JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum MySpace talking to independents Posted by: "Derek at CD Baby"

Actually Turnaround (and FYI, I have no idea who Turnaround is, but that's fine as he/she was quite intelligent and respectful in their post) made the fundamental purpose of my essay for me. Indie artists should not look at this new MySpace Music set up as a good thing. We 100% agree on that issue. It's very bad for indies, and in the end, I wonder how good it will be for the majors. Everyone is raging about 360 deals right now where mega artists like Jay-Z and Madonna and U2 get gobs of money essentially sell shares of their entire commercial life. All products, all music, all appearances, everything. But I don't think that premise works so well for most artists, especially those not getting a gigantic upfront payment for it all.

Most of the smaller level label artists I know get their initial signing money and that's about it. That money dries up fast and they are left trying to make things go with all the fringe income they can make from touring or merchandising for example. Since majors are doing less and less and cutting back their staffs to less than mere shadows of what they once were, they're going to be giving more and getting even less in return than before. And how many of them (or Turnaround for that matter) actually think the royalty/shared income money they DO get from MySpace is going into the pockets of the artists involved? Outside of a few superstars, probably little to none. Remember, aren't these the same folks that said they lost money so famously on TLC on 179 million is sales right? Seriously.. with the claimed losses by these mega corps, that money isn't going to go to the artists, but less money from their sales of non musical stuff is going away at the same time. That's tragedy of this for label folk. For everyone else, you're right, they shouldn't expect that a new owner "the labels" are going to do anything for them. But when they signed up, it wasn't "the labels" site.. it was an independent site and 5 million artists joined up and made it what is it today so that the labels would ever consider doing business with them in the first place. Have the indies who worked it hard benefitted? Sure. So has MySpace. But now, all that goodwill is sold down the river to a bunch of failing corporations who rode their own plane into the ground before finally starting to do what indie artists have been doing for 10 years. I just think it's important that someone out there tell it like it is. So I stepped up.

I've actually gotten some hate mail from label folks.. had a few unsubscribe from our newsletter and others not return my emails. So be it. Telling the truth isn't always the easy thing to do, but it's the right think none the less.

MySpace claims to be a community site. They've just proven they are the farthest thing from that possible. And Turnaround seems to acknowledge that. So we agree.

Brian