IODA Signs With MySpace Music
Digital distributor IODA has finalized a deal with MySpace Music. They become the second major Independent distributor after The Orchard to have their music included on the social networkers new ad supported music service.
The deal means 1 million tracks from 50K indie artists. "Sometimes being first to the party is not the best position to be in during negotiations," IODA CEO Kevin Arnold said in an interview late Wednesday. "We weren’t under intense pressure to make this deal and I’m very happy with what we ended up with."
Arnold stated that "equity and profit participation were not a part of the contract", as MERLIN and some indies have called for. "I said from the beginning that finding short term revenue streams for our label partners was the goal. We’ve tip toed our way towards the ad supported model and MySpace Music is well positioned to make it work." While labels are able to opt out of participating, Arnold says his labels are generally enthusiastic. "Many of IODA’s labels have been early and active participants in the MySpace Music community, and consider it an essential tool to develop relationships with their fans."
Who is next? MySpace isn’t really saying. "We’re creating a sustainable, profitable music economy for all artists and we’re thrilled IODA endorses this vision. MySpace Music continues to actively embrace the indie community as we further our partnership discussions with additional labels and aggregators," says Frank Hajdu, My Space Music’s Executive Director of Strategy & Operations.
If anyone from Myspace Music reads this, RouteNote is also keen to go into talks about adding our growing catalogue to the Myspace Music service.
This is a nice move by myspace; but it continues to follow their stale old act of creating large amounts of revenue on the backs of independent artist and their content.
myspace is easily worth at least a billion, and where is the value coming from other than artist and memberscontent and activities.
How much ad revenue is myspace sharing with members that generate ad revenue for them ? Are they giving anything back to the community that has put them where they are ?
I am technology consultant, and this summer I became so feed up with the share cropper mentality of sites like myspace that I decided to build an application that shares the wealth that is created with the community.
At adelph.us we believe that Artist should have the best tools available to connect with their fans and to distribute and sell their music. We think that artist should have an easy way to build a fan base and to allow their fans to also be rewarded for spreading the word and the music.
With adelph.us the artist owns the content. With adelph.us the artist controls the price. With adelph.us the artist can generate interest as well as sells.