D.I.Y.

Thousands Of Indie Artists Are Left Unpaid After MySpace’s Imeem Purchase

image from rlv.zcache.com It wasn't just fans who got the short end of the stick when MySpace purchased imeem. They just lost their playlists and a great place to hang out and discover music. Now its come to light that thousands of indie artists lost some hard earned cash.

MySpace only bought some of imeem's assets and assumed none of its mounting debts. Included in those unpaid debts were money owed to the 110,000 artists who used imeem owned SnoCap to sell there music on the web on a number of sites including imeem and MySpace itself.

Not assuming debt is a common practice when a struggling company is sold.  But now these 110,000 artists have to get in line behind more powerful creditors as imeem sells off its few remaining assets. Or somebody – like MySpace – could buy SNOCAP and find a way to at least partially compensate the artists. 

Why is Aerosmith's "Dream On" running through my head right now?

The official statement from MySpace:

“MySpace Music bought a limited set of imeem’s assets including the
domain name and certain technology and trademarks,” a MySpace
spokeswoman said in an e-mail to Wired.com. “The asset sale to MySpace
Music was part of a foreclosure process which resulted from the lien
certain secured creditors had on all the assets of imeem. MySpace Music
did not acquire imeem’s outstanding debts, including the money imeem
owed to artists under the Snocap relationship.  Upon closing, users
trying to access the Imeem website were redirected to MySpace Music. We
did not acquire imeem’s contracts or relationships as we have our own
in place. MySpace Music has its own distribution platform, which
includes relationships with prominent aggregators and indie labels,
that provides indie artists ways to monetize their music on our site.”

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6 Comments

  1. I actually consult for a group (even oddz) who is/was owed money from Snocap…not very much at all, but still its fucked up. Kinda the same thing that happens when a distributor or indie music store goes bankrupt.
    But hey, what can you do? Its the business we chose lol

  2. It appears like the New Music Business is kind of reminiscent of a gold rush in the old days, when shovelmakers, toolmakers and producers of black powder were making the money, but not the actual independent gold diggers themselves.
    From this viewpoint, MySpace, FaceBook, SnoCap and all those middlemen for hire represent the shovelmakers whilst the indie artists represent the gold diggers – but if a lot of indie artists suffered from the bad luck of their hired middleman going under, what would that mean for the musical middle class? Would it still exist anyway or would the hired middlemen just keep all the money?
    The Rutles – Eine Kleine Middle Klasse Music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmgwxMrq0kc

  3. Everyone wants to make money from the indie artists but when it comes time to pay up – suddenly, there’s no money. Isn’t it just fabulous how corporate America works! *cough*

  4. I signed up for Snocap a long time ago, and they don’t offer to pay in checks or debit, they only ask for all of your bank account information. As a result, I never filled it out, and I never would have made any money anyway. I took it off because I was worried about the fans getting ripped off, but put it back on recently just so people could download my music.
    But the Snocap site has been down for a week and it is messing up the layout of my webpages as a result. These are the corrupt Napster guys who screwed over the music industry in the first place. I guess it is the myspace aquisition or something, Snocap is completely down right now, and unfortunately I hope they come back up. Yeah, these are the Napster guys that killed the music industry in the first place.
    Keep Creepin,
    K I T
    Creep Macabre

  5. Well Put Macabre. I signed up, never could get it to link up with my Myspace page. Thought that was odd. Finally posted it from the HTML code on the site. I trusted it before doing any research because my friends bands fairly established and touring with Major Label acts were using them on their Myspace pages. Oh well, I may never know if I made a dime.
    Travis Comer

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