MySpace, with its parent company Intermix Media, were bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. which owns such media companies as FOX News, Harper Collins and the New York Post, for half a billion dollars. MySpace consumes a lot of bandwidth and has ads plastered everywhere. They can afford to pay a few of the more popular artists at the very least.
The following shows what heartless bastards work at MySpace.
Asked by moderator Jim Griffin why MySpace shouldn't make some kind of contribution - she replied that bands could get on their bikes and look for other revenue sources.MySpace is supposed to be the alternate revenue stream! Why the hell would any artist use MySpace?
The great thing about MySpace, she said, was that so many bands took business back under their own initiative.
"People love to go to your show and buy your T-shirt," she said.
What if the band doesn't want to, or can't afford to perform, came back the response. The question was sidestepped.
"We provide hundreds of millions of dollars of technology investment for new artists. It takes money to build a website."Judging from the look of MySpace and all of the HTML "hacks" that users have to use to make their profiles look a little less ugly, they're failing in terms of providing a great product.
That brought splutters from the panel. Former EMI exec Ted Cohen replied that this was an argument others could make.
"You say 'We want your music for free, and here's some technology?' Microsoft could say that!"
Oh, but we don't want it for free, she replied.
They're a marketing site, just like the radio and TV are and they should be subject to the same royalty arrangements that music TV channels and radio stations have. Who cares how many people listen to your damn song if you can't make a single cent? Exactly like MySpace and YouTube...Who cares how many people visit those websites if they can't make a cent?
A short post I know, the next one will be longer.
2 comments:
Bands aren't going to MySpace to help bring people to MySpace. People are already there. Bands go to MySpace to inform those people who are already there (which is a fair sum, to be sure) of their music. Most bands exercise the option of streaming their music only, so it's not as if people can download any song they want off the site. Plus there's a limited selection of music from any given artist, not whole albums. MySpace is being used as free advertising. It's not at all like performing on a television show or on radio, for which the music is used to bring in an audience. This advertising technique isn't even unique to bands. Movie companies are setting up MySpace pages for their blockbuster hits. There are corporations looking into using MySpace for advertisement. Setting up a MySpace account is valuable simply for the attention it draws. Your gripes agaist it's lousy coding aside, they're successful with or without bands (though the bands have helped) and any band who feels they deserve cash for signing themselves up on a free networking site is free to leave.
Yes, you're right. Their main business doesn't rely on bands, it relies on advertisements and big corporate dollars, more of one than the other. Corporations looking into advertising on MySpace are most likely going to be seedy (News. Corp. or some kind of spam company (Intermix Media, the parent company of MySpace, was a spam organization and were actually labelled by their ISP (Internet Service Provider) as a spam organization!))
Okay, if the videos and music are advertisements then MySpace should be getting paid for hosting them by the creators of those advertisements. But music videos and music clips are simply not advertisements so the rules are different (obviously). The bands deserve cash because MySpace is using their content to boost their own popularity.
It turns into a nice cycle where the popularity of one boosts the popularity of the other and then turns around and does the same for the originator. This isn't a problem at all, the problem is that MySpace has gotten paid and the artists haven't.
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