Fairly sparse stuff this week.
Billy Bragg says MySpace exploits musicians.
The Guardian has a nice article on the UK experimental music scene.
And there was the launch of a new CD swap site that aims to give back to struggling artists: Lala.com allows fans to trade CDs for just $1, plus shipping, and pledges to give a fifth of its sales to all the musicians, including session players, involved in the making of those records. Sounds like a nice idea.
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The MySpace terms and conditions sound a lot like the usual legal boilerplate that Microsoft and Yahoo have used in the past, only to “clarify” their small print once users start asking difficult questions. MySpace is making noises about watering down their legal claims to copyright.
Hmmm, if Billy Bragg wasn’t making money this wouldn’t be an issue. Isn’t the high availability of his music in MySpace one reason why he became so well known? MySpace is not a record company. Now that MySpace raised Billy’s profile, he doesn’t necessarily have to give them the right to all his future songs…does he?
Hi Lisa, thanks for your comment. Well, Billy Bragg’s been making music for over 20 years now, so MySpace isn’t why he’s famous, it’s just one tool he started using more recently to help promote his music further. But he’s an old hand at the music business, and he doesn’t really need MySpace at all. And I think he’s right in that anyone with a serious interest in making their living in music (or any of the arts) shouldn’t sign up to a license agreement that allows someone else complete, royalty-free rights over your music. It’s just a bad thing. But that said, Bragg was a bit silly in the first place to sign up to MySpace without checking this sort of thing out first.