This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Digital Labels & Publishers Top Stories
Merlin signs up to MySpace Music
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 23 November 2009
So the war, mainly of words (though I read somewhere Alex Turner and Jack White had taken out Tom with a hand grenade), between MySpace Music and indie label digital rights body Merlin is over. This means indie label music will be available via the social network’s expanded music service, or at least it will until MySpace goes out of business, which I think is due to happen three weeks on Wednesday.
As much previously reported, when MySpace launched its expanded streaming music service in the US last year it did so without Merlin on board – and therefore without the majority of the indie label catalogue. Merlin objected to the fact the major record companies had been offered equity in MySpace’s new music company, while the indies were not. If they signed up, Merlin argued, they would be helping boost the profits of their competitors, without equally benefiting from said competitors’ involvement.
Indie aggregators The Orchard and IODA did licence their catalogues to the new service, and some major-label distributed indie labels were on board, but the lack of a Merlin deal meant that the bigger independents, and therefore the bigger indie-signed artists, were not included in MySpace Music. That remained the case even as MySpace Music launched in Australia last month.
None of this stopped stop indie labels uploading their content to individual MySpace artist profiles, but it meant that bands like Arctic Monkeys, Adele, Antony & The Johnsons, Basement Jaxx, Bjork, Tom Waits, Franz Ferdinand, Prodigy, Animal Collective, Rancid and Vampire Weekend did not feature on the expanded MySpace Music platform, which offers users a much wider catalogue of music and playlist functionality, putting the social networking site’s music strand into Spotify and Grooveshark territory (albeit in the “not very good” enclosure of that territory, just next to the Comes With Music tent).
Numerous indie labels around the world criticised MySpace for not doing a deal with Merlin, pointing out it was they who originally embraced the artist profile section of the social network platform, helping the service gain a hold in the music space, and providing the one USP that has kept MySpace in business despite the rise of superior social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter.
But in a statement this weekend, Merlin confirmed it had done a deal with MySpace. The specifics of that deal are not known, but the statement says the indie labels represented by Merlin will enjoy “an opportunity to participate in and benefit from the financial growth of MySpace Music”. While Merlin will not, like the major record companies, get a place on the MySpace Music Board which oversees the new service, they will attend its meetings in an advisory role.
Confirming the deal, MySpace Music’s top man Courtney Holt told reporters: “We’re excited to have Merlin’s labels join our platform. We can now provide our users with access to the rich catalogue that Merlin brings while simultaneously enabling Merlin labels to monetise their content within the MySpace community and easily track their fan engagement via our Artist Dashboard”.
Merlin chief Charles Caldas, meanwhile, said this: “We have worked hard with Courtney and the MySpace Music team to find a way by which Merlin’s members could participate in the platform that MySpace Music offers as well as benefit from the long-term value that they bring to the MySpace Music venture. The creation of this participation plan, along with the ability for Merlin nominees to participate in MySpace Music board meetings, shows that MySpace Music has recognised the value Merlin offers. I believe the announcement of this participation plan will ensure that MSM will move forward with the full support of our members, and by making this plan available to all independents, with the support of the entire independent community”.
A string of indie label chiefs affiliated to Merlin lined up to welcome the deal. We’ll give you two of them. First, Beggars Group boss Martin Mills: “I am very happy that, after considerable effort on all sides, we now have an agreement through Merlin to participate in the exciting opportunities that MySpace Music offers, and that those labels and artists who were so much at the heart of MySpace from the outset will now be a part of and benefit from its growth.”
And second, Horst Weidenmueller of !K7: “MySpace was the first social network service that enabled indies to introduce new music to consumers without a major marketing budget. This has changed the music industry, but gave birth to the misconception that labels had to give away their music for free in exchange for increased profiling. This new partnership enables both sides to enjoy the financial growth of MySpace Music”.
