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Comment of the Day
JontheWayne left this comment to my TourBus post:
Om reports that MySpace is opening an indie record store online which will sell DRM-free music from over 3 million indie bands. The cool thing is each band gets their own “store”, and a small version of the store can be pasted into any MySpace page (viral).
I predict that it won’t be long before the big labels take off their DRM condoms and start selling on the MySpace music store too. You simply can’t ignore over 100 million people. Hurray for music lovers!
Posted by: JontheWayne
While the idea of a drm free music store for indie bands is not new (eMusic anyone?), the viral nature of MySpace music, and the size of the audience truly can't be ignored. I'd be willing to bet that MySpace Music is going to be more popular with the teen crowd than Spiral Frog.
September 3, 2006 Venture Capital and Technology | Comments (2)
Comments
When MySpace does this with film/video, that will be news.
Posted by: Megan Cunningham | Sep 3, 2006 11:58:07 AM
How does MySpace justify taking $.45 per song? MySpace should be using a sliding scale - $.45 maybe after 100,000 downloads.
If we have 3 million bands, I suspect 90-99% of the offering will have say 10-20 downloads, for which Myspace should get a flat fee of say $5-10 per 10-song album (comparable to eBay fee structure) from the uploader.
Then, if the songs take off, the percentage "rent" to MySpace is triggered (paid by music downloader).
MySpace should keep its take to not over 33% of the gross, like the average contingent fee lawyer.
45% looks like greed, and compares unfavorably to Apple, which charges $.35.
MySpace and Apple and the other music and video folks (and eBay) should price in accord with the reasonable value of what they offer, generally speaking.
MySpace can promote its suppliers' product as "no DRM, so better than iTunes" but that concession comes from the copyright holder, which is not MySpace.
Posted by: cfw | Sep 4, 2006 12:03:54 PM
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