Re: mp3.com, freebies, etc... another point of view

["Stephen P. Goodman" <spgoodman@earthlight.net>]

Andre LaFosse put forth:
> Back in 1995-96, IUMA charged artists $200 to sign up for their system.
> The idea of a website dedicated strictly to music, that would offer you
> unlimited file storage space, and would take a file you uploaded and
> convert it into different kbps formates for you, all for FREE... was
> science fiction at the time.  But that's what mp3.com has been doing for
> the last few years.

I started with them in 1996, and they provided a link to my Studios page 
for
free.  I've been posting MP3s there for free for about two years.  They 
did,
prior to their purchase by vitaminic, have a limit of # of files you could
post, but they were the only folks who consistently paid checks - no matter
how small - to me every quarter.  MP3.com had rules about when you would or
wouldn't get paid for a music download/play that confused many, and weren't
clearly posted, frankly.

> Now, when you subtract the $1,000,000 that THEY have been paying out to
> artists every month since payback for playback started, that would leave
> them with only $200,000 - about $1.67 per artist - of income.

This of course doesn't take into account the money they make from
advertising and merchandising, whether you're paid as an artist or not.

> When you consider that the site recently had to pay out several HUNDRED
> million dollars in legal fees to the major labels, their situation looks
> even less rosy.

Well, they paid their lawyers for sure; they made distribution deals with
the folks who sued them that we still don't know about completely.

> I'm not a huge fan of the site, and I've never taken it very seriously
> as anything other than free FTP storage space, but to slam them because
> they're a corporation that wants to increase its market value and pull
> in some money sort of misses the point.

I didn't slam them because of any of the above.  I criticized them because
of their deceptive arrangements regarding promotion of music for a price -
85% for film/video placement?  Even not wanting to promote your stuff
shouldn't cost that much! - and their bait-and-switch tactic regarding 
their
"premium artist" service.  And I asked the question amongst us all 
regarding
all our placements on their system - and what you all thought of the idea 
of
moving.  We have started talking about live365 and the "radio station"
concept for our creations - and I think that gets our material out to more
people anyway.  This wasn't just a call to "fight or switch" (to coin an 
old
cigarette advert).

Stephen Goodman
http://www.earthlight.net/Gallery_Front.html - Cartoons & Illustrations
http://www.earthlight.net/Studios * The free Loop of the Week!