p2pnet news | Music:- Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG are still desperately, and in vain, trying to sue consumers into buying their ‘product’. But downloading and posting excerpts is okay, surely?

Not on Facebook. Not where the Universal Music Group is concerned, anyway.

Its iLike gives users the ability to post 30-second music clips on their profiles but UMG “has forced iLike to pull its music off the app,” says Silicone Alley Insider.

Neither side will say why, but., “people familiar with the situation say that part of the problem lies with the agreements both companies have had with Muze, a middleman which powers the ’sampling’ feature on a host of web sites.

“UMG had licensed its music through Muze, which in turn subbed the rights to iLike; now UMG’s deal with Muze has expired, and the music label and iLike are trying to hammer out a direct deal. Update: Muze marketing VP Lee Ho tells us that his company still has a deal to provide samples for UMG, which makes things slightly fuzzier.”

But irascible old UMG dinosaur Doug Morris (right) is blundering around in the background, it seems

To put it politely, says Silicone Alley Insider, he’s “trying to extract payment from Web sites or other companies that want to use his music – the ‘exposure as payment’ notion hasn’t flown for quite awhile.

“Hence his insistence that MySpace stop providing full-length streams on UMG artists’ pages, and that sites like iMeem, et al, pay substantial upfront fees for streaming rights.

“Even Microsoft has played along, ponying up a tariff on each Zune player sold. The only person who has yet to give Morris what he wants: Apple’s Steve Jobs.”

Here’s a study in contrasts:

Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, the members of the Big 4 organised music cartel, are hell bent on forcing you to use their low quality, high-priced ‘product,’ as they quite rightly call the formulaic junk they pump out year after year.

And they’ll stop at nothing.

However, media hype notwithstanding, the corporate online music business is only just starting to develop with Amazon as the first company to successfully licence partially unpolluted downloads in the Big 4.

They’re still way over-priced and despite reports the ‘product’ is DRM-free, that’s stretching the truth to virtual breaking point.

But it’s a start.

Meanwhile, in the real world of independent online music which has been expanding dynamically ever since the mid-1990s.

Today, billions of music lovers everywhere are online every minute of every hour of every day, sharing, caring and communicating with each other.

Who needs 30-second clips from UMG?

Come to that, who need UMG. Or Warner? Or EMI? Or Sony BMG?

Slashdot it!

Also see:

Silicone Alley Insider- TUniversal Music: MIA on iLike, January 3, 2008
partially unpolluted downloads – Sony BMG dumps DRM _ kinda, January 4, 2008

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 11:19 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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