Mp3.com to charge artists to get paid.

March 23, 2001 1:40 AM

Mp3.com to charge artists to get paid. Though only a handful of artists have made a lot of money from this exposure, it was a good place to start out and the model was intriguing. But this smells like record company tactics, and probably spells the end of an era.

Some kind of file-sharing forum for new artists will spring up I guess. Where the money/remuneration fits in , I don't know.
posted by aflakete (3 comments total)

These things don't die out. If MP3.com starts to charge artists, some other site will take over it's current position. There are numerous similar pages allready, like freetrax.com.
posted by mort at 3:06 AM on March 23, 2001

Yes Mort, but IMHO only MP3.com has the hits to really make big piles of money for successful artists, and to survive the dot-com slaughter. They are smart to charge money, since then only artists making more than $20 a month will continue with Pay for Play, meaning fewer accounts to keep track of, fewer checks to write, concentrating on the few artists that are bringing traffic to the site. MP3.com has made some misteps here and there, and this is obviously an anti-small-artists step (booooo!) but from a business perspective I think they're on the right track.
posted by Outlawyr at 6:18 AM on March 23, 2001

hopefully this'll mean significantly fewer posts to every music-related mailing list that I'm on from people who've never posted before asking me to "check out their phat new trax!" and give them some feedback!

on the other hand, I guess this puts a damper on my joke music project where I did the same thing in hopes of getting rich. back to the drawing board, i guess.
posted by chrisege at 7:01 AM on March 23, 2001