Another free ride is coming to an end for Web music, only this time it's the musicians who stand to lose out.
As of April 1, the no-cover-charge model is coming to an end. Artists can still put their sites onto MP3.com for free, but they will have to pay $19.99 a month to be a part of the profit-sharing program. |
That shouldn't be a problem for the most successful artists on the site, but the vast majority of musicians on the site today make less than the nearly $240 a year that will now be required to break even on the program. Although the program has handed out millions of dollars since its inception, only a handful of musicians have made any real money.
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The move comes as MP3, like other music sites focusing on independent artists, struggles to turn a business that is developing more slowly than expected into a profit-making venture.
"There is still demand for (this kind of content) on the Web," said P.J. McNealy, a Gartner analyst. "The question is still whether there is a legitimate business model behind it."
MP3.com's decision comes a few months after the Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA), one of the earliest music sites on the Web, stopped its own artist revenue-sharing program and closed down many of its other features. Other similar sites have been struggling as well; Riffage.com, a site that allowed new artists to post their material in hopes of discovery closed down late last year.
The free internet seems to be going down, hopefully we can keep CD Freaks free forever, but you will have to click our banners for that...
Source: ZDnet.com
