12,000 of the world’s independent record labels have joined together to create a virtual fifth major.
“80 percent of the world’s music releases come not from the majors but from independent labels. Getting access to this music is a hassle for stores like iTunes and webcasters like Last.fm, since it takes an incredible amount of effort to do thousands of different (and small) deals. It’s not a great situation for the indies, either, which individually don’t possess the clout needed to get the best deals.”
A little over a year ago, the indies launched Merlin, a one stop rights clearinghouse for indie artists. More importantly and according to Ars Technica, “Merlin has announced that it is working on deals with several soon-to-be-launched services, including the highly-anticipated music service from MySpace.” Read the rest here..
It’s great to see indies come together like this. I’m interested in seeing how much power they will wield as a collective.
For sure. Very possibly a key development in the new-&-improved Music Biz 2.0
does anyone know merlin’s website address?
I haven’t been able to find the actual site as well.
“I’m interested in seeing how much power they will wield as a collective.”….none, this has been tryed before.
I’m going to agree with Larry. The more popular/money making acts will get the attention/budgets, and the rest will be basically fending for themselves as it is now.