Government Investigating Music Label Services
from the but-will-they-do-anything? dept
It seems you can't do anything involving online music without somehow getting involved in a lawsuit or six. After the music labels went out and crushed a bunch of online music companies, they're working on their own programs (talked about here often enough) called MusicNet and Pressplay. The US Justice Department is starting to investigate both of them. MusicNet and Pressplay seem to think it's nothing big. Of course, one of the odd details that comes out in the story is that MusicNet is requiring companies pay an upfront $750,000 fee just to negotiate with them for a license. That's right, that's three-quarters of a million dollars just to get to the table. It doesn't guarantee you anything. Anyone want to pay me $750k just to negotiate with me? I promise I'll go easy on you.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
