Record Labels Change Minds About Sharing MP3s

Mass Defect writes "While the RIAA continues to sue people for p2p file sharing, the record labels have made an about-face and given their blessing to users sharing MP3s via the social networking site imeem.com. In May this year the site was being sued by Warner for allowing users to upload photos, videos, and music to share. However to everyone's amazement, instead of being flattened, imeem.com managed to convince the label that this free promotion was a good thing. In July imeem.com signed a deal with the label. Since then the site has added Sony, BMG, EMI, and now the biggest fish of them all, Universal. Imeem now has the royal flush of record labels supporting its media-sharing service, each getting a cut of the advertising revenues generated by their catalog. Finally someone has figured out a way to do 'YouTube for MP3s' without getting sued out of existence."

The end it near

[Kintarotpc]

Does this mean that the universe is going to end?

Re:About time

[Martian_Kyo]

Yes but RIAA was never opposed to music sharing because of the revenue...but because of the principle and morality.

Common sense?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

This isn't an outbreak of anything but more crap. Who would use this service? It's like going to a news site where all they do is provide a brief, degraded version of an actual news story...

Re:Yawn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imeem's missing the point. One of the biggest positive points of P2P is that the record companies, radio conglomerates, have absolutely no say over what you get for free. What we're seeing here is the Record Companies trying to make money, while making one last effort to keep cheap fucks from taking things for free because it's easy. And it's just not going to work. You see.... last year was arguably one of the best years on record for people who want free stuff for this very reason. The amount of *easily pirated* content being released by small labels was staggering to say the least, and I'd be pretty certain that more than a few of these artists got their "big break" via P2P by "fans" who insist that somebody is going to pay for a t-shirt or ticket... just not them. Meanwhile, the immensely popular talent on the major labels was.... "crap"... to say the least that you can say to justify all the music you stea... er, infringe copyright, and it has nothing to do with the inevitable backlash that occurs between generations. Most of the "Top-40" artists are untalented, formulaic, and absolute rubbish, which makes it *really* odd to see how many people are downloading Beyonce and Alicia Keys torrents at this very moment. In fact, if the "Top-40" artists are so fucking awful, why is it that they're inevitably the most *pirated* artists? Oh, well. I guess there are a lot of political protesters out there pirating shitty music in a consolidated effort to stick it to TEH MANG! The crackdown on P2P, and the agreement with Imeem is at least in part trying to mask the fact that the RIAA's members have completely lost the ability to get paid for the music they distribute. On the other hand, the indie labels have gotten quite good at it... and by "gotten quite good" I mean "consistently failed to attract artists who have anything other than a niche appeal." The days of music piracy being limited to people with any sort of technical knowledge are over. The labels need to accept the fact that the culture of entertainment as something worthy of financial support is over and music is going to become increasingly unfunded over the next several years, and that their old strategy of making money off music that is wildly popular to the listening audience is over.

Fixed that for you.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

If that superultraawesome indie music appealed to anyone other than holier-than-thou college students with stupid hair who stop listening to a band the moment someone who bathes admits to listening to them, then the band would have been signed to a major label. There's a reason the labels are pushing Beyonce more than The Mars Volta. Beyonce sells zillions of albums and The Mars Volta are unlistenable jizzshit that only appeals to people who think suffering is an awesome side effect of entertainment.

Parallel universe?

[nevurthls]

Did we switch to one while I was asleep?
I guess this means Duke Nukem Forever will be coming out next month.

Re:wow

[Yetihehe]

its not really that invasive, I haven't had to sell a kidney, or hand my sould over to the devil.

The first time is for free...

Re:Common sense?

[mincognito]

Who would use this service? It's like going to a news site where all they do is provide a brief, degraded version of an actual news story..

I'm not sure about imeem, but what if -- get this -- you had a site with degraded news stories *about* degraded services? The news stories could be degraded in just such a way that made the degraded services appear *non-degraded* and really cool. Then, you provide a forum for people to bitch about the service and about how it shouldn't have been covered in first place. What do you think?