Basement Jaxx Music Set to Become Available on Myspace
News Corp site settles row with Merlin agency whose clients include Arctic Monkeys, Basement Jaxx , Radiohead and Vampire Weekend.
MySpace has settled a year-long row with independent record companies with a landmark deal that will allow artists including Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead and Vampire Weekend to sell tracks on the social networking site’s music service.
MySpace Music launched in the US last year, recently expanded into Australia and New Zealand and plans to roll out in the UK soon. But the launch of the service was marred by anger from the largest independent record labels, which accused News Corp-owned MySpace of leaving them out in the cold.
The four majors that signed up to the new service – Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI – all received an equity stake in the venture. But Merlin, an agency representing independents around the world, complained the smaller labels were not offered comparable terms.
Other artists represented by Merlin’s member labels include Adele, Basement Jaxx, Tom Waits, Franz Ferdinand and Prodigy.
Now independent labels representing 10% of the global music market will join MySpace Music, creating one of the largest independent music offerings on the web.
The two sides said in a joint statement that a new deal would allow Merlin’s members to “participate in and benefit from the financial growth of MySpace Music”. The agreement is to be announced formally on Monday.
They declined to disclose the commercial terms but said Merlin’s member labels would be eligible to make money from their content on MySpace Music and that a Merlin nominee had been invited to attend and participate in selected MySpace Music board meetings.
“We can now provide our users with access to the rich catalogue that Merlin brings while simultaneously enabling Merlin labels to monetise their content within the MySpace community and easily track their fan engagement via our artist dashboard,” said Courtney Holt, the president of MySpace Music.
