AfterDawn: News

Loudeye to offer indie music to Net music stores

Loudeye, a long-time digital music company, has set up a new service called IndieSource that basically acts as a middle-man between indie record labels and online music stores, such as íTunes. The demand is clear -- quarter of American music sales are for indie labels' artists and currently all of the online music stores have focused their attention to five major record labels, mostly ignoring the niche players. Already several indie labels have signed up to Loudeye's service and company seems to be optimistic about its outlook.

To ensure its position in upcoming global wave of online music services (iTunes and other services are mostly available to U.S. only), Loudeye also signed a contract with Indian company called Saregama that represents over half of India's recorded music. Under the terms of contract, Loudeye has rights to distribute Saregama's music to online music stores around the world.



Source: News.com

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 14 Apr 2004 13:46

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• strcruzer

  THe question will be (or is) are they part of the RIAA? If so they will be doing the Indies a great disservice. If not (and I hope so) this give the big 5 something else to worry about, more sales to the small guys and less to them.
  
  As the above article it states, 25 % of the sales goes to indie labels (the hard copies, CD's etc...) and right now none of the on-line MP3 sales are for the Indie labels/Artists, I'm sure the RIAA will try to pull the indie labels in or Loudeye (both?) to control the sales and get their share (fair share, I doubt that) or maybe try to squash the Indie on-line sales by putting agreements in place that the on-line seller cannot sell competing products. That would be just like them in trying to control the market.

  15.4.2004 06:31 #1