Another Reason Disney and Myspace Sucks

This has to be the dumbest thing I have heard Disney do. The Blake Babies can not stream their own music on Myspace. The reason is Disney owns the masters. How Disney thinks this will help sells records of a defuct indie pop band is left unexplained.

John Strohm explained that Myspace suspended the Blake Babies streaming privileges. The band is not allowed to post music not owned by Disney. The most surreal thing about all this is the band members wrote the majority of their recording output; barring a few cover tracks.

Okay, I've never posted on here, but something has come up that merits explanation. MySpace pulled the songs we were streaming because The Blake Babies do not own our master recordings -- they are the exclusive property of the Walt Disney corporation. I apologize for this inconvenience; although our intention is only to generate interest in our music and make the streams available to established fans who can't find our recordings elsewhere, our posting the tracks is indeed an infringement of Disney's copyright. They'll get no argument from me.

The frustrating thing is that there are certain Blake Babies recordings that we do own and control (nothing from the original Mammoth catalogue, but some more recent recordings from the reunion phase), and we would very much like to make these recordings available for streaming on this page. Nevertheless, because of the unauthorized use of the Disney recordings, our streaming privileges have been suspended "until further notice." I understand that MySpace must actively police the website and its users to weed out infringing uses. That said, I hope they permit us to post our controlled masters soon. We mean no harm to anyone; to the contrary, our sole intention is to spread the love and make/keep people interested in this band's music.

Strohm is being too kind to Myspace. I'm sure he is aware of that, but why piss off a music marketing monster.

This is the same Myspace that believed they were legally allowed to use any song posted without the artist's consent. Folk singer Billy Bragg said the Myspace policy was copyright infringement.

"The real problem is the fact that they can sub-license it to any company they want and keep the royalities themselves without paying the artist a penny. It also doesn't stipulate that they can use it for non-commercial use only which is what I'd want to see in that clause. The clause is basically far to open for abuse and thus I'm very wary."

The appeal of Myspace perplexes me. I love that I can find new music. The social network aspect is retarded. The layouts and loading speed of the site is dreadful. The blog software is even worse. Myspace users are shocked that lurkers find out embarrassing personal details of their lives. Do people understand the concept of talking to each other in person? Try it people. You might like it.