When Chairlift—better known as "oh, another act that's trying to ride the iPod ad train?"—is one of the "bigger" indie acts touted in a press release announcing a contract-signing, the breakthrough quotient of said deal might be called into question. Indeed, the signing of IODA seems to be more about quantity than quality.

On Thursday, however, MySpace unveiled a deal that should begin to quiet the critics. The News Corp. division announced it had licensed over one million tracks from IODA, a San Francisco-based digital distributor of independent music. IODA's artist roster includes indie faves such as Paw Tracks's Animal Collective and Kanine Records' Chairlift.

"The independent music community has been a cornerstone of MySpace Music," said Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and CEO of MySpace in a statement. We're thrilled to welcome IODA and its more than 50,000 artists to MySpace Music."

MySpace's critics said the social network was now turning its backs on the same artists who had been instrumental in its growth.

Frank Hajdu, executive director of MySpace Music, says nothing could be further from the truth. "There has been a lot of public misconception about MySpace and its involvement with the independents with the launch," he said. "We've always been committed to the independents from the outset."

He declined to discuss the terms of the IODA deal. Kevin Arnold, CEO of IODA, was more forthcoming. He said it had taken a while for IODA to strike a deal with MySpace because the social network had initially offered no guarantees, only a share of the music service's ad revenues.

IODA won't get equity in MySpace Music. But Arnold said MySpace had sweetened its offer in recent weeks. "We made significant improvements over the previous proposal," he said. "There are a number of things that are important to us-some guarantees and assurances that there will be revenue for streaming our music."

IODA does have some important imprints in its catalog (Arts & Crafts, Fat Cat, Relapse, Rounder), but for each of those labels, there's Kanine Records (home of Chairlift), Rave Police Records, and Geykido Comet Records. MySpace announced they were still in negotiations with Merlin—which is possibly the biggest fish in the indie pond (it has distributors like Domino, Koch and Beggars under their umbrella) and one of the most outspoken opponents to the existing payment structure for indies.

The question unlikely to be answered by the people at IODA is: Why sign on with Myspace Music? The deals being signed are unlikely to adquately serve as payback for the eyeballs indie labels have brought to MySpace in the past and (likely) the future, especially since the majors are getting partial ownership in the venture while indies are left to fight over the scraps. Are smaller labels just making sure they get something from the site, even if said wrangling results in setting a bad precedent for their music's value?

After uproar, MySpace signs indie music deal [CNN Money]
IODA Partners with MySpace Music [Marketwatch]

Well, sort of. Instead of allowing this to become a thriving and exciting new marketplace for artists to promote and sell their wares, is this move really about more than Google/YouTube's bottom line? YouTube garnered a reputation as something of a major copyright-infringer in its earliest days, but it's recently started playing more nicely with major labels like EMI and Universal Music Group. With its copyright battle still raging with Viacom, Google is probably, more than anything, trying to placate its biggest content partners—the major media conglomerates. Basically, it's another way of the site saying, "Look, we're all in this together... now you can make even more money off the kid who taped the video off MTV and posted it!"

This is worrying:

Music labels could choose to place the e-commerce links next to their own videos or on videos uploaded by users, whose images or soundtrack they identified using YouTube’s Content ID system, which allows content owners to find unauthorized material on the site.

It all sounds great until you get to that part about "unauthorized material." I can see the major labels using a wide definition of the term, one that asks the question "who gets to monetize what?" If an artist released a song on two different records on two different labels, and it's a live video of said song, who gets the cut of that? Is there a pecking order based around which company has more money to throw at lawyers?

For example, this godheadSilo cover of "In The Air Tonight" I'm about to post for no reason other than it's totally boss. W gets the MP3 link on that, if anyone does? What's to stop Virgin or Atlantic from coming through and linking to Phil Collins from this, since the song was written by "their" artist? Or will users just bypass the helpfully embedded links and, if they're inspired by buy something, head to their old reliable sources for digital music? Just like MySpace Music, record companies assume that "access and convenience" automatically equals "sales," and that's not necessarily a truism. (Artists, of course, have zero control over any of this.)

Google Puts Tunes From YouTube A Click Away [New York Times]

Hyman disses MySpace for not having the database to back up its much-hyped initiative, scolds the music business for being slow on streams, and discusses outdated pricing models. After spending so much time reading about the doomed premise behind something like Comes With Music, this is all a breath of fresh air, especially coming from someone employed by CBS.

Forbes.com: MySpace Music just launched. Like Last.fm, it's owned by major media and sells advertising against online music streams. Is there room in the market for both?

Hyman: MySpace is great as a social network: I've got an account. But music discovery is really much more than that. It's about being recommended new stuff, being told new stuff. To do that, you need a huge database of information....

But aren't recommendation algorithms old hat on the Internet by now?

It's not just the recommendation engine; it's all the stuff that goes with it. So I like Tina Turner, there's an amazing group for Tina Turner on Last.fm, and I think probably before Tina Turner even knows she's going to be in concert, they know where she's going to be doing it. And that's just invaluable....

Legal, free streaming is a newer phenomenon on the Internet. What's the issue?

We always said to the labels, "You have to let us do this," because what's happening at the moment is people are getting the recommendations off of Last.fm and then they're just going to all the illegal peer-to-peer sites.

They're more than familiar with that problem. What's the state of the digital music business today?

I think what you've got with the Internet is the fact that the labels and the collective side have realized that they need to make sure there is proper sharing of all the revenues which are generated with all the content creators. And I think that's correct. I think the problem, though, is that there is a lot of posturing going on, on both sides, as to what the right model is to monetize that. The [potential] market is huge, but at the moment, it's all on the peer-to-peer networks

What's refreshing about this interview is that Hyman doesn't blame the consumer or the P2P networks themselves for the dominance of piracy in today's music marketplace, but the music business itself for not learning the lessons from the popularity of the "free music" model. Then again, we still live in an era when labels won't allow people to embed their favorite artist's music video on their blog, so it might be a while before the "posturing" comes to an end. Hyman recognizes that as well.

Where does that leave digital music going forward?

I think everyone understands that as the market matures, the economics will need to be revisited and re-looked at. Because it's much better that you get 10,000 people [listening at] one-tenth of a cent [per stream] than it is to get 10 people [listening at] $.01 [per stream]. The aim of this game is to get as much money overall as possible. It's not to get hung up on a per-stream rate or a minimum share of revenue.

It must be tough to align everyone with so many interests involved.

The music industry is blessed with a cornucopia of lawyers.

I would have liked to hear the tone in his voice as he uttered the word "blessed".

The Digital Music Fight, Round Two [Forbes]

1. Pink, "So What"
Streamable from Pink's MySpace page; not available for purchase via MySpace Music widget, despite presence on Amazon.

2. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown"
First 1:30 streamable from West's MySpace page; not available for purchase via MySpace Music widget, despite presence on Amazon.

3. T.I., "Whatever You Like"
Streamable from T.I.'s MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon.

4. Taylor Swift, "Love Story"
Seems to be bypassing MySpace Music's official player/commerce widget, opting instead to pre-sell her forthcoming album on MySpace (with the option to buy a $75 box set!) and give people the download for "Love Story" instantly.

5. Rihanna, "Disturbia"
Streamable from Rihanna's site; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects Good Girl Gone Bad.

6. M.I.A., "Paper Planes"
Streamable from M.I.A.'s MySpace page; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects either Kala or the "Planes" remix EP.

7. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold"
Streamable from Perry's MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon. (On the bright side, the awfulness of having to visit Perry's page was mitigated slightly by a pop-up ad for Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. Teach the children, Ted!)

8. Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours"
Streamable from Mraz's MySpace page; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects the right version of the "I'm Yours" digital single.

9. Estelle feat. Kanye West, "American Boy"
Streamable from Estelle's MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon. (It would appear that the Estelle insta-tribute band the Studio All-Stars don't have a MySpace page.)

10. David Archuleta, "Crush"
Streamable from Archuleta's MySpace page; available for purchase if you select "Crush" from the pull-down menu in the widget.

So, out of the ten most saleable songs in the U.S. right now, MySpace Music is letting its users purchase four of them—and all four have to be navigated to, instead of them being presented to the user straight off. Can someone tell me why Tom & Co. felt like they had to launch this thing today, before it was ready for prime-time at all? I know that the site's supposed to be "iterative," but not having six of the top ten singles for purchase on what is being pitched as a track-by-track marketplace is not unlike trying to open an outlet of The Gap that's missing jeans.

Earlier: MySpace Music Gets Ready For A Big Amazon Affiliate Check

Independent labels are still absent from the "streaming for dollars" portion of the service, as is the catalog of EMI. (Update: EMI's catalog will apparently trickle in soon.) This results in a few browsing hiccups; when you visit Coldplay's profile, for example, and select Parachutes from the pull-down menu, you are greeted with one streamable song: "Trouble," which was uploaded to the band's page long enough ago for it to have received some 3.8 million plays. The same hiccupy browsing goes for indie bands like Ponytail. Why the discography feature was turned on for artists whose labels aren't participating in the revenue-sharing program is beyond me; it creates something of a dead-end for users, who can browse the songs the bands have uploaded by album, which is semi-pointless and usually results in users heading back to the "Featured Playlist" (which is code for "songs that were streaming from the site before today's changeover").

There are a few other quirks. Some new releases, which one would think would be high-priority for a venture that's expressly designed for making bank, are missing: Fall Out Boy's new single is streamable, but not available for purchase, and I couldn't find Ne-Yo's Year Of The Gentleman for streaming or purchasing, despite him being the No. 10 major-label artist on the site. The merging of Amazon's data with the streaming player also results in a few glitches in the discographies, although I suppose merge failures like that are to be expected with large-scale launches such as this. (And I seriously doubt anyone is looking at MySpace Music as a possible All Music Guide alternative.)

It's details and flaws like these that make the MySpace Music that launched today look like a rushed, desperate attempt to just get something to market, despite the amount of energy and press-gladhanding that was poured into it in the run-up to its launch. Will it result in a slight uptick for Amazon MP3's music revenues in the short term? Perhaps. But I suspect that a year or so from now, we'll be looking back on today much as we did on the day that Snocap first introduced its "buy this MP3" widgetry to the site—as a bump in the road, but nothing all that special in the long run.

MySpace Music [MySpace]

The current versions of these pages are on top; the "new" versions are on bottom.

SCREENSHOT 1: THE MAIN PAGE

I guess it looks slightly cleaner. Although one has to wonder, with all the service's indie label-related issues, whether or not the removal of the Top Artists section was an easy way to de-emphasize artists whose albums aren't distributed by one of the site's major-label revenue-sharers. Especially since the always-sketchy "top artists" list, which currently features a bunch of artists whose material is pushed by Atlantic Records in its "indie" list, remains. Although I guess that could also be looked at as a strategic move.

SCREENSHOT 2: THE PROFILE PAGE

Well, I'll give them this: That commerce interface is sure more elegant than the old Snocap widgets. I eagerly await half of the musicians on the site having their 1,945 embedded Flash widgets curl up and stop working as a result of mysterious incompatibilities with it.

There's a third screenshot that TechCrunch is saying is a "user admin panel," although it looks like it may be cleaned-up version of Song History to me:

Much like the future of MySpace Music, however, it's way too blurry to make out.

Leaked MySpace Music Screenshots [TechCrunch]

Take your field of vision past the Planet Hollywood banners, and what do you see? On one side, you have the Virgin Megastore, which was once a monument to the power of music retail and is now waiting to be brought to its knees by commercial real estate developers. (That is, of course, if the whole market for retail floor space doesn't crater sometime in the next six months.) On the other, you have banners for albums like Christina Aguilera's Stripped and Elvis Presley's #1s, both of which came out in the comparatively SoundScan-soaked days of 2002, and both of which come as a result of said building serving as the headquarters of the German conglomerate Bertelsmann—a company which, of course, is trying to extricate itself from its music-business ties as I type this.

Nice positioning, guys. You couldn't have angled for a spot near, say, the Hard Rock Cafe?

MySpace Music Becomes Physical, Not Virtual, Reality [Songs For Soap]

Wired: Is MySpace Music open to giving equity deals to digital distributors such as The Orchard or Ioda?

DeWolfe: We're open to extending our equity deals to the right partners, but at a certain point, you can't extend equity to everyone. What we originally set out to do was create a platform where every artist in the world would not only have a free promotional platform like they do right now — we're providing a free service — but also to create additional revenue streams for them.

A nice non-answer there, right? But it gets better!

Wired: Will unsigned bands on MySpace Music have a way to participate in the ad revenue?

DeWolfe: We don't really have the mechanism right now to develop an affiliate program or a payout structure for millions and millions of bands.... We started with the major music companies, and we're talking to the consortiums because the indie bands are really the heart of MySpace — it's how MySpace Music started. We value their contribution, and one of our initial missions was to help artists that didn't get signed by major labels to create a living based on their art.

We first did that by creating this free platform where they could get fans from all over the world that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to reach; and provide a platform for those fans to become friends with those independent artists. And when those independent artists go on the road, they can sell out their shows and make money through touring and merchandise and tickets and all of that. We're trying to extend those revenue streams to the independent artists. This is all meant to be a very, very positive movement for them.

So maybe bands who are affiliated with the Orchard and IODA will see some money... someday. But I'd file that last claim under "I'll believe it when I see it."

MySpace Music Won't Give Equity to Indie Bands [Listening Post]

* News reports indicate that this new service is a joint venture between MySpace and at least three of the four major labels, and that in exchange for supplying the store with their music, among other possible contributions, the major labels have been given equity in the new venture

* If news reports are true, it is unclear whether and how the equity the participating major labels received will be shared by them with their artists, or with the independent labels they simply distribute (yet count in their overall market share, and whose music they presumably intend to include in the MySpace service

* To our understanding, independents have not been offered any equity. However, we will make a strong and unequivocal commitment to you: very simply, if we negotiate for and receive equity, we will share it with you

* We appreciate MySpace as a unique social phenomenon and the fact that many of you rely on MySpace as an important part of your web presence and fan connection. Thus, we engage with MySpace respectful of the role MySpace plays for many of you. We do not take this opportunity lightly, and we will constructively but aggressively advocate for you ... as we always do

* Digital retail is fairer than physical brick-and-mortar retail ever was. iTunes led by example and helped to shift music industry dynamics towards a more level playing field for all industry participants (for example, in their continued efforts to further standardize pricing, and their reasonably democratic way of dealing with placements on the site). In that light, if reports are true, the apparent MySpace licensing approach is troubling. It hearkens back to a time none of us wants to revisit ... Where independent artists and labels were third-class citizens in the global music economy, instead of the second-class citizenship (with a good chance for an upgrade to first) that we enjoy today

So let me get this straight... you're worried about major labels possibly engaging in a practice that might knock those uppity indies back into the role they were in before digital distribution up and made everything go haywire, thus taking money out of the majors' pockets and spreading it around to more people. Really, how could you even think that they wouldn't want to engage in a little bit of anticompetitive chicanery, The Orchard? Have you not read Hit Men lately?

Full Text Of Orchard's MySpace Letter To Labels [Hypebot]