Idolator

It's not as big as the Led Zeppelin maybe-news, but Bob Lefsetz's latest mailbag also passed along a MySpace bulletin from singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat, whose career was assisted in part by her songs streaming from the social-networking site (not that her family connections didn't help, too). According to Caillat, the powers that be at Universal have decided to cap MySpace streams at 90 seconds, in an effort to stop crafty kids from ripping really crummy streams of songs to their hard drives and covering them in onions. Or something like that.

Hey everyone...bad news. Due to circumstances beyond my control I have to swap the songs out on my page for 90 second versions instead of full length versions. In fact some of the songs have already been swapped as I write this.

Every artist signed to a Universal label has to comply immediately.

You can listen to full versions of some of my songs on my personal webpage www.colbiecaillatmusic.com. I will make sure that the songs that were available here are available there as soon as possible.

I apologize to everyone for the inconvenience especially those that use my songs for personal profiles. Hopefully the politics involved here gets worked out soon and we can return to full length songs as soon as possible. Thank you everyone for your continued support!!

Checking MySpace pages from other Universal artists shows that this policy isn't limited to Caillat's page, although newer signings appear to have not yet complied. But why is MySpace being singled out here? After all, as Caillat noted, the full songs are still being streamed from her personal site. Is it in celebration of the one-year anniversary of Universal's lawsuit against MySpace? And is it really smart to give your artists fewer places to promote their music?

Colbie Caillat [MySpace]