A month after irking part of the independent recording community by launching its online music service mostly with major labels, MySpace Music has made a deal to almost double the amount of indie tunes available through the service.
In an agreement announced Thursday, the San Francisco-based Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA) – a digital distributor of tunes for several thousand labels – will make its library of more than 1 million tracks available through MySpace Music.
IODA founder and Chief Executive Kevin Arnold said he expects songs from its catalog to start showing up through MySpace Music in December. IODA’s catalog includes tunes from soul group Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings.
The distributor’s tracks will join several million songs that are available for MySpace’s roughly 120 million users to hear for free on the site.
Of these songs, about 1.3 million come from one independent music distributor, T he Orchard, while most of the rest are from the major labels: Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Inc., Universal Music Group and EMI Music. Those labels have an ownership stake in the service, which gets its revenue from ads on the site and the sale of songs through Amazon.com Inc.’s MP3 downloading service.
Other independent labels have been upset at being left out of the launch of MySpace Music. They also have pointed out that if they were to join the service, the major labels that own a slice of it would profit from the independent labels’ success.
Arnold is a board member of one group that that expressed disappointment – London-based music rights licensing agency Merlin, which represents more than 12,000 independent labels.
Arnold said IODA had been talking to MySpace for months about becoming part of the music service. There is “definitely some discomfort” in the independent music community about the major labels’ equity stake in MySpace Music, he said, and his group generally shares that concern.
Still, “it’s also much more important for us to really find a strong deal that’s going to make our labels money now,” he said.
Frank Hajdu, executive director of MySpace Music, said the service is trying to bring in as much content as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“Many, many services that have been launched, they build their content catalogs out over time. If you wait indefinitely, you’ll never launch,” he said.
Hajdu said MySpace Music is continuing to talk with Merlin and independent music distributors about adding their content.
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More