Billy Bragg has a thought-provoking op-ed over on the New York Times’ web site.
The musicians who posted their work on Bebo.com are no different from investors in a start-up enterprise. Their investment is the content provided for free while the site has no liquid assets. Now that the business has reaped huge benefits, surely they deserve a dividend.
The claim that sites such as MySpace and Bebo are doing us a favor by promoting our work is disingenuous. Radio stations also promote our work, but they pay us a royalty that recognizes our contribution to their business. Why should that not apply to the Internet, too?
This is interesting–since most of the ink on the ‘modern age of music’ seems to revolve around the MPAA suing illegal downloaders, I haven’t heard much about the performing rights’ organizations efforts to get residuals for online performance–have they been working on this? I mean, why *shouldn’t* ad-based media companies work like radio stations?