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One For The Indies: MySpace Music Offering IODA Music

Now you can listen to indie songs before Steve Jobs puts them in a commercial. MySpace Music has signed a deal with digital music distributor IODA that will see over a million indie tracks on the social net’s site, LAT reports. Full terms of the deal were not disclosed, though IODA CEO Kevin Arnold said the deal is short- to medium-term and its artists will get a cut of the ad revs in addition to royalties for each track streamed. Unlike MySpace Music’s major partners, UMG, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI, IODA artists will not get an equity stake. The deal comes just after Facebook talked about its own musical offerings, revealing that it wouldn’t want to deal with acquiring label’s licenses—let alone give up equity—and would rather work more closely with its existing music partners than set up a new site.

MySpace Music expects to announce more partnerships within the coming months and is in talks with Merlin, an organization representing 12,000 indie labels. The venture has been widely panned since its launch for excluding content from the very artists who helped build up the music community in the recent years. Though one wonders, doesn’t the inclusion of indie content in a multi-million dollar social net giant negate the meaning of the word “indie?”

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Oct 23, 2008 2:01 PM ET
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Posted In: Entertainment, Music, Social Media, Community, Companies, News Corp., MySpace, ioda, myspace music

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