Merlin Signs Deal With Snocap To Sell Independent Music On MySpace
Merlin, a new global licensing agency specializing in Indepndent music, has reached an agreement with digital music company Snocap to sell music on MySpace. The downloads will be sold as unprotected MP3 files enabling them to be played on all digital music players.
The agreement will enable repertoire from potentially thousands of independent labels across the world to be put into Snocap’s retail MyStore initiative, which enables music to be downloaded from web sites across the world, including, via their partnership with MySpace, the world’s number one social networking site.
A one-stop licensing shop, Merlin will leverage the sector’s 30% world share for licensing and emerging media. The most important development yet seen within the independent sector, Merlin will make it easy to license up to 80% of the world’s new releases through a single point of contact – potentially replacing the need to negotiate thousands of individual deals.
Merlin will improve access and level the playing field with new and emerging media, rectifying the poor cousin status of deals previously offered to independents, where they have been tabled at all. Neither an aggregator nor a distributor, Merlin’s remit is to seek and negotiate new media deals that can’t be easily negotiated locally or individually. Operating outside the space occupied by Collecting Societies, Merlin will redress the growing assumption that, for emerging media, only the four majors need to be licensed, with the rest free to air.
MyStore’s tie in with MySpace, set to launch in the near future with labels, will enable independent-signed artists from across the world to sell digital downloads of their music from their MySpace pages.
Merlin has set the terms by which independents across the world can deliver their repertoire into Snocap. Once there, labels can use Snocap to sell their music over MySpace, a well as other music web sites. MyStores is a totally portable retail initiative that can be integrated into any web site.
