The indie community is being really rather vocal about the failure of MySpace to ensure they had the independents on board before launching their all-new music service which, as previously reported, went live in the States yesterday. Following criticism yesterday from Charles Caldas, the boss of indie label digital rights body Merlin, now the boss of the Beggars Group, Martin Mills, has stepped in. He says that not only have MySpace failed to get the indies on board, they made no attempts to do so either.
Mills says: "It is both disappointing and astonishing that MySpace, built on the music of independent artists and labels, should, now it has the majors as partners, choose to launch without those that have been at its heart, and whilst treating independents as second class citizens. The service's independent content, sadly, appears to constitute only the independent distribution arms of the majors by virtue of their deals with their parents, and [independent aggregator] the Orchard. We, however, believe that independent music and artists are worth every cent as much as that of the majors, and will not be supporting this potentially exciting new service until we see fair play".
So there you go. With all the hype surrounding MySpace Music yesterday we insisted our US correspondent get online and give us his review, which arrived last night thus: "It's rubbish and a bit pointless".