snapshot 3/6/08

Musicians still waiting on a YouTube payday
How important is music to Google's YouTube.com? Out of the top 12 all-time most viewed YouTube clips, nine are professionally made music videos. At least one rock video has been watched more than 75 million times on YouTube. But do the performers in the videos share in the advertising revenue generated by their work? Some top music managers have told CNET News.com that their clients haven't seen any money from the licensing deals the four largest music labels have signed with YouTube over the past 18 months.


Someone Likes Them: iLike Announces 200,000th Artist
Music networking application iLike announced its 200,000th participating artist on Wednesday, part of a quickly-growing profile. The artists are tapping the iLike application to spread themselves across Facebook, hi5, and Bebo. The company also reaffirmed its intent to launch applications and widgets within MySpace, Orkut and others within "the coming weeks," an initiative first shared with Digital Music News last week. That expansion will be powered in part by Google OpenSocial, a shared platform that does not involve Facebook. But MySpace is a serious terrain for artists, and the networking behemoth hosts more than eight million band profiles. Elsewhere, Facebook is also opening artist profile pages, a move that directly overlaps with iLike.


OurStage Gets Much, Much Bigger Venue; Strikes AOL Deal
Supercharged battle-of-the-bands destination OurStage (ourstage.com) is now bringing its concept to a much broader audience, thanks to a recently-announced AOL Music (music.aol.com) partnership. The Boston-based OurStage invites fans to upload their songs, and enters them into an endless series of face-offs with other bands. That theoretically sifts the wheat from the chaff, and creates a more democratic artist discovery platform.

The deal finds OurStage sharing music content - including interviews, streaming audio and videos - with the AOL Music destination. AOL will blend OurStage into its massive advertising platform, and share revenues accordingly. AOL Music commands a monthly unique visitor audience of roughly 20 million, according to information shared Wednesday


Can The Crowd Choose The Hits? Slicethepie Releases First Album
Based on the concept that the wisdom of the crowd is greater than that of a handful of struggling record executives, Slicethepie.com releases its first project Monday, UK indie-rockers The Alps. Completely fan-funded yet professionally recorded and released, The Alps' ‘Something I Might Regret’ is positioned to compete in what the site calls "a climate of poor major label hit-rates and roster downsizing". Dave Allen (The Cure, Depeche Mode) produced and album that Slicethepie hopes "offers proof that great music and innovative business models can offer real hope for this troubled industry".