By Eliot Van Buskirk
Indie bands and labels now have a way to receive royalties when their music is played on Facebook, iLike, Bebo and elsewhere, thanks to a deal between iLike and TuneCore that was announced on Monday.
Unsigned artists and independent record labels who already upload their music into TuneCore for a small fee in order to sell it through iTunes and other online music stores can now participate in advertising revenue everywhere iLike's music catalog is embedded using their syndication API.
"This relationship is the first time that music discovery, promotion and sharing is directly connected to distribution outside of a traditional label," stated TuneCore founder and CEO Jeff Price.
Independent bands and labels have been somewhat frustrated by MySpace's professed inability to share advertising revenue with independent artists the way it does with the majors through their equity deal in MySpace Music. Now that iLike -- and by extension Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, Hi5, Ticketmaster and the other social networks that have partnered with iLike -- have joined Last.fm in setting up royalty programs for non-major label entities, bands could have an incentive to send their users to their band pages on Facebook instead of their MySpace pages.
The majority of plays will likely come from Facebook users embedding songs on their profile pages and possibly in playlists. To join, indie artists and labels upload their music into iLike's database and select the option to distribute their music through Rhapsody as well as other stores, should they wish. Once their music's on Rhapsody via iLike, royalties start to flow from whichever sites (Facebook, Bebo, etc.) stream their music.
"As the music industry continues to reinvent itself, we believe it's critical to offer independent musicians equal opportunity alongside major-label artists," stated iLike CEO Ali Partovi.
Though these royalties may be small, they're a step in the right direction. As advertising and other formerly ancillary revenue sources become more important for music copyright holders in general, unsigned artists need as many ways as they can get to participate in the upside of the free music economy.
The deal could also come as an indication that Facebook could be leaning toward iLike/Rhapsody for integrating a music service into the site beyond the application level.
