‘Fair Trade’ Stamp For Music Websites That Compensate Artists?

Helienne Lindvall from The Guardian has come up with a novel idea to award a ‘Fair Trade’ type stamp of approval to music websites that fairly compensate creators of the music they make available on their sites. This would empower consumers to make the decision to use legitimate music sites and support their favourite artists, rather than ‘stealing’ from them by getting music from illegal download sites.

MUZU & Spotify
Lindvall highlights two sites which she believes would qualify for such a designation — MUZUand www.spotify.com. These sites provide consumers with free access to music videos (MUZU) and mp3s (Spotify) from major label, indie and unsigned artists, while supporting the music industry by paying both royalties and a share of advertising revenue generated from views and plays of the artists’ music.

Lindvall says “Maybe we should have a Fair Trade grade stamp for music, which says that the workers who created this product were fairly treated and paid for their work. Like Fair Trade coffee, it wouldn’t have to cost more to purchase (it could even be free), but it may make the consumer feel that their conscious choice has made a difference to the artist.”
Explaining the artist-friendly merits of MUZU, Lindvall explains: “Unlike YouTube, MUZU has licence agreements with some of the best independent labels around. They work with the artists (even unsigned ones) and share the advertising revenue. Artists can restrict the categories of ads appearing on their videos. Some bands don’t want ads for alcohol or firearms (I suspect there are a lot of bands that don’t want that), for example.

Here are some examples of Dance artists available on MUZU:

Dance TV on MUZU.

Lindvall goes on to say, “MUZU.TV provides a studio in Dublin for free, where artists can film live gigs to be broadcast on their channel. They also digitise old video footage for free in return for groups giving the site exclusives. Bands such as the White Stripes have taken advantage of this on MUZU, as they think the quality of any footage posted on the net is important (compare this to YouTube). I’ve tried out the site and am very impressed. You can create your own channel and playlists and share them with others. They have exclusive footage from classic TV show The Tube (great for checking out what artists were like before they were all media trained), and it’s easy to get stuck-in for hours.”

We say – since YouTube is now blocking users in the UK and Germany from watching ‘premium music videos’ switch to MUZU and support your favourite bands!

Here are some examples of Alternative artists available on MUZU:

Alternative TV on MUZU.

A little bit about MUZU
On MUZU you can create, watch and share music video playlists. You can create these playlists from thousands of videos and embed them on your social networking pages and other sites, using the simple embed code provided. MUZU has thousands of hours of diverse music video content including concerts, back-stage footage, documentaries, tutorials, music videos, interviews and classic music TV shows like The Tube. MUZU users can also purchase mp3’s, merchandise and concert tickets from their favourite artists.

Here are some great examples of live concerts available on MUZU:

EagleRock TV on MUZU.

For full article and comments check out The Guardian.

Here are some great examples of classic videos and interviews available on MUZU:

Rock TV on MUZU.