MySpace-Imeem Deal Leaves Indie Artists Unpaid

azoblue writes with news that following MySpace's acquisition and shutdown of imeem, independent artists who sold their music through imeem's Snocap music storefronts (on MySpace and other sites) won't be paid what's owed them. More than 110,000 artists are believed to be affected. The crux of the problem is that MySpace acquired only a certain portion of the assets that were imeem — "the domain name and certain technology and trademarks" — and not imeem’s outstanding debts, including the money imeem owed to artists under the Snocap relationship. According to the article, some artists have been owed money for more than a year. "Napster creator Shawn Fanning co-founded Snocap in 2002 to let artists sell their music through an embeddable storefront widget. At one point, the service was marketed as the exclusive way for artists to sell music on MySpace. Imeem bought Snocap last summer. But because MySpace left most aspects of Snocap out of its acquisition of imeem’s assets, all 110,000 or so of those storefronts are gone. The server that hosts them is offline and so is the Snocap website."

Comments

Re:In my home country...

[PopeRatzo]

In my home country...that is, France, I believe this kind of scam is downright illegal, and specialized courts that deal with commerce do frown upon selling assets and leaving the debt to a straw company. They are usually declared de facto bound to one another and treated as one entity

Yes, but here in America, we're a Free! Country! with a Free! Market! which means that anyone with any money or power is Free! to fuck over anyone who doesn't have power or money.