Billy Bragg asks for a share of Bebo’s AOL profits
By Dave Parrack
When AOL decided to spend $850 million on acquiring the increasingly popular social network Bebo last week, a few people made a lot of money very quickly, but one who didn’t was British musician Billy Bragg, and that has annoyed him.
Bebo’s founder, Michael Birch is thought to have walked away with roughly $600 million, along with his wife and co-founder, Xochi, for their 70% stake in the company. Billy Bragg on the other hand, one of the artists who uploaded his music to the site didn’t get a penny from the sale, and he’s expressed his displeasure at this supposed oversight.
In an editorial piece in The New York Times, Bragg has gone on a rant about how the company should consider paying the artists who upload original works to the site some form of royalties for the privilege.
This postulation has prompted a varying selection of comments from journalists and bloggers, some, such as Nicholas Carr, who are in agreement with Bragg, and others who point out the faults in his argument. Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch is probably the most vociferous anti-Bragger, and I happen to agree with him.
There’s no doubt that the emergence of the Internet as a means of music distribution has thrown up some new problems for musicians and record labels. In some ways I have sympathy for the loss of profits some are experiencing with the growth in piracy over the past decade.
But, apart from not agreeing with the way the RIAA and similar organisations are trying to solve the problem, there is also the fact that artists aren’t utilising the Web to their advantage.
I wrote earlier about how Wikipedia is a central destination for people trying to finds out information on musical artists, and that the artists themselves should learn to exploit that fact, and social networks are no different.
Billy Bragg was one of those forward thinking musicians who decided to embrace the new technology, and try to gain new fans from Bebo. Good on him. And when he and his record label signed on for the deal, they all knew there was no money in the equation.
Now that Bebo has become a cash cow for its founders, he all of a sudden changes his tune, and wants a slice of the pie. That wasn’t part of the deal. Stop your complaining.
Bragg also doesn’t mention how many new fans he may have gained from being featured on Bebo.
No-one had a gun pointing at Bragg’s head as he agreed to put some of his songs on the site, in the same way that no-one forces artists to set up a MySpace page. They do it because they see the chance for some self-promotion and keeping their fans up to date on tour news etc.
Maybe there should be discussion over how artists can be better compensated for their work being shared, in its various forms, over the Internet, but on this particular point, Bragg has got it completely wrong.
I would say stick to making music, but personally, I’d rather he stopped doing that too.
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March 24th, 2008
Billy never did join Bebo. There are 16 Billy Braggs on Bebo and they are all either fans or fakes, so your point “they all knew there was no money in the equation” is factually incorrect.
All the bloggers who have been churning words around on this topic failed to do the most basic research before they start going after Billy.