Comcast gets nasty, MySpace screws indies

Maybe you shouldn’t be amazed that the 2nd biggest Net provider in the U.S. ain’t necessarily nice people. Even forgetting their crappy service record, Comcast is also fighting and biting about the issue of Net neutrality where they see fit to block any big P2P traffic that they don’t like as chronicled in an AP article and this Channel Web article. In the former article, they admit to hiring ‘seat warmers’ at their public meetings where they usually get lambasted so that they have some friendly folks to applaud their efforts. The later article notes CC’s ‘bill of rights,’ which is seen as a red herring to distract from their poor record of such. Is Karl Rove consulting these guys are what…?

Just be glad that you’re not an indie band getting cut out of MySpace’s deal with the major labels for ad revenue sharing. In an interview with Wired magazine, the MS folks admit that unless a band is hitched up with an aggregate service like The Orchard, IODA, Merlin and CD Baby, they’re cut out of any potential ad money. But… note this quote at the end where they say that the aggregations are “all possible candidates for signing equity deals with MySpace Music.” Note the word ‘possible.’ That means that if you’re an indie band and you sign up with one of these services, they MIGHT be able to cut a deal with MS, or they might not. You sign up with them and then gamble and hope that things will work out peachy with MS. Quite a racket, eh?