DeWitt Clinton

Tune Recycler, a new effort from the guys who bring you Downhill Battle, seeks to help independent artists by capitalizing on all of the unused downloads from Pepsi’s 100 million song givaway at Apple’s iTunes Music Store. In general, they have been critical of iTunes, particularly in that only pennies on the dollar go to the artists themselves. However, they make the claim that “there are a few great independent labels in the iTunes store that give their musicians up to 40-50 cents” per song. As a result, they are asking that everyone donate their unused Pepsi promotional codes, and in return, they will purchase massive numbers of independent tracks. Since up to 90 million songs are expected to go unredeemed, even a small fraction of this put in the hands of an independent artist or label could make or break a year (or a career) for the musicians. While it remains a little unclear about exactly which labels and artists the Tune Recycler will purchase, there has never been any reason to suspect the integrity of the people running it, and this could prove to be a very good cause. But if you do chose to redeem the songs yourself, in spite of the iTunes Music Store’s shortcomings, then at least check first on the RIAA Radar to see that the money isn’t funding the conglomerates rather than the artists.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2004 by DeWitt Clinton and is filed under breakdown. You can bookmark this post at delicious. You can digg this post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.