Just When You Thought the Music Industry Was Starting to “Get” It…

Universal Music Group, the largest of the big three major labels, is forcing all of its bands to take down the full versions of songs on their myspace profiles and replace them with 90 second samplers.  From Wired:

Word on the grapevine is that this policy was enacted about six months ago, but that in many cases, artists were only recently notified.  Universal has limited the music by artists on all of its labels to posting only 90 second samples on MySpace and other third-party sites, unless they have a contract with Universal that allows them to stream the full song on-demand.  (Labels can also choose to add an audio tag to the beginning and end of the audio files rather than limiting songs to 90 seconds, but most are going with the 90-second sample option.) The policy applies to any site where music can be embedded, except for Universal’s own official sites, which still offer free on-demand streaming of certain complete songs.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Dumb. If you’re one of the lopdicks at UMG who thought this up, let’s talk in about 6 months and see how thing work out. That is, if you’re still around…

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