Online Pay-for-Play Gives Some Artists Pause (washingtonpost.com). washingtonpost.com - The world's largest music company had been hectoring rock singer Tom Petty since last summer. You've got a big and popular catalogue of albums, Universal Music Group said. We've got to put them up for sale on the Internet -- they're being traded free every day on the Web and we're all losing money. [Yahoo! News - Technology]

Great article on the complexity of selling music online.  Securing rights to sell online is difficult because the rights are scattered about.  This quote about the pricing structure "When iTunes sells a song for 99 cents, 70 cents is paid to the artist's record company. The artist typically gets 10 to 15 cents; the songwriter, about 8 cents." would seem to indicate that there is great incentive for the rcord company, but less for the artist and songwriter.

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