BuyMusic ripping off artists

Another good reason to avoid the BuyMusic service: apparently, through snapping up the back catalog of a very shady distributor, much of the BuyMusic catalog comes from independent artists who are not receiving any compensation for their work.

This from recording artist Jody Whitesides:

I did a search for one of my old CD’s that will be going onto iTunes and It turns out my CD was there on BuyMusic.com. As were the CD’s of several other bands that I’m friends with. All of whom were not contacted about being placed for sale there.

Here’s what I’ve deduced… BuyMusic.com (which I will refer to as BM) got their “vast” music library of 300,000 plus songs from a company called the Orchard. The Orchard is a distribution company that has consistently shafted artists by not paying them for CD’s sold nor returning unsold CD’s or cancelling contracts. So, without the express consent of what is likely lots of the Orchards catalog, BM has put it up for sale at the bargain price of \$.79 a song.

So now, they can tout they’re selling tracks at \$.79 and they can say they have a library of music of over 300,000 songs. But what they don’t tell you is that it comes from musicians/bands that were not asked for permission, and who will likely not see a penny of any sale made through BM. By their very own site policy they are committing copyright infringement. They have done this to lure PC/windows users to their site in hopes to sell the few major label aquired songs they do have, at a price that is much higher than Apple’s \$.99.

I’m currently looking into legal means to have my music removed from their site and strongly encourage users to not browse BM’s site nor purchase from it.

(via MacSlash)