This just in (courtesey of hypebot and @suffolkandcool). Got to be the saddest news of 2010 so far. Let’s hope there’s another avenue for aspiring artists soon….
Jamendo, which made available tens of thousands of free tracks licensed through one of several Creative Commons licenses or the Free Art License is changing course under new ownership.
“After months of uncertain search for a new investor, the company has finally been purchased by one of its clients.” company founder Patrick Haour told Hypebot. “The .com website will keep on existing, but the main focus from now on is on background music licensing”. This paid portion of Jamendo has previously been known as Jamendo.pro.
“Only a very small team has been maintained to keep things running,” said the talented Haour, who will be leaving the company on March 1st and already contemplating his options.
It is sad news.
I saw this via twitter too.
I’m surprised, firstly – cutting the listenership by 80-90%, and the charges they have put on for licensing the tracks are a lot, I mean A LOT. for 1 year weblicence, 4 euros per track.
This certainly discourages me from using the service, or indeed promote a service, that in the past was awesome.
I cannot see that Jamendo even in it’s “new” format with business charges like that will continue beyond 2010, I mean people like Magnatune, and Bandcamp have worked well without charging the earth and getting 50+% back to the artists, I have not seen anywhere how much is going back to the artist on the Jamendo site.
A shame indeed. Discovered some really good stuff via Jamendo – searching for my own ‘cast and listening to others. Lets hope some of the netlabels can pick up a little of the slack.
The new music business economy still hasn’t quite figured out how to deal with free music/Creative Commons music and still make enough money to stay solvent or make a profit. I don’t know what the answer is. This is a sad case, though, as Jamendo was really trying something new.