Petteri Pyyny
19 Mar 2001 3:51
MP3.com is going to end their hugely popular Paypack for Playback program by end of this month. Payback for Playback program is a program where artists have received certain percent of advertising income of their MP3.com site and music.
Instead, they're launching a new Premium Artist Service which is basically the exact same program that Payback is now, with one exception. Now artists have to pay $19.99 a month to participate to this program. Move basically means that bulk of the artists are not going to make any money out of MP3.com anymore. Most of the bands and artists are not even making that $20/month although there are some artists, such as Offspring, who make thousands of dollars each month.
MP3.com says that their advertising income has declined after the dot-com crash and that their fraud blocking system and other expenses have increased too much.
It's interesting to see when MP3.com decides to set up a fee for artists just to have their site on MP3.com..