Sincere Artists Billy Bragg And Fionn O Lochlainn Take Issue With Myspace From Both Sides Of The Atlantic

LOS ANGELES (Top40 Charts/ Fionn O Lochlainn Official Website) - Solo artist Fionn O Lochlainn boasts a love-hate relationship with the world's fastest growing online community, Myspace.com. Recent complaints by his management team, Sincere USA to the company further compound recent sentiments made by over artists' proprietary rights. "My client has been locked out of his Myspace account for almost two months with no recourse or help from Myspace, despite our numerous attempts to contact them," comments Sue-Ellen Stroum for Sincere USA.

This is not the first time a Sincere artist has encountered trouble with the online community. In an article that appeared in Music Week last June, Billy Bragg wrote an open letter to generate discussion on Myspace's Proprietary Rights in Content Clause, one that has since been lifted to protect the interests of artists everywhere.

"What is at stake here is the ownership of rights. In the past, when I wrote a song, I needed a record company to manufacture, market and distribute my work and, in exchange for that, they expected to own the rights to exploit my recordings for as long as the material was capable of earning royalties-"life of copyright" in legalese- which currently means 50 years. If that is the case, then they need to make explicit in their terms of agreement that the material posted on the site belongs to the artists and that they, not MySpace, have the sole right to exploit their work in any way they see fit," said Bragg.

"A simple google search will show that Fionn O Lochlainn is not the first artist to encounter such problems," continues Stroum. The larger issue is really about how quickly artists have come to depend on Myspace to promote and market their music. The demands of maintaining the community are growing more rapidly than the infrastructure to support it. This is truly a new era for the music industry."