When Words Meet Heartbeats

24westmgmt:

In what continues to be one the most public battles over file-sharing sites, Megaupload was shut down by the FBI today. In addition, four people were arrested, states the Wall Street Journal.

Megaupload has long been one of the most popular file-sharing sites around. It recently posted a video showing endorsements from big name artists such as Kanye West and more. Although the video was initially pulled by UMG from YouTube, it was reinstated after it was made clear that all of the participating artists signed a separate contract stating their compliance with the video. Also, it was revealed yesterday that producer Swizz Beatz is the CEO of Megaupload.

With the battle raging for both SOPA and PIPA to be dropped, this change only exemplifies what could happen to other outlets artists use to distribute their music. Childish Gambino, or more commonly known as Donald Glover of Community, willingly gave away his EP this past fall via Megaupload. Both SOPA and PIPA would block any chance of that happening. Since free music is often a common for bands to build on their existing fanbase, could this then take away that option? Especially for smaller bands that don’t have tech saavy teams behind them, it then becomes that much harder to give their fans a song for free, without potentially getting their fans, or themselves, in trouble.

This is definitely one lawsuit everyone in the music business will be following closely.