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Rock veterans Gabriel & Eno start online music alliance

The success of legal music download services has led musicians Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno to develop a new alliance that will allow artists to bypass record labels and sell their music online. Artists need to take action as the digital music industry develops, the duo argued at a music conference Monday. "Unless artists quickly grasp the possibilities that are available to them, then the rules will get written and they'll get written without much input from artists," Eno said. Gabriel and Eno, who plan to launch the online initiative within a month, call the plan the Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists, or MUDDA. They propose that artists should set their own prices and agenda. A pamphlet from the two musicians lists online alternatives to the typical album or CD format, including releasing a minute of music every day for a month or posting several recorded versions of a song and asking fans to vote on which is best. The effort will certainly be valuable to and help unsigned artists, Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff told the Canadian Press. "But for anyone [already] signed, it's almost certainly a violation of their contract." Gabriel, who also owns his own label, said he wants to give artists more options. The technology for MUDDA would come from On Demand Distribution, a company Gabriel co-founded to run legal music download sites in 11 European countries. (From CBC.ca) Although the Mudda.org site is currently up and running, no downloads are to be found, just some background information and the company's manifesto. Mudda is connected to OD2.com, "On Demand Distribution", founded by Peter Gabriel and Charles Grimsdale.
Mudda.org

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