YouTube has announced a new initiative to promote indie music. Titled Musicians Wanted, the program gives selected bands the opportunity to make money through embedded videos on blogs, with advertising revenues based on pageviews. As YouTube music manager Michele Flannery said, “Whether you make hip-hop, folk, noise-rock, jazz or a genre of your own invention, we are looking for all types of original music video content.”
YouTube employees will decide which bands get into the YouTube Partners Program. The artists will then have control over posting tourdates, adding “buy” links for their music, and the design of their pages. YouTube’s ultimate goal? To have a “browsable, searchable section dedicated to independent music.”
The channel was announced at a little festival in Austin, Texas known as South by Southwest. One of the first bands to apply was the distinctly un-indie OK Go, who left EMI/Capitol earlier this month partly because the label wouldn’t allow the band’s videos to be embedded on blogs.
This is certainly one initiative that should be administered by indie powerhouse Tiny Mix Tapes. Your correspondent can’t think of anything more blood-curdling than YouTube executives deciding what’s “indie.” *shudder*