I read Billy Bragg's NYT piece on why artists who promoted their music on Bebo should be rewarded because it helped build the site. Beebo recently sold to AOL for $850 million and Bragg argues that the bands deserve a cut.

Mike Arrington rips into him :

Why is it the Brits have all the crazy-stupid ideas about how to screw up the music industry even more than it is already?

and

I think the main reason Bragg wrote this article is jealousy over the massive success of someone he once met - Bebo cofounder Michael Birtch.[...]. Bragg had absolutely nothing to do with Bebos’ $850 million payday. And everything else he wrote in that article is dead wrong, too.

I believe Mike is wrong and that Bragg is right but both use obsolete arguments. 

Both focus on the royalties, radios, labels, artists etc.. while this has nothing to do with the music industry. It has to do with brands, attention, traffic, social graph, whatever you want to call it.

This from Youtube's FAQ:

After you click the "Enable Monetization" button on your video, YouTube will begin showing ads when your videos are viewed. As a partner, you will earn a share of this revenue.

Videos yes, streaming songs or music videos no?

The web is going towards a model where every piece of information that has value can be "monetized" in an equitable manner. This applies to the music industry too. In the case of Bebo, bands have music, pics, fans that translates into traffic that translates into ad impressions. It's this value that justifies an $850 price tag for Bebo. Bands should be paid something correlated to their popularity.

Mike argues that "recorded music is nothing but marketing material to drive awareness of an artist". Yes, the song, as a product you own is dead. Online, the brand is the product.

These communities  / b(r)ands are organizing themselves and by using data portability, open id, web standards etc..could, overtime, gain considerable economic weight, forcing online middlemen (social networks, search engines, media sharing sites) to rethink the way things are done, and auction their value to the highest giver.

Nick Carr gets it