I'm not sure I can keep up with all these great Swedish music startups. First Spotify, then Soundcloud (technically based in Berlin but populated with lots of Swedish expats), and now Ubetoo.
Ubetoo is a platform which allows unsigned artists to upload music and audio and receive up to 90% of ad revenue from commercials run alongside the content. Whilst YouTube does have a scheme similar to this, it is only open to a smattering of loyal and attention worthy content producers.
This also gets over the criticism of social networking sites exploiting artists for attention but not sharing their enormous ad revenue. At the EconMusic Digital Music Conference back in September, Billy Bragg singled out MySpace and Bebo as two of the most guilty parties.
In order to qualify for the 90% ad revenue share, content producers have to sign up to Stagepool, which is an audition and casting service based in Stockholm and Cologne. Last month the artist with the highest pay out was The Vetter Factory with 158, 23 euros. Not too shabby.
The site also includes a number of widgets to embed channels and content on other social networking sites. However, I'm not too sure these sites would be too happy at Ubetoo piggybacking them to derive significant significant ad revenue.
