So! The shutdown MegaUpload and charging of founders with piracy ostensibly started with a copyright scuffle between the filesharing site and the Universal Music Group. Except the shut-down was also timed to scupper MegaBox, a venture to sell artist’s work directly to consumers while letting artists keep 90 percent of earnings. Raised eyebrows all around.

Now I mean, let’s be clear – this could be an event that just happens to neatly coincide with UMG’s claimed $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other media; even so, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the the money-hemorrhaging label might be threatened by MegaUpload’s late-December announcement of an entirely cloud-based distribution model that offered artists a better money-making platform than any record label provides.

A Torrentfreak interview offers more details, and speculation:

“UMG knows that we are going to compete with them via our own music venture called Megabox.com, a site that will soon allow artists to sell their creations directly to consumers while allowing artists to keep 90 percent of earnings,” MegaUpload founder Kim ‘Dotcom’ Schmitz told Torrentfreak
…
“We have a solution called the Megakey that will allow artists to earn income from users who download music for free,” Dotcom outlined. “Yes that’s right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works.”

This is all speculation right now – and we’ll update you as more becomes apparent – but if this is the true reason for MegaUpload’s shutdown, it would be a HUGE deal, and an unbelievably shitty move by a record label.

[Source: DMN]