Indy band Au Revoir Simone

CBS's online radio community, Last.fm, launched the New Artist Royalty Program, which will issue royalties to independent ("indy") and unsigned bands.

Musicians have the option of joining the royalty program when they upload music to Last.fm. Royalties will be paid whenever a user plays one of their songs.

The New Artist Royalty Program test-launched in January. Since then it reportedly generated 450,000 uploads.

Last March musician Billy Brag claimed social networks, such as Bebo and MySpace, exploit musicians by refusing to grant royalties for the millions of songs streamed on personal profiles. In January U2's Paul McGuinness made a similar accusation toward ISPs, which purportedly abet music piracy by refusing to manage for what passes through their networks.

Two months ago, a US District judge ruled that online music streaming services — specifically AOL, Yahoo and RealNetworks — pay royalties to the American Society of Composers. Record labels were not included in the compensation model.