I never saw a dime for the version of Who Let Da Dawgs out I posted on bebo.

Mr Bragg, where's your contract? Oh, you were stupid enough not to have one and you've been expecting a cut all this time?! Sorry chap but world doesn't work that way.

Putting you music up on a social networking site is a free way to get exposure for your music.
Without a contract, I don't think his argument holds much water, and I am a Billy Bragg fan.

What's the matter Billy... running low on Champagne?

It'll probably turn out that one of the reasons for the downturn on sites like Bebo, is that unreconstructed "socialist" dinosaurs / self appointed voices of the working classes like Bragg insist on inflicting their out of date views through the medium of dodgy music,
on the unsuspecting public.

Get over it Billy boy, capitalism and freedom will always triumph over socialism and subjugation.

Old media: Artists sign their rights away for a pittance, in exchange for promises of stardom and riches that are, in reality, only possible for a tiny minority. Most of the money goes to middle-men who claim to be "all about the artists", but whenever one of those uppity creative types dares raise their voice against the system, they are quickly marginalised.

New Media: See above. Replace "a pittance" with "nothing".

"The musicians who posted their work on Bebo.com are no different from... all of the other morons that bought into the 'community driven to save the whales' bullshit that every other 'web 2.0' startup relies upon".

In this regard, I suspect there was a paragraph of original the Bebo business plan that read, "There are 500M Internet users, and Bebo.com plans to exploit the 1% of the stupidest among them: the dumbest 5M people. These people will work their asses off for you with absolutely no written expectation of a return...". In other words, a business plan written by Dogbert.

For a more recent example, see: mahalo.com...