I know you felt the void caused by a lack of competing social music recommendation sites. It's that nagging, longing feeling that starts at your toes and runs up through the rest of your body like a near miss speeding ticket adrenaline rush.

Jones no more dear brother, jones no more. Haystack launched recently with a giant twist in the social recommendation universe.. artist revenue share. Yep, right out of the gate these guys are planning for artist payment, and not in a "oh we just send a big check to SoundExchange and they divvy it up" sorta way, but in a "we manage this stuff in house so people get paid accurately" sort of way.

From Haystack's own site, "Haystack believes in fair compensation for artists and content owners, and to support that we've created the RightsNow royalty program. By sharing advertising revenue generated by the artists content, we provide listeners with a way to legally share their music collections with friends, while enabling the content rightsholders to monetize this experience. In early 2007 the first payments will begin, and at that time payment registration will be open to all artists, including those who are unsigned."

I always turn a skeptical eye to anything new, I'm a curmudgeon that way, but I get a warm fuzzy from Haystack. I'll be taking a much deeper look at the stack for next week so, stay tuned.

[via Hypebot]