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THE INDUSTRY STANDARD'S
B E A T S H E E T
A Weekly Report on the Convergence of Music and the Net
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| http://www.thestandard.com |
Tuesday, May 16, 2000
TOP STORY:
* Love, Spinrecords.com Style
Internet record label bills itself as the original farmclub for bands.
NET NOISE:
* No frills at Music4free.com
UPBEAT/DOWNBEAT:
* Napster Yanks Users
* My.MP3.com disables content from majors
* Dot Dot Dot
SOUND OFF:
* Did video kill the radio star?
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TOP STORY:
~~~~~~~~~~
Love, Spinrecords.com Style
Internet record label bills itself as the original farmclub for bands.
By Julene Snyder
CARLSBAD, Calif. - Love is in the air when you hang out with Wayne
Irving II. The 29-year-old founder, president and CEO of
Spinrecords.com is buoyant about his company, which aims to bring
independent musicians to the next level by marketing their music
online. "We just aim to maintain the love so they don't want to sign
with anyone else," says the boyish, blonde Irving with a straight
face.
Part of that love is familial; the staff includes all three of
Irving's siblings. The company also showered a little love on members
of the band The Color Red, who were given jobs at the firm so they
could afford to go on tour. There's also love strewn about in the form
of food; the staff gets free lunch every day, partly so it won't stray
too far from the company's Carlsbad offices, which lie off the beaten
path in this northern suburb of San Diego county, just up the street
from LegoLand.
In a whirlwind tour of the offices, Irving introduces each of the
staff members by first name. "Caroline works with our content
partners. She is responsible for making sure that they all feel the
love." Caroline nods dutifully. The company, which was founded in
1998, calls itself "the original farm label," in a clear dig at
Universal Music's Farmclub.com label. Spinrecords.com has about 85
full-time workers, plus "Spin Scouts," who are given $100 for every
band accepted to the site.
The company prides itself on being selective. It turned away 90
percent of the bands that applied to the site to reach its present
roster of 560 bands, claims Chief Operating Officer Robert Shapiro. He
flatly critiques MP3.com. "They use no filtering, so you can't help
but step in shit. When you've got 30,000 bands, it's hard to find a
good song. We've got nothing but good songs."
But Spinrecords.com doesn't have MP3.com's traffic. In March, MP3.com
reported 142 million pageviews; last month, Spinrecords.com logged a
million hits. Nor does it have a pile of flattering press clips as
high as rival Riffage.com. Still, the quality of the music on the
upcoming June 2000 featured artist CD is impressive. And the label's
biggest act, The Color Red, seems positioned to be noticed, as it
shares bills with bands like Korn and No Doubt.
Spinrecords.com will deal at most with "a few thousand groups," says
Shapiro. "We're like the minor leagues," says Shapiro. "We'll see
who's best and push them upstairs."
The company's also working to create a model of music success that
could fall short of the big leagues. "We want to create a new class of
working musicians," says Shapiro. "We'd like to see bands that sell
50,000 CDs a year be able to quit their day jobs, instead of get
dropped, which is what would happen with a major label." Whereas a
major label might pay a band a buck or two for every CD sold,
Spinrecords takes pride in turning over to artists $6 from every $10
CD sold.
Of course, such figures are hypothetical so far, since 50,000 would be
a very large number of records for most indie bands to sell. Still,
such sums are a hell of a lure to newbie groups that can't, after all,
live on love alone.
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NET NOISE:
~~~~~~~~~~
No frills at Music4free.com
To be honest, I started out intending to review a site called
music4nothing.com, but typed in the wrong URL and found myself here.
Good move, because while the former shows hints of wit and promise,
it's clearly in the earliest development stage. The latter is much
more promising, offering up a decent selection of MP3 tools. We're
talking software reviews of players, encoders and rippers, plus the
novice-friendly Ultimate MP3 Player Guide. The site also delivers a
modest but easily searchable database of downloadable songs (Metallica
anyone? 53 matches were found), some editorial commentary and other
goodies for the MP3 aficionado. There's not an overwhelming mountain
of information here, but enough to serve as a useful guide in early
online go-rounds.
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UPBEAT/DOWNBEAT:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't Let the Screen Door Hit You on Your Way Out
Napster yanks Metalli-busers off system
This Napster vs. Metallica brouhaha is starting to look like a no-win
situation for everybody involved. The 317,377 Napster users who found
their user names blocked have got to be ticked off (especially those
who claim they never downloaded a Metallica song). Napster management
probably isn't ecstatic about looking like a bunch of spineless
snitches ready to roll over on their users just because Lars Ulrich
waggled his finger and hired a lawyer. And one would hope that
Metallica is starting to realize that calling your fans a bunch of
criminals out to steal your "art" (or worse, steal dollars right out
of your perfectly faded and ripped jeans pocket) is at best a
questionable career move. Of course, there are ways around the Napster
ban, and it doesn't take much digging around online to find ways to
hop back online under a new user name and trade MP3s until the cows
come home - or the next batch of user names are requested from a
disgruntled artist with a passel of lawyers in tow.
The Sound of Silence
My.MP3.com disables content from majors
Well, great. Now if I want to listen to the Beastie Boys' "Check Your
Head," Kristin Hersh's "Hips and Makers" or any other album that I
"beamed" to my account at My.MP3.com, I have to stand up, walk over to
the CD rack, pull out the CD, place it in my computer or the stereo
and hit play. Grump, grump, grump. In spite of all the rhetoric, it
turns out that MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson is still interested in
playing nice with the big boys at the majors, and toward that end went
ahead and pulled the plug on songs beamed to My.MP3.com. Company
president Robin Richards said the move was designed to "demonstrate
our good faith and strong desire to achieve an expeditious business
resolution." In a letter to users, Robertson hastened to reassure them
that they can still listen to promotional tracks and "those not
affected by the judgment." You know, the partial summary judgment in
favor of the RIAA in its copyright infringement suit against MP3.com.
Now, there's a musical turn of phrase. All things considered, I'd
rather have my tunes.
Dot Dot Dot
Wake Up Show Online ... Napster Wins Webby ... They Might Be Giants
... RMAT
AtomicPop.com, who seems to have a press release a day touting some
new feature or another, announced last week an exclusive partnership
with "hip-hop radio visionaries Sway and King Tech to produce and
promote their world famous Wake Up Show online"; the show is billed as
"the most-listened-to hip-hop radio show in the world ... reaching a
worldwide audience with over 13 million listeners tuning in every
week." ... Not everyone is thrilled with Napster winning a Webby award
last week in the music category. ZDNet ran a concise little manifesto
stating that "media hype and industry presence should never factor in
to Webby nominations. At the very least, Napster is ill-categorized as
a 'music Web site'." ... Cool cats and kittens best check out They
Might Be Giants - the band that coined the immortal line "wake up and
smell the cat food" - when they do a voicecast and concert at 8 p.m.
EDT next Tuesday, May 16, at Emusic.com. ...It's time again to try and
earn your music geek credentials at the Rhino Musical Aptitude Test.
On Wednesday, May 17, you can either head to various Tower Records
(check Rhino.com for details) or go online and compete for the prize
package which includes, among other swag, a home theater and DVD
player. Fun facts: DEVO will kick off the contest at the Los Angeles
event; the winner gets the esteemed title of "Geekus Musicus Maximus,"
and last year's winner is the music editor at Amazon.com.
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SOUND OFF:
~~~~~~~~~
This week's question: Did video kill the radio star?
E-mail your opinions to julene@well.com with "sound off" in the
subject line, and we'll print a selection of the responses in next
week's newsletter. Letters may be edited for clarity and length, so
keep them short and include your name and affiliation, if any.
Last week's question: What's your vote for most annoying digital music
catch phrase or jargon?
"Digital Rights Management or DRM to the really trendy types. What
the *&$% is that?"
- Andrew MacCauley
Systems Analyst, Miami
"Without question, the most annoying digital music catch phrase today
is 'music service provider' from the half-baked PR kitchen that Mr.
Michael Robertson presides over at MP3.com. Somebody down there read
one-too-many Industry Standard articles and decided that MP3.com's
lame business model needed an equally lame moniker that Michael could
peddle around to describe the new category that MP3.com was struggling
to define. In light of the court's recent statements, exactly what
services will a penniless, post-settlement MP3.com be able to provide?"
- Lee Clancy
Sherpa Ears
"This one goes beyond the digital music realm, but I've heard it used
in that context too often to count. I hate the term 'monetization'
with a passion that verges on homicidal. All these Internet
entrepreneur types say it every other sentence. 'How do we monetize
this? Where's the monetization for that?' For God's sake, it's money.
M-O-N-E-Y. Period. What is *wrong* with these people?"
- Kat Clancy
STAFF
~~~~~
Written by Julene Snyder. Send newstips and press releases to julene@well.com.
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