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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, October 10, 2000
TOP STORY:
* Everyone Loves Listen.com
NET NOISE:
* LyricFind.com
BEATS:
* SpinRecords Bites the Dust
The San Diego company closes abruptly after running out of money.
* Dot Dot Dot
Shawn Fanning, media darling ... Napster redux ... ArtistDirect
redesigns while stock flounders
SOUND OFF:
* Can a portal like Listen.com become to music what Yahoo has become
to navigating the Web?
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TOP STORY
~~~~~~~~~
Everyone Loves Listen.com
By Julene Snyder
The first thing most people notice about the Listen.com office is how
quiet it is. No boom boxes duel for aural supremacy; MTV videos don't
blare. The only sound you're likely to hear is the tippity-tap of
keyboards.
The relative calm isn't due to some mandate about keeping a lid on
noise, but is a function of having thirty-odd people listening to
music on their headphones all day, every day. "If you look carefully,
everyone is nodding their head to a different rhythm," laughs the San
Francisco-based company's director of editorial, Tim Quirk. And listen
they must, since the company's aim - to become a portal for all
digital music - is rather ambitious, especially when you consider that
it goes out of the way to be sure that every indexed track is legal.
The privately held company's bottom line looks solid, according to
President and COO Sean Ryan. While Ryan won't reveal financial
details, he confirms that revenue comes from advertising, partner
relationships and commerce. Beyond that, he says that Listen.com is
extremely well-capitalized: "We raised $75 million in March, and we
didn't need it at the time and still haven't spent it." Of course,
there's not a thing wrong with having an overflowing corporate kitty,
and Ryan thinks the company is in a good position to emerge as one of
the big winners in the digital music space.
A few weeks ago the company bought the streaming-audio company
WiredPlanet for an undisclosed sum, an acquisition that founder and
CEO Rob Reid says will probably not be the last. Listen.com plans to
be up and running with streaming radio stations using WiredPlanet's
technology in the next few weeks and will offer partners the
opportunity to hook into Listen's streaming audio or to program their
own stations. "For example, Old Navy could have radio on its site and
program the station itself," explains Ryan.
Listen.com has 30 writers and editors on board. Ryan says he has hired
editorial staffers from a variety of backgrounds, but they all share a
passion for music without being "indie-rock nazis." That's key, since
the idea at Listen.com is to describe music rather than actually
review it, a subtle but important distinction.
"We're not here to say 'this sucks' or 'this is good,'" explains Ryan.
"Our job is to tell you what the music sounds like and to help you
find new stuff." Toward that end, the staff goes to great lengths to
fit a given song into its appropriate genre of music, a skill that's
become increasingly more important as music lovers splinter off like
so many facets of a giant disco ball. For instance, you'll find 15
headings under the category of "alternative/punk," ranging from "alt
metal" to "ska revival." Then underneath those headings, you can
winnow down even further into sub-genres.
Things can get esoteric pretty quickly for those of us who don't
obsessively catalog every new sound on the block. I confess to having
been utterly clueless that there was a style of music called
"plunderphonic," but at least 168 bands on the Listen.com Web site
fall into this category, which as described as those who "sample
found, pre-existing music and sound, creating conceptual recordings
rather than traditional songs. While not always aesthetically
pleasing, Plunderphonic recordings are challenging and unusual."
(Personal note: Evolution Control Committee's song "Candywrapper" made
my cat hide under the bed and refuse to come out for an hour.)
It's hard to find anybody with an unkind word to say about the
company, though Ryan is a sport about providing an uncomplimentary
quote when pressed. "Jupiter called us 'experts in promiscuous
partnering,'" he volunteers. But when your stated business is to
syndicate online music products and information, having a lot of
partners is a good thing. The company has already built an impressive
dossier that includes major labels, big search engines like Lycos and
Yahoo, credible indies such as Kill Rock Stars and Matador and players
from MP3.com, Farmclub and Riffage.
It's a long list that's meant to keep getting longer, which sounds
like good news for that happy horde of employees that gets to love
music for a living - not to mention those of us with day jobs.
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NET NOISE
~~~~~~~~~
LyricFind.com
While there are many places to find song lyrics on the Web, some more
specialized than others ("Sesame Street" lyrics, anyone?), this
fan-focused site has a certain bare-bones charm about it. The hosts
claim to have compiled more than 25,000 lyrics from nearly 4,000
artists, and their breathless presentation is oddly charming:
"LyricFind.com is a site created for the music loving community of the
Internet. Our goal is to provide not only a search engine to find
lyrics, but an engine that can search the content as well. We found
most good lyrics pages lacked this feature, and it frustrated us - so
we decided to create our own site!" And guess what? Nine times out of
ten, it appears to work nicely. Searching for "shot a man in Reno"
does, in fact, turn up the full lyrics to the immortal Johnny Cash's
"Folsom Prison Blues." Plugging in "doesn't make you Jesus" neatly
pulls up Tori Amos' "Precious Things." I was a bit worried when I
looked for "no dog's body" - a snippet from only the greatest punk
anthem ever written - and got a "no match found" message. But then I
realized that someone (possibly a misguided hip-hop fan) managed to
mutate the line from the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK" to read "ho
dog's body." Typos aside, LyricFind is the place to go when your
addled brain keeps trying to remember that song, you know, the one
that some metal band whose name I forget did about how love hurts? No,
not the sappy song that's actually called "Love Hurts," the other song
... et voila! There it is, in all its long-forgotten glory: "Bed of
Nails" with the immortal line, "love hurts good on a bed of nails."
Hey, they are worse ways to waste your time online.
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BEATS
~~~~~
SpinRecords Bites the Dust
The San Diego company closes abruptly after running out of money.
What do you do when you show up for work and find out that you're not
only unemployed - along with everybody else in the office - but that
you won't be getting paid for the last two weeks of work? Maybe
scatter a couple of tidbits on the company's Web site? Which is
exactly what employees at Carlsbad, Calif.-based SpinRecords.com
apparently decided to do before they were told to hit the road last
Friday. In the site's Industry News section, a terse message reads,
"All SpinRecords.com staff laid off." In another section, visitors
will find the admonition, "Do NOT buy anything from this site. Your
order will not be fulfilled." You'll also find the missive, "Attention
Musicians: SpinRecords.com has folded. They still have your CDs. The
offices are located at 1935 Camino Vida Roble in Carlsbad. Go get your
CDs ASAP." It may be too late. According to one insider, the locks
have been changed, CEO Wayne Irving has left town and liquidators have
moved in. The site has been on an ever-downward spiral since half of
the staff was laid off in May. And last week's San Diego Reader
article detailing the company's deteriorating relationship with its
one-time flagship band The Color Red did not exactly inspire
confidence in the firm's ability to keep its dirty laundry from
flapping in the breeze. A source told The Industry Standard that the
company's parent, Solutions Media, plans to use the funds from
liquidating its assets to pay employees for their last two weeks of
work.
To read more, click here:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,19217,00.html?nl=bts
Dot Dot Dot
Shawn Fanning, media darling ... Napster redux ... ArtistDirect
redesigns while stock flounders
Napster creator Shawn Fanning is a busy guy these days. He's scheduled
to appear on "60 Minutes II" tonight (9 p.m. ET) for a talk with
Charlie Rose; although Inside.com reports that there will be little
new information revealed in the segment, we are assured that we'll get
a chance to see the wunderkind shooting hoops and getting emotional
about how the file-sharing application has given his life meaning. On
Monday, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, invited Fanning to come to Brigham
Young University to speak at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Hatch is holding hearings in various cities to "find how federal laws
may need to be changed to protect intellectual property." Reports from
the scene are that Fanning was greeted by students' cheers, but one
wonders whether many "hurrahs" resounded when he said that Napster
hears "regularly from mothers who say they use Napster to screen the
music their children are listening to."... Media Metrix reported last
week that Napster is officially the "fastest growing home software
application ever," with usage that jumped from "1.1 million users in
February 2000 to 6.7 million users in August 2000, a 506.8 percent
increase." Yow, that's the kind of jump that billionaire dreams are
made of. Is it any wonder that rumors continue to fly about possible
buyers for the company, in spite of the legal ramifications? ...
ArtistDirect has redesigned its ArtistDirect Network, promising to
"utilize flash technology and a streamlined navigation." If only there
was a magic button to drive up the stock price; at press time, shares
were trading at less than a buck a pop, down, oh, about a quadzillion
percent from its opening day peak of $12.75 six months ago.
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SOUND OFF
~~~~~~~~~
This week's question: Can a portal like Listen.com become to music
what Yahoo has become to navigating the Web?
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.
FEEDBACK:
Last week's question: Do fan communities make music criticism less
important?
Certainly fan communities make music criticism less important - if by
"music criticism" you mean a flat-out review of a musical work
designed to influence people's tastes and/or purchases. Fans can now
widely discuss their favorite artists' new music immediately, and the
thumbs-up or thumbs-down can be created among the faithful almost
before critical publications and marketing programs can do their work.
However, there will always be a place for critical analysis that seeks
to put popular music and its artists into the larger context of our
time and culture. Sadly, rock criticism has declined from the golden
age when its best practitioners sought to do just that. Hopefully, the
Web can provide a place for a new, digital equivalent of Rolling
Stone, Spin and other rock mags of yesteryear.
- Marshall Bowden
TransistorNet.com
If music critics today had any interest in writing about music, I
would be reading them and fan communities would be the untrammeled
domain of cranks. I don't know about you guys, but when I try to read
music criticism in alternative mags (such as Seattle's The Stranger
(full disclosure on my part: I used to work for them)), all I hear
about is how the critic dude or dudette was having an off day when
they were listening to the sucky new CD or how they were really high
once when they first heard Van Halen. And I don't care about their
lives. Just educate me about the music. It's called autobiography, all
the latter day critics should quit the biz and go write one. At least
the fan communities talk about the music. Check out the Web ring about
Steely Dan to get a good sample of an educated group of folks who talk
with authority about something I care about.
- David Newman
Editor
SoulMD.com
I'm sure I'm biased, having spent 20 years banging out record reviews
and features for a variety of publications, but it seems to me the
thing that's missing from the concept of fan reviews is, for lack of a
better term, good writing. From the point of view of the record
companies, the only reason music writers exist is to get people
excited about a new release. And, yep, fan reviews can do that,
probably even better than professionals or the crazed folks who put
out fanzines. But, from my point of view, music writing is about
analyzing the music and the culture within which it resides. The idea
is to look at what's happening, and think about it in ways that don't
just say whether something is good or bad. The best music writers are
great prose stylists with fascinating insights. I don't see that
happening in chat rooms or newsgroups or e-mail lists very often.
- Steve Pick
It depends where the criticism is coming from. If it's a reputable
source with a good track record, then the criticism will be taken in
to consideration. As far as music communities are concerned, that's
obviously the best source for criticism. Until marketing companies
come in with business platforms focusing on this demographic ruin it.
Posing as fans and flooding the gates with commercial rhetoric in
these communities is just plain ol' whacked. Fans know who other fans
are, no one is fooled.
- Jordan Hirsch
I think (last week's lead story) brings to light the reality that many
of the critics and music sites don't have the same effect as they used
to (or hoped to) achieve. The Internet is letting the sheep out of the
pen to graze on the fields of vast music that has always been there.
The sheep have always been fed what the critics and the labels say is
"good." We the sheep are free to roam and download what we want, not
what they want us to want. We personally know many artists that are
not interested in the standard route for so-called success in the
music business. They are utilizing the Internet for their distribution
and communication between fans. We've seen artists earning $500K per
year on their own with more control over how much they earn of that.
That in unto itself makes the business model viable to take it to the
next step, without the need to sell their soul to survive. They really
do not care if they get their music on MTV. What they do care is that
fans are reaching out using this medium to help build their businesses
for them by spreading the music. The old banker's rule (rule of 72,
compounding interest) plays well in explaining how talent is spreading
throughout the Internet through fans telling other fans. They e-mail
two friends who e-mail two friends and so on and so on. My friends who
share the same musical tastes mean more to me than a critic who earns
his reputation by being label-friendly. I automatically delete the
e-mail that CDNow, Rolling Stone, and other industry sites (many who
refuse our requests to unsubscribe (so they can claim HUGE subscriber
bases)) since I know it is pure sheep feed.
- Christian Marks
MagicBus.com
STAFF
~~~~~
Written by Julene Snyder (julene@well.com).
Editor: Steven Zeitchik (szeitchik@thestandard.com).
Deputy Editor: Michele Keller (mkeller@thestandard.com).
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