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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, January 23, 2001
TOP STORY:
* The Legality of Lyrics
NET NOISE:
* Sesame Street Lyrics Archive
BEAT:
* MP3.com Promises Profits
CEO says dot-com woes won't affect company.
DOT DOT DOT:
* Adios, Entertaindom ... Drummer to Metallica: 'Smell Ya Later' ...
Transmatic Gets Signed Online
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TOP STORY
~~~~~~~~~
The Legality of Lyrics: Posting Words on the Web Is Trickier Than You
Think
By Julene Snyder
It's not particularly hard to go online and find the lyrics to any
Rolling Stones song - just head to a search engine, key in "rolling
stones lyrics," and you'll be presented with links to several fan
sites that spell out the words to dozens of songs. From there, you can
print them out and sing along with confidence the next time "As Tears
Go By" plays on the radio.
But that seemingly innocuous act isn't necessarily legal. If you want
to stay on the straight-and-narrow, the only authorized lyric Web site
in the U.S. is the International Lyric Server, owned by Harry Fox
Agency, the licensing arm of the National Music Publishers'
Association. Problem is, even though the site claims to contain a
searchable database of more than 2 million songs, lyrics to only two
Rolling Stones songs can be found on the site, and they can't easily
be printed or cut-and-pasted. In other words, the database may be
huge, but it's not necessarily useful. Enter the proliferation of fan
sites. Enter, too, the lawyers.
In mid-1998, the On-Line Guitar Archive, an online library of guitar
music charts, was shut down after being threatened with legal action
by Harry Fox Agency. This came on the heels of another brouhaha, this
time involving GuitarTabs.com, which took down content after wrangling
with Warner Bros. over the issue of perceived copyright infringement.
And in early 1999, even the International Lyric Server (www.lyrics.ch)
was affected. The service was shut down after music publishers sent in
the police to seize the site's computers.
One of the few sites to navigate the territory between legality and
usefulness is LyricFind.com. The site, which allows you to search by
lyric as well as by song, offers a 50,000-title database, a database
it chose to pull after it saw all the skirmishes other sites went
through. But according to CEO Darryl Ballantyne, the Canadian Musical
Reproduction Rights Agency agreed last week to let LyricFind.com
legally display thousands of song lyrics via a searchable database.
"They agreed to our proposal with a few minor provisions," says
Ballantyne, a student at the University of Waterloo. While details of
the deal are still being hammered out, Ballantyne expects to begin
paying a royalty of less than a half cent per song for each lyric
displayed on the site once the agreement is finalized.
(LyricFind.com's revenue numbers are modest: About $12,000 per month
in advertising. Ballantyne hopes that once the licensing issue is
completely resolved, the company can syndicate its database to music
sites like Listen.com and retailers like CDnow.)
Even sites that have been allowed to remain up have seen a number of
demands imposed on them, particularly in the way lyrics are made
available for cut-and-paste. On the International Lyric Server, for
example, users must agree that "access to the ILS does not grant you
the right to reproduce, copy or distribute by any means, method or
process whatsoever, now known or hereafter developed, any of the
information obtained via the ILS, including the song lyrics contained
on this site," and the lyrics are displayed in a way designed to make
cutting and pasting difficult. It's not unlikely that those "minor
provisions" that Ballantyne refers to will, in fact, require
LyricFind.com to follow a similar path, which is likely to frustrate
the 15,000 unique visitors who drop by the site every day. "It's
possible that people won't be able to easily cut and past the lyrics,"
he admits. "We may have to put in some minor JavaScript." While the
technically savvy will doubtless figure out a way around the
prohibition, users may decide to look elsewhere for their lyrics.
Copyright holders are often thought to be ones victimized by
underground fan sites. The question is: How much harm are these sites
really doing? In 99 percent of cases, no one is being hurt, and you
can even make the argument that artists could get a boost in sales
should someone buy a record due to reading lyrics. "Our position is
that the use of song lyrics aids in music sales," Ballantyne says.
"When we can integrate our search services with music retailers,
they'll see that they can not only make money off licensing, but
increase sales as well."
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NET NOISE
~~~~~~~~~
Sesame Street Lyrics Archive (http://i.am/tinyd)
It's not Yahoo's fault that you can get to hundreds of Web sites that
offer up the lyrics to thousands of songs from its search engine. The
company's public relations manager, Dean Jutilla, says that Yahoo
doesn't need to worry about getting a license from Harry Fox Agency
because Yahoo doesn't post lyrics on its site, "just the links to Web
sites that post lyrics." Now that that's settled, check out this
charming archive of lyrics to the beloved songs from "Sesame Street"
next time you're looking for an antidote to that Slim Shady song that
you just can't get out of your head. From "I Am Chicken (Hear Me
Squawk)" to "The Lambaba" to "Rubber Duckie," you'll find an
exhaustive list of songs from the children's television show. Come on,
sing with me now: "Sunny day, sweepin' the clouds away/On my way to
where the air is sweeeeet ..."
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BEATS
~~~~~
MP3.com Promises Profits
CEO Michael Robertson says dot-com woes won't affect company.
It's a dirty job, but someone's got to jet on over to Cannes and
attend the Midem conference. Among the thousands who grudgingly left
their offices to go to the south of France was MP3.com CEO Michael
Robertson, who waxed euphoric in an interview with Reuters about the
future of his once-beleaguered company. "We've wrapped up most of our
legal problems and expect to move to profitability in 2001," he said,
downplaying the recent industry slowdown in advertising revenue. "I
see no problem with advertising remaining a key revenue for us. Only
20 percent of our ad revenues come from dot-coms," Robertson told the
news service. "We will, however, see more diversification with more
revenues coming from subscriptions and transactions."
Read more at
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,21566,00.html?nl=bts
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DOT DOT DOT
~~~~~~~~~~~
Adios, Entertaindom ... Bass Player to Metallica: 'Smell Ya Later' ...
Transmatic Gets Signed Online
The writing's on the wall for Entertaindom, and it doesn't take an
interpreter to see that it reads, "So long, see ya, don't let the door
hit ya on the way out." According to ZDNet, AOL Time Warner will shut
down the site on Feb. 1 and merge operations into the Warner Bros.
Online site, according to "well-placed sources familiar with the
company's integration plans." Taking a last look at the site, I'm not
only struck yet again by how terrible the name is but reminded of how
annoying pop-up ads and constant exhortations to buy things I don't
want are in a Web site purporting to entertain me. ... It's a big old
lovefest over at Metallica.com, where those who missed the news that
bassist Jason Newsted is leaving the band can learn that the boys will
always think of each other as brothers and that the remaining members
embrace the next chapter, when they'll make Metallica shine brighter
than ever. ... The management of alt-rock band Transmatic says that
the group has been signed to a "multimillion-dollar, six record deal
with Virgin Immortal Records." Newsday.com reports that the deal is at
least in part the result of the band's use of the site LoudEnergy.com,
which "seeks out promising bands and pairs them with producers to hone
their sound." Of course, just because a label could potentially pay an
unknown band millions of dollars doesn't mean they necessarily will.
Nonetheless, CNNfn and CBS MarketWatch taped the band performing live
at NYC's Arlene Grocery recently and will be running segments on the
group's story in the next week, according to - who else -
LoudEnergy.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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