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THE STANDARD'S
B E A T S H E E T
The Latest Digital Music News - and It's Free
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For more on digital music, visit
The Standard's Media & Marketing page:
http://www.thestandard.com/subject/marketing
Tuesday, May 1, 2001
TOP STORY:
* Grooving Up Slowly
NET NOISE:
* Rhino Musical Aptitude Test
BEATS:
* Felton/SDMI Smackdown!
* Napster Again, Naturally
DOT DOT DOT:
* No Merger for Bertelsmann and EMI ... Listen.com and LiquidAudio
Layoffs ... Aimster = Ickster
SOUND OFF:
* This week's question: What are the hidden benefits of being a music
geek?
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TOP STORY
~~~~~~~~~
Grooving Up Slowly
Two artists' rights groups are coming together to push for legislation
to protect musicians' interests. As new coalition, can they exert more
influence than either could alone?
By Julene Snyder
Say good-bye to the musicians' coalition Artists Against Piracy - it's
being dissolved. Founded by songwriter Noah Stone last July, Artists
Against Piracy came down on the anti-file-swapping/pro-Lars Ulrich
side of the digital-music debate and drew criticism for receiving
financial support from industry heavyweights like the Recording
Industry Association of America and the National Association of
Recording Merchandisers.
Say hello to a reinvented Recording Artists Coalition, originally
founded last year by musicians Don Henley and Sheryl Crow. It was
credited for helping pass the Work Made for Hire and Copyright
Corrections Act of 2000, which repealed an earlier law that
characterized sound recordings as "works for hire" and allows artists
the ability to reclaim rights to their original master recordings
after 35 years.
Working together, members of the new organization plan to push for
stronger rights and guaranteed compensation for performers. According
to Stone, who will serve as executive director, the nonprofit
Recording Artists Coalition will "be a totally independent
organization." In other words, the RIAA & Co. will not be invited to
join. The group will work on promoting seven-year terms for recording
contracts (currently, most standard major-label contracts call for
seven albums, which would typically span 14 years) and on finding a
way for artists to receive a statutory payment when their music is
available on interactive services such as My.MP3.com, MusicNet and
Duet.
The organization has yet to announce the names of artists who've
signed on so far, but Stone says that most of those who supported
Artists Against Piracy are giving the thumbs-up to the new Recording
Artists Coalition. AAP's members included luminaries such as Alanis
Morissette, the Dixie Chicks, Sarah McLachlan and Blink 182.
While most of the response to the new coalition so far has been
positive, entertainment lawyer Lawrence Feldman - who is currently
representing artists with two pending class-action suits against the
music industry - says he is taking a "wait-and-see attitude." "I want
to see if they represent musicians at large, rather than only
'major-label, currently signed artists,'" he said via e-mail. Feldman
adds, however, that he respects Stone for merging his group with the
RAC and broadening the group's focus. "His decision to drop 'piracy'
as a platform was wise, because he realized that it had become an RIAA
code word for anti-Napsterism."
The path for the merger of Artists Against Piracy with the Recording
Artists Coalition was laid last month, when former Eagle Don Henley
testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the lack of
direct remuneration to artists for interactive services as a
representative of the Recording Artists Coalition. Stone worked with
Henley to prepare for the hearing, and says he'd always thought the
"two efforts should become one" because they shared concerns about the
rapidly changing digital-music landscape.
While the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists labor
union has existed for decades to protect artists who receive
royalties, Stone points out it only represents certain types of
recording artists - featured vocalists, to be exact. "If they had been
a powerful enough voice for recording artists, then we wouldn't have
gotten into some of the trouble that we got in."
He adds, however, that he hopes RAC can team up with AFTRA on some
issues, and the union seems amenable to the idea. Ann Chaitovitz,
AFTRA's national director of sound recordings, says AFTRA views the
Recording Artists Coalition as "an opportunity to work even more
closely" with artists who receive royalties. She adds that the union
has long been involved in efforts to help artists and worked alongside
RAC to repeal the copyright law that designated sound recordings as
work for hire. "As they say in Washington, no one works alone. You
have more clout when you all work together," Chaitovitz says.
Stone agrees. He's hopeful that the new coalition will ultimately get
various existing organizations - AFTRA, the Coalition for the Future
of Music and others - to work together under one big umbrella. "If you
have a legislative agenda, you need to have a broad coalition."
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NET NOISE
~~~~~~~~~
Rhino Musical Aptitude Test (www.rhino.com/RMAT/)
Quick! What was the name of Elvis Presley's first movie? Who wrote the
song "Mood Indigo"? Which band was also known as "Pink Puzz"? Bzzzt.
Time's up, pencils down. Well, smarty-pants, if you aced these three
sample questions, you may just want to consider entering Rhino
Records' Musical Aptitude Test, or RMAT, the place for music geeks to
strut their stuff for fabulous prizes. If you're not cut out for
"Survivor"-esque grub eating or utter humiliation as the weakest link,
you can still take part in our national mania for public contests and
potentially wind up with goodies like a home theater, DVD player and
one copy of "everything released on the Rhino label for the winner's
lifetime (or Rhino's, whichever ends first)." But you'd better get
cracking on brushing up your music-trivia retention skills: Given that
the hour-long test, to be administered on May 17, has more than 300
questions, the score of last year's overall winner - 262.43 out of a
possible 305 - is mighty impressive. You can take the open-book test
over the Internet or in person at Tower Records stores in Chicago, Los
Angeles, Atlanta, Seattle, Las Vegas or Sacramento; those who choose
the latter option are promised a pair of nice yellow No. 2 pencils and
slightly better odds of winning (each city will have a winner declared
and all participants over the Net will be scored as a group). Then,
with great fanfare, the person with the highest overall score will be
declared "Geekus Musicus Maximus." Let the games begin.
(Answers: "Pied Piper of Cleveland: A Day in the Life of a Famous Disc
Jockey" - he played himself in the 1955 documentary; Duke Ellington;
Paul Revere & the Raiders)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
BEATS
~~~~~
Felton/SDMI Smackdown!
The Recording Industry Association of America can't seem to get
through a week without twisting someone's panties into a bunch, and
the past one was no exception. This time around, it was Princeton
University computer expert Edward Felten feeling the whip come down in
the form of a letter telling him that he'd better not present a
research paper about circumventing various music-protection watermark
systems developed by members of the Secure Digital Music Initiative
Foundation. If he did, he'd subject his research team to "enforcement
actions under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998) and
possibly other federal laws." The letter, penned by SDMI Foundation
Secretary Matthew Oppenheim, went on to point out that Felton - and
all participants in the open challenge that SDMI hosted asking people
to try and break the security measures - would violate the terms of
SDMI's "click-through agreement" by publicly disclosing their hacks.
In other words, those who broke the code had to follow the rules,
because that agreement "simply does not 'expressly authorize'
participants to disclose information and research developed through
participating in the Public challenge and such disclosure could be the
subject of a DMCA action." In the wake of a tsunami of bad press about
the perceived stifling of free speech and academic inquiry, Oppenheim
almost immediately appeared to backpedal furiously, releasing a press
release saying the SDMI "does not - nor did it ever - intend to bring
any legal action against Professor Felten or his co-authors." The
brief statement also tried to cut the RIAA some slack, saying that
"for the record, the Recording Industry Association of America, one of
the founding members of SDMI, strongly believes in academic freedom
and Freedom of Speech." Felten's paper was supposed to appear on the
Web here - http://cryptome.org/sdmi-attack.htm - but he apparently had
second thoughts about publishing it.
Read more at
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,24020,00.html?nl=bts
Napster Again, Naturally
There's a good reason you can't find a darn thing you want on Napster
these days, and the company seems to feel just terrible about it.
Witness this rueful explanation on the file-swapping company's Web
site saying that the enhancement of blocking filters has
"unfortunately caused substantial additional 'overblocking,' the
unintentional removal of otherwise authorized works, for which we
apologize to our users and artists." The new Napster does prompt one
to be more resourceful when searching: While you won't find much when
you search by artist name, if you opt to go all meta and search by a
single word in the title field - say "rain" - you'll come up with some
surreal lists that contain more than a few songs that surely shouldn't
be offered up for nabbing. For example, the latter brings up 100 hits,
including the Temptations' "Wish It Would Rain," James Taylor's "I've
Seen Fire and I've Seen Rain" and Los Lobos' "Wicked Rain." Hmm, seems
like a nifty way to make a mix tape, come to think of it. In related
news, research firm Jupiter Media Metrix reported last week that
Napster's user base has declined by 20 percent since it was ordered in
March to stop allowing the trade of copyrighted songs. For the week
ending April 22, Napster was down to No. 7 on Jupiter's music hit
parade, with MP3.com sprinting in front to wind up in the No. 6 spot.
And according to a study from online music research firm Webnoize, the
number of songs downloaded through its file-swapping service in April
has dropped even more since March, by more than one-third.
Read more at
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,24127,00.html?nl=bts
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DOT DOT DOT
~~~~~~~~~~~
No Merger for Bertelsmann and EMI ... Listen.com Layoffs ... Aimster =
Ickster
Tuesday morning, major music labels Bertelsmann and EMI Group
announced that they won't be merging after all; EMI Chairman Eric
Nicoli said that "after exhaustive analysis and discussion, we have
been unable to find a deal with Bertelsmann which works for both
shareholders and regulators." Just last October, a merger with AOL
Time Warner fell through for EMI. Read more at
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,24116,00.html?nl=bts. ... Two
digital music companies announced layoffs this week. Privately held
Listen.com - which has morphed from an online music directory to a
syndicator of Web music directories to its current mission of
"focusing on business-to-business syndication of both proprietary and
licensed music discovery content, music navigation tools and streaming
media" - let go 35 employees last week, in a second round of layoffs.
The company acquired streaming-media technology company TuneTo.com
less than a month ago. According to Listen.com spokesman Sean Garrett,
the layoffs - which affected all departments - were due in part to the
"impact of swallowing 15 new TuneTo folks." And LiquidAudio laid off
about 40 percent of its staff Tuesday morning, saying it would
streamline to focus on providing digital-rights management software to
music-subscription services. ... Aimster - the application that lets
people swap files between their hard drives if they're on each other's
instant-messaging "buddy lists" - has a new marketing campaign that
features va-va-va-voom photos of a lithesome babe. While that in
itself isn't all that noteworthy, the fact that the photos now gracing
the company's Web site are of company founder Johnny Deep's
16-year-old daughter Aimee, is a bit, well, icky. Inside.com's Warren
Cohen writes that Deep thinks his little girl will get the company all
sorts of press: "'She will draw a lot of attention because she happens
to be awfully good looking,' says the proud papa." And Miss Deep
provides living proof that with enough makeup, even minors can be made
to look downright legal. To reiterate: Ick.
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SOUND OFF
~~~~~~~~~
This week's question: What are the hidden benefits of being a music
geek?
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: Do you listen to radio online? Was the station
you listen to among those that pulled their live Web feed offline
earlier this month?
I love Internet radio and have been listening online for several years
now. I used to get in trouble at work when we only had an ISDN line
and I would hog the bandwidth listening to Launch.com. As I write this
I am listening to Spinner and I also often stop at Echo, SonicNet and
local Seattle public radio stations KPLU and KEXP (formerly KCMU but
now run through the Experience Music Project.)
I do not listen to any of the stations that pulled feeds offline. I
purposely chose stations based on 1.) music genres I like and 2.)
minimal ads. One of the reasons I no longer listen to commercial radio
is exactly that, the commercials. I hate seven-minute spot breaks.
Give me the music and nothing but! As a former radio news reporter I
look forward to seeing how the major conglomerates work out deals with
unions so air-talent is compensated for their work both online and
off. Frankly, I'll be surprised if talent gets a dime.
- Cynthia Land
Public relations manager
HitHive
Who cares about Clear Channel affiliates when there are such great
non-commercial broadcasting alternatives? My favorite radio station,
KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., was one of the early-adopters of
streaming, allowing me to listen from here in San Francisco (yes, I am
a subscriber). Since they are a member-supported public service of
Santa Monica College (and an NPR affiliate), they have no advertising
and, thus, have no AFTRA ad issues. And because they are not part of
the commercial FM cabal, they play a diverse and interesting mix of
music that beats both Clear Channel and Web radio hands down. They
have a live on-air feed, an all-music feed and an all-news feed. Tune
in at www.kcrwmusic.com. I don't miss Clear Channel, and neither
should you.
- Fred von Lohmann
Visiting researcher
Berkeley Center for Law & Technology
STAFF
~~~~~
Written by Julene Snyder (julene@well.com).
Editor: Michele Keller (mkeller@thestandard.com).
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