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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 22, 2001
TOP STORY:
* Morning-After Mutterings
NET NOISE:
* Indie-Music.com
BEATS:
* Whole Lot of Talking Going On
DOT DOT DOT:
* SoundExchange Holds Tight to the Purse Strings ... Hey, Look,
Ma! I'm on the Front Page! ... Internet Radio Gets a Boost
SOUND OFF:
* This week's question: What does Vivendi Universal's purchase of
MP3.com mean for the unsigned artists who make MP3.com their
promotional home? Good news or bad?
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TOP STORY
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Morning-After Mutterings
The announcement that Vivendi Universal is buying MP3.com
leaves unsigned artists wondering what comes next.
By Julene Snyder
Since the bombshell of the Vivendi Universal deal dropped on
Sunday, the tone of postings to MP3.com's artist message boards has
shifted in tenor away from the usual blatant band promotions and
gripes about changes in service.
Recent posts about the buyout are roughly divided into two camps.
Some think the news that one of MP3.com's foes has bought the
company for $372 million means that their big break is closer than
ever. (Some of these wildly optimistic sorts point out that, at least
technically, they're now on a major label.) On the other side are
those who see the buy as a deal with the devil that can't bode
anything but ill for unsigned artists. This faction believes that it's just
a matter of time before the new boss starts wielding the corporate
scythe, cutting dead wood - a.k.a. indie musicians - from the site in
large hunks.
While those who hope that good things are ahead appear to have a
slight numerical lead, the indie artists who see doom and gloom on
the horizon tend to post longer and louder: "Whenever a big label
takes over a small 'label,' it's not an altruistic gesture," writes Daryl
Westfall, a Nashville, Tenn., artist who uses the pseudonym
"beefhumper.com" on the MP3.com boards. "What they plan to do
with it is anyone's guess, but I can almost guarantee you it's most
certainly *not* to give unsigned artists a free place to give their
music away."
On Sunday night, MP3.com sent out an e-mail message to artists that
tried for a reassuring tone but offered hints that changes for artists
may be in the works. In an FAQ, the question, "Will MP3.com
artists remain independent?" was followed by the answer: "Yes. The
terms and conditions of the various artist agreements will not
automatically change as a result of this transaction." What's
troublesome here – at least to some artists who promote their work
on the site – is the word "automatically," which suggests that
MP3.com may be laying the groundwork for artists to expect future
contract changes.
And if changes are in the offing, some think that it's unlikely they'll
benefit the little guys. Liz Galtney, who performs and posts under
the name "erotictrance," writes in a post to one MP3.com message
board that her perception is "Universal's contracts are notoriously
non-artist friendly," and that corporate mergers don't tend to bode
well for the people at the bottom of the chain. Reached by phone
from her home in Lake Arrowhead, Calif., the synth-pop musician
says that Sunday night's news didn't surprise her in the slightest, and
that she was already in the process of moving her artist site
elsewhere due to her dissatisfaction with the way MP3.com is run:
"Maybe the lesson here for artists is that we don't need any of these
places. We should just use the Internet ourselves to promote our
stuff instead of sites like MP3.com."
One artist who is enthusiastic about the future of MP3.com is the
single-monikered "Larree," who says he's done quite well by being
associated with the site. Not only has he racked up $4,431 in
"payback for playback" earnings in just a few months, he says he
bought about 15,000 shares of stock in the company at between
"$1.71 and $2.50." Given that the Vivendi Universal deal offers
MP3.com stockholders $5 a share in cash or VU stock, Larree's
feeling pretty flush right about now.
On the phone from his home in Los Angeles, Larree says he thinks
that much of the nay-saying over the deal on the message boards
comes from pure paranoia, and he is downright thrilled about the
new possibilities that MP3.com might offer artists. "The wall
between small independent artists and huge major artists is coming
down, just like the wall in Eastern Europe came down."
In response to rah-rah sentiments like these came several big old
raspberries of derision. One rebuttal came from Raphael Rippenger,
a 41-year-old musician from Luxembourg, who writes that "sooner
or later, indies will be somehow, asked to leave, mobbed out, kicked
off MP3.com." Rippenger's take on the deal is that MP3.com will
turn into a "music-on-demand business delivering quality music by
signed artists with music produced under pro conditions."
But Ric Dube, an analyst at Webnoize, thinks that unsigned artists
could ultimately benefit from the deal, and notes that Vivendi
Universal represents 26.4 percent of the market. Other MP3.com
message board posters, like blues musician Kenny Lee, are less
sanguine. Lee sees the deal as a sellout of epic proportions:
"MP3.com started out as a way for artists ... to make money on their
own. Selling their own CDs, getting paid for plays. Free from the
slaveholder mentality of the major labels. The underground railroad
is now closed. The plantation picked up a few more acres. This is
now a place for slaves, not freemen."
Time will tell which camp is right about the future of unsigned
musicians on MP3.com. As for Daryl Westfall, he's busy
reestablishing his site at Ampcast.com, which he describes as an
"alternative MP3-based artist site." Westfall says that while the site
is currently working out some bugs, "they have the kind of
artist-oriented focus that MP3.com once had, and I think that will
take them far."
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NET NOISE
~~~~~~~~~
Indie-Music.com
Perusing the testimonials of those who find Indie-Music.com
invaluable, you'll find the sort of rave reviews that get framed and
hung on the wall to provide a dose of daily affirmation. "At first
glance this site appears like many others, offering the same old info,"
says a blurb credited to SignMe.com. "But digging deep reveals there
are dozens of articles ranging from managers to MP3s, interviews
with successful bands, promoters, agents, and record labels on the
Web. Indie-Music also provides you with a huge listing of radio
stations, clubs where you can gig, a tour guide and neighborhood
studios. An excellent learning tool." A big draw here is the
opportunity to get any band's record reviewed by submitting it to
Indie-Music.com's "cooperative of independent writers," allowing
musicians the unusual opportunity of choosing which regular
reviewer will critique their work. An extensive section called
"education" includes a large archive of articles with titles like "10
Reasons to be Thankful You're an Indie" to "Carpal Tunnel in
Musicians" to "Keeping the Band Together." It all appears to be a
labor of love, founded by self-described "music junkie" Suzanne
Glass, who's been an indie musician, small label owner and
promoter. Clearly, this Columbus, Ind., resident knows her stuff and
has created an indispensable online watering hole for indie musicians
to come together and drink from the collective knowledge pool of
those who've come before.
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BEATS
~~~~~
Whole Lot of Talking Going On
The latest congressional hearing on digital music offers little
consensus or humor.
When tuning in to an audio feed of last week's congressional hearing
on digital music over tinny computer speakers, it didn't take long for
a haze of malaise to set in. The exclusively male chorus of politicians
and music execs began to sound eerily alike, distinguished only by
the volume of their speechifying as they squared off on the
complicated issue of hammering out online music licensing by
summer's end. The three-hour hearing - which featured
RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser, musician Lyle Lovett, Vivendi
Universal's Edgar Bronfman Jr., MP3.com President Robin Richards
and others - seemed endless and, ultimately, unproductive. But hey,
perhaps that's the very nature of getting the government involved.
The funniest quote we came across - and believe me, humor was not
the order of the day - was from a congressman who we think was
introduced as hailing from Florida (or was it Utah?): "I must admit
that I'm ashamed to be a user of Napster. I'm trying to get past that
awful habit ... I was touched by the fact that during the China
spy-plane dispute, that what actually brought the American hostages
and the Chinese prisoners together was the fact that at night the
American hostages sang 'Hotel California' and the Chinese soldiers
actually came to them, whispering, and asked for the lyrics. So I
guess Don Henley is an ambassador to China now in a sense." Sadly,
we were not privy to the next segment of the story, but we like to
imagine an impromptu dance session breaking out, with captors and
hostages singing in unison, "Her mind is definitely twisted / She's got
the Mercedes-Benz/ She's got a lot of pretty, pretty boys / That she
calls friends." In a word, yikes.
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DOT DOT DOT
~~~~~~~~~~~
SoundExchange Holds Tight to the Purse Strings ... Hey, Look, Ma!
I'm on the Front Page! ... Internet Radio Gets a Boost
SoundExchange, an entity created by the record industry to collect
Webcasting royalties, announced last week that it won't be handing
out checks to artists or labels before summer 2002. Although the
group has collected what's been reported to be in "the low millions"
of dollars for more than a year, the group says it will put the funds
into an interest-bearing account until it can accurately distribute the
money. At press time, no mention of this latest development was
found on SoundExchange's site. ... Monday's San Diego Union
Tribune - a newspaper with a less-than-stellar reputation for editorial
excellence - featured a huge above-the-fold photo to go along with
its story about the Vivendi Universal-MP3.com deal. Thousands of
readers were no doubt left perplexed as they studied the image,
looking in vain for some drama or information. Instead, all they saw
was a candid-looking shot of several sandal-and-shorts wearing
young people grinning like canary-eating felines. Turns out they
were MP3.com employees leaving a Sunday evening meeting where
they'd just been informed of the merger. Aha! Those goofy grins
make perfect sense: Who wouldn't be thrilled to find out that their
company's mandatory all-hands weekend meeting didn't deliver
immediately dire news? ... MeasureCast reports that the number of
hours streamed by Internet radio broadcasters "increased more than
14 percent during the week of May 14-20." Among the top five
Webcasters, four are "Internet-only" stations, and 80 percent of all
listening occurred "between 5 a.m. PST and 5 p.m. PST." In other
words, at work. The implications for workplace networks clogged
with bandwidth-sucking audio streams were not explored in the
report, but one hopes the boss doesn't catch on and pull the plug on
music-loving employees any time soon.
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SOUND OFF
~~~~~~~~~
This week's question: What does Vivendi Universal's purchase of
MP3.com mean for the unsigned artists who make MP3.com their
promotional home? Good news or bad?
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: In the real world, can a Web site like
garageband.com launch a band into the big-time?
It may be a matter of semantics around the use of "big time," but I
think that garageband.com is another useful tool for ambitious
artists. It certainly has the ability to get music into the eyes and ears
of those who are interested; maybe just enough to secure a major
label deal. Big picture: Artists can always use tools that help them
distribute, promote and maybe even create music on their terms.
- Michael Lupo
Indiepulsedotcom
STAFF
~~~~~
Written by Julene Snyder (julene@well.com).
Edited by Michele Keller (mkeller@thestandard.com).
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