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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, June 5, 2001

TOP STORY:

* Crazy Little Thing Called Censorship

NET NOISE:

* KillRadio.org

BEATS:

* Launch Returns Major Labels' Legal Salvo

DOT DOT DOT:

* Bertelsmann Buys MyPlay ... Bronfman Family Sells a Hunk of VU

Stock ... New Radiohead Album

SOUND OFF:

* This week's question: Can a radio station change the world?

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TOP STORY

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Crazy Little Thing Called Censorship

Author Eric Nuzum's new book examines the history of music

censorship in the United States.

By Julene Snyder

If you're looking for utter objectivity in a writer, Eric Nuzum isn't your

man. He's up-front about his biases. In both print and conversation, he

comes across as blunt, opinionated and downright passionate about

freedom of speech. While the latter trait might be due partly to the

extensive research he conducted for his new book, "Parental

Advisory: Music Censorship in America," Nuzum was quite possibly

blunt and opinionated as a toddler.

"People from all walks of life think I'm crazy," he laughs from his office

in Ohio. "I get it from the left, and I get it from the right. But speaking

with your own voice is important. You just can't say that some speech

is more permissible than other speech; that's a line that shouldn't be

crossed."

The book is broken down into two parts: "Issues in Music

Censorship," a dense, surprisingly readable 12 chapters that cover

subjects ranging from the Parental Music Resource Center to MTV to

congressional hearings, and "The Chronology of Music Censorship in

the United States," which begins with the Civil War and takes us to

the end of the latest millennium.

While it would seem to make a fine text for high-schoolers - being

concerned with, you know, music and stuff - Nuzum doesn't expect

his book to be added to many curricula that aren't aimed at

college-age students, primarily due to its necessarily explicit language

and images related to the subject matter.

Nuzum makes the difficult tap dance of being both entertaining and

informative look easy. "Parental Advisory" is sprinkled with goodies

like lists ("Songs That Mention Tipper Gore" and "Fornicators,

Blasphemers and Druggies") and images of controversial and banned

album covers (such as Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A," which

critics said looked like the flag was being urinated on, and the

notorious nakedness of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Two Virgins")

and is solidly researched and annotated.

In conversation, Nuzum (pronounced news-um) packs a lot of

information in rapid-fire bursts of words. It turns out that the book

was born from an unexpected influx of visitors to Nuzum's music

censorship Web site (Ericnuzum.com) - of course, it didn't hurt that a

few weeks after he put it online it was featured as a cool site on

Netscape's front door.

"I started to get a 100 to 200 e-mails a day," recalls Nuzum. "One

was from a book editor at William Morrow & Co., but I thought it

was junk mail and tossed it." Once convinced that the editor's interest

was genuine, Nuzum worked up a proposal, submitted it and sat back

to wait for the contract to arrive. Whoops! Rejected. Undeterred, he

rewrote the proposal and this time got the green light.

Since the publication of "Parental Advisory," Nuzum has expanded his

Web site considerably and has added audio interviews from the book,

with subjects like a Wal-Mart music buyer, conservative minister Bob

Larson and current PMRC head Barbara Wyatt. Nuzum thinks that

the interview with the Wal-Mart buyer, who requested anonymity on

the grounds that he spoke on behalf of the company and not as an

individual, is the most interesting of the bunch.

According to Nuzum, the Wal-Mart chain is the world's largest music

retailer and sells "as many as one out of every 10 CDs sold in the

United States." It also has a blanket policy not to stock any music

product with a parental advisory. The "Mr. Wal-Mart Music Buyer"

interviewee says it's all worked out beautifully: "Our company decided

not to carry controversial music, and it was the single-most positive

marketing thing we have ever done in home entertainment," he tells

Nuzum with enthusiasm.

When asked about the role of organizations such as the Recording

Industry Association of America, which recently was taken to task by

the Federal Trade Commission for "failure to institute positive reforms

to its self-regulatory structure" when it comes to the marketing of

violence to children, Nuzum all but sneers. "The RIAA doesn't care

about artists' rights," he says emphatically. "Repeatedly, they've

demonstrated that they would do anything against artists. It's all about

profits, not about the rights of artists."

As far as his own profits goes, Nuzum is hopeful that his book will sell

relatively well. For one thing, he opted to forego printing it in

hardcover and instead go straight to paperback. "That was a

deliberate choice," he says. "This book needs to be affordable."

Whether or not it sells as well as "The Real Slim Shady" (doubtful at

best), Nuzum's own star appears to be rising with the publication of

"Parental Advisory."

"I did 10 speeches in seven weeks," Nuzum says. And in July, he'll be

a talking head on a VH1 special, which will do doubt air when little

children are tucked safely in their beds: It's a six-part series on the

history of sex in rock music, called "Below the Waist."

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NET NOISE

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KillRadio.org

The mission of the Webcast-only radio station known as

KillRadio.org is anything but modest. "Basically, we want to use the

station to save the world," says an excerpt from the collective's

mission statement, which reads, in part: "Social and economic injustice

is a bad thing. Corporate domination is a bad thing. Helping people is

good. Giving people a chance to be heard is good. A wide mix of

viewpoints is good. Using our li'l station and our media powers to

promote the good and confront the bad is what we're all about. And if

you think about it, in a commerce-driven world such as ours, deciding

to do something with no desire for profit is a downright revolutionary

act."

According to a recent LA Weekly story about the organization - a

piece which was apparently less than a hit in the KillRadio community

- the audience for shows put on by a revolving cast of DJs is, shall we

say, somewhat sparse. Live, on-air broadcasts take place Monday

through Friday from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. PST, weekends from noon until

2 a.m. LA Weekly says: "Its ratings are small - anywhere from five to

200 hits per show, approximately 15,000 a week - but ultimately,

ratings aren't the point. This is, for better or worse, an anti-profit

collective."

Still, it takes money to live in this world, and word is that KillRadio

could use some green. Because they use the DSL line of a nearby

office, they can broadcast only at night. The DJs pay dues to split the

rent. A donated computer has a tendency to crash due to lack of

RAM. And so on. Those who'd like to help out can drop a line to

mail@killradio.org or call the studio directly at (323) 661-5455 to

find out where to send the check, computer, cash, old LPs or what

have you. Come on, what are you waiting for? It's not every day that

someone who's not a Powerpuff Girl vows to save the world.

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BEATS

~~~~~

Launch Returns Major Labels' Legal Salvo

If you were to draw a chart detailing all of the digital music lawsuits

that have been filed in the last year, it would resemble the web of a

particularly manic spider. Last week was no exception, adding two

new strands to the tangle. First, four of the five major record labels -

Sony, Universal, BMG and EMI - sued digital music service Launch

Media for its personalized LaunchCast radio service, saying that the

company didn't get proper licensing. Quicker than an arachnid's strike,

Launch took down that aspect of the site, though preprogrammed

genre stations were streaming at press time. Then on Friday, Launch

filed suit against the labels in a U.S. District Court - along with fellow

plaintiffs MTVi, Listen.com, MusicMatch and XACT Radio - asking

the judge to rule that their customized music services are, in fact, legal

arguing that services with personalized broadcasts should be required

to negotiate separate licenses with each of them, but the digital music

firms are sticking to their guns and saying that they should be granted

the digital equivalent of the statutory license that broadcast radio

stations use. Meanwhile, the arbitration process between Internet

broadcasters, the labels and the Copyright Office continue, with the

parties involved seeking a new way to pay royalties for songs played

online. It's indeed a tangled web, and there's little reason to believe

that the issues will be sorted out anytime soon.

Read the full story:

http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26849,00.html?nl=bts

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DOT DOT DOT

~~~~~~~~~~~

Bertelsmann Buys MyPlay ... Bronfman Family Sells a Hunk of VU

Stock ... New Radiohead Album

Last Wednesday, the Bertelsmann e-Commerce Group announced

that it is acquiring MyPlay, which lets consumers upload, store and

manage their digitized music in a remote "locker." (As you might recall,

BeCG partnered with Napster last fall.) In a conference call hyping

the MyPlay deal, division head Andreas Schmidt said that with this

move, the company believes it's "building the new powerhouse of

music distribution."