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THE INDUSTRY 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:
Tuesday, July 24, 2001
TOP STORY:
* Music to Fill-in-the-Blank By
Uplister unveiled plans for a new independent digital-music
subscription service last week. Can it attract enough fans to give
the major-label plays a run for their money?
NET NOISE:
* BreadandRoses.com
BEATS:
* Court Rules Napster Can Go Back Online
DOT DOT DOT:
* New Top Dog at Napster ... MP3.com and Pressplay, Sittin' in a
Tree ... Salon's Music Industry Story Gets Readers Writing
SOUND OFF:
* This week's question: So, what's right with the music business
these days?
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TOP STORY
~~~~~~~~~
Music to Fill-in-the-Blank By
Uplister unveiled plans for a new independent digital-music
subscription service last week. Can it attract enough fans to give
the major-label plays a run for their money?
By Julene Snyder (julene@well.com)
Uplister, an Oakland, Calif.-based company that's built a following
among indie-music fans by letting them share online playlists,
announced last week it will roll out a beta version of a two-tiered
subscription service by summer's end. The new subscription model,
slotted for commercial release by the end of the year, will allow users
"unlimited digital music downloads" for $10 a month. But there's
a catch: The tracks can only be played on a computer (they can't be burned
to a CD or recorded as an MP3) and will expire if the user stops
making
monthly payments. And unlike other services in the works from major
labels, the company plans two tiers of pricing; in addition to the
first option, customers may also purchase tracks - for a flat fee,
usually 99 cents - that they will own and can space-shift as they
like.
Uplister CEO and co-founder Toni Schneider likens the first tier of
the service to renting music. "Within your subscription, you can
download as much as you want," he says, adding that the company
will use Microsoft's digital rights management (DRM) technology to
prevent users from getting something for nothing.
One potential problem? At least some digital-music fans won't be
happy unless they get, basically, that. John Parres, a co-founder
of the "pho" mailing list - which focuses on issues related to the
convergence of entertainment and technology - expressed his
skepticism for proposed subscription models like Uplister's via
e-mail. "It doesn't matter what Uplister or Pressplay or Duet are
offering unless it's Napster-classic at five bucks a month."
Other music aficionados say that paying a small fee isn't
necessarily a turn-off. Paul Pearson, recently featured as one of
Uplister's "playmakers of the week," says he'd seriously consider
paying to rent music from the independent-music service. "In the
large picture, I don't have a problem paying fees for downloads,"
says Pearson, a DJ at Evergreen State College's radio station KAOS
in Olympia, Wash. While he's not familiar with the specifics of
Uplister's two-tier system, he says loyalty to a site would be a
huge factor in whether he'd consider paying $10 a month for access
to music on his computer.
Loyalty to major labels isn't much of a factor in targeting
customers; unlike in the indie realm, few music fans know or care
what major label their favorite artist is on. (Subscription
services Pressplay and MusicNet, slotted for release by the end of
summer, are aligned with major labels: Pressplay is the brainchild
of Vivendi Universal and Sony, and MusicNet is backed by EMI, BMG
and Warner Bros.) Uplister hopes to target the music fans who are
devoted to smaller labels, and has signed a roster of independent
record labels as initial launch partners, including TVT Records,
Matador, Alternative Tentacles, Knitting Factory/Shimmy Disc, K
Records and Lookout.
Because niche labels tend to attract loyal followings, Ric Dube, an
analyst at the digital-music research firm Webnoize thinks that
Uplister may be onto something. "The advantage Uplister should work
to have over major label offerings is an understanding of its
consumer base," Dube said via e-mail. "A subscription service that
specializes in genres of independent artists may represent, say,
less than 5 percent of available music, but could conceivably serve
its paying customers better than a major label service that offers
60 percent of available music, but without any sort of special
focus."
Focus is key, and Uplister hopes to be firmly in the black within
24 months. "While the majors are launching their services, the
indies have needed to gather around something," Schneider says. "In
terms of the indie sector, we stand alone right now."
To use the current version of Uplister, users have to download
software, though this won't be the case with the subscription
service, which will be entirely Web-based and more user-friendly.
He says the company currently has 200,000 monthly unique visitors
and a core community of users who rely on one another for music
recommendations. (About 60,000 of them have posted playlists to the
site.)
One potential promotional advantage is Uplister's celebrity
playlists, submitted from artists ranging from Ice-T and Thurston
Moore to Joey Ramone and pop-culture icons like former MTV VJ
Martha Quinn and writer Nick Hornby. Of course, all the street-cred
in the world is moot if the audience is of the opinion that digital
music should be free.
"The problem Uplister does face is competing with free," says
Webnoize's Dube. "Unless it can provide some value [that] illicit
resources for online music cannot, it will have a hard time signing
up paying customers."
Read the full story:
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NET NOISE
~~~~~~~~~
BreadandRoses.com
In June, something happened at San Quentin Prison that hadn't
happened for 13 years: Inmates sat in the sun and listened to the
kind of live music that costs big bucks in the outside world. The
Marin Independent Journal's account of that concert - which
featured blues-rocker Bonnie Raitt and Keb' Mo' - quoted an inmate
waxing rhapsodic: "It's been so long since I've felt like this,
like a human being. You look at the faces of these guys and you can
see hope. ... This is feeding life into them." That concert was put
on by Bread and Roses, an organization founded by folk singer Mimi
Fariña in 1974 to provide "free, live, quality entertainment to
people who live in institutions or are otherwise isolated from
society." Fariña, the sister of Joan Baez, died July 18 after a
battle with cancer, but it's a safe bet she'd want the work of
Bread and Roses to live on. From mental institutions to prisons,
from drug rehab to homeless shelters, artists have rallied over the
years to Fariña's cause. And we're not talking lesser luminaries:
Among the many performers who've participated in these shows are
the Indigo Girls, Tracy Chapman, Jerry Garcia, Eartha Kitt and Paul
Simon. An online tribute to Fariña reads, in part: "We remember
Mimi Fariña - our founder and the light of Bread & Roses. We
thank
her for more than 25 years of devotion to our mission, to our
audiences, and to those who traveled with her. We hold her banner
high, promise that the love that she gave to others through Bread
and Roses will be multiplied many times over in the years to come."
If you're so inclined, the public is invited to a memorial service
and "celebration of Mimi's life" at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral
on Aug. 7 at 11 a.m.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
BEATS
~~~~~
Court Rules Napster Can Go Back Online
An appeals court ruled Wednesday that Napster - the online
song-swapping company that you may vaguely recall from the previous
4,972 stories we've written about the firm in the past year - can
go ahead and allow legal music-trading on its service. The ruling
grants Napster's request for a stay from the previous week's order
from U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel that said Napster
couldn't go back online until it could guarantee it could block all
copyrighted music that wasn't authorized for trading. Not that any
of this means squat to those who long for the Napster of old, which
is, apparently, gone for good. At press time, Napster's homepage
still informed visitors that "we will make every effort to resume
file transfers as soon as possible and we are continuing full steam
ahead toward the launch of our new service later this summer."
Those who've signed up to beta test the new service were sent an
e-mail last week with the news that the beta version will be
available before the paid subscription service launches, and that
testers are needed to provide feedback on "new features, the ease
of use, and, of course, identifying the inevitable bugs." The
e-mail promises that once the "small monthly fee" kicks in, more
than "half of what you pay Napster will go directly to the artist,
songwriters and other rights holders whose works are transferred
between members of the Napster community." With a completely
straight face, Napster tells us that the latter plan has "generated
interest from a number of artists who previously were uncomfortable
having their music shared over Napster or other file-sharing
services."
Read the full story:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
DOT DOT DOT
~~~~~~~~~~~
New Top Dog at Napster ... MP3.com and Pressplay, Sittin' in a Tree
... Salon's Music Industry Story Gets Readers Writing
Online song-swapper Napster has named Konrad Hilbers, a former
Bertelsmann executive, as its new CEO. Interim CEO Hank Barry will
remain on Napster's board. The New York Times quotes Barry as
saying that his replacement's "task will be to move us into an era
where Napster is just a normal business" ... San Diego-based
MP3.com - which is in the process of being acquired by Vivendi
Universal - announced Thursday that it will provide technology for
Pressplay, the music subscription service being developed by
Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Word is that
it's a scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours sort of deal, with
MP3.com using Pressplay's service on its site and Pressplay using
MP3.com's content delivery and subscription management technology
when it launches later this summer. Get more at
Salon.com's Eric Boehlert wrote a little ditty last week titled,
"What's Wrong with the Music Biz?" about the slump in CD sales and
concerts this year. Judging by the letters sent from readers of the
well-written piece, the answer to that question is: plenty. The
letters range from the snarky ("I read this article with malicious
glee") to snarly ("I hope the record companies crash and go
bankrupt") to the downright sullen ("A lousy product sold at a high
price yields no sales") to the seditious ("This is the
consumer's
power. The power not to buy.") Given sentiments like these, sounds
like there's little chance of a follow-up article titled "What's
Right with the Music Biz?"
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SOUND OFF
~~~~~~~~~
This week's question: So, what's right with the music business
these days?
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: Should we deny recognition of the copyrights
of those who create works in cyberspace? Why or why not?
Briefly, you need some kind of basic copyright law EVERYWHERE to
prevent the possibility of outright counterfeiting of others' work
as if it's your own. But we need it for little else in my opinion,
especially in a medium geared to and intended for sharing like the
Internet. Certainly fragmentary reuse on the Net should be free and
clear, as I believe it should be elsewhere, and I wouldn't mind
seeing whole work reproduction there, free of any restrictions or
obligations, as long as originating credit is given. I think we can
and should afford that in ONE medium we can all access. The
assumption is that it will kill business there, and it may. On the
other hand I don't see that much business success there now, being
set up the way it is to simply bypass gatekeeping and toll-taking
in general. We can either take advantage of what the medium
suggests or go to court for the rest of our lives trying to
transform it all into another suitable shopping mall. That's what
we're trying at the moment.
- Don Joyce
Negativland
STAFF
~~~~~
Written by Julene Snyder (julene@well.com).
Edited by Michele Keller (mkeller@thestandard.com).
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