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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, April 25, 2000
TOP STORY:
* Not the Most Popular Guy on Campus:
These are lonely times for Napster advocate turned anti-piracy
crusader Chad Paulson.
NET NOISE:
* 88Hiphop.com
UPBEAT:
* Join the Clubs
Will Bertelsmann's BMG Direct and Time Warner's Columbia House merge?
* Dot Dot Dot
ClickRadio...MP3.com...Entertaindom...Limp Bizkit
SOUND OFF:
* Do MP3s help or hurt music sales?
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TOP STORY:
~~~~~~~~~~
Not the Most Popular Guy on Campus:
These are lonely times for Napster advocate turned anti-piracy
crusader Chad Paulson.
By Julene Snyder
It's not easy being Chad Paulson these days. The 19-year-old Indiana
University sophomore can't keep his Web site up for more than a few
days before his files are deleted by hackers. He gets about a dozen
e-mails a day calling him names like "traitor" and worse. Clearly,
it's time for him to get a new domain name: Savenapster.com has got to
go. It just doesn't have the same ring to it since Paulson decried the
controversial software-swapping company as a "haven for piracy" in an
open letter a few weeks ago.
For those who haven't been paying attention, the chain of events went
something like this: In mid-February, Indiana University joined the
ranks of schools that banned Napster, citing bandwidth concerns. The
next day, Chad Paulson formed Students Against University Censorship
(SAUC) and created the group's Web site, Savenapster.com. There, he
posted news on the latest developments and a petition urging schools
to reinstate access to the software.
On March 26, the university reinstated Napster after working with the
company to develop methods to keep users from hogging too many
computer resources. On April 13, the heavy metal rock group Metallica
filed suit against Napster and Indiana, Yale and the University of
Southern California. (Since then, Yale and Indiana have resumed
blocking the software, and have been dropped from the suit.) On April
14, Paulson posted his anti-piracy letter. Within a few days, hackers
began taking down Savenapster.com, and they've been at it ever since.
"The site was up last week until Wednesday {April 19}, and then
someone took it down," Paulson says. "I put it up again and then it
was brought down for Thursday and Friday. I put it up Friday night and
then it was up until early Sunday morning and now it's down again.
Every time I move it {to various free Web-hosting servers}, it'll be
up for a few days and then someone will come in and delete the whole
account."
At this point, it's not just hackers that Paulson's disgusted with,
it's Napster itself. A fan of bands like Built to Spill, Modest Mouth
and "pre-Nevermind" Nirvana - Paulson is a firm advocate of musicians'
right to make a living from their art, something with which he says
Napster has been unconcerned.
When Paulson came out with the SAUC site, he probably never suspected
that he'd one day get a phone call from Recording Industry Association
of America President Hilary Rosen. That call came last week. The two
talked about the Metallica lawsuit and Paulson asked Rosen if she
could get his "open letter" read by the band. She agreed.
Paulson doesn't see himself as a RIAA poster-boy or music industry
mouthpiece. He's letting the FBI figure out who keeps hacking the SAUC
site. He's contemplating changing his major from computer science to
telecommunications. And once he gets his site back up and decides on a
new domain name, he's thinking it could be time to lay low.
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NET NOISE:
~~~~~~~~~~
88Hiphop.com
A division of Pseudo.com - which also hosts Streetsound
("electronica") and Kool Out ("urban grooves and downtown culture") -
88Hiphop.com is dedicated to "accurate, comprehensive, and interactive
coverage of hiphop culture." The site serves up the latest dirt, such
as a recent item detailing a feud between Wyclef and Canibus. Along
with the daily slices of gossip, 88Hiphop offers a live show
Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST - plus archives, "two minutes of fame"
interviews, freestyles, mike wars, up-close interviews, live-show
alerts for the NYC area, real-time chat and message boards. The
frequent warnings that this is a commercial site are almost refreshing
enough to make you forget that you're being forced to endure ads
before you can venture too deeply within the site. Almost.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
UPBEAT:
~~~~~~~
Join the Clubs
Will Bertelsmann's BMG Direct and Time Warner's Columbia House merge?
The Wall Street Journal reported late last week that Bertelsmann's BMG
Direct record club had begun discussing a possible merger with Time
Warner's record-and-video club, Columbia House, which is half-owned by
Sony. Should the merger take place - which isn't likely to happen
while the AOL/Time Warner merger is in the works - the combined entity
could start with 27 million members right out of the box. The WSJ was
cagey about sources, alluding only to "people close to the situation"
along with the always reliable "people familiar with the matter." The
idea of the merger is hardly without precedent for the pair: Earlier
this year, Time Warner's Book of the Month Club merged with
Bertelsmann's Doubleday Direct Book Club, "prompted in part by the
impact of Web competition."
Dot Dot Dot
ClickRadio...MP3.com...Entertaindom...Limp Bizkit
New York-based ClickRadio was granted last week "the first interactive
radio license" by the Universal Music Group - home to labels like A&M,
Geffen, MCA and Motown. Set to launch this spring, the service
promises an "exciting new i nteractive listening experience" that will
simultaneously "protect the rights of copyright holders." ... MP3.com
recently announced that it will allocate $1 million in May and $1
million in June to its 'Payback for Playback' program, which pays
artists based on the number of listens their work receives. Find out
which bands are getting the most green at www.mp3.com/payback/. ...
The top three execs at Warner Bros.' Entertaindom.com resigned Monday,
citing the company's evolving digital strategy due to the AOL merger.
The parting is said to be amicable (natch). ... If you just can't get
enough Metallica vs. Napster news, check out a novel plan to pay the
band for illegally obtained MP3s at Paylars.com. ... Also, this
Monday, the LA Times reported that Limp Bizkit was close to completing
a $2 million deal with Napster to sponsor the band's upcoming free
concert tour with Cypress Hill; MTV says the first of those dates will
be July 4 in Chicago. Reuters reported that when Limp Bizkit singer
Fred Durst was asked why the band opted to make the concerts free
rather than charge a nominal fee and turn them into charity events, he
said. "I don't know any charities I'd wanna give money to."
SOUND OFF:
~~~~~~~~~
This week's question: Do MP3s help or hurt music sales?
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: What do you think of Metallica's decision to sue?
"You bet Metallica's thrashing on thin ice. Suing the universities
where arguably misguided students so actively fought for their
Napster, never mind litigating against Napster itself, is nothing more
than PR suicide, and Tipper Gore isn't going to be crying over the
band's slashed headbanger wrists. Neither are their once-frenzied
fans. Whether or not it's right or wrong to download their music
gratis, Metallica has decreasingly presented themselves as rebels
since the release of 'Kill 'Em All' in1983. Lately, long after their
European hairdos and too-fluffy photo shoots by artsy lensman Anton
Corbijn, they're releasing symphonic pap with a Yanni-style orchestra.
The issue of Metallica selling out is nothing new. Coming out against
their fans instead of finding an accessible way to charge for
downloadables online is just another way they've proven themselves
anachronistic. Shame that."
- Fish Griwkowsky
Digital Mogul analyst, Edmonton Sun music writer and former metal head
"Metallica is absolutely justified! I am continually amazed at the
naive and uneducated opinions regarding intellectual property
ownership issues displayed by the university constituency and other
'free access' evangelists. This opinion can be analogized to the right
to vandalize private property or joyride in any car that you decide
you like. This is displayed by the disgruntled idiots that have
responded by hacking Metallica's site and those of other intellectual
property defenders. If the intellectual property of music should be
free, then why not all intellectual property in all facets of society?
Why have patents, copyrights, trademarks or any other IP protection?
The argument can only be supported by those too unskilled to create
their own intellectual property or too ignorant to understand why my
mind's creations are not yours for the taking."
- Risky Figgs
"Metallica gained their enormous following because a bunch of Heavy
Metal fans bootlegged the band's demo tapes in the early 80's. If it
wasn't for bootlegs and tape traders this band wouldn't be here today.
These guys used to encourage people to come to their shows and video
tape them. Now, millions of dollars later, Metallica could care less
about the next young band trying to get their name made in the new
bootleg circuit ... Napster."
- Alan Gilkeson
Your About.com Guide to Heavy Metal
{We got a flood of responses to this question. The final count was
two-to-one against Metallica. -JS}
STAFF
~~~~~
Written by Julene Snyder. Send newstips and press releases to
julene@well.com.
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