=====================================================================
THE INDUSTRY STANDARD'S
B E A T S H E E T
A Weekly Report on the Convergence of Music and the Net
=====================================================================
| http://www.thestandard.com |
Tuesday, October 3, 2000
TOP STORY:
* Onlinus Criticus: A New (and Increasingly Rare) Breed
NET NOISE:
* Rockcritics.com
BEATS:
* Napster Lives to Fight Another Day
Three judges, a passel of lawyers and live TV coverage
* Dot Dot Dot
MP3.com's 'Million EMail March' ... Artists Against Piracy Revamped
... Al Gore, Uber-Geek
SOUND OFF:
* Do fan communities make music criticism less important?
/=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= advertisement =-=-=\
Check out the Standard's all new Job Shop!
Come browse the hottest job opportunities in the Internet Economy.
Our new posting service brings together the top employers and the
top candidates in the Internet business space. Find your next gig
right here or post a job in front of the best web minds in the world.
Your next career move could be a mouse click away. Visit JOB SHOP today.
http://www.thestandard.com/people/recruitment/?nrc=nhsr
\=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=/
TOP STORY
~~~~~~~~~
Onlinus Criticus: A New (and Increasingly Rare) Breed
By Julene Snyder
In the beginning, there was Crawdaddy, Creem and Rolling Stone. Then,
before you could hum the chorus to "Let it Bleed," rock critics were
everywhere. There were the academics (Robert Christgau, Eric
Weisbard), the wunderkind-turned-moguls (Cameron Crowe), the madmen
(Lester Bangs, Richard Metzger), the cultural chroniclers (Ann
Powers), the fan-focused (Gina Arnold), the semi-notorious (Jim
DeRogatis) and the label-friendly hacks (you'd didn't really think I'd
put a name here, did you?).
You'd think that Web journalism's explosion would bring a new crop of
influential music journalists. It hasn't. Instead, it's brought
hundreds of music Web sites pumping out hundreds of thousands of words
- mostly mediocre words. The question: Is anyone paying attention? The
new Madonna record saw reviews everywhere from Wall of Sound to
Sonicnet.com. But did all those online record reviews have a thing to
do with the album's success?
There are signs that the industry has begun to wonder if the world
really needs dozens of Madonna reviews. Last week, MTVi - the online
division of Viacom's MTV Networks and parent of Sonicnet - laid off
more than 100 employees in a major reorganization. (Full disclosure:
I've written record reviews for Sonicnet.) According to a recent
Industry Standard article, those layoffs were due to the company's
plans to "consolidate its editorial and technology staffs into one
division. One staff essentially will create editorial for MTV.com,
VH1.com and Sonicnet." MTV.com's group president, Judy McGrath, told
Inside.com's Craig Marks (formerly an editor at Spin) that one result
of the reorganization will be the centralization of music reviews,
remarking that, "There's really no reason to have four separate Nelly
reviews."
Not surprisingly, critics themselves aren't as matter-of-fact. "As the
business itself consolidates, the media is also consolidating," says
New York Times pop music critic Ann Powers. The Times writer also
thinks that the sites' existence as part of the industry they cover
leads to a lack of dissenting opinions.
Powers says she's distressed because much of the discussion about the
role of music criticism is strictly about filtering and taste-making:
"(There is an) extreme focus on consumerism online, on buying and
selling. Well, it's not that easy to monetize commentary and social
context. It's much easier to monetize a guide that's going to say,
'This is good, and this is bad.' I'm sorry to see so little interest
among people who are really invested in the online world in the side
of criticism and journalism that I think is more interesting."
But the issue might not lie with a dimunition of content but with a
shift in who's creating it. Marc Schiller, CEO and co-founder of the
marketing firm ElectricArtists, thinks that the most important reviews
these days are coming from the fans themselves in places like mailing
lists, message boards and chat rooms - the places where fans talk to
one another in communities that they've created themselves. "These
communities can create a buzz in velocity that's incredible," he says.
"For the first time, there's a layer that the labels have to take into
account early - the fans."
If so, it's a sea change from the way things have worked for years in
the music industry. The relationship between writer, publicist and
record label has always been a symbiotic one: The writer needs access
to the artist, the artist presumably wants to be famous, and the
publicist is supposed to rack up as many positive reviews as possible
so that lots of records are sold and everybody can make a lot of
money.
But hey, none of this is rocket science; putting the fans at the
front-end of the process might turn out to be the best thing that's
ever happened to the business. In the immortal words of the late,
lamented Frank Zappa, "Most rock journalism is people who can't write,
interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read."
To read more about MTVi, click here:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,18900,00.html?nl=bts
/=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= advertisement =-=-=\
Exclusive New E-Commerce Reports from The Standard
E-Commerce Consumers: What, Where, and Why
They Buy, Spring 2000, a series of 12 reports from The Standard
and Odyssey, provides a fresh perspective on the broad E-commerce
market, branding, vertical markets and demographic usage.
Available only at http://www.thestandard.com/store/econsumers/?nst=nhsr
\=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=/
NET NOISE
~~~~~~~~~
Rockcritics.com
Who are these people who spend their lives writing about music? And is
that even a real job? While it's far from complete, Rockcritics.com
does a pretty good job of being a one-stop shop for those interested
in the work of writers like Greil Marcus, Lester Bangs and Dave Marsh.
Along with lots of interviews and a few links to critics' home pages,
what's most fun here is the provocative, the catty and the deranged.
You'll find Denise Sullivan's 1998 screed against the Village Voice's
"Pazz and Jop" poll, where she reveals the shocking news that some
music critics are "assholes." If you missed the nervous reaction when
last year's "Rock Critical List" was mailed anonymously to top
publications, naming names and kicking ass on A-list critics, it's not
too late to catch up. Rockcritics.com points you to the full text of
the essay (which resides on the Spin magazine Web site, of all places)
along with links to stories chronicling the brouhaha among the New
York critical elite trying to figure out who wrote the manifesto,
which appears to be an inside job. There seems to be a nicely acerbic
sensibility in deciding which stories will be given play at
Rockcritics.com; a piece about writer Chuck Eddy finds him remembering
his early days at the Village Voice as a token, recalling that he was
"their white, male, Midwestern heterosexual who grew up on Ted Nugent
and Aerosmith. I think they found that quaint.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
BEATS
~~~~~
Napster Lives to Fight Another Day
Three judges, a passel of lawyers and live TV coverage
Boy, this reality TV thing is really taking off. Just as Big Brother
ended with a whimper - leaving an audience of dozens bereft - we were
reprieved yesterday by live television coverage straight out of the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Although it's unlikely that we'll
see a decision on the Napster copyright infringement case for several
weeks, it occurs to us that we could really kick-start the new TV
season into overdrive by simply locking all of the key players in that
courtroom and watching the wacky shenanigans ensue. Sure, for the
first few days things might be tense, what with all the lawyers
elbowing each other aside for a turn in front of the camera and the
journalists resorting to fisticuffs for the best seats. But after a
week or so we'll bet that a settlement will start to look mighty
attractive. The TV audience could keep things interesting by voting on
various challenges to inflict on the players - say, forcing the judges
to lip-sync the new Offspring single, or demanding that the Recording
Industry Association of America tells everyone, in no uncertain terms,
how much money is enough - and after we'd had our fun, we could go
ahead and let democracy settle the matter once and for all. The only
question remaining is whether file-swapping aficionados would pony up
99 cents a phone call to vote for Napster's right to exist. Hey, if it
doesn't take off, we can always replace it mid-season with "Who Wants
to Be an Entertainment Lawyer."
To read more, click here:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,19048,00.html?nl=bts
Dot Dot Dot
MP3.com's 'Million Email March' ... Artists Against Piracy Revamped
... Al Gore, Uber-Geek
MP3.com's new campaign to flood the inboxes of Congress members with
messages urging passage of the Music Owners' Listening Rights Act of
2000 might be an exercise in futility - given the time constraints of
the current legislative cycle - but you've got to admit it has a
catchy name. While calling it the "Million Email March" does prompt
mental pictures of We The People marching on Washington in solidarity,
the image falls apart when you realize that it's not bodies that will
be converging on the government, but a mass influx of messages. ...
Artists Against Piracy launched a new media campaign this week,
complete with a slick newly designed Web site overflowing with splashy
images, cool pop-up buttons and an instant poll that helpfully
defaults to the "correct" reply ("Do you think it is morally wrong to
download copyrighted music for free without artists (sic) approval?"
Answer: "Yes.") It's all very swellegant, except for the annoying
format of the message boards, which make it impossible to read
responses without scrolling back and forth until your eyes cross. ...
Vice President Al Gore denied inventing the Internet in an interview
with Red Herring this week, but immediately regained his geek-cred by
drawing "several complicated diagrams," according to a Reuters story
about the interview. (Has it come to this? Stories about interviews?
Now back to our item about the story about the interview.) Gore also
likened the American democratic system to "an early political version
of Napster." In an attempt to figure out what exactly he meant by
that, we went to Redherring.com to read the transcript, but our eyes
glazed over somewhere in the middle of the passage: "Just as you saw
the progressive switch from central processing units to massively
parallel supercomputing, our democratic system made it possible for
the average citizen to participate in the decision-making of this
nation by processing the decision-making directly relevant to him or
her in an individual congressional district or state. Then, in the
process of biennial or quadrennial elections, our process harvests the
sum total of those decisions and uses it as a basis for guiding the
nation."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
SOUND OFF
~~~~~~~~~
This week's question: Do fan communities make music criticism less
important?
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's your take on the way that Web statistics
are bandied about?
It is amusing that so much stock is put into numbers produced by firms
with a strong interest in Internet success. The recent spattering of
numbers produced by Forrester and this magazine are sure to be replete
with the wide-eyed optimism that triggered the Internet tax debate. In
a world where stock valuations are based on future revenue, it's nice
to have "independent" studies to confirm the growth of your industry
or sector. Most of these studies, except for the apocalyptic fare
provided by the National Retailers, are designed to depict rosy
scenarios that soothe investors and steal headlines. $13 billion in
online retail in 4Q 2000? That would be a nearly 100 percent increase
from the 2Q 2000 statistics provided by the Census Bureau. Will it
happen? Forrester probably already has the research to show that it
has. ... Forrester still maintains that 1999 4Q was $7.7 billion
despite the fact that the Census Bureau's figure was 31 percent lower.
The inverse relationship between the amount of factually challenged
numbers (let's be PC about things) produced and the attention paid to
them will soon catch up to these peddlers of pecuniary prospects.
- Jason M. Thomas
I have never trusted statistics. They can be contrived, constructed
and manipulated to suit whatever any person's agenda might be. I can
prove statistically that eating broccoli causes car accidents; why
should I care/listen to what your Web stats are? The only place I see
them as being useful is for internal use. While they still can be
thrown about willy-nilly, at least if you have a standard you follow
each month, growth or decline should be measurable and somewhat
realistic. Accountability also means using one's statistics fairly and
accurately, not just getting the numbers you want to satisfy the boss
or clients.
- Derek Reardon
Manager
Interactive Media and Design
Anyone who puts stats together knows that most stats are bullshit ...
89.67 percent of them to be exact.
- Billy Young
National Joy Band
San Francisco, Calif.
They say figures never lie. The real truth is liars figure! The major
Web portals hype their stats, but less than 1 percent of surfers click
on banner ads. Stickiness, or how long a surfer stays at a site or
page, is more meaningful. All this hit hype is really meant to jack up
these Web sites' overpriced stocks so a few can cash out early, buy
the obligatory Ferrari and live like Martha Stewart.
- Cyrus Sullivan
STAFF
~~~~~
Written by Julene Snyder (julene@well.com).
Editor: Steven Zeitchik (szeitchik@thestandard.com).
Deputy Editor: Michele Keller (mkeller@thestandard.com).
GET THE MAGAZINE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4 RISK-FREE issues at this URL:
http://www.thestandard.com/account/magazine
GET MORE NEWSLETTERS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Industry Standard newsletters cover the media, stock market,
e-commerce, music, law and more. Enter your e-mail address at the
following URL and select the newsletters you wish to receive:
http://www.thestandard.com/newsletters/
To UNSUBSCRIBE to any newsletters, log in at the following URL and
select the newsletters you wish to cancel:
http://www.thestandard.com/account/newsletters/unsubscribe
GET MORE NEWS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Go to http://www.thestandard.com for more coverage on the Internet
Economy.
ADVERTISING INFORMATION
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For more information on advertising in The Industry Standard
Newsletters, contact:
West Coast
Connie Elliott (mailto:celliott@thestandard.com)
East Coast
Norma Wesolowski (mailto:normaw@thestandard.com)
FEEDBACK AND PROBLEMS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Send letters to the editor to letters@thestandard.com.
Please contact us with any problems that arise:
http://www.thestandard.com/service
You can also contact us via phone or mail:
The Industry Standard, Customer Service
(402) 293-0386 (phone)
(402) 293-0794 (fax)
The Industry Standard, Production
315 Pacific Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 733-5400 (main)
(415) 733-5401 (fax)
Copyright 2000 The Industry Standard |