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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, December 5, 2000
TOP STORY:
* A Tale of Two P-to-P's: While Aimster Brews, Angry Coffee Stews
NET NOISE:
* Global Music Network
BEATS:
* The Return of My.MP3.com
The service is back up after months of legal struggles.
* Dot Dot Dot
EMusic follows through ... OSU student found guilty ... Buh-bye iCast
... Future of Music conference ... Yahoo buzz
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TOP STORY
~~~~~~~~~
A Tale of Two P-to-P's
While Aimster brews, Angry Coffee stews.
By Julene Snyder
There are parallels between the current legal wrangling over the
presidential election and the first-you're-up-then-you're-down digital
music landscape: In both cases, no clear winner has emerged, and when
one does, there will doubtless be those who feel they were robbed.
Now that Napster has joined forces with Bertelsmann, MP3.com has
settled with all the majors and EMusic.com has given notice that it's
mad as hell and isn't going to take it anymore, the future of
file-sharing is looking as uncertain as the fate of a slightly dimpled
chad.
But beyond Gnutella and Freenet, which can be cumbersome to learn and
use, there's a batch of second-generation companies looking to tap
into Napster's zeitgeist without drawing the wrath of the Recording
Industry Association of America. Still, just coming up with a cool
peer-to-peer application doesn't mean that it'll be made available to
the world. Before it decided to pull the plug on the service in
mid-October, Angry Coffee's "Percolator" promised to turn visitors
onto new music while looking for the tried-and-true. "Run a search at
Angry Coffee using the Percolator engine and enjoy unsigned,
independent music along with whatever you were looking for in the
first place," says the company's Web site. "It's free, there is no
software ... and it's much faster than using Napster."
While excited about how peer-to-peer has changed the musical
landscape, Angry Coffee's CEO, Adam Powell, has just about reached the
conclusion that the future of p-to-p is bleak indeed. (The 30-year-old
San Franciscan said he voluntarily pulled down his company's
Percolator music search engine - in part because of a pending deal
with EMI to promote Radiohead's "Kid A" but mostly because of fear of
being sued out of existence.)
"What we're seeing is that once again there is little opportunity to
make money and there is little opportunity to really distribute and
promote your stuff," he said. "A networked system where you can trade
music files should have been a revolutionary thing: It should have
changed everything and leveled the playing field and made things
easier for artists when it comes to promotion." Instead, Powell said
that established artists, like the Beastie Boys, have gotten the
message loud and clear from their labels that they're not to
personally use the Net for distribution. Powell thinks the p-to-p war
is basically over, except for the shouting. "You're going to have
three or four subscription services, and none of them will contain all
of the catalogs or all of the songs that Napster does," he said.
Powell wanted his company and its now unavailable "Percolator"
technology to become a player in the p-to-p arena, but he's wary both
of lawsuits and of the difficulty of getting everyone paid. "I think
that peer-to-peer networks are fantastic; the problem is figuring out
how to infuse money into the situation," he sighed.
But Johnny Deep, co-developer of Aimster, says there's reason for
optimism. He thinks that major corporations are starting to see the
value of peer-to-peer sharing. Aimster, which will launch its first
official version this Wednesday, lets those that download the free
program swap any files they like with a buddy list using multiple
plug-ins. "We've heard nothing from the RIAA, and I don't think we
will or should," said Deep. "We're not actually a file-sharing
service." Besides, Deep thinks it won't be long until companies start
to realize that there's an upside to file-sharing, such as building
better relationships with customers and rewarding them for sharing
information about their musical tastes.
Aimster, which first went online as a trial version in early August,
was downloaded a million times in its first five weeks of existence,
according to Deep. Although he's unable to talk specifically about
potential partners because of nondisclosure agreements, he said some
major deals are imminent. He sounded downright giddy about the
prospects for p-to-p.
If the best way for p-to-p speculators to score is by partnering up
with some big players with deep pockets, Aimster's in good shape. The
company has already gotten some high-level visibility for hooking up
with EMI's Capitol Records to promote Radiohead's "Kid A." And while
nothing's final, Aimster reportedly has talked to everybody from Intel
to Yahoo to Capitol Records about possible deals.
"I think the industry is moving toward better relationships with their
customers," says Deep. "Instead of attacking them as criminals or
invading their privacy, they are probably going to go to the opposite
end of the spectrum and say, 'We're grateful that you're our customer,
and we really want to know as much about you as you're willing to
privilege us with.' I think you're going to see companies start
rewarding their customers when they share information about the kinds
of music that they like and that they share and that they're playing."
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NET NOISE
~~~~~~~~~
Global Music Network
If the current state of pop music has left you cold and rock doesn't
move you to your very soul, venture into the classical, jazz and opera
realm at the Global Music Network (www.gmn.com). Here, neophytes can
take a crash course in those genres, while aficionados can follow "up
to the minute" news, along with checking out CD reviews, daily
Webcasts, video clips and streaming audio. In what's billed as "unique
agreements with more than 70 renowned artists, festivals and venues,"
visitors are promised more than 400 hours of "exclusive audio and
video content." The plethora of audio offerings is organized in
easy-to-find sections with a relatively user-friendly - if dull -
design. But more importantly, you can get up-to-the-minute news like
this: "An elderly singer from Athens, Greece, made the winning bids
for all of Maria Callas's underwear - and promised to burn it to save
the diva's 'dignity and honor.'"
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BEATS
~~~~~
The Return of My.MP3.com
The service is back up after months of legal struggles.
At first glance, MP3.com's site looks much the same as it always has.
But there's a $170 million difference: For the first time in months,
the My.MP3.com icon up top will allow visitors to listen to albums
that they've "beamed" to the service. This morning's New York Times
reports that the San Diego-based company plans to charge customers
$49.95 per year for access to "a nearly unlimited number of CDs" once
they prove they own the disc by either inserting it into their CD-ROM
drive or by buying it from an online retailer. (Users can also opt to
store up to 25 CDs on the service free of charge.) While all five
major record labels have negotiated licenses with the company, users
won't be able to listen to CDs from independent labels that MP3.com
hasn't yet negotiated with. A quick visit to the site seems to confirm
this. While about half of the CDs that I'd previously "beamed" is now
"unlocked," allowing me to listen to them with a mouse-click, the
other half has disappeared from the "my music" locker, presumably
because those albums are on indie labels. And in attempting to add a
new CD to "my music," it took three tries with three different,
relatively mainstream CDs before I found a disc that existed in the
database. But once the software detected the album, it "beamed" with
no problem. The Times story says that in an effort to deter users from
borrowing CDs that they haven't actually purchased, certain CDs will
have to be reinserted periodically. In addition to the $49.95, MP3
plans to draw revenue from the sale of data regarding customers'
musical tastes.
Dot Dot Dot
EMusic follows through ... OSU student found guilty ... Buh-bye iCast
... Future of Music conference ... Yahoo buzz
As promised, last week EMusic.com began its crackdown on Napster users
who were trading files from its catalog. According to Inside.com,
about 1,400 Napster users "had their access to the file-sharing
service yanked" on Thursday when they continued to make the offending
files available after being warned to stop sharing them. A letter at
EMusic.com from CEO Gene Hoffman says: "Our hope is that we will have
to send Napster very few user names. We trust consumers and believe
that with the right information and education most will do the right
thing. We DO NOT believe that this is the best solution to the
problem." ... Sonicnet reports that 19-year-old Oklahoma State
University student Scott Wickberg was found guilty of attempting to
distribute pirated music files over the Internet a few weeks ago. The
penalty - $5,000 and forfeiture of his computer - might be considered
lenient, given that Wickberg promised "unlimited access to more than
40 gigabytes of MP3s for anyone who would upload movie releases for
him." Apparently, he had a big old hard drive, since more than 10,000
MP3s were found on his computer. ... If you're looking for iCast,
don't bother. Visitors to the entertainment site will find a terse
message from CEO Margaret Heffernan, saying the corporation has
"closed down its Web site and is in the process of winding down the
business." ... The upcoming Future of Music Policy Summit Conference,
taking place in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 10-11, has confirmed
"singer/songwriter/senator" Orrin Hatch to keynote the conference; go
to www.futureofmusic.org for more information. ... Every day, Yahoo
ranks subjects that its users search for by "buzz," and we couldn't
help but be somewhat tickled and a tad bemused by the top-five
celebrity leaders for Dec. 1: 1. Britney Spears 2. Eminem 3. Madonna
4. Al Gore 5. George W. Bush. Does this mean Britney is the one with
the real mandate?
SOUND OFF
~~~~~~~~~
Last week's question: Who are the winners and losers in P2P? Why?
The BIG winners in P2P file-sharing will be true music lovers. You can
already get anything you want free of charge from Napster, when it
starts charging for P2P, there will be a mass exodus to Scour or some
other untrackable P2P solution. I'm hoping that the end result will be
that the power and distribution of music will be taken out of the
hands of the almighty RIAA and into the hands of music lovers. The
efficiencies that P2P provides will result in a significantly lower
cost of music and thus kill the motivation for Britney Spears and
'NSync to put out the crap they do. Money as a motivator helps most
causes, but I think it has a negative effect on music. My hope is that
P2P will take 'Big Money' out of music and bands will make music
because they love to play and not to sell records. THEN music fans
win.
- Chris VanKula
Chicago North Superstars
The business model that makes sense on the Internet for downloading
MP3 files is to charge per minute of download or by size of file. A
portion of that should go to the musician, whether it's a record
label's site or a site such as Napster. If you use a subscription
service with a flat fee, it could lead to abuse. We need to compensate
the artists in our Web community for their music creations. Otherwise,
they will stop creating, and the world would be a very colorless place
indeed.
- G. Taylor
I think we all lose at some point. I use Napster and was a Scour
exchanger before it shut down, so I'm guilty of my own demise. As we
cut into the profits of artists for present music, I think we lose the
benefit of quality music in the future. I am a musician and often
wonder whether I'm only working to play live shows rather than make
additional income from CD sales. While I agree the proliferation of
songs can increase listener awareness, there are so many indie artists
fighting for space that you still need label support and radio play to
get that repetition and familiarity crucial to wooing the masses.
- Randy White, Alaska
STAFF
~~~~~
Written by Julene Snyder (julene@well.com).
Editor: Steven Zeitchik (szeitchik@thestandard.com).
Deputy Editor: Michele Keller (mkeller@thestandard.com).
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