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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 19, 2000
TOP STORY:
* The Way We Were in 2000
What's too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget.
NET NOISE:
* Redband.com
BEATS:
* Putting EMI in the Musicbank
* Dot Dot Dot: Lars Lives! ... Naughtiness at ClubCam
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TOP STORY
~~~~~~~~~
The Way We Were in 2000
What's too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget.
By Julene Snyder
This time last year, it wasn't visions of sugarplums that danced in
our heads, it was an apocalyptic nightmare called Y2K that made us
wake up gasping for breath. Of course, we've long-since realized that
the specter of unilateral destruction won't come from computers
confused about what "00" means but from 19-year-old programmers
wearing baseball hats.
Looking back at the year 2000, we're struck by a few trends in the
digital music arena, but first and foremost among these is the L-word:
litigation. So lawsuit-ridden was 2000 that it almost seems easier to
cite those who didn't end up in court than the converse.
As you may recall, when we first started off the millennium, a company
called Napster had just been slapped with a lawsuit from an
organization that would soon become a household name - the Recording
Industry Association of America - which charged the service with
"facilitating piracy." Even then, we were developing a mental picture
of the RIAA as a particularly humorless, pinched sort of person with
perpetually pursed lips and no sense of rhythm.
A few weeks into the year, MP3.com came out with My.MP3.com, a nifty
little application designed to let users access their music collection
from any computer once they'd proved ownership by "beaming it." The
RIAA was on this case, too. It filed suit against MP3.com for
copyright infringement in Federal District Court in New York, claiming
that "it is illegal to compile a vast database of the sound recordings
of its member companies with no permission and no license."
By early February, MP3.com had filed a countersuit against the RIAA,
claiming defamation, libel and unfair business practice. Already, the
very word "lawsuit" was making us sleepy, and we'd only just begun.
Onward we trudged across the bleak tundra of 2000. Along with
"litigation," an equally important keyword of the year was "merger."
At the end of January, major record labels Time Warner and EMI were
said to be getting ready for a megamerger, while German media group
Bertelsmann was reported to be poised to break up the proposed
pairing. Of course, litigation was always lurking about; on the very
last day of the month, a lawsuit was filed by the National Association
of Recording Merchandisers charging Sony Music with "strong-arming
retailers to point their customers toward its online shops."
The major labels managed to provide their share of fodder for the
column mill, what with their tendency to move with the urgency of a
melting glacier in figuring out how to distribute their catalogs
digitally. Of course, Napster was the real headline-hogger all year
long. Whether it was students banding together to keep their schools
from banning the application or artists trying to retain their
street-cred while still crying foul over royalties, the application
got more press than Madonna.
Just when we began to worry that all this litigation made for some
mighty dry reporting, an unlikely savior named Metallica came to our
rescue. The heavy-metal band's springtime lawsuit against Napster gave
scribes hope that there would be some provocative quotes forthcoming.
As we waited for Lars to spin his wisdom, all hell was breaking loose.
In May, Napster blocked the accounts of more than 300,000 users for
allegedly trading Metallica songs, while MP3.com disabled major
labels' content on My.MP3.com. The very next week, Napster got $15
million from Hummer Winblad and hired Hank Barry as interim CEO. It
was starting to seem as if the Napster/MP3.com combo was going to end
up with a lock on all available editorial space. We had MP3.com
settling one by one with the majors, Napster getting the spotlight
during the July Senate hearings, MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson coming
out in support of the injunction against Napster, Napster hiring legal
gun David Boies and Artists Against Piracy coming out to support Lars
on the day he was testifying in front of the Senate. Frankly, we
wondered if there was even a slim possibility that we'd get to go a
week without mentioning either Napster or MP3. The answer, it turned
out, was no, we wouldn't. As the summer went on, MP3.com settled with
Sony for an undisclosed amount (speculated to be somewhere around $20
million), and by mid-September, Judge Jed Rakoff ruled that MP3.com
willfully violated the copyrights of Universal Records, bringing
speculation that damages could reach more than $100 million.
Fall turned out to be particularly poignant. We'd already said
"buh-bye" to Scour, and then it was time to say "sayonara" to Al
Teller's Atomic Pop, "see ya" to SpinRecords.com, "hasta la vista" to
iCast, and most recently, "so long" to Riffage.com. But the really big
news of the latter part of this year, fittingly, belonged to Napster.
On Halloween, an announcement hit that Bertelsmann had jumped ship and
teamed up with Napster. Oh, the humanity!
We tried - Lord, how we tried - to keep reporting on the endless
trials and tribulations of Napster and MP3.com without taking to
drink. Dutifully, we kept faithful readers up to speed on Universal's
settlement with the latter to the tune of $53 million and change. God
help us, in spite of the political shenanigans down Florida's way, we
kept our focus on the very latest lawsuits, finding and making
speculations about the Meaning of It All along the way.
As we go to press, we find news of yet another lawsuit nestled in our
inbox. This time around it's EMusic.com that's suing MP3.com for
copyright infringement. "Although MP3.com has entered into settlement
agreements with the five major record labels, they have chosen to
ignore their infringing actions with respect to independent record
labels," says EMusic President and CEO Gene Hoffman in the press
release. And so it goes.
As the year winds down, we look back a bit wistfully. Sure, My.MP3.com
is back up. Yes, files continue to be shared on Napster. But we can't
help feeling a bit sullied, a tad sordid, a touch violated. We started
off the year thinking that we were entering a brave new world filled
with endless possibility. We end it wondering why so many lawyers were
involved.
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NET NOISE
~~~~~~~~~
Redband.com
It's true enough that Sony Music has a pretty big stake in Redband
Broadcasting, what with forking over a good chunk of the $17 million
in first-round financing that the San Francisco-based company - which
bills itself as "The Internet Audio Network" - raised in the spring. A
quick glance around doesn't reveal any overt pushing of Sony artists,
although the "exclusive news, talk and entertainment programs" are
delivered through Sony Music Entertainment's "extensive Internet
distribution network," as well as through LookSmart, AltaVista and
third-party Web sites. Once you cut through the buzzwords, the audio
offerings here are plentiful and worth listening to. Along with
programs dealing with football, finances, film, travel and books, come
our pet favorites, music and pop culture. Recent artists profiled for
the Music Backstage program include Richard Thompson, Fisher, Robyn
Hitchcock, Sonic Youth and Billy Bragg. We can't even keep track of
who is tied to Sony or one of its labels, but that hardly matters.
What's most significant is the quality of the artists and the
programs, and on that score, Redband delivers. PopScape subjects range
from the Sing-Along Sound of Music to reality TV (with an actual "Real
World" cast member) to comics both fringe and mainstream.
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BEATS
~~~~~
Putting EMI in the Musicbank
All five major labels have deals with music locker service.
San Francisco-based Musicbank announced last week that it has made a
deal with EMI, making it the second online streaming-music locker
service to sign on the dotted line with all of the Big Five. While
Musicbank's site hasn't launched yet, word is that it will debut in
the next week. The idea - to allow users to stream their own music
collections on any computer with Internet access after first proving
that they own the CDs in question - is similar to My.MP3.com. In late
summer, Musicbank made a deal with Virgin Megastores that lets
customers buy CDs through its site. (MP3.com has a similar deal with
Tower Records.) EMI reportedly took a "small equity stake" in the
company, as did several of the other major record labels.
Read more at http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,20819,00.html?nl=bs
Dot Dot Dot
Lars Lives! ... Naughtiness at Clubcam.com
We were shocked and saddened by the news that Metallica drummer Lars
Ulrich was shot by a "well-dressed man" who shouted, "You killed
Napster!" in Austin, Texas, on Sunday. Until, that is, we realized
that this story, which arrived in our e-mail inbox mimicking the look
and feel of a CNN.com article, was bogus. Our first clue should have
been that Ulrich supposedly sustained "mild gunshot wounds to the
groin and abdomen." Our second tip-off should have been that that
Ulrich reportedly was treated and released for those mild gunshot
wounds in the course of a single day. This tasteless tidbit turned out
to be a hoax from those wacky folks at Abodo.com, who are apparently
in a snit for getting booted off Napster or something. ... A posting
to the "pho" mailing list this past Thursday from one of the list's
co-founders, John Parres, delivered the news that "AudioTrack
Watermark Solutions Corp. dotbombed last week, laying off employees
and beginning the process of closing its offices. We were all holding
out for a miracle yesterday but apparently it was not to be." Somewhat
poetically, Parres continued, "The destiny of the tech is unclear as
of this writing." ... The award for ickiest press release of the week
goes to ClubCam, which wants us to know that along with its "national
directory of all bars and nightclubs in the USA, including live video
feeds from top clubs," the site has a plan to add even more
excitement. How, you ask? Why, with online bikini and wet T-shirt
contests. And they say the Web can't be high-minded.
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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