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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 10, 2001
TOP STORY:
* The Horror, the Horror
Everybody's got a tale of woe to tell these days, especially on the
digital-music scene, but it took industry veteran Janet Fisher to
turn "Music Horror Stories: A Collection of Gruesome True Tales" into
a book
NET NOISE:
* Frank's Vinyl Museum
BEATS:
* The Latest Summer Blockbuster: Major Motion Picture Studios Hit
Aimster With Lawsuit
DOT DOT DOT:
* 'Splaining Stuff at Napster ... Live365 Lives! ... ArtistDirect's
Reverse-Stock Split
SOUND OFF:
* This week's question: What's your music-industry horror
story?
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TOP STORY
~~~~~~~~~
The Horror, The Horror
Everybody has a tale of woe to tell, especially on the digital-music
scene,
but it took industry veteran Janet Fisher to turn 'Music Horror Stories:
A
Collection of Gruesome True Tales' into a book.
By Julene Snyder (julene@well.com)
The music business is notorious for breaking hearts, promises and
bank balances, but if you wanna be a rock 'n' roll star, it's still
the only game in town. And for every band that breaks big, there are
thousands that feel lucky to get out alive, emerging from their own
battles for stardom with only battered egos and cautionary tales to
show for their efforts.
When songwriter and industry veteran Janet Fisher, who runs the music
publishing firm Goodnight Kiss, published her music horror story on her
Web
site in mid-1998, she was bombarded with so many tales of woe from
readers
that she decided to compile the stories into a book. Celebrities are
notable for their absence from the pages of "Music Horror Stories: A
Collection of Gruesome True Tales," released last week, no doubt
because
fame and fortune tend to be somewhat less than horrible.
"Horror stories exist on every level of the business," says Fisher,
from
her Hollywood office. "But this book is not insider secrets of the
stars."
She describes most of the people who contributed as "working people, on
the
road, making decisions that they think are hopeful or sound." Like the
guy
who sent a demo tape to a songwriting contest, got a call telling him to
go
to the Hollywood Bowl for a personal interview, showed up, and was
subjected to an Amway presentation. Or the guy who told Woodstock
promoters
that his band would only play the festival if they could go on first -
a
decision he now realizes was the most detrimental in his group's career.
Or
the band who inadvertently set a club owner on fire.
While those types of stories make for fun - and somewhat scary -
reading,
Fisher says that artists need to understand that the music
business is, in fact, a business. "Opportunities are so rare, that
new artists and writers take the first one that's offered to them, no
matter what," she says ruefully. "If you value yourself and your art,
you find out what your rights are."
While there aren't any stories in the book about digital music, Fisher
has
been an outspoken advocate for artists' rights who has taken a public
position against Napster-style file trading. But she doesn't think
the
major labels have handled the digital music revolution with much
panache:
"The music industry is run by old warhorses, and the digital age came
so
fast that they don't understand the new age of digital everything."
Fisher
says that the industry's slowness in getting up to speed means that
we've
ended up "educating youth that music should be free."
Meanwhile, she says, companies such as MP3.com take advantage of
unsigned
bands by trying to sell them services they don't really need or get them
to
sign contracts that aren't to their advantage. "Anyone who thinks
there's
an online dot-com site that's there for altruistic reasons only is in
dreamland. People don't spend thousands of hours and thousands of
dollars
on software and staff to give it away for free. Someone has to pay
for
that, and it's the artist that's paying at MP3.com."
Fisher says that while there's nothing wrong with that philosophy per
se,
the problem is with the positioning. "The site paints themselves as
if
they're doing the artist some big favor, when in fact, the artist is
simply
another consumer." She's particularly alarmed by the licensing
agreements
that artists sign when they put their music on MP3.com, and says that
bands
can end up being held to agreements that could actually keep them
from
achieving their big break.
"While MP3.com has brilliant ideas, they're much more restrictive and
much
more demanding than the traditional music industry ever was," Fisher
says.
"While that doesn't mean that they're going to glom onto rights, make a
big
profit and not pay you anything, you are giving them the right to do
that,
royalty-free."
Sounds like a surefire way to guarantee content for the next volume
of "Music Horror Stories."
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NET NOISE
~~~~~~~~~
Oh. My. God. Tempting as it is to leave my Web site review at that,
I'd be remiss if I didn't expound further on the twisted joy you'll
find in delving into the sheer dreadfulness of the music assembled
here. Vinyl collector Frank LaRosa, who has an ear for the truly
ghastly, offers up streaming songs that will prompt your cats to run
for
cover and your dogs to howl along with gusto. Just how bad is the
music?
Bad. So bad that the word "bad" doesn't do justice to the horrific
cacophony that one so-called artist after another delivers through
the
auspices of Frank's Vinyl Museum. And when it comes to butchering music
via
truly abysmal covers, the supposedly revered Beatles are subjected to
endless indignities. There's the nervous hilarity of "Barking
Beatles"
(yup, it's dogs barking "Love Me Do," just like it sounds) to the
vibrato-gone-mad sonic musings of one Mrs. Miller covering "A Hard
Day's
Night," forgetting the words in midsong, then forging ahead,
undeterred.
Other icons don't escape unscathed - Sebastian Cabot's recitation of
Bob
Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" is enough to make a
person
swear off "Family Affair" forever - but the beleaguered Beatles also
get
Bill Cosby covering "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (! wacky!) and
an operatic wannabe by the name of Cathy Berberian, who interprets a line
in "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as "Please say to me you'll let me be your
mum." Oh, the humanity!
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BEATS
~~~~~
The Latest Summer Blockbuster: Major Motion Picture Studios Hit
Aimster
With Lawsuit
It just wouldn't feel like summer without a lawsuit alleging
copyright infringement. The latest is the one that seven major motion
picture studios filed June 27 against peer-to-peer file-swapping
service Aimster, which allows users to access their "buddy lists" to
trade
files with one another. The suit reflects Hollywood studios' belief
that
Aimster is "presenting the same threat that the recording
industry said it faced from Napster." (Earlier this year, Aimster
filed a suit of its own asking an Albany, N.Y., judge to rule the
company
was not liable for copyright infringement; on May 24, a number of
major
record companies and music publishers sued Aimster alleging that it was,
in
fact, infringing on copyrights.)
Aimster head honcho Johnny Deep argues his company is more like the
post office than a pirate ship. Reached by phone at his New York
office, Deep says he believes the recent suits against Aimster are
part of a bigger scheme to quash peer-to-peer services using round
after round of litigation. "They're probably trying to wear us down,
and get us to spend money that makes us run out of resources. That's
one way to win." But Deep says he's planning to fight to the bitter
end, and says he and fellow defendants - AbovePeer and BuddyUSA - are
prepared to hunker down and get dirty.
A representative for the Motion Picture Association of America referred
us to the 23-page complaint, saying it served as the organization's
formal statement on the matter. An excerpt: "Deep not only admits the
desire to take over where Napster has left off, but he has boasted to
the press, 'We're the next technical innovation upon Napster,' and
has called his Aimster system 'Napster squared.'" Stay tuned. This
summer looks like it's going to be a hot one.
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DOT DOT DOT
~~~~~~~~~~~
'Splaining Stuff at Napster ... Live365 Lives! ... ArtistDirect's
Reverse-Stock Split
Napster remains out of the loop this week, having patriotically
suspended file trading in the days leading up to the Fourth of July.
A Q&A on the site, for those wondering what's going on, is somewhat
less than illuminating, with the sort of vague promises about the
resumption of the service ("we can't yet give a precise time") that
one expects to hear from politicians. There's also an oh-so-patient
explanation ("when you're dealing with such large numbers, things are
bound to be complicated") that resembles the overly enunciated diction
of
an elementary-school teacher. But the little application that could
assures
visitors that all will soon be hunky-dory with its new subscription
service, which is slotted for launch by late summer ... It seems that
reports of Internet broadcasting community Live365's death have been
greatly exaggerated. Turns out that VP of strategic development John
Schenk
circulated an e-mail saying that the company was shutting its doors, and
he
was just plain wrong. The real deal was that 22 employees - including
Schenk - were laid off last week. A visit to the press area of Live
365's
Web site finds that the most recent press release is dated May 3. Its
subject? The promotion of one John Schenk ... Online music network
ArtistDirect, whose stock slid recently at such an alarming rate that
it
was in danger of being delisted from the Nasdaq, avoided the issue
entirely
by announcing a 1-for-10 reverse stock split Thursda!y. So if you owed 10
shares befo
re, now you own one, worth 10 times as much. The stock ended trading
today
at $5.84 a share; the price before the reverse-split was 65 cents a
share.
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SOUND OFF
~~~~~~~~~
This week's question: What's your music-industry horror story?
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.
STAFF
~~~~~
Written by Julene Snyder (julene@well.com).
Edited by Michele Keller (mkeller@thestandard.com).
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