LABELS TO ARTISTS: WEOWNYOU.COM (CULT. 3:00 am)
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The recording industry is trying to get new artists to sign
over their domain names to a label -- for life. Don't do it,
says rapper Ice-T. Arik Hesseldahl reports from New York.
Full Story:
Labels to Artists: Weownyou.com
by Arik Hesseldahl
3:00 a.m. 20.Sep.99.PDT
NEW YORK -- The beat goes on. And the
debate over digital music among artists,
the recording industry, and digital music
entrepreneurs is just as persistent -- if
somewhat more predictable.
At the College Music Journal Music
Marathon over the weekend, rap artist
Ice-T said the recording industry's efforts
to secure digital music are just a
smokescreen.
In a keynote speech, he also addressed a
new controversy over the control of an
artist's domain name. Some record
companies are reportedly writing
provisions into their contracts with new
artists requiring the artists to give control
of their Internet domain names to the
label for life, even if the artists switch
recording companies.
"Everyone out there who's in a group,
don't sign your name over to no label. Tell
them, like I say, to eat a bowl of dicks,"
the rapper said.
"I can see the future of music is that it
will be downloadable," Ice-T said. "I don't
know if it'll be MP3 or M3-fuck....
Everybody's saying we don't know, we
don't want people stealing records....
They're throwing up this smokescreen so
they can get their computer techs up and
ahead of this thing before the masses get
ahead of it."
His attitude toward the major recording
labels was echoed on some panels. When
Karen Allen of the Recording Industry
Association of America repeated her
organization's line on its secure digital
music initiative, she got a heated
response from Jeff Price of SpinART, an
independent music label that has
published its entire catalog online in MP3
format.
"I think there is a value to secure music
over the long-term," Allen said. "It's great
to sell unsecure MP3s now, and sell a few
thousand and make some money off it.
But I think longer term what you're going
to see is that you've only gotten paid for
3,000 but there 30,000 copies out there
that you're not getting paid for."
Price, in turn, accused the RIAA of trying
to control music distribution channels by
"creating a problem and forcing me to
come to you to solve it."
"Pirating on the Internet is such a moot
point, " he said. "You can't stop it.
Everything that has ever been released
at this time is open-platform from wax
spools to CDs. Second, piracy doesn't
decrease sales, it increases sales."
According to Price, the most-pirated
music file on the Internet is The
Offspring's "Pretty Fly For a White Guy"
with 16 million downloads. So why has
Columbia sold more copies of that album
than the band's last one? Because the
demographic that pirates music -- 12- to
22-year-old males -- is the same as the
one that buys the album.
Digital music was not controversial for
everybody on the panel. Rob Weitzner of
Digital On Demand discussed his
company's plans to make digital music
available for download in the place where
most record sales still happen: record
stores.
Imagine walking into a record store and
not being able to find the title you want
in stock. Would you still buy it if the store
could burn you a CD of that record in just
a few minutes? Weitzner's firm thinks so.
Digital on Demand has already struck up
deals with several major labels and has
built up a broadband network connected
to two server firms: one in San Diego, the
other in New York. The servers will send
both the audio files and printed labels to
the store to be pressed onto a CD or
other medium.
"We want consumers to feel that when
they walk into brick-and-mortar stores,
they can get what they want, however
they want it.... You have to go where
eyeballs and transactions take place and
we foresee them occurring in the
brick-and-mortar environment for quite
some time," Weitzner said.
"What we really feel is that we want our
content providers to focus on marketing
to develop their artists as brands, and
not to spend as much time worrying
about the physical infrastructure in
delivering the content," he said. |
