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To: Richard Tsang who wrote (15180)	1/29/2000 1:00:00 PM
From: IEarnedIt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 118717

I like this article and wanted to pass it onto you. IMO it is a nice recap of the struggle that has been going on in the music industry and how it's shaping up. Also nice plug for LUcents ePac (which is of course edig embedded) <<<Broadband Week for January 31, 2000 Cacophony Sounds in Music Overhaul By Gary Arlen Contributing Curmudgeon January 31, 2000 In the short term, Time Warner's $20 billion merger with EMI Music will overshadow the $140 billion (or whatever today's valuation is) integration of Time Warner Inc. into America Online Inc. It's also a reminder that AOL -- which clearly knew about the EMI negotiations -- and its CEO in waiting, Bob Pittman, are ready to guzzle from the cornucopia of digitally distributed music. The music industry is wrestling with Internet issues that are far more crucial to its very survival than the similar battles being fought among high-speed carriers and long-range content strategists. It was no coincidence that on the day of the Time Warner-EMI alliance, Microsoft sprayed an array of digital and Internet entertainment deals and investments. Some of those ventures will quickly lead to clashes between Microsoft and its key rival, AOL. The ways in which Internet music-on-demand issues evolve during the next few years could set the path for the subsequent richer and more complex skirmishes about Internet video. "Disposable music" is at the heart of today's music-industry rearrangement. For many of us, collecting records was a matter of pride: lining up those album covers and stacking crates full of vinyl was a sign of accomplishment and good taste. Admit it: you probably still have a stash of favorite music in the basement -- things you never got around to transferring to tape or CD-ROM, but still plan to get around to. Today's young listeners, as confirmed by several polls, merely want to hear the music. They toss out the CD jewel boxes and only sporadically keep the notes/inserts. They sell or trade the CDs as soon as they tire of the music. They find time to dub their few favorite songs onto hard drives. RealAudio has made that very easy. MP3 and other music-download techniques cut out the middleman altogether and elevate a new breed of alternative musicians. Listeners scavenge for the songs they want, then delete music when they move on to the next sounds. Big labels may still control the big artists, but underground (online) distribution has given new life to garage bands -- as has insurgent promotion via chat rooms and other Web tools. Meanwhile, the nature of Web commerce itself has worked against traditional music labels. A CD that costs $15 in Los Angeles or Cleveland may sell for $30 in France or New Zealand. Thanks to CDNow, Amazon.com and other e-tailers, a customer anywhere in the world can buy music at the U.S. price, pay the shipping and still get a bargain -- much to the dismay of the music labels' existing worldwide brick-and-mortar distributors. But selling and shipping plastic discs is not what the Time Warner-EMI deal is all about. It's about fear: the fear of what will happen as fickle listeners turn increasingly to the Internet for the music they want now. AOL had the foresight to buy spinner.com -- a major online source of downloaded music -- last year. That asset gives AOL-Time Warner another avenue to exploit the Warner-EMI music library. Meanwhile, there are no assurances that giants like Warner-EMI (which combined controls about 25 percent of the global music market), Universal or BMG have a lock on the music of the future. Companies such as Liquid Audio, which provides software for digital delivery of music via the Internet, continue to grow in importance. Microsoft allied last week with Liquid Audio, which will use Windows Media technology to host and distribute music to hundreds of online retailers in its network and serve as a clearinghouse for Windows Media digital-rights management. That adds strength to the online music community (and it jazzed Liquid Audio stock by 32 percent in one day). Separately, Microsoft last week pumped $56 million into Intertainer Inc., a company with strong cable connections, but with plans for digital-music packaging and digital-subscriber-line distribution. Remember: On-demand technology works just fine for audio, and Intertainer (headed by music-industry stalwarts) can make an easy move in that direction -- if it can get content. Microsoft's money can help them to find that content. The funding bought Microsoft a 20 percent stake in Intertainer and a reminder that the Redmond giant plans to work its way deep into the infrastructure of online music distribution. A deluge of digital and Internet music tools surfaced at last week's MIDEM music trade show in Cannes, France. Lucent Technologies licensed its enhanced "Perceptional Audio Coder (ePAC)" to several online music-security systems, recognizing the need to offer pirate-proof distribution if music is to be sold online. Lucent touts that its technology makes safe the "virtual record store" -- a quaint and perhaps final reference to the vinyl discs that are long-forgotten. Copyright-protection tools are crucial to Web music. The free access to and manipulation of Internet music will continue to drive rights-holders crazy, which is why Warner-EMI, Microsoft and AOL are scrambling to stake a place in the business and claim glory for rescuing the music industry from Internet enslavement -- or emancipation. I-Way Patrol columnist Gary Arlen keeps a stack o' wax handy for those after-work sock hops. >>> PS; Richard, you missed the pleasure of our company:-) JD

To: Richard Tsang who wrote (15180)	1/29/2000 1:06:00 PM
From: JSB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 118717

You didn't miss a thing. The market is butt ugly and other than brad making few profitable trades, we just sat around and joked. I added some GENE on the cheap, though it may get cheaper. <gg> I've got enough cash left for another 1k shares or so of BINC and intend to use it for that purpose. This last week was the single worst week I've ever had in the market, glad as hell I'm not on margin. At least I'm still up a couple of percentage points for the month, but they could be gone by the Monday's close, which I expect to be bloody.