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To: Gustaf who wrote (25725)	7/22/2000 5:47:48 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 27307

Cuban plans record label based on Internet model 07/22/2000 By Alan Goldstein / The Dallas Morning News Mark Cuban, who made his fortune as a co-founder of Broadcast.com and earlier this year purchased the Dallas Mavericks, is looking to get into the music business by launching a recording label in partnership with a major radio group. The Dallas billionaire's business model would be based on offering unlimited access over the Internet to the work of recording artists, in exchange for a monthly subscription fee. His label would also produce and distribute compact discs through partnership deals. One of the potential radio partners is San Antonio-based Clear Channel Communications Inc., according to Inside.com, an online magazine that follows news about the media. A spokesman for Clear Channel said Friday that he couldn't confirm that there have been talks with Mr. Cuban. Mr. Cuban declined in the Inside.com article to offer specifics about the unnamed venture, other than to say that he would invest up to $50 million of his own money and that he is in discussion with several radio groups. "We are only about 10 percent into it right now," Mr. Cuban said in an e-mail interview Friday with The Dallas Morning News. He said the Inside.com story was "meant to stir some things up and see what kind of feedback comes back." Analysts said the market is wide open for figuring out a way to profitably sell music over the Internet. They also said Mr. Cuban brings valuable experience in distributing Web-based audio from his days at Broadcast.com, the Dallas multimedia Internet company that was sold last year to Yahoo Inc. "Mark Cuban is one of the guys you think of" for delivering audio online, said Steven Vonder Haar, an analyst at the Yankee Group, a market research firm based in Boston. "He's proven he's a good marketer. And he brings cash and a high profile." Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications Inc., an interactive consulting firm in Bethesda, Md., said the music industry is in so much flux in part because young people are less interested in building music collections than their parents were. "Nowadays, they just want to hear a song for a while, and when they're done with it, they delete it," he said. "There's a great deal of concern about what this means for the recording industry, and Cuban apparently understands this." But David Coursey, an independent industry analyst in San Mateo, Calif., said that while radio has been a powerful distribution tool for music, a Cuban-backed recording label would need relationships with more than one broadcaster. Moreover, he said, the business is filled with established players who won't give up their artists without a fight. Still, Mr. Coursey, who is from Dallas and is a longtime associate of Mr. Cuban, said he wouldn't count out the idea by any means. "Mark has energy, chutzpah and more money than God," he said. dallasnews.com