Steve, what do you think of
mp3.com
and all of the baffoonery of the RIAA and its cohorts? Like Friday's decision to not decide,but to not to decide to decide that digital music is coming.
Sunday February 28 1:31 AM ET
Record, Tech Industries Meet On Digital Music
By Scott Hillis
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Music and technology companies met Friday to seek ways to supply pirate-proof music over the Internet, hoping to create an industry standard in time for the lucrative 1999 holiday season.
The coalition's first meeting in Los Angeles yielded little in terms of a concrete strategy for tackling the Internet age, focusing instead on organizational issues and laying the ground rules for industry cooperation, participants said.
The group, dubbed the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), met amid mounting concerns in the $40 billion record industry over new technologies that threaten to undermine distribution and royalty payments.
At the forefront of those technologies is a controversial format called MP3 that compresses digital music data to one-twelfth the original size, enabling computer users to quickly download CD-quality songs.
The format is popular on the Internet, where dozens of Web sites offer tens of thousands of free songs, including pirated music by popular artists.
Upset at such developments, the music industry is in court fighting San Jose, Calif.-based Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:DIMD - news), which makes the Rio, a pager-sized device that can store downloaded MP3 music.
Alexandra Walsh, spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America that organized the SDMI, said the alliance was not opposed to MP3 technology, but sought a way to make such formats secure.
''The technology is not the concern, the misuse is the concern,'' Walsh said. ''The SDMI is not attempting to select from a field of competing technologies, but to look for a way to marry multiple approaches,'' she said.
Participants in Friday's meeting cheered the SDMI for pledging to create an open standard that would open the field for many companies to compete.
''They are going to establish a standard that multiple vendors can comply with,'' said Rick Fleischman, senior marketing director for software developer Liquid Audio.
''They also have set an aggressive delivery schedule,'' Fleischman said. ''Basically they want products on the market by the '99 holidays''.
Several companies are vying for the alliance's attention.
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - news) has joined with five large music firms and plans to unveil a system that will allow consumers to make secure royalty payments to record companies.
Others showcasing their technology include Sony Corp. (NYSE:SNE - news) and a team of Liquid Audio and AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T - news) .
Observers said the coalition was eager to avoid a bruising format battle that could hurt consumers and hamper efforts to embrace the promise of the Internet.
''Based on history, they want to figure out a way to come to grips with one secure technology,'' said Larry Iser, an attorney with law firm Greenberg and Glusker who follows music issues.
''There will be a way for people to download, but it will be at a price,'' Iser said.
Hey if the RIAA stands in the way of the digital revolution,they are gonna be squashed flatter than a bug under Pavorotti's Derriere.
And what do you think of DIMD, totally undervalued,mutual fund managers totally scared,like the little 30 somethings they are,afraid of losing their Porsches. This reminds me of SUNW during the MSFT lawsuit,it sat,and sat,and sat. DIMD has only a small amount of insitutional ownership. Is it going to pull a SUNW,and at least double no matter how the case turns out?
businessweek.com.
BW ONLINE DAILY BRIEFING
STREET WISE by Amey Stone February 26, 1999
Can New Facets Make Diamond's Stock Shine Again?
Its Rio music player and HomeFree consumer networking gear could be the keys to a revival
For ailing modem and graphics-card maker Diamond Multimedia Systems (DIMD), the successful launch of two hot new-product lines late last year was just what the doctor ordered (see Business Week, 2/8/98 Cover Story, "Beyond the PC").
Sales are soaring for its three-month-old Rio, a portable electronic device about the size of a pack of cards that plays CD-quality music downloaded from the Internet. Diamond sold 250,000 units of the trendy $199 gizmo in its first three months and expects to sell 750,000 for all of 1999. That could add $30 million to its revenues (see BW Online, 12/3/98, "Diamond Rio: The Little Music Player That Could").
This is just the first of many digital audio products the company plans to bring out. "You're going to have a whole family of products," says Brian Alger, a senior research analyst at Preferred Capital Markets. "This is not a one-trick pony."
Last November, Diamond also began shipping a product called HomeFree, which allows easy PC networking in the home. The market for home networking equipment is expected to grow steadily over the next few years, along with the number of multiple-PC households. On Jan. 5, in fact, Diamond announced that Compaq Computer (CPQ) will use HomeFree in its line of home-network-ready and custom-built Presario PCs. That legitimizes Diamond's product, says Naohisa Murakami, an analyst with CIBC Oppenheimer.
POINTS OF LIGHT. "This market is going to be slower growing than the Rio's, but it is potentially much, much bigger," Alger says of the HomeFree line. Eventually, he envisions Diamond providing a router for homes that distributes Internet access to a range of digital devices, including PCs, set-top boxes, TV sets, and stereos. That technology might even make it possible to turn on your heating system or your lights remotely via the Net.
The Rio and HomeFree have provided two sorely needed points of light for Diamond Multimedia's future. The company has lost more than $65 million from operations in each of the past two years as its core modem and multimedia products have turned into low-price commodities. Its quarterly earnings (or lack thereof) have disappointed Wall Street repeatedly. Its stock, which climbed above $40 in 1995 when it was one of the hottest tech IPOs that year, has spent the past three years trading in a range between $8 and $15 a share. It fell as low as $2 7/8 on Oct. 9, 1998, the day after the company reported a third-quarter loss of $22 million, of 63 cents a share. Diamond announced a major restructuring in mid-November, and the stock has climbed back to close on Feb. 25 at 7 5/8 on the strength of the company's new products and on hopes for a successful reorganization.
Man I hate using Businessweek as a reference, the curse of death, worse than Barron's
Hiram |
