NAPSTER USERS SAY THEY WILL PAY.....and that was six years ago -- continuing the series of looking back six years ago to 2000 and the start of the new millennium by Joyce Schwarz, JCOM, www.joycecom.com, entertainment author, analyst and emerging media consultant.
Hollywood Discusses the Digital Download Dilemma
by Joyce Schwarz, 6/15/2000 (originally published):
“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers” Pablo Picasso (1880-1973)
The audience of more than 250 people at the iHollywood Music Forum Tuesday night wanted answers to the question of how emerging technologies will transform the music business.
But alas, most probably went home with even bigger philosophical questions like:
Is technology good or evil?
Why aren’t artists at the table to negotiate their online rights?
What are artist’s rights?
And what is an artist? .
In the Q&A session, audience member Composer Russell Steinberg said, “Suppose there is no solution (to digital downloading), suppose you can’t own a long digital number?”
Following a long pause, panel speaker, Chris Otto, product manager for RealJukebox, Real Networks, reminded everyone that just a little more than 100 years ago there was no recorded music but there has been singing, dancing and music since the dawn of time. “There is just too much incentive to find a solution,” Otto proclaimed.
GIVING AWAY SOFTWARE AND THEN SELLING UPGRADES?
Fellow panelist Allen Kovac, CEO, Left Bank Organization and founder and CEO, Beyond Music, quickly queried, “Didn’t Real start by giving away it’s software and then selling upgrades?”
Moderator Michael Stroud, business/entertainment journalist and iHollywood Forum founder, queried as to whether there’s really a problem. “Can Napster and the music industry co-exist?” Stroud asked.
The evening quickly turned into a 21st Century debate on entertainment industry ethics, practices and prejudices.
The subject ("MP3.com, Napster and the Future of Entertainment: A Dinner and Dialogue about Online Music") is a “hot” one, and reverberates far beyond music into intellectual property rights for all kinds of content including video, film, books and perhaps even patents. Indeed, the evening was even a media delight with ABC, Fox, CNN, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, KFWB (CBS radio), (and of course Joyce Schwarz) on hand to document the discussion. The event even made the 11 p.m. news—most unusual for a Hollywood trade function.
ANYTHING BUT BLACK AND WHITE ALL OVER
As per usual industry attire, four of the five panelists were dressed in black and white, the fifth, Joe Fleisher, corporate vice president, MP3.com had on a pale blue shirt. But the night was anything but black and white all over
“If you come up here and take my glasses, that’s stealing,” said panelist Carol Bayer Sager, Oscar- and Grammy-winning songwriter and performer and founder and CEO of Tonos.com. Sager noted, “The new technologies that exist are spectacular.” She admitted to trying Napster and Gnutella and other digital systems developed to trade MP3 format files online. Trying to wear several hats as the new media and new economy demand, she admitted to being conflicted by watching her 14-year-old son downloading song after song off of his computer
WHO IS AN ARTIST?
Earlier in the evening Bayer Sager, who has written many of the tunes the mostly over 35-year-old audience probably sing in the shower occasionally, was the subject of loud boos and hisses when she questioned whether Rob Glazer, Real Networks founder, was an “artist” as referred to by Kovac in a passing remark.
WE vs THEY
Bayer Sager’s comment brought up the eternal “we vs. they” controversy of technology vs. content creators. As a founder of Tonos.com with “Babyface” and David Foster, she launched the industry’s first music insider’s network online in April. As the designated, “creative” on the panel, she found support from Kovac, whose career has included management of such major names as The Bee Gees, Duran Duran, John Mellencamp, Motley Crue, Vogue and others.
Kovac proclaimed that, “Artists need their own organizations to represent their rights.” He urged Bayer Sager to get together with the other 236 (referring to her as one of the 237 recording artists whose albums go gold each year out of 32,000 albums pressed annually.)
GASOLINE FOR THE RECORD COMPANIES?
At one point fellow panelist, Peter Standish, VP of marketing for Warner Bros. Records, who caged his bets by saying he was speaking for himself not his company, said that traditionally artists who make songs and CDs were seen as the gasoline for record companies. “The real challenge,” Standish said, “is to figure out how to fuel the new engines since the intellectual capital is NOT sitting at the record companies.”
As he noted, for decades, the record companies’ job has been to bank and distribute. All of the panelists and audience seemed to agree when he said, “A new paradigm is needed, a new way to monetize music”.
NEW PARADIGM -- NEW WAY TO MONETIZE MUSIC~
Fleisher responded by saying, “The country figures out how to make money one way or another.”
WEBNOIZE RESEARCH:
The hit of the evening was Dr. Ric Dube, senior analyst for Webnoize.com. The “babyface” Dube, who one audience member said looked 16, had the wisdom of a sage.
During his recap of a Webnoize research study of 4,294 college students on 10 New England campuses, he cut to the crux of the challenge by saying, “Demand created its own supply”. Dube reminded us that it’s not just Napster or Gnutella but scores of other digital download, MP3 and other file-trading Web sites that are at issue. He mentioned QMX, Wrapster, Amster, Bitch X, JNerve, MP3 Finder, Fury, Scour.com, Pornster and many others that make it possible to trade games, software, video and even full-length movies over the Web even on a 24.4 modem.
71 percent of Napster users say they will pay!
The most surprising statistic that Dube mentioned was that 7l.4 percent of the daily users of Napster said they would pay for downloadable songs. He also noted that 97.7 percent of the files are discarded after use.
After the panel, when this reporter asked if the “discarded” files were zapped because they had already been recorded to CD via compact disk recorders, he said he thought “discarded” did not mean that but it was open to some semantic questions The unanswered question was, even if consumers say they’ll pay for downloadable music, will they pay for it?
No Webcast was made of the evening and, unfortunately, the video company “forgot to do it” according to an iHollywood Forum spokesperson. Check your television listings for an upcoming CNN Showbiz Today program on the event.
PLANTATION MENTALITY?
On the way out, this reporter was asked by Kovac if she was a writer. She acknowledged she was and he surprised her by saying—well tell them the real story: “You asked why there’s no artist alliance, it’s because of a ‘plantation mentality”, because so many of the artists’ representatives and lawyers actually work for the recording labels.” When this reporter attempted to contact Kovac the day after the event to get him to expand on his comment, she was sent to one publicist after another at Rogers & Cowan but couldn’t get a hold of Kovac in time for her deadline. So perhaps if “her people” talk to “his people”, we’ll make that a subject of an upcoming column.
After all, isn’t that what the Internet is all about—of the people, for the people?
Joyce Schwarz co-wrote the first NAB book on convergence in 1993 entitled “Multimedia: 2000”. She works with old and new economy companies in creating a new digital broadcast arena. She is head of JCOM, http://www.joycecom.com/ and you can reach her in real time at [email protected]. She is located in Marina Del Rey, California.....and is always looking out on the yachts of the rich and famous while she toils away in the new economy :) .
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