Recording industry lives in fear of MP-3

LOS ANGELES -- It's the biggest jukebox in the universe, with every kind of music you could ever want sitting there, free for the taking. And it's driving the record industry crazy.

Do you like Pearl Jam, or Madonna, or Alanis Morissette? Most of their latest music hit the Internet months before the albums were officially released.

The tunes are out there, often converted to a compact, good- quality computer audio format called MP-3, and tucked away on some college mainframe system, or someone's fan site, available with just a few minutes of downloading. Staring at the proliferation of thousands of free copies of music they've labored long and hard to produce, record companies worry that the Internet will kill their business. Not only won't the record labels see a dime for all those pirated copies, neither will artists who sang and played on them, nor will the people who wrote the songs. Neither will the companies that normally would distribute those records, nor the retailers that would sell them. In fact, the entire, enormous food chain that is the nation's music business fears starvation by Internet. With nothing more than a basic computer, an Internet connection and some freely available software, virtually anyone can make endless digital copies of any CD or other sound source, then ship them all over the planet. "Do you need record labels? Do you need record stores?" asked Bruce Weber, a Grammy-winning producer and co-owner of Weberworks, a small record label. That's what record companies are wondering, even as their representatives scour the Internet, trying to scrub it clean of illegally copied music. It won't be easy. On college campuses, where high-speed Internet connections are common, a student such as Northwestern University junior Chris Ward from Valencia can quickly find and download a pirated version of a song, then have his computer play it whenever he'd like. Ward said his computer has about 50 MP-3 song files, none of them legally obtained. Some of his MP-3s, from up-and-coming band Guster for instance, have led him to pay for the group's music. But most are by bands whose music he otherwise doesn't much like, such as Queensryche and the Scorpions, and whose records he wouldn't otherwise buy. "This music is something I enjoy, but I wouldn't want to spend money on it," said Ward. "It's just a great bonus for music you can listen to for relatively little hassle." When it's time for an all-nighter, Ward said, he turns on his computer, tells it to start playing his personal jukebox of songs, and starts writing. People like Ward are part of an Internet revolution in music that has riled the record business and threatens to change its structure radically over the coming years. That's because once a piece of music is turned into an MP-3 or some other digital format, it can be easily copied and moved around the Internet at virtually no cost. "Three-fourths of Pearl Jam's last album was on the Internet in December, and it wasn't supposed to hit stores until when, March?" says Brandy Thomas, chief executive of Cyveillance, which works for the Recording Industry Association of America, ASCAP and other organizations to track down illegal digital music, movies and other intellectual property on the Internet. All you need: software The ease of copying and distributing illegal music is radically different from the old days of vinyl, where pirates need access to expensive record-pressing machinery. "There was a pretty big barrier to entry there," said Todd Steinman, Warner Bros. Records vice president for new media. "There were very few pirates that would want to spend $50,000 or whatever it was to build a pressing plant. Now all you need is Soundforge software and an Internet connection." Ward and many other MP-3 fans go to Scour.net, the Westwood-based Web site that makes it easy to search for audio files, even just for MP-3 files, as well as still pictures and video files on the Net. Using Scour to look for songs by Grammy-winning singer Beck, for instance, a quick search turns up links to 100 MP-3s, including live recordings he's never officially released. The year-old Scour has quickly become a darling of MP-3 fanatics. And as far as Scour President Dan Rodrigues is concerned, "MP-3 is the best downloadable music format out there in terms of quality." Rodrigues and others said they believe MP-3 will win out over more secure alternative formats, such as Liquid Audio and a2b, because it's not owned by any private company. And they say the record industry's ire is misplaced. "It isn't the technology that should be questioned," said Brian Litman, president and CEO of PlayMedia Systems, which owns the technology behind the widely downloaded Amp series of MP-3 player software. "The bigger issue is why people would use the technology in ways that could be construed as illicit," Litman said. "Our position is the growth of the MP-3 phenomenon is symptomatic of bigger problems faced by the major (record labels). In a world where distributing digital content can be as easy as sending e-mail, you have to rethink what you're doing." MP-3 boosters A group of technology and small music companies recently banded together to form the MP-3 Association to further the use of the format. "There's a huge opportunity in online music," said Steve Grady of online record label GoodNoise, an association member. "We feel like the format is already out there, and consumers are using it." GoodNoise sells MP-3 songs from artists such as Frank Black for 99 cents each, reasoning that it's better to join `em if you can't stop `em. It recently acquired other online companies with rights to music from artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Patsy Cline, Ray Charles and Billie Holliday. "Fans don't have access to legitimate content on MP-3," said Gene Hoffman, GoodNoise's president and chief executive officer. "MP-3 is never going to go away -- the technology is there and available, and you might as well make it easier to buy it than to steal." Platinum Records plans to give away MP-3s by prominent artists, but only one song each from four artists at a time -- and for only two weeks per song. Company officials said the marketing and promotional value of such releases outweighs any concerns about their proliferation on the Net. "I don't look at the piracy of this," said singer Taylor Dayne, one of Platinum's first four artists to give away a downloadable song. "I look at this as a giant radio station. It's a promotional tool for me." That's nothing but good news to MP-3 boosters like Michael Robertson, president of MP3.com, an all-in-one Web site with links and reviews to MP-3 software, hardware, recordings and much more. "What you see is fear," said Robertson of the industry's concerns. "If you do it right, you'll sell more music than ever." But bigger record labels, with more to lose, are struggling to figure out how to use the Net to sell records without losing control over their products.

Copyright 1998
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.