I found this article about the Future of Music conference and wanted to share it. It seems to capture the contentious nature of the conference very well. Randye
-------- To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22972-2002Jan9.html The Scratchy Record Of the Online Music Debate By David Segal For a realm that was supposed to thrive at stunning speeds, the world of online music sure seems stuck in a kiddie crawl. In 2002, just as in 2001, labels still fret that consumers will pirate great gobs of downloadable music and put them out of business. Retailers still worry that the labels will sell directly to consumers, and put<em> them</em> out of business. Musicians, most of them too poor to buy health-care benefits, still hope the Internet turns into some magic turnpike that bypasses the Sonys and the Universals of this world and taps directly into the wallets of their fans. And little happens. There is umbrage and anxiety but not much else. Except talk. You could hear the talk, great hot gusts of it, this week at the second annual Future of Music conference, a two-day event at Georgetown University that allows players in this never-ending skirmish to quit their bunkers for a while to vent, speechify and rant at each other at a variety of symposiums. Together under one contentious roof were musicians, major and independent labels, song publishers, assorted unions, performing-rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI), managers, lawyers, Web entrepreneurs and even a few fans. They came, ostensibly, to hash over matters technical (copyrights, license agreements) and philosophical (whither the indie musician in a world of "Total Request Live"?). Modest light was shed on some of these subjects, but after umpteen panels and dozens of aria-length questions from the audience, the clearest lesson was this: The music industry today looks a whole lot like the end of a John Woo movie. You know, the climactic moment when the heroes and villains -- maybe three or four of them -- take out guns, point them at one another and freeze, each waiting for a false move and an excuse to shoot. In the decades before modems and PCs went mainstream, the business gradually and painstakingly split the music pie down to the last half-penny. Now everyone is paralyzed, horrified by the idea that this online world will rearrange the portions and leave some people with less than they had before. Weapons are drawn. Lawyers have been retained. Nobody is budging. "The Internet is moving like everything else," said Charlie Sanders of the National Music Publishers' Association during one panel, "because the Internet<em> is</em> like everything else." The conference was organized by the fledgling Future of Music Coalition, a D.C.-based nonprofit group that lobbies and agitates for the heaps of musicians ignored by MTV, radio, the majors and any other entity that could market a band to fame and a large paycheck. The FMC is filling a big niche, since the number of struggling musicians far exceeds the number of Linkin Parks. Its heart is in the right place. What was missing at the conference, though, was a vivid sense of the source of all the infighting and hostility, and an explanation for all this inactivity. It starts with the labels, which don't want to infuriate the retailers, since regular old stores are still where more than 90 percent of CDs are purchased. So instead of offering a pay-for-play Internet alternative to free downloads, the labels have recently launched sites like Pressplay that offer a limited batch of songs for $10 a month, after which time, through the magic of technology, the song vanishes and you hand over another $10. (For a rundown of online music services, see Page E12.) Some deal, huh? The labels are saying, "Hey kids, why take all you want for free,<em> when you can rent a few songs for a limited time for real dough</em>?" You have to assume that the labels don't really want your money, at least not directly. This rent-for-a-month approach reflects the labels' deep mistrust of you, the consumers, whom the majors believe might stop buying CDs if you start to vacuum songs, gratis, over your computer. Those fears might be well founded. Or they might not. Today there are endless arguments and swordplay over whether free online music is like radio -- which spurs sales -- or like bootlegging, which eats into margins. Konrad Hilbers, the CEO of Napster (which re-launches today as a subscription service to a test audience after being offline for months), said in a speech Monday that fans of his site bought more CDs after they'd sampled the joys of costless music. Danny Goldberg, a longtime major-label executive who now runs the independent Artemis Records, said an amen of sorts during a panel later that day, noting that every time people downloaded free tunes from "Spit," an album by the Canadian gal-metal band Kittie, sales of the disc jumped. Hilary Rosen, of the Recording Industry Association of America, countered that college students she speaks to admit that the free trade of MP3s makes them less inclined to drop money on a legitimate CD. What matters now is that the judges have sided with Rosen and the majors, which is why the industry has had a more decisive hand in shaping the online music sphere than anyone would have guessed back when Napster was in its rogue phase. So nothing happens. The tough part about this John Woo standoff is sorting the heroes from the villains. The indie musicians at the conference had a quick answer: The villains are the labels, which favor pap over quality, wangle control of copyrights and sign artists to onerous multiyear contracts. The conference's hottest sparks came from the audience of artists and their representatives, who accused the labels of every sin short of grand theft auto. Ian MacKaye, of the much-beloved D.C. punk band Fugazi, ended a genuinely insightful mini lecture during his panel by likening the majors to the Mafia. The majors pleaded innocent. Tommy Silverman, founder and head of Tommy Boy Records (De La Soul, Everlast), noted that businessmen like him make long-shot and pricey bets on a handful of artists, hoping that just one of 10 will hit the jackpot and cover the cost of nine failures, with some left over for profit. As the cost of securing retail space soars -- he complained in particular about the price of a window display at Tower Records -- the majors nowadays make money only on albums that sell more than 500,000. That's why he and others are prowling for the big score, leaving less patience and cash for artists who don't smell like certain winners. Radio, at the same time, is consolidating, leaving airplay lists in the hands of fewer executives, now dead set on hitting their quarterly revenue numbers. Unfortunately, the overlords of retail and radio didn't attend the Future of Music conference, an inexplicable omission. Maybe they were invited and didn't have the guts to show. If they had, perhaps they could have pasted the old Snidely Whiplash mustache on someone else.
