Forum Archive Index - August 2000

["Wedde, John" <john.wedde@cit.ac.nz>]

For those chatters interested in EStar and the possibilities for its
subsidiary CDStar, the following Aust. Financial Review article may be of
interest.
IMHO, for what it's worth, this is all about the crunch issue when it comes
to selling music over the net. The company who has the best software, a la
Napster, to pipe music straight to the customer's CD Rom drive, and credit
card charge on the way through, will do extremely well. First the copyright
issues however need to be addressed. This  I believe must come. The presence
of the technology to allow direct downloads makes this inevitable. It,s
just a question of time.
Mat Darby - I'd be particularly interested in your views on this. How does
CDStar's software look from this perspective? Will it put you up with the
winners?
Disc: I don't hold EStar at present but follow it closely and have been in
and out recently.
Cheers
John

                

Chaos blazes the trail in copyright payments for online music files

By Mandy Bryan
ChaosMusic hopes to kick-start commercial music file swapping over the
internet by allocating to artists and record companies a proportion of the
internet advertising revenues it sources from the increasingly popular
pursuit.
Chaos yesterday outlined plans to initially forgo 15 per cent of the
advertising revenues sourced form its audio search tool, FreeTracks in a
proposal triggered by last week's copyright stoush between the Record
Industry Association of America and online music swapping service Napster.
"We got to the stage where we decided to take a proactive step rather than
wait for the industry to find a solution," said ChaosMusic chief executive
officer Mr Rob Appel.
"We are taking the proposal to the US and we plan to talk to global
collection societies," he said.
Napster provides the mechanism with which to swap MP3 music files while
FreeTracks merely enables visitors to search the internet for a audio files,
some legitimate and some not, according to Mr Appel.
He said that by monitoring search requests on FreeTracks, ChaosMusic could
apportion revenue to specific artists and copyright holders.
The go-ahead for the scheme, however, awaits the response of record
companies and collection agencies like the Australasian Performing Rights
Association .
These associations have failed to address the growing issue of piracy as
music shoppers flock to the internet. 
Reflecting the trend, Telstra yesterday announced an exclusive deal with
Sanity.com to enable its customers to buy music online over their
WAP-enabled mobile phones.
Mr Appel declined to disclose the amount of revenue generated by advertising
on FreeTracks but said with co-operation from other companies, the scheme
could provide a substantial revenue stream for artists.
"We are happy to talk about the evolution of the model. It could for
instance take the same form as radio royalties," Mr Appel said.
He said the proposed levy was not an endorsement for the unauthorised use of
music files but provided a starting point in recognising the copyright
component of online music.



######################################################################
This e-mail message has been scanned and cleared by MailMarshal 

######################################################################

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.sharechat.co.nz/          New Zealand's home for market investors
http://www.netbroker.co.nz/        Trade on Credit, Low Brokerage. Join now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To remove yourself from this list, please use the form at
http://www.sharechat.co.nz/forum.shtml.