From The Industry Standard: "While the world's major
music labels are crowing over the imminent demise of Napster,
the file-sharing service's corporate partner, Bertelsmann,
is secretly developing software to put it in a strong position
should the rebel music site be forced to shut down.
"The program, called Snoopstar, is an easy-to-use
interface that allows surfers to search for music, videos and
other media on various file-sharing services, including Napster,
Gnutella and iMesh...
"On Monday, Napster CEO Hank Barry told German trade
newspaper Net-Business that he wasn't aware of Snoopstar, but
that he understood Bertelsmann's interest in such a service.
"'There's a great chance Napster will be shut down,' said
Barry. BeCG spokesman Alexander
Adler said Snoopstar would not affect BeCG's support for Napster...
"BeCG may well be positioning itself as the R&D arm
of file-sharing, testing technologies for the next generation
of services. Paul Myers, founder of Wippit, a U.K.-based file-sharing
service, said: 'Bertelsmann is clearly looking for alternatives
should Napster close.'"
Read the entire story here.
From BusinessWire: "SiteShell
Corporation announced today that its BlueDot WebSite NetWork is
now
hosting over 100 NetWork WebSites for affiliated radio stations,
with many more on the way.
"SiteShell officially launched its affiliation campaign
at the September 2000 NAB Radio Show, and it now has agreements
to host NetWork WebSites for over 200 radio stations, owned by
over two dozen companies. Using its proprietary, functional design
and scalable NetWork architecture, the company has added over
70 new WebSites to the NetWork since the beginning of the year.
"Similar to a major television network, SiteShell
actually 'programs' the WebSites for its affiliated radio stations.
They can add as little or as much as they'd
like to enhance the presentation of the local news and information
and the radio station promotional areas of the WebSite.
"'We provide and continually update all content necessary
for a complete presentation, including such things as news; artist,
music and movie features; weather; sports; and even local concert
and movie scheduling information,' said Jim Champlin, SiteShell's
President. 'And, a substantial amount of the content is originated
by our own journalists, so you can only get it from sites programmed
by the BlueDot WebSite NetWork,' Champlin added.
Read the press release here.
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From the press release: "Audible
Magic, creator of digital audio identification technologies
and 
services,
today announced PlayGen, a service
capable of rapidly and accurately identifying music streamed by
Webcasters and other Internet sites and generating an immediate
and accurate playlist based on actual songs played.
"PlayGen is a powerful solution for copyright owners,
royalty monitoring associations, and music labels looking to track
the public use of audio content. PlayGen is currently being tested
with beta customers and will be widely available this spring..."
"With the potential to identify all types of audio content,
the company believes future uses of the PlayGen service will include
monitoring traditional radio broadcasters, ads, jingles, and other
copyrighted audio content. No integration or cooperation from the
source being monitored is required for PlayGen to produce accurate
playlist reports."
Read the press release here.
From WiredNews: "The recording industry is stockpiling
an arsenal of top Republicans
as it tries to permanently blow Napster
out of the water.
"On Tuesday, the Recording
Industry Association of America named former Montana Governor
Marc Racicot to its team of consultants that includes former Sen.
Bob Dole (R-KS).
"The move comes as pro-Napster rhetoric from Senate
Judiciary Committee head Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has increased in
volume over the past several months, including a recent speech in
which he decried the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to
uphold an injunction against Napster.
Read this article here.
Reprinted from yesterday's issue...
BY RALPH SLEDGE
This week, I'm going to feature a site that doesn't necessarily
have a lot going for it other than the fact that I listen to it
a lot. It seemed important, however, to look at the site, to figure
out a little bit more about why
I keep coming back to it. There isn't anything fancy about the
page itself. The music isn't stuff that I can't hear elsewhere.
But for some reason, a popular Shoutcast site called Monkey
Radio has been soothing my ears for some time now.
The station is fairly well described by its tagline: "What
is Monkey Radio? Well, some call it 'Trip-Hop.' And some call
it 'Acid Jazz.' Some call it 'Downtempo' or 'Abstrakt Beats.'
Now take the intersection of all these. Stir in groove. Dust with
sexiness. Simmer. Voila."
The mix of music the station features is indeed pretty
easy to listen to. There are no abrupt switches of mood and tone.
In fact, there might not be any changes of mood and tone at all.
The station stays pretty level, and all in all, that's a nice
thing.
As I said earlier, there's really not a whole lot to Monkey
Radio -- and I suspect that might be why I keep going back. The
homepage is simplicity. Links to a high- and low-bandwidth
stream are right at top. The current song and the stats
for the station (current listeners, peak listeners, and average
listen time) are right below them. A small news section
is below that.
On the side are some links to the rest of the site.
You can make a request. There's a section for featured artists,
and a section with skins for Winamp. A link for the recent
playlist (songs that have already been played) is there.
There's a section entitled "essential albums," if you find yourself
getting into Monkey's music, and two links to information about
the site and its DJ.
If my description if the site sounds a little dry, I don't
mean it to be: I'm hoping that some of the appeal is
apparent by what's not there: by what's in between the lines,
so to speak. All the useful information for the site is
at your fingertips. Nothing is buried in the site.
There are no flash graphics and no Java to distract you.
It's pleasant to use the site.
And the listen times should make most people take notice,
too. While it's hard to give a typical statistic (like ATH)
on this station based on what they're reporting, as I'm listening
to it, there are reportedly 226 total listeners, and the average
time-spent-listening is five hours. This isn't an accident:
I've been a fairly regular listener to Monkey Radio for a while,
and they always seem to hover around the top 10 in listenership
of Shoutcast streams, as reported by the Shoutcast site.
Why is it so popular? Well, the music selection is
nice. Sometimes it's a random playlist, and sometimes it's
hand-picked, based on whether or not the station's maintainer
is in or not. The music itself doesn't stray too far from
the most popular tracks for the Electronic/Techno format: fans
of the genre will recognize names like DJ Krush and Kruder &
Dorfmeister. It's a kind of music that's easy to listen
to for hours at a stretch, too. And it probably somehow
helps that the DJ is one of the three full-time programmers of
Nullsofts' Winamp 3.
Despite that shared relationship, however, there's really
nothing commercial about the site at all. There are no advertisements
in the stream, no banners on the site. There is no DJ voice.
One of the reasons, then, that it might be easy to listen to the
stream for so long, is that it rarely seems "interrupted."
What all of this means, of course, is that Monkey Radio
might not be a good template for people seeking to establish a
commercial sites. But it's still an interesting study to
see how a site with a very minimalist approach can attract a rather
large audience to listen for a long time. I suspect larger
sites might want to take note.
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