LOS ANGELES — Piracy and the proliferation of free music
on the Net remained hot topics among the almost 1,400 attendees at
Webnoize '99.
But debate at the digital-music industry conference, held last Monday
through Wednesday at the Century Plaza Hotel, was sparked by one hot
topic in particular — how record companies can get music fans to
pay for downloadable music.
"We're at a time when there's a lot of stuff available for free,"
conference chairman Ted Cohen said. "But it's going to start
monetizing itself. It's going to start happening where people can get
music to you faster than you can go to a store.
"If Snoop Dogg creates a new piece of music, he can write it on
Wednesday, record it on Thursday and post it to the Web on Friday,"
Cohen continued. "The creative output of the artist is going to more
reflect where he was at the time that he created it as opposed to it
being a time capsule of where he was a year ago."
Rapper Ice-T had a more jaundiced view of the uses of the Internet.
After participating in Monday's "Voice of the Creator" panel, the
rapper said he doesn't think music distribution online will be much
different than it is now.
"Once the machine is made, it's just going to suck artists in like
everything else," said Ice-T, who released his 7th Deadly Sin
LP through the Internet-based label Atomic Pop. "All the Internet is
doing is building another major label another way. ... Some of these
guys probably never listened to a record, and they're going to be
running hip-hop. I can't let that happen."
In addition to Ice-T, the artist panel featured David Bowie
collaborator and guitarist Reeves Gabrels — who appears on
several songs on Bowie's current album, hours ..., including
"Thursday's Child" (RealAudio excerpt) — Spearhead singer Michael Franti, folk singer Jonatha Brooke, and producers Patrick Leonard (Madonna) and Jimmy Jam (Janet Jackson, Spice Girls).
Brooke, who is selling her latest album, Jonatha Brooke Live, on her website, said she's afraid that fans, because of their experiences online, have developed an expectation that all online music should be free.
Such expectations can foster rationalizations for online music piracy, an issue that struck sparks on the "Virtual Skull and Crossbones — Music Piracy and the Internet" panel and a discussion involving the Secure Digital Music Initiative, an effort to fight online piracy that the music industry has implemented in the year since the first Webnoize conference.
"If you don't want to have a piracy problem, put your digital master in Fort Knox and get the Army to guard it," said James Burger, a lawyer who represents firms involved in the recording industry's anti-piracy efforts.
Tara Lemmey, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, suggested instilling in consumers the idea that pirating music files is no different than "stealing your neighbor's firewood."