By Colin Berry
For Web sites that play or sell music online, the time is coming to pay the piper - or, perhaps, the guitarist or lead singer. BMI, the music licensing giant that oversees more than 3 million copyrighted works, recently launched MusicBot, a modified search engine that sleuths out and monitors use of music files on the Web. Just as restaurants and radio stations must pay for the privilege of playing tunes, webmasters will soon be required to chip in for the broadcast and transfer of music files.
The bot's launch coincides with three new licensing arrangements designed to police a range of online uses, from high-profile retail sites like CDnow to homepages blasting "Free Bird." "Our company was created in response to technology," says Richard Conlon, BMI's vice president of marketing and business development. "This is another frontier, another step in our evolution." The only question is: Why was the music industry so slow to take it?
ELECTRIC WORD
Robo(Music)Cop
