In a tale of mistaken identities and strange bedfellows, legendary hip-hop group Public Enemy has teamed up with a small technology company to rewrite the rules for promoting, distributing, and pricing music over the Internet.
When Global Music Outlet, or GMO, announces its next-generation music distribution format this week, it will give artists a way to embed copyright information in CD-quality files for easy distribution over the Net.
Like MP3, the technology allows users to download small, executable files that contain music. In addition, players that reveal text, graphics, copyright information, and hyperlinks to the artist's site are included in the file.
But, in a controversial move, GMO has trademarked the technology as "MP4," a name that has been used informally to describe MPEG-4, a separate, open-standard technology that is to be released for general licensing later this year by the International Standards Organization.
GMO's MP4 format is not an effort to undermine the MPEG-4 open standard, the company said, but rather an attempt to rein in the unregulated, anarchic world of MP3 �- where piracy runs rampant and artists have little control over their work once it's released.
It is also meant to appease the Recording Industry Association of America, which is creating its own secure music distribution technology called the Secure Digital Music Initiative. The RIAA has the support of heavy hitters AOL, AT&T, IBM, Lucent, Microsoft, Matsushita, RealNetworks, Sony, and Toshiba.
"SDMI is really a coalition reaction to MP3, and we understand why they have formed it," said Anthony Stonefield, CEO of Global Music. "However, there is a trend in MP3 because people on the Internet want free music. We've attempted to create a midstep between these dynamics. I don't think it undermines anything they're trying to achieve.... It's a different fish." The MP4 format hit the Internet last week when Public Enemy posted a new song, "Swindlers Lust", to its Web site for free download. The song takes a stab at the music industry's exploitation of artists over the years. It starts with Chuck D rapping, "Vultures of culture, dollar a rhyme / But we barely get a dime," and goes on to say, "Rap and R&B paving the streets of Bel Air from the sales of singers no longer here / The bigger killer gets the bigger share."
Public Enemy has been one of the most outspoken groups in the MP3 debate. The group forced its label's hand last month by putting an MP3 song on its site for free download.
When PolyGram, Public Enemy's distributor, forced the group to remove the MP3 song from its site, Chuck D wrote a note condemning the label for its legal threats.
In the wake of this battle, the new MP4 song and its vehicle were meant to send another message to the music industry about artists' rights to their work.
"They designed [MP4] to be more artist-friendly. When you email a song, it still gives an instant link to their site and gives us more leverage in the world of e-commerce," said Walter Leaphart, Public Enemy's manager, speaking on a cell phone as he drove through Manhattan. "We ain't gonna give all the songs away, but Chuck D is challenging the notion of what constitutes an album ... and we may challenge the whole way the music industry defines an album. Now, people buy an album for US$16, $17, and not even half the songs are any good," Leaphart said.
Hip-hop, an art form that evolved in the '70s in the clubs and street corners of the Bronx, has always been quick to give new technology a spin. Specialized DJ turntables and state-of-the-art digital sampling equipment are now used to create everything from R& B to electronica music.
"I think [MP4 is] a great thing, an excellent promotional tool that lets people know what you're doing," said Gary G-Wiz, Public Enemy's webmaster and a music producer. "I don't know what the RIAA is trying to do. I understand that they have copyright issues, but I don't think the approach is to condemn it." Other companies have made efforts recently to create a viable online music distribution system, but none have been able to strike a balance between security and distribution. One major benefit to MP4 is that users don't need to download a separate player or other client software to play the MP4 files.
All the music, copyright information, graphics, and player technology is wrapped into one file, which can easily be emailed or posted to a Web site. And if a user tries to unwrap the song from the file �- to play it in another format, for instance �- Stonefield said the contents will degrade to an undesirable level.
Global Music developed the MP4 format by manipulating AT&T's encoder technology, which in its original form will be part of the MPEG-4 standard. The intellectual property for the MPEG-4 standard is owned by Sony, AT&T, Yamaha, and other electronics manufacturers �- a group that will license it out under the condition that developers build tools that are open and interoperate with each other.
The name is bound to cause some confusion and force the ISO to come up with another name for MPEG-4. Eric Scheirer, editor of the MPEG-4 standard and a researcher at MIT's Media Lab, said Global Music's strategy may ultimately backfire.
"I have no problem with the technology, and clearly it's a marketplace grab on the name MP4. It's really just a proprietary subset of MPEG-4, and it's misleading to call it MP4," he said. "It's just that it's not likely to be a direction that fosters goodwill towards them. There is a brand value associated with open standards."
The distinction between an open-standards format like MPEG-4 and a proprietary format like MP4 is that any company can license the former to create new tools; with the latter, the licensing is up to the company that owns it. In addition, companies aren't allowed to make unilateral changes to an open standard when they build new products, so there is an expectation that all products will be interoperable. In reality, this isn't always the case, but when companies create an open-standards player, the consumer should expect it to work with other MPEG-4 products.
Those subtleties and goodwill gestures are not part of the dog-eat-dog music industry, said Leaphart, who gave GMO credit for getting a trademark on the MP4 name.
"It's almost like a sample situation.... Someone has it, but they're using it for their own purposes. Business ain't fair, man," he said as he pulled up to a New York City restaurant. "Valet parking, now that shit is a crime."
