NEW YORK -- How do you get together a panel discussion that ensures hot debate in the recording industry?
"We're the only place that could do it," said Jon Marcus, who runs the New York chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences. "We're the neutrals."
NARAS, which also runs the annual Grammys music awards, on Saturday invited a sea of people to watch online music businessmen argue about the best way to sell and license music online.
During the event, panelists leaked details of forthcoming product plans and shamelessly pitched their own wares. While the debates solved nothing, here are some of the highlights:
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The RIAA's deputy general counsel Steven Marks thought the day's debates were pretty good.
"People like to see barbs thrown just because it's exciting," he said. "SDMI is consistent with everything MP3.com is doing. It's technology [and] business-model agnostic."
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Marks and MP3.com's founder Michael Robertson unofficially vied for the pity of their peers.
"Michael has shown a lot of guts being here," said panelist Charles Saunders, counsel for the Harry Fox Agency and for the National Music Publishers' Association, during the afternoon panel. "I don't want to be viewed as attacking him, because there are a lot of copyright owners and their representatives sitting on this panel, and he's here alone, so this is not an attack on [him] personally."
The RIAA's Marks interjected, "I thought I was the one that showed guts being here," he said, referring to an earlier comment that he was "in the hot seat."
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Diamond Multimedia's vice president of RioPort.com David Watkins was asked whether there would be a forthcoming "Apple [computer] version of the Rio" portable MP3 player.
"Yes, there will be, [but] I don't want to make any product announcements," was all Watkins would say.
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At times, the panel discussions were bogged down by legalese. Responding to a discussion about who has what rights regarding the streaming of music, one panelist expressed his frustration.
"A lot of people call the Digital Millennium Copyright Act the attorneys' full employment act," said Marc Morgenstern, senior vice president at the American Society of Composers and Publishers, which represents musicians and helps them license their music. "There are a lot of gray areas. The bottom line is right now, there are more than enough streaming sites, 20,000 to 40,000 sites.... Lets go out and license and get money to the people that create" the performance.
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The speedy Net makes it hard to predict the future. Panelists grappled with the impact that broadband would have on music downloads. "Like [the rest of the industry], my crystal ball goes dark after two years," said Larry Miller, chief operating officer at a2b music, which makes a competing downloading technology to MP3 with added security.
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The audience of artists and people from labels and tech companies got appropriately rowdy during the debates, yelling out things like "The system doesn't work!" and "Why don't you [RIAA] sue Sony!" Finally, afternoon moderator and Billboard magazine's managing editor Susan Nunziata asked for a ban on "shoutouts" and for people to write their questions down.
Separately, when trying to clarify a point, she said, "My publicist is going to kill me for saying this, [but] there are a lot of flaws with the existing record label system. There are [also] a lot of benefits to it."
