SAN DIEGO – It featured all the trimmings of a tech industry conference: vendor booths, product demos, and hype. But the muggy, hazy, southern California setting – peopled with smooth-faced, tanned Los Angelinos – made the MP3 Summit a shinier, happier event than your average Comdex.
Also:
MP3 Rocks the Web (Special Report)
Don't Tell Me How to Listen
MP3 Goes Mainstream
MP3 Hardware: Beyond the Rio
Barlow: Music Wants to Be Free
Rio Rolls Over RIAA
At tables capped with white canvas umbrellas, dark-suit-and-gold-pen Hollywood types negotiated with MP3's power-youth element: skaters with cell phones and an intimate knowledge of frame rates. Women exuding money and LA's brand of class milled about the University of California student center. Rappers Ice-T and Canibus roamed the grounds speaking on panels and explaining MP3 to the TV cameras. Lisa Loeb entertained the crowd Tuesday night.
Attendees used to technology shows soon realize they're not in the Valley any more. But as technology shows, the MP3 scene – in its hybrid of promotional splendor and a still-thriving underground – didn't lack for entertaining outtakes.
A promotional shave: From hotel lobbies to after-hours shindigs at Porter's Pub, personnel, flaks, and execs roamed the campus and beyond. They bore the standard-issue MP3-centric shirts, buttons, bottle openers, and bags, making them easy to distinguish from the average touring family visiting from Idaho. But one omnipresent EMusic employee stood out in particular.
On his mostly bald head was his company's logo, rendered in hair. Dyed in EMusic black and blue, the three-inch-wide patch sported the shaved-in initials, "E.M." In the summit press room, the bonus-bound EMusic man also taunted the media with an undisclosable company product plan in the works, saying only, "I've been salivating over this for months; it's like a wet dream."
One lawyer's unreliable sources: During a panel on copyright law, Ken Hertz, mainstay on the MP3 scene and a lawyer representing acts including Alanis Morrissette and Boyz II Men, was the first to break the news of the court decision eviscerating the RIAA's case against the Rio MP3 player. He prefaced the news with a caveat: "I don't know if this is accurate, because it was told to me by a journalist." We're not sure if the quote is accurate, but – you get the idea.
What are we here for? Digital On Demand seems to walk a fine line across the MP3 landscape. On one hand, the company is bringing record companies into the digital fold with a high-speed-network-cum-kiosk system for delivering CDs to stores digitally. On the other hand, the system – designed and built to woo the old-guard music industry – uses a proprietary network. The point of purchase is not an Internet connection, but the same retail stores where people already buy CDs.
Burned, printed, and encased on the premises, consumers get more choice because the inventory is, well, digital on demand. But the summit's reception to a brief Digital On Demand presentation by CEO Scott Smith was skeptical at best. "So basically you have to wait 10 minutes for a CD," a member of the audience shot to Smith. Before the exchange could continue, an MP3.com staffer instructed the audience not to "turn this into a Q&A." Retorted the interrupted attendee: "That's what we're here for." Ice T calls the coroner: At a panel titled "Music as a Virus: Biological Warfare," Ice T dished out some details on plans to establish "the first totally Internet hard-core record label." The Internet label would give an artist a direct, day-to-day window on the progress of his music, Ice T said.
"He can go watch what he did and see how much money he's making and how many [downloads] sold that day. The artist can track the movement." With a bigger profit margin, he said he'll give the artist more money, not "60 or 70 cents for a US$10 or $12 album."
"What's the name of the label?" audience members called out. They loved the answer: "Our label is called Coroner Records," Ice T answered to a brief, semi-stunned silence. "It's about the death of the record labels." Applause and laughter swept the room.
The bag index: As at most industry conferences, there were the bags. The quality of logo-branded carry-alls offered to attendees usually speaks to the sponsor's cash flow. Still brimming with capital infusions and anticipating an IPO, MP3.com offered a fine leather satchel. (Wired News declined the graft.)
Quiet period? Like other companies about to go public, MP3.com took the SEC-mandated pre-IPO quiet period to ridiculous extremes, based on lawyer-fed fear that the commission would postpone the offering if a company hypes its financial prospects to drive up its IPO price. MP3.com founder and CEO Michael Robertson probably had to whip out the 'quiet period' excuse every 10 minutes at his own summit, whenever anyone asked his opinion on any MP3.com subject.
But the company was, well, remarkably available, on one count. Its public relations teams saw to it that the "groundbreaking" announcement of the ASCAP live-performance licensing deal with MP3.com was rushed into media hands. Still no comment, but lots of encouragement.
Best business plan of the Summit: A lowly Yellow Cab driver, carting MP3ers to and fro among after-hours bars and restaurants: "I don't understand why they don't hook this stuff up to jukeboxes." Brilliant idea, his passengers thought: Maybe a side project for Digital On Demand. Imagine walking into any bar and cueing up any song, not just the CDs or records in the jukebox. Who needs the Internet?
Hilary Rosen's MP3.com account: MP3.com founder and CEO Michael Robertson demonstrated the new personalized site feature, My MP3.com. To the audience's glee, Robertson took the liberty of "registering" the format's nemesis, Hilary Rosen, president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America. Robertson chose an account alias for Rosen, too: "MP3 Forever."
"That's a nice nickname, huh?" he taunted.
Related Wired Links:
MP3 Goes Mainstream
16.Jun.99
MP3 Hardware: Beyond the Rio
16.Jun.99
One-Stop MP3 Searching
16.Jun.99
Barlow: Music Wants to Be Free
15.Jun.99
Rio Rolls Over RIAA
15.Jun.99
