Music firms reach out to creator of Napster
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LOS ANGELES As a teenager, Shawn Fanning brought free music to the masses, creating the Napster file-swapping program and unleashing a technological genie that granted the wishes of fans seeking virtually any song at any time - gratis.
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NEW YORK/TOKYO  - Napster Inc. NAPS.O said on   Tuesday it launched an online song distribution site in Japan,   challenging Apple Computer Inc. AAPL.O and popular music   phones.
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For many of us, it seems like a long time since the battle of the bands was waged on the front pages of the media. It started with Napster, an illegal file sharing service that made it possible
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Napster developer Shawn Fanning is back with a new file-sharing program -- but this time it&#39;s legit. Without revealing all the details of his new venture, Snocap, Inc.
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The force behind one-time music industry nemesis Napster has changed his tune by becoming a guardian of copyrighted songs.
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Boston&#39; Northeastern University dropout Shawn Fanning, who tapped out the code to Napster in 1999, is back in the music downloading game.
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Shawn Fanning, Napster Founder, is back in to the music download scene, this time around with a legal music service. SNOCAP, Fanning&#39;s new company, will provide value to record labels, artists, online services
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'We hear the kids like these MP3 things' Napster will once again deal in the scourge that are MP3s now that the major record labels have decided that MP3s are not evil but rather their future.â¦
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Music download company Napster launches a service in Japan, the world's second largest music market
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Sharman Networks has called former Napster expert witness Justin Tygar to give his testimony during the ongoing trial against the peer-to-peer software provider for alleged copyright infringement.
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(InfoWorld) - The co-founder of a Web site that offers free streamed music from top artists said he's determined to operate his service legally despite menacing overtures from Universal Music Group. The Web site, Deezer.com, based in France, has been signing up users at a fast pace thanks to its user-friendly interface and streamed music from thousands of artists, including Maroon 5, Rihanna, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones. The site offers about 200,000 songs and has signed up 300,000 registered users in the past few months, co-founder Jonathan Benassaya said on Monday. Most of the users are in France, he said, although the site is available in 16 languages. The record labels have been less enthusiastic. Universal Music, a division of Vivendi Universal, said on Friday that Deezer.com's use of its music was illegal and that it would take "all measures necessary" to get its music removed from the Web site, according to press reports. Benassaya insisted on Monday the service is legal, however -- or at least, that it will be soon. "We are not robbers," he said. "We want to pay for the rights to our music, but it takes time to put all the agreements in place." Deezer.com originally operated as Blogmusik.net but shut down in February under pressure from the music industry. It relaunched with its new name last week after it signed a deal with SACEM, a group that collects royalties for authors and songwriters in France. The recording industry told Deezer.com that the deal with SACEM was a necessary first step before it could sign deals with the major labels, according to Benassaya. His company is now in talks with the labels and is confident that it will sign deals with them soon to begin paying royalties, he said. Universal Music, EMI Group, and Warner Music did not return calls seeking comment on Monday, and Sony BMG could not immediately be reached. Asked if Deezer.com should have waited until the agreements were in place to launch the service, Benassaya countered that YouTube launched its service before it signed deals with content owners to distribute their video. He also said that Deezer.com has been operating since April and that only now has Universal raised its objection. While Deezer.com is supposed to let people stream music only, some users have figured out a way to download songs to their computers, something that's only likely to further irritate the music labels. "It appears there are some leaks in the Web site security and we have been working on that since Friday," Benassaya said. "This week by Tuesday or Wednesday, we will put in place new security so you cannot download music." Deezer's problems arose when it got caught in the crossfire of competition between two French ISPs, Free and Neuf Cegetel, according to Benassaya. Neuf announced a deal with Universal Music last Monday to launch a music download service for its customers. Deezer.com was launched two days later, and Free has been promoting Deezer.com as an alternative to its own customers.
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Tokyo, Sept. 21 (Jiji Press)--Napster Japan Inc., a joint venture between Tower Records Japan Inc. and Napster LLC, said Thursday it has signed up more than 260 companies to provide content for the online music download service it plans to launch in Japan shortly.
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Grokster, one of the best-known P2P services (at least one of the best-known by the RIAA &amp; co), has taken yet another step in its path to make its P2P service to please the record labels by teaming up with a start-up called Mercora to provide an artist
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Napster, one of the world&#39;s most well known music downloading services, has signed a lucrative deal with Dwango Wireless that could see a mobile phone capable of downloading ringtones from Napster by 2005.
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Few in the tech world need an introduction to Napster&#39;s founder, the college dropout whose revolutionary file-swapping technology shook the foundations of the $11 billion record industry.
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At the Consumer Electronics Show this year, it&#39;s clear that consumers are making choices that are driving industry changes, and nowhere is that more evident than in the digital music business.Music industry and technology executives convened for the Billboard Digital Music Live conference Wednesday to talk about what those in the business need to do to meet the needs of music fans who appear to be running the show.&quot;2008 has to be the year we get real or the business as we know it goes away,&quot; said Fred Goldring, an entertainment attorney with Goldring Hertz &amp; Lichtenstein. He said that consumers will access music regardless of whether artists, labels, publishers, and digital music distributors approve of the means or receive money from the exchange.Since Napster turned the music industry on its ear in 2000, the digital-music business has been rocked by dissent among artists, labels, publishers, and the breed of technology companies distributing and selling music online that emerged in Napster&#39;s wake. All of these parties want to derive revenue from their contribution to the business, but have been arguing for years about how everyone should get paid.As this drama unfolds behind the scenes, consumers continue to find ways to bypass DRM and emerging revenue models to download and share music, making it not just impossible for the music industry to make money from traditional means, but also difficult to make money at all. In the meantime, artists have embarked on their own revolution, using social-networking sites and other online means to get their music directly in the hands of fans and finding other ways to derive revenue from their work.An example of the latter is the controversial and much-publicized move by U.K. rock band Radiohead to sell its new album &quot;In Rainbows&quot; direct to consumers without going through its record label or Apple&#39;s iTunes Store. The album first went on sale in October on Radiohead&#39;s Web site, allowing users to choose their price for the record; a few weeks ago, Radiohead released the record to iTunes and other retail channels.Scenarios like this will continue to happen, both among major-label artists and independent or unsigned artists. Whether they work is not the point; it&#39;s what the industry will do to work within these models and support them rather than continue to resist that will decide how the industry will fare in the future, said Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group. Nettwerk is a Canadian privately owned record label and artist management company.&quot;The corporate side of it has to shift,&quot; he said. &quot;The corporate people have not allowed us to do what we know we have to do. This is about the consumer, about monetizing their behavior and giving them choice. For all of the people that believe in controlling the&#160;[intellectual property]&#160;and how [the music] gets to consumers, the game is over. It was over seven or eight years ago, and soon your business will be over.&quot;Goldring suggested the industry focus on business models built solely around the networks that allow users to download music and find ways for everyone involved to make money that way.&quot;We have to stop trying to keep our old business alive&#160;... and figure out how to monetize the pipes [music files] are going through,&quot; he said.Barney Wragg, head of digital, EMI Music Group, said that in a perfect world, scenarios like the ones McBride and Goldring propose would exist. However, the needs of different artists vary, and there are still concerns about the integrity of their work and how they will be compensated for it as new business models emerge.&quot;I have artists that don&#39;t want to be involved in certain business models,&quot; he said. &quot;I have to balance those conflicts. ... There are a whole bunch of artists who are worried about how they&#39;re going to get paid, and what this is going to do about their representation or their art.&quot;Allowing their music to be distributed through ad-supported online music services is a particularly hard sell for artists who worry that having their work be associated with advertising &quot;devalues&quot; it, Wragg added.Subscription-based models such as Rhapsody that don&#39;t give users ownership of their music have struggled to take off. Wragg compared music fans&#39; view of subscription models to the early days of e-mail, when people wanted files to be stored locally and were adverse to the concept of e-mail existing only on a remote server.That concept changed over time, as will the perception of subscriptions if they are marketed to consumers in the right way, he said.Another factor that should boost the popularity of subscriptions in the future is the increased spending of younger fans who are naturally more comfortable with the idea of not owning their music, said Matthew DeFilippis, vice president of new media and technology for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, a membership organization representing the rights of artists.&quot;Ownership is a generational thing,&quot; he said. &quot;Even though kids today are buying from iTunes, I don&#39;t think they care about owning a thing. As they become the new generation of homeowners and bill payers, [music subscription] will be moving toward a cable [TV] model.&quot;
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Digital music provider Napster on Thursday teamed up with Dwango Wireless, hoping to corner a slice of the booming ring tone market.