Columnist Geoff Carter: Solid EAT’M panel debates industry’s Internet issues

Geoff Carter

Friday, May 21, 1999 | 10:01 a.m.

Music is very viral," said Michael Robertson, CEO of the hotly-debated MP3.com website. "It's how stars are broken. Artists should recognize that."

Most musicians come to terms with this truism early on -- that you ultimately profit when your music is heard on the radio, on a friend's mix tape and so on. Even having a song described to you might encourage you to get a hold of it. The sound spreads, just like a virus. And while this school of thought is not a new one, it is new to the music industry -- an aloof, self-satisfied body of greedheads that took to carpet-bombing artists, recordings and music with the blunt term "software" several years ago.

Robertson's statement was just one of a dozen intelligent counterstrikes fired during Wednesday's "Internet -- Nuts and Bolts" seminar at the Emerging Artists and Talent in Music (EAT'M) conference, still running at the Mirage. And I have to say that in three years of attending these damnable things -- collecting business cards, reams of promotional sheets and verbal excrement -- I have never seen or heard a livelier, more intelligent panel discussion.

The focus of the often-heated discourse centered around three letters: MP3, a form of audio compression that allows CD-quality audio to be delivered directly to your computer, where it can be saved and played indefinitely -- even burned to a CD. You don't have to be Lassie to recognize that there's trouble at the farm: The new guard is lobbying for consumer choice, while the old doesn't want to risk losing its lucrative distribution and retail operations.

"The net is also a marketplace," said Ron Sobel of ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers). "And therein lies the rub."

To put it in English: Let's say, sometime in the not-too-distant-future you download an MP3 version of the new U2 album. Here's what the industry wants to happen before you even press "play": They want U2 to get their royalties; they want to insure you will have one copy and one copy alone; they want to know who owns it, just in case you attempt to hack your copy for pirating purposes. And above all, they want the money they once got by slapping an ungodly mark-up on CDs.

In other words, they want to watermark every piece of music on the Web. That spells a privacy breach, which traditionally does not sit well with gearheads.

"We're not big fans of security at MP3.com," Roberston said. "Security gets in the way with consumers."

Steve Rennie of UBL.com (Ultimate Band List) worked a balanced line, insisting a compromise could be reached: "Digital distribution is just a piece of the puzzle. It is not going to replace Tower Records."

Whether that's true or not, there's no denying that the consumer end is changing even now. Another panelist, Derek Sivers, runs all-independent online CD store CD Baby (cdbaby.com), and allows self-made artists to sell their product to a global audience without dealing with the high end of the industry at all.

"Your release won't be buried among major artists," he promised the musicians in the crowd. He later stressed the importance of "making a good living, without a major label deal."

Between Sivers and Robertson alone, there are thousands upon thousands of new artists waiting to be heard, many of whom will never get a major label deal (and not that they'd want one, at the rate Universal's Edgar Bronfman Jr. is buying up labels and booting artists from their contracts). Nor are they likely to get radio play on America's fast-narrowing dial.

It was an invigorating hour -- every one of the panelists knew their subject, self-promotion was kept to a bare minimum and nothing was dumbed down. The EAT'M organizers are to be commended for setting up a forum where these ideas could come to light. For the first time ever, I felt like I wasn't wasting my time among industry folk -- a viral lot if ever one existed. The future is wide open, and if we move fast, we can stick our foot in it.

Stereo Dynamics

* Expansion Union, "World Wide Funk," TVT Records.

From the same species subset -- if not exactly the same parentage -- that produced Daft Punk comes Expansion Union, would-be masters of funk. It's a glutted field these days, as every soul with two turntables and a microphone tries to grab the fleece, but where such overrated talents as Dee Jay Punk Roc fail, Expansion Union's "World Wide Funk" will succeed. Good? Nay, great.

You want loopy break beats? "Meow" tempers a tough funk bassline with enough scratching to draw blood. "Drunkin' Fader Style," with its recycling pop-metal guitar riff, hangs around just long enough for the listener to catch the beat, then vanishes in favor of the mechanical hop of "Psionic," a classic techno number whose simplistic "chorus" stirs memories of The Age Before Sequencers. And the title track is, quite truthfully, a triumph of evolution.

Get Out, Act Up

EAT'M? Isn't that, you know, some kind of a cheese? The festival continues through Saturday, featuring artists from all over the world on multiple stages. Check the event website at eat-m.com for a complete schedule of events.

Please be kind. The two-day Kind Music Festival features Mark Huff, Dear Liza, Dexter Grove, Zen Exit, Cool Water Canyon and many others on the intimate stage of Legends Lounge. Last year, Legends went on the warpath against EAT'M, hosting the "EAT THIS!" showcase; Legends owner Rudy Jalio promises "a positive approach" beginning tonight at 10. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, as the kids say. Call 437-9674 for information.

Nothing warms my heart like musicians suing The Man. Author Stan Soocher has compiled a bunch of these magic litigious moments in his new book "They Fought The Law: Rock Music Goes to Court." "It's Perry Mason-meets-Billy Joel in this account of the most famous lawsuits in rock history," the press release promises. Scary, Stan -- we like that. Soocher visits Borders Books on Decatur with some stories from the bench, 2 p.m. Saturday. Call 258-0999.