From Philip Downey Sent Sat, Feb 6th 1999, 14:47
From Philip Downey Sent Sat, Feb 6th 1999, 14:47
In Thursday's Wall Street Journal there is a story that says Islandlife/Rykodisc are going to be begin selling MP3's over the web. Sender: xxx-xxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Precedence: bulk "...200 tracks...the likes of Frank Zappa, Morphine, and others...and sell them for 99 cents over GoodNoise's website. "...Rykodisc worried that ignoring mp3 would simply encourage more piracy of its catalog. By sanctioning use of the technology, the label can derive revenue and royalties from per-track Web sites. "'Every minute someone downloads a pirated mp3 track and doesn't compensate the artist, that's another person who's gotten the idea that they can geit it for free,'...says Lars Murray, Rykodisc's director of new media. "...The 200 tracks it initally plans to sell in mp3 represent only about 3% of its total catalog. Some of these songs--nearly a quarter of them are by the late Mr. Zappa--are older tracks that aren't likely to be the hottest sellers in record stores. But Mr. Murray said Rykodisc hopes to deveolp cross-promotions between its online and bricks-and-mortar retailers that complement, rather than undercut, CD sales. "'Digital distribution is the future, and we've got to get on top of it because it's not waiting for us,' he said." Phil Downey