Post Apocalyptic or Merely Hungover?
[ No. 39 - January 2000 ]
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Gotta make this quick...what with the grid down and the
connectivity police scanning every wavelength, your FezGuys
will have moved on by the time you read this. We've got enough
tuna for three weeks, it should get us across the border. But
from there - who knows? You can count on us, though. With
militia and hungry dogs only an hour behind, we keep bringing
you Internet audio enlightenment from the front lines. Here's
what we've gleaned while on the run.
Players, movers, shakers and wannabes crowd around to catch
the tide and be the hot spot, but the undefinable, mercurial
Web ever eludes them. Some ideas are better than others.
The legendary Chuck D of Public Enemy fame creates his own
radio show, "When The Shit Hits The Fans." The awesomely titled
weekly program will feature unsigned and indie label music
which he will program or broadcast live from a suitcase while
touring. It's like a "Secret Sam" briefcase, with a laptop
instead of plastic bullets and a "miniature camera that really
works!" Mr. D also will be broadcasting six radio shows weekly
with long-time Public Enemy producer Gary G-Wiz and sponsored
by Atomic Pop.
<www.bringthenoise.com>
The Beastie Boys take out a full-page ad in Rolling Stone for
their 2-CD anthology. The ad also points out that if you don't
like the songs or the order on the official CD release you can
go to the web site and make your own CD by choosing from their
repertoire of 170 songs.
<www.beastieboys.com>
At the WebNoize 99 conference in Los Angeles last November the
Hollywood Stock Exchange
<www.hsx.com> won our
vote for the most intriguing and engaging web site. Coming in
dead last was the guy who frothed at the mouth about gathering
"a bunch of A&R guys" to pick and choose music for a site that
will "sell the data from users to direct marketing companies."
Before we had a chance to recoil in horror he assured us that
he would "change the face of Internet music forever." Maybe in
his universe...
In San Jose, CA, Bill Gates gave a keynote address at the
Streaming Media West December '99 conference. It was obvious
to all that it didn't matter what he had to say. His presence
alone spoke volumes. Transferring audio and video (and data)
across the Internet is officially Job One. Microsoft radio
spots for Windows 98 2nd Edition (with MediaPlayer and Musicmatch
Jukebox) strongly pushed enhanced manipulation of digital audio
and video over the Internet.
And the dotcom upstarts keep eating the old guard. Emusic
<www.emusic.com>
bought Tunes.com, RollingStone.com and DownBeatJazz.com. Plucky
Ebay.com buys longbeard Butterfield and Butterfield. And MP3.com,
the site we love to hate, joins the ranks of apparel, alcohol
and cigarette manufacturers sponsoring tours by the likes of
Tori Amos, Alannis Morrisette, TLC, the Goo Goo Dolls, Tonic,
and others.
There's never a dull moment in this lovely arena and never a
shortage of fire-breathing maniacs to write about. The following
is a Y2K list of new places to post your music, assuming you
have the desire to upload your music in the first place.
The site that pioneered the "enter and win a record contract"
arrangement. Upload your music (you're required to review other
music already on the site), and join a competition for a $250,000
recording contract. Jerry Harrison (ex-Talking Heads) and Sir
George Martin (producer of you know who!) are the two most
prominent members of a stellar board of directors. This site
is worth the time.
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ease of use
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straightforward
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design
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smoooooth
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tech support
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improving
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expected user experience
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positive
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overall
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green lights all the way up Park Avenue
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A direct rip-off of the garageband.com model, but with the
added corporate muscle of cable TV. Trying to pose as an
independent Internet record label, the site is actually a
spin-off of la musica groupo largo Universal Music Group which
(while itself owned by corporate behemoth Seagram's) includes
MCA, Interscope, Island, A&M and Geffen records. The signup
is simple though, as usual, they demand a phone number. Lying
is becoming so natural these days! They also absolutely must
know your gender for some reason. After completing the contact
info and before the upload process you must sign off on a dense
2053-word legal document. After that, also as usual, there's
no indication for how long an upload takes. This is a real pain
in the ass, gang! The FezGuys suggest you do the simple fix
and provide your users with high quality service. The site
won't actually offer your music downloads to users until
February, '00.
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ease of use
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straightforward
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design
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army/navy chic
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tech support
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undetermined
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expected user experience
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Christmas morning, you didn't get what you wanted
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overall
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The carrot, the stick and a side dish of faint condescension.
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The site appears to focus on community features like chat rooms
and message boards. But are they relevant or should they be
here at all? There's a lot of dead space in the chat rooms,
and it's hard to care about a site where nothing appears to be
happening. The upload process shoots us across another slippery
legal document (like most others they say you keep your rights
but they can do whatever they want with the music you upload).
The signup process requires a phone number! Hahaha! We laugh!
Genres are also required. It's hard to choose when you could
find yourself lodged between such fascinating pigeonholes as
"sports anthems" and "hair metal". The setup is, overall, pretty
clear and wonder of wonders, they do provide a dialog box while
waiting for the upload to complete. "File uploading, please
stand by!" The FezGuys thank you, though would still appreciate
knowing how long the wait is likely to be. For some reason we
can't shake the feeling that the gang at Cosmic is waiting by
a silent connection for someone to upload some music. When the
little light goes on worker bees leap up in a frenzy! They also
offer a "Featured Artist" and ten "Favorite Artists" (chosen
by their staff) that increase a band's chances of exposure.
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ease of use
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simple
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design
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let's go bowling in 1968
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tech support
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present and accounted for
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expected user experience
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positive
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overall
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"Up With People" meets Microsoft at a pep rally
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A whopping 4000-word legal document must be clicked through on
this very dense, very corporate, beta site. There is an upload
alert dialog box to let us know how long it's all taking, which
is very nice. The FezGuys find this web site fabulously boring.
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ease of use
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multiple choice questionnaire
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design
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government work
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tech support
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undetermined
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expected user experience
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10:30 a.m. at an institutional job
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overall
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lifeless
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This official site for unsigned music built by Billboard Magazine
appears to offer everything that a site like IUMA does, but
for a fee. How do you feel about paying money to place your
music on a web site? We thought so! The legal stuff is
predictably long but what makes it really challenging is the
teeny, tiny font size. You'd need to hold a magnifying glass
up to the computer screen to read the stuff. The FezGuys say
pass on this one.
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ease of use
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we'll never know
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design
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midsize American rental car
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tech support
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undetermined
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expected user experience
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you're just another long-chain, high-grade polymer
in a petrochemical cracking plant
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overall
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a picture-perfect example of an organization that doesn't grok
the Internet
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Though the site claims to do minor weeding to keep quality up
it remains unclear how bad you have to be to get refused. The
uploading process worked smoothly.
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ease of use
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easy
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design
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convention hall
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tech support
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good email response
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expected user experience
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if they like you you're in. If they don't...
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overall
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bi-polar disorder
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Overall it appears that music sites are slowly getting it
better, if not exactly right. The main problem is that, for
the most part, they take a cookie cutter approach instead of
offering original and unique services. Many also have half-hearted
community features - what musician wants to manage an email
list on ten different sites and try to split their fans among
ten chat rooms?
Then there's the hosers at artistforum.com. The FezGuys give
them the Most Annoying Spam Award. Not content to only send
their spam in illegible formats, this once-promising site makes
sure you get multiple copies of the useless gibberish. For
months we've politely asked them to be removed and still the
crap keeps coming. You're setting a bad example gang, we expect
this kind of behavior from big, constipated institutions.
There are a plethora of other entries in the pipeline as well.
Warner Bros. says they'll add MP3 downloading for bands on
the new multiplex-o-rama web site,
<www.entertaindom.com>
(the FezGuys suggestion of <www.entertaindummy.com> was, sadly,
rejected). If the new MP3 area of the site is like the rest of
entertaindom.com we suspect you'll find it busy and bothersome
and become bored while waiting for it to load.
Platinum Entertainment, fed up with leasing their music to
other sites has decided to launch their own. The unfortunately
named <www.heardon.com>
will feature traditional and digital sales of their catalog
through selected free download giveaways, a (big! new! idea!)
contest to win a $250,000 budget to make an album, and free
MP3 downloads of their entire catalog (nearly 15,000 songs).
Their logo recalls truck stops circa 1976 with 18-wheelers
cranking Skynyrd. The FezGuys wonder if HeardOn might not have
benefited from testing the name on a classroom of 6th graders
first.
Also launched recently is Tonos.com. The site fires up with an
absolutely pointless introductory animation documenting how
closely allied tonos.com is with mainstream corporate music
culture. See Carole Bayer Sager and Carole King write the next
Britney Spears hit! Create and enter your own lyric/melody part
for an instrumental track by producers Babyface Edmonds and
David Foster! If you win the site promises you'll "have one of
the most expensive demos ever made!" Makes ya' salivate don't
it? The site boasts that it's run by musicians. The style of
music is "sitting in a megaplex movie theatre waiting for a
big budget blockbuster to start." It's more of that lame smooth
Los Angeles cinema pop; music to play in K-Marts and while on
hold with your medical insurance provider. No uploading. No
free downloads(except for the contest entry). Pretty silly.
<www.tonos.com>
This space will continue to troll the digital depths for tasty,
toneful treats. Hopefully it won't always be like shooting fish
in a barrel.
Uh, oh...we can hear the hovercrafts approaching and see the
swinging arc of searchlights. Gotta go...don't try to find
us... we'll find you. Take this:
<www.fezguys.com>, you may need
it. Don't be afraid to use it. We'll be back!
