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Kind of in line with the European regulators,
I don't see this "final absorption" of Zomba as any biggie. BMG has effectively "owned" Zomba, Arista, Bad Boy, J and all of the indie labels that they distribute by virtue of that world-wide ability to get the product into the market.
In fact, in preparation for what I believe will be a move by BMG to go public, I see this as a purchase of Zomba initiated by Zomba and not BMG. Until this music distribution company is spun-off from Bertelsman, not much will change in the hierarchy of the five major labels.
Oh, and just to correct that article, for the record, Alicia Keys is signed to Clive's label "J" and Pink is signed to Arista.
Bertelsmann has been cutting their losses
for some time now. The first signal that they were getting out of their on-line marketing efforts was when Andreas Schmidt quit.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-276281.html
If they could, I'm sure they'd revert to selling bibles, again.
Yes, Bob, that was truly an exhilarating moment
following the NASDAQ "disappointment."
Yup; he is
pondering this "development."
Obviously, simply supporting WMA is not enough
http://www.sonicblue.com/audio/rio/rio_riot.asp
sentinel: Edig has friends at Universal.......
don't worry, everything happens for a reason.
$1.49/ single in WMA?
This will catch on like wildfire with the music downloading crowd. What's changed since the last Sony effort two years ago?
....& The Annonymous Artists of America;
they played at Kesey's Acid Test Graduation when Bill Graham intimidated the G.D. out of performing that night. (see the electric kool-aid acid test (tom wolfe) for details about these freaks.
Before there was Rock & Roll there was
Specialty Records http://www.history-of-rock.com/specialty.htm
Now this looks interesting. Bashing allowed? MH
Glad you said it, Tim/
Ah, but B.D. had his sources
http://www.jadedragon.com/archives/may98/tao.html
U wrote that?
Those are incredible lyrics.....keep at it!
gernb1: The CSM is a bit
far from the cutting edge, but it does suggest how main-stream this propaganda battle is spreading. As far as "..It may also lead to the eventual demise of the multi-song album or CD format itself," goes, IMO, multi-song releases are the essence of the music industry which is powered by writers, publishers and producers of "album cuts/B sides." For every "hit" single, 10 - 15 other crappo selections collect the same mechanical reproduction fee. They ain't about to give up that money.
ucansee: A thousand pardons!
Occasionally RB does provide some beneficial advice, and I humbly offer these pearls of wisdom to all here on ihub.
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=980062
ucansee, or atleast I can see
that IBM was NOT the equity investor waiting in the wings to buy 20 million shares from a shelf registration. I claim no special source for information, but my eyes and ears and my experience as a BVI corporation owner, tell me that IMMANUEL KANT/ Apriori is an off-shore stock shorting syndicate.
Did the company KNOW that their intent was to flip the shares to close a short position? I can't state that for sure, but I find it hard to believe that in light of other shylock-financing in the past, they are naive as to the intent of people who make a living shorting stock.
Wouldn't you and some of your fellow longs like to buy these same bargain shares at a 10% discount? Why not approach the company through jimc, or someone who has the company's ear and offer to buy a couple of million bucks worth of stock as a "long term" investment? Then, the pps might actually appreciate and you will have the additional satisfaction of having "done the right thing" for the company's future!
"....The most positive aspect is that at least someone is still willing to support us through the purchase of our stock. They sure can't make any money buying at .53 & .38 while the current trend continues."
I think they are making lots of money by selling "short shares" borrowed from unsuspecting longs via MM's. For example, if the "equity investor" began naked shorting at $1 or so, and closed the position by purchasing the promised discounted shares at about $.45-$.50, that is making money, IMO. Similarly a short position established at close to $.60, a week or so ago, will yield similar profits when that position is closed at say $.35, with more discounted shares direct from Edigital.
They can, and will continue doing this, with a grateful green light from the company, as long as they choose.
Stock sales/
JBocca: I think you're correct.
Retailing their own products won't pull up this PPS.
Record Labels' Answer to Napster Still Has Artists Feeling Bypassed
By NEIL STRAUSS
In their bitter battles against Napster and other free music downloading services, record company executives have wielded one moral argument that has placed their position beyond self-interest: the fans take the music without proper permission and don't pay the artists a dime.
Last December, the major record labels responded with two Internet services of their own where fans pay monthly fees to download songs. Under this arrangement, however, the performers still don't get a dime: for each song downloaded, they stand to get only a fraction of a cent, according to the calculations of disgruntled managers and lawyers.
And, artists and their managers say, the labels, like Napster, aren't putting the music online with proper permission either.
"I'm not an opponent of artists' music being included in these services," said Gary Stiffelman, who represents Eminem, Aerosmith and TLC. "I'm just an opponent of their revenue not being shared."
Because the sites are new, no payments have been made yet, but the payment plan has so infuriated scores of best-selling pop acts, including No Doubt, the Dixie Chicks and Dr. Dre, that their lawyers have demanded their clients' music be removed from the sites, with some even sending cease-and-desist orders. Only in some cases have the major record companies complied.
Since Napster was born on college campuses in the late 1990's, peer-to- peer file sharing services have become the bane of the established music business, with, at their peak, some 60 million Napster users sharing nearly 40 million songs illicitly. Even after a federal district court shut Napster down, other free services proliferated, with Kazaa and Morpheus attracting an ever-growing base of users sharing not just music but movies and software as well.
In December, the music business responded with Pressplay and MusicNet, both pay-to-use subscription services where users can listen to or download a specified number of songs each month. Pressplay is a joint venture between Universal and Sony Music, and MusicNet teams BMG, EMI and AOL Time Warner (news/quote) with Real Networks.
"All of my clients had their attorneys advise the labels that if they did use my clients' music on Pressplay or MusicNet, they would be in breach of contract," said Simon Renshaw, who manages the Dixie Chicks, Mary J. Blige and others. "Some artists they took off, but some they didn't. It's becoming very obvious to me and my peers that we're becoming victims of what is a huge conspiracy."
Representatives of the five major record labels would not talk on the record about the payment system or their rights to use the music. But in comments not for attribution, several executives at labels and their subscription services did not dispute the accusations regarding the payment plan. They said their first priority was to make the services attractive to consumers and that the details of compensation could be worked out afterward.
In a letter responding to a lawyer who is trying to remove an artist from Pressplay, the head of business affairs for several Universal labels, Rand Hoffman, set out a company position. It is a view shared by other record executives, who say they are investing heavily to fight piracy and develop a fair compensation system for artists who are ungrateful.
"We are now spending tens of millions of dollars to help launch Pressplay in the hope that a legitimate response to the illegitimate services will provide an attractive alternative to consumers," Mr. Hoffman wrote in the letter. "Pressplay is committed to making music available on the Internet in a manner that is legal and that ensures that artists and publishers will be paid. This is truly a time for artists and record companies to be working together."
He added that it was "beyond logic" that artists would choose to leave their music off Pressplay and "effectively encourage the use of illegal services."
Though the two new services don't appear to be widely used, what worries artists and managers is that a precedent is being set, so that if the labels finally come up with a viable online music subscription service, they won't have to share a significant portion of the proceeds with artists and can claim that this is the way business has always been done.
The crux of the debate over artists' compensation involves whether they should get a licensing fee or a royalty payment.
When their music is used in movies, in commercials and on Internet sites, artists are paid a licensing fee, which, after payments to the producer and the publisher, is split 50-50 between artist and label. Although Pressplay and MusicNet license the music, the bands are not paid a licensing fee. Instead, the labels pay their artists a standard royalty for each song accessed by a fan, as they would for a CD sold.
This means that the artist gets on average less than 15 percent instead of 50 percent. But, out of that, 35 to 45 percent is deducted for standard CD expenses like packaging and promotional copies — expenses that obviously don't exist in the online world.
As one rock manager computes it, if a consumer buys the standard Gold Plan on Pressplay, paying $19.95 for 75 songs downloaded to a hard drive and 750 streamed so that they can be heard only once, an artist, after these deductions, gets $.0023 per song downloaded. To earn a penny, more than four songs must be downloaded.
"I did the math with several other managers and lawyers, and the labels and Pressplay get just under 91 percent after they've paid all the artists for all the downloads," said Jim Guerinot, who manages No Doubt, Offspring, Beck and Chris Cornell. Other managers come up with other figures that they say are even worse for the artists.
The artists' managers and lawyers say the record companies have not committed their payment system to writing.
Representatives for Pressplay and MusicNet said that the payment schedule was a decision made by the labels. "Pressplay licenses its content from record labels and in turn packages the music on our service," said Seth Oster, a spokesman for the company. "The compensation of artists takes place at the label level."
"Pressplay was developed as a legitimate service to make sure artists' rights were respected and artists were compensated," he added.
A spokeswoman for MusicNet said, "We are deeply committed to artists' rights and to ensuring that copyright holders are compensated."
Another irritant for the artists, several lawyers and managers say, is the distribution of the $170 million settlement from MP3.com, an Internet company that offered a music storage service in violation of copyright law.
The labels were to share that money with artists whose music was put online without authorization, but several artists' representatives said nothing had been distributed.
Spokesmen for Sony (news/quote) and BMG said those companies were arranging to distribute the money. According to Warner Brothers and Universal Music, the money has been distributed, although it may not have been spelled out exactly in the accounting statements artists received. EMI did not call with a comment.
For many acts, suddenly there appears to be little difference between the illicit file-sharing system and record-label services.
The arguments the labels are using, said Jill Berliner, a leading music lawyer, are exactly the ones Napster made. "And, from our perspective, if the technology is going to be out there and the artist isn't really going to make money, we'd prefer that our fans just get it for free," she said.
Another complaint is that the labels are licensing music to the subscription services without seeking permission from the musicians.
"All of a sudden this thing launches," Mr. Guerinot said, "and myself and a lot of other managers and lawyers had never even been asked about it. We have coupling rights in our contract, which means they can't just take our music and put it wherever they please. When I try to talk to them, they say that they don't have to discuss this."
Mr. Guerinot said he sent cease- and-desist letters on behalf of Offspring, Beck and No Doubt. As a result, he said, music from No Doubt and Offspring was removed from Pressplay, but not the music of Beck.
One manager of million-selling acts, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "We've written them letters and put them on notice up front, as did most managers and lawyers, saying, `Don't put our artists' music up.' But they'll do it anyway. They're so arrogant. They're taking the position of: `We don't care. Let's just do it without asking.' They're ignoring their contracts. It's ridiculous. Obviously it will be litigated."
Some managers, however, said that they felt bullied into including their music on the services and were powerless to do anything about it. "Of course we're upset about it," said the manager of one male artist. "But he hasn't even turned in his record yet, so what leg do we really have to stand on?"
To try to avoid future protests, most major labels have added a clause to their standard recording contracts allowing the label to sell an act's songs on the Internet, including all subscription and pay-per-use services. It is very difficult, said Mr. Stiffelman, for a new band to have enough leverage to remove this clause from its contract.
"Stormy weather" for copy protected CDs:
http://uk.eurorights.org/issues/cd/docs/natimb.shtml
4video/gernb1: I must add my own commendations
to you, gernb1, for the style and substance of your posts about the music business and internet music downloads. You are realistic, accurate and without bias; I greatly appreciate THAT approach.
4video, you have given a pretty accurate review of the current situation, and with only minor corrections, I concur, as well.
My feelings about the industry, the "big 5," encryption and their use of the internet for promotional purposes only, don't require repetition.
Thanks for being honest, and the very best holiday wishes to you and all others of good will. MH
DANL: No,
Until there is immensely more broadband available, digital transfer of music represents no threat to the brick and mortar music outlets. Last April, Sony backed off its online distribution of music plan quickly when the large chains moved their new product to poorly visible locations in the stores.
The Mafia (as per our chat discussion), and these stores are hardly that "organization," is very well integrated into the WHOLESALE distribution of music, with the labels dependent on their "services" just as the king depends upon his army to maintain order in the fiefdom.
BERGE: Many thanks!//
With Napster Down, Its Audience Fans Out
By MATT RICHTEL
The record industry's largely successful effort to cripple Napster, the online music site turned social phenomenon, has left it facing something potentially worse: a new generation of music-swapping sites, more numerous and much harder to police.
Figures to be released today show that a precipitous drop in Napster's traffic over the last several weeks has been paralleled by marked growth in more than half a dozen less centralized services. Those services, some of them based overseas, not only welcome millions of Napster refugees, but also complicate matters for the industry by scattering a once-concentrated audience, and relying on technology that may be insulated from legal attack.
"Napster is probably dead," said Brian Itschner, 29, a law office manager in Tampa, Fla., and former Napster user who has moved to MusicCity.com. "But it hasn't stopped this" free-music exchange movement.
Six of the alternative services had 320,000 to 1.1 million users each in May, according to figures to be released today from Jupiter Media Metrix (news/quote), a Web traffic measuring service. Five of those services had little traffic or did not even exist in February.
Those figures are consistent with those from other services that track Internet use. Last week, people initiated downloads of 1.1 million copies of software for the MusicCity service — retrieving the program on the Web site of Download.com, a software clearinghouse offered by Cnet Networks on which hundreds of programs are available. The program, called Morpheus, was the single most downloaded program on the site. The second most popular was also a file-exchange program, Audiogalaxy Satellite, with 977,000 downloads.
Other programs used to exchange music, called BearShare, LimeWire, KaZaA and iMesh, were all among the top 10 most downloaded programs on Download.com. They have emerged, industry analysts say, as users have become accustomed to obtaining music online but as a vacuum was created by the demise of Napster and the failure of record labels to create their own for-pay services quickly. The record companies have promised to create such services by summer's end.
"With Napster not working, all 50 million users are most likely looking for an alternative," said Scott Arpajian, vice president of Cnet Download.com.
Napster has been out of service since July 1, when the company stopped all file sharing so that it could integrate new technology to allow it to better block the trading of copyrighted files not authorized for exchange. The company, which is under a court order to block such files, said its filtering system was 99 percent effective, but said it had not decided when to put the service back up. It, too, has pledged to offer a pay service by summer's end.
But it remains to be seen whether people will return to Napster, which once claimed 70 million users, if they cannot freely exchange popular music. Strong evidence suggests that, even before Napster went offline, the number of songs traded on the site plummeted as much as 95 percent when it began filtering unlicensed copyrighted files, according to Webnoize, a digital music research company.
Matthew Bailey, an analyst with Webnoize, said one critical tool helping fuel the new generation of sites was a program called Fast Track, which is the underlying software of the KaZaA and MusicCity services.
Fast Track is the creation of Niklas Zennstrom, chief executive of Fast Track, based in Amsterdam, which operates the KaZaA service. Mr. Zennstrom said KaZaA was fundamentally different from Napster because the exchange relied less on computers operated by the company and more on users' computers. On Napster, users exchange files that they have on their own computers. But when Napster users want to find what song is available on other computers, they send their search requests through Napster's central computers, which in turn search the individual computers to see whether a music file is available.
Users of Fast Track software also trade music from their own computers, but they also use their own computers to search. Specifically, the software searches the network of users for those with the most powerful computers, turning those computers temporarily into a search hub, or "supernode," that other users can tap into to search the rest of the network.
Such a concept of decentralized search and exchange is not new, with related services like Gnutella in existence for more than a year. But analysts said the difference was that the new generation was becoming increasingly easy to use, while becoming increasingly more difficult to police, possibly forcing record companies to sue individual users, a daunting, if not impossible task.
The Recording Industry Association of America, which sued Napster on behalf of the record companies alleging copyright infringement, said it was studying the new generation of services. "We have been reaching out to companies like Fast Track to address these issues constructively," Cary Sherman, the association's general counsel, said in a statement. He added that the group hoped to "work through them informally and avoid litigation."
Mr. Zennstrom said that his software, while it might be used for music now, was designed as a generic program for the exchange of files. He declined to discuss the legal implications. A company spokesman, Mike McGinley, based in Los Angeles, said the company was discussing with several record companies how they might license the Fast Track software to build their own services. "If we could make a deal with even one of them, we'd probably shut the site down," he said.
One licensee already of the Fast Track software is MusicCity.com, a Web site with headquarters in Franklin, Tenn., that has folded Fast Track into its own software, Morpheus. Steve Griffin, the chairman of MusicCity, said the company was not responsible for what files users exchanged because the trades took place through their own computers. And he said that while the service was called MusicCity, suggesting it is meant to be used to exchange music files, users could also exchange files like "term papers or prom pictures."
But Mr. Griffin said MusicCity's computers did become involved in one respect: they will be used to provide advertising to the service's users. The company plans to make money by running banner ads on its site and placing audio-based spots between songs. Mr. Griffin said that the service had 518,000 simultaneous users on Wednesday, a record.
Some of the service's users say the site has become a haven for Napster refugees. "Most people have come over from Napster," said Mr. Itschner, who said he talked with fellow users in a chat room he operates on the MusicCity site. Mr. Itschner said he had downloaded more than 120 full albums in the last year from the Internet, first from Napster, then from MusicCity, and he said he had not bought a single album during that time.
Meanwhile, some MusicCity participants belong to a new generation of Internet users who are coming of age in what they call a post-Napster era. One of them is Bastian Schubert, a 19-year-old in Salzgitter, Germany. Mr. Schubert said that he used Napster periodically on friends' computers, but that when he got his own Internet connection, he "jumped right into Morpheus."
"Napster is very slow compared to the new trading sites," he said, adding that if Napster did emerge again, it would be a for-pay service. "It will cost money, and most users don't want to pay for music."
GROSCAILLOUX: If I'm not mistaken,
Donna is John Bastian's wife. I believe that the info she gave you, coupled with CDR's email from JB, is accurate. Despite all the nonsense surrounding the "birth" of the TREO, I consider Bastian to be a straight-shooter, FWIW.
Big news from Platinum Equities:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=717269
CKSLA: Ahhh! Reality rears it's ugly haid!
Public Service Announcement
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=703231
gernb1: wow.
AOL-Microsoft Talks Ended by a Growing Rivalry
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/18/technology/18SOFT.html
OT For Berge, cksla, & other New Yorkers:
I know this is against the rules; I'd normally post it on the free-wheelin' RB board, but........
In a Life of Jazz, a Jarring Note
BY COREY KILGANNON
05/27/01
PHIL SCHAAP has spent just about every day for the last 30 years preaching the gospel of jazz from the campus of Columbia University.
As a longtime D. J. at the university's radio station, Mr. Schaap is considered the dean of jazz radio in New York. In a city thick with jazz aficionados, Mr. Schaap is also widely conceded to be its most knowledgeable jazz historian. And in his pedagogical if often overbearing on-air style, he has taught jazz to generations of New Yorkers, from musicians to scholars to casual listeners.
His fame extends far beyond the city. In January he appeared in Ken Burns's documentary "Jazz," and in February he won his seventh Grammy Award for his work reissuing older jazz recordings.
"There isn't anyone in the country who knows more about this music than he," said Max Roach, the jazz drummer.
But now Mr. Schaap's New York years may be coming to an end. The reason is a hiring dispute with the very institution from which many have thought him to be inseparable: Columbia.
Mr. Schaap, tall and trim at 50, began teaching jazz at Columbia when he gave guest lectures as a freshman, and has worked there for years as an adjunct professor. Then, when the school opened its Center for Jazz Studies last year, expanding its jazz curriculum and faculty, his hopes of being hired full time peaked.
The university, however, offered him no classes to teach this school year. Nor, he said, has it responded to his requests about his status. Complaining that the university has long ignored his tireless work and never given him proper recognition, he asked, "If they're expanding their jazz studies department, why am I being decreased?"
Elaine Sisman, chairwoman of Columbia's music department, said that Mr. Schaap had not formally applied for a professorship and that, anyway, he had little chance of being hired full time, although he might fill in for absent professors. She said Columbia's music professors, who are expected to teach diverse musical styles, including ethnic and classical, all have postgraduate degrees, mostly doctorates. But Mr. Schaap, she said, has only a bachelor's degree in American history.
"It's not even clear if we could hire him," she said. "The department would have to get a special dispensation."
Whoever is right, the dispute raises the specter that this living jazz archive may soon depart from the school and even the city to which he has long been linked. To listeners of his hallmark radio show, and to Mr. Schaap himself, that idea makes as much sense as the Statue of Liberty retiring to Palm Beach.
Nevertheless, "I've started shopping myself around," he said. "I only have so many decades left. I'm not a young man anymore, and lately I've become worried about how to deposit what I know about jazz. I'd like to find an academic home. I'd prefer it be Columbia, but if an offer came from another university, I'd be gone."
Currently, Mr. Schaap teaches jazz history as an adjunct professor at Princeton University and the Manhattan School of Music (neither has a full-time position available). He also researches old jazz recordings and remasters them — improves the sound and transfers them to digital formats — for major labels like Sony and Universal. And at the Columbia station, WKCR-FM (89.9), he is host for three jazz shows: a Monday afternoon jazz program; "Traditions in Swing," a Saturday evening show that has run for 30 years; and his best-known show, "Bird Flight," a weekday morning program devoted to Charlie Parker's improvisations.
A Memory for Details
A striking knowledge of detail runs through all of Mr. Schaap's work. On "Bird Flight," his off-the-cuff lectures last much longer than Parker's solos, and include enough historical minutiae to leave some listeners screaming at their radios for less matter and more art.
Mr. Schaap has a flypaper memory. He can rattle off lists ranging from all the United States vice presidents to rosters of 1960's professional hockey teams. If he knows you, he knows your birthday, and he knows thousands. If you give him a date in the last century, he can tell you the day of the week it fell on. For example, he was born on April 8, 1951, a Sunday.
As a child, Phil was a master at Concentration, the memory-testing card game. "He never lost at it," said his first cousin, Dick Schaap, the sports journalist. "He had this weird memory."
Philip Van Noorden Schaap grew up in Hollis, Queens, the only child of Walter and Marjorie Schaap. Both were bohemian jazz buffs. His father, a jazz scholar, graduated from Columbia College in 1937, when it was a hotbed for jazz experts like Ralph J. Gleason, Barry Ulanov and Orrin Keepnews. Mrs. Schaap was a classically trained pianist from a religious family, who courted scandal during her Radcliffe years by listening to jazz records and smoking a corncob pipe.
At home, she played her son her favorite jazz solos. She played the Count Basie Orchestra's 1939 recording of "Taxi War Dance" until the needle wore through the 78 r.p.m. disc. By age 5, Phil could whistle the entire Basie tune, including Lester Young's saxophone solo.
Two days short of his sixth birthday, he bought his first jazz albums, at Triboro Records in Jamaica. It was April 6, 1957, a Saturday, and he got his baby sitter to take him there by completing her geometry homework.
Today, he splits his 20,000 recordings between his West 24th Street apartment and his father's house in Hollis.
Mr. Schaap came by his vast jazz knowledge by befriending many jazz legends. He has met just about every major jazz figure who lived into the late 1950's, including Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and he was friends with musicians like Roy Eldridge, Charles Mingus and Dizzy Gillespie. He also pumped them for information, and now has a collection of 3,000 recorded interviews. "He knows more about us than we know about ourselves," said Mr. Roach, the drummer.
In the 1950's, many black jazz musicians had begun settling into Hollis and other middle-class neighborhoods in Queens, a fortunate fact of geography for a fledgling jazz buff. At an early age, Phil was knocking on the door of every musician he could find, from Buck Clayton to Milt Hinton. In the first grade, he persuaded Carol Eldridge, daughter of the trumpeter Roy Eldridge, to introduce him to her father.
Walter Schaap, 83, said he himself rarely had the nerve to approach the early jazz legends about whom he wrote. "When I started hearing that Phil was going around meeting all the jazz greats at the age of 6," he said, "I wondered if it was all fantasy."
Young Phil also became friends with Papa Jo Jones, with whom he watched Bugs Bunny cartoons in Mr. Jones's Manhattan apartment and drank tea with lots of milk and sugar. At 14, Phil tracked down Count Basie by slyly thumbing a ride with him into Manhattan and then amazing the musician with details about Basie band members and repertory. Soon, he became something of a mascot to the Basie players.
Given the music connections of Phil's parents, the big picnics the Schaap family held in Cunningham Park in Queens were often attended by Mr. Clayton, Mr. Jones and other jazz greats. At 16, Phil was already six feet tall and had as insatiable an appetite for soul food as he did for jazz anecdotes. He often challenged musicians to eating contests, most often Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the saxophonist famous for playing three horns at once and for his equally astounding capacity for multiple meals.
Some musicians merely tolerated Phil's enthusiasm, while others applauded it and encouraged him to continue recording the oral history of jazz. Mr. Jones punctuated his jazz lessons with the refrain, "Pass it on."
Musicians have themselves come to depend on Mr. Schaap's memory. He recalled that Sun Ra, the jazz pianist who claimed to be from Saturn, "kidnapped" him one night in the late 70's from a nightclub and began driving toward Boston. Mr. Ra said he was lecturing at Harvard University the next day and needed a refresher about his tenure on Earth. Among other things, Mr. Schaap informed him that, according to his union application, he was born in Birmingham on May 22, 1914, a Friday, and that his favorite ice cream was banana-strawberry from Baskin-Robbins.
Once, in 1981, Mr. Schaap reminded Count Basie of an exchange Basie had had with the pianist Fats Waller in a Harlem nightclub in the 1930's. Basie had long since forgotten relating this obscure memory to a teenage Phil Schaap.
Years later, Grover Mitchell, leader of the Count Basie Orchestra, told Mr. Schaap: "That really shook Basie up. He thinks you're a demon, man."
In retrospect, Mr. Schaap said: "I don't know why they wanted to talk to me. Either I was just some cute kid, or maybe they saw it, even at my young age, as an investment in their legacy."
A Bottomless Pit of Knowledge
For decades, Columbia has been the setting for Phil Schaap's love affair with jazz. "He had a passion for chronology and dates," said James P. Shenton, a retired history professor who invited Mr. Schaap to deliver guest lectures during his freshman year. "He was a bottomless pit of jazz knowledge, just awesome."
Teaching his own classes, Mr. Schaap is known as a stern taskmaster. New students should be prepared to sing the first line of "Stardust," and by semester's end better be able to hear the difference between a Louis Armstong solo and one by Bix Beiderbecke.
But then, Mr. Schaap himself learned jazz the hard way. The big band singer Al Hibbler once told Mr. Schaap not to bother visiting again until he could hear the difference between Charlie Parker and one of Parker's early mentors, John Jackson.
The Columbia radio station has been jazz central for Mr. Schaap since his freshman year. In WKCR's cluttered temporary studios in Riverside Church, numerous metal shelves hold reel-to-reel tapes of Mr. Schaap's jazz interviews. Although it seems odd, this collection, totaling about 5,000 hours and sitting unguarded in a chaotic student-run radio station, may well be the world's largest accumulation of such oral histories.
Mr. Schaap has helped turn WKCR from a fledgling college station into a worldwide jazz institution. He as well as past and present station managers say he has helped keep the station running by raising $2 million over the years, soliciting big checks from Woody Allen and other devoted listeners and even auctioning off his own rare 78's. (Columbia provides the station with studio space, allots $50,000 a year toward its $200,000 annual operating budget and gives it roughly $40,000 a year from rent paid by other stations to use Columbia's broadcasting equipment.)
Recently, Mr. Schaap slumped in a chair in the studio after spending almost 24 hours straight on a marathon jazz broadcast. He was soon rejuvenated by three things: drinking a large cup of coffee; talking about himself; and playing a Count Basie record. When an undergraduate D. J. walked in, he sprang from his chair and began swing- dancing with her, twirling her around the cramped studio, looking like Ichabod Crane playing Fred Astaire.
Even when doing serious archival work, Mr. Schaap clowns with the students at WKCR. When people join, he asks their birthday and informs them of its relevance to jazz. He rewards dedicated students with prized records from his collection.
Hundreds of students have gone through the Phil Schaap school of jazz radio, gathering at station meetings around his size 12 1/2 red Converse high-tops. Many of the former students have made careers in jazz radio, archiving or teaching.
"Me and so many other students, we all sort of modeled ourselves on him," said Ben Young, Columbia '92, who was a protégé of Mr. Schaap's at WKCR and has made a career of researching and remastering old jazz recordings at major record labels.
Formidable but Unofficial
But Mr. Schaap's relationship with the university is complex. He is friends with many influential deans, professors and alumni, and has distinguished himself as a Columbia man. Yet, all the while, he has worked on the fringes of the institution, with no office, teaching only as an adjunct. Even at WKCR his status is unofficial; although Columbia has permitted several alumni D. J.'s, especially Mr. Schaap, to remain there for training purposes, university policy formally restricts the station to students.
Still, many of Mr. Schaap's followers say that his contributions to Columbia have been sizable, and that the school should recognize his work as it expands its curriculum with its new jazz center.
"For someone who's been here rooting for jazz forever and to all of a sudden see it blossoming and be on the outside looking in, you could see how it would make you feel uncomfortable," said Mark Burford, a Columbia graduate student who teaches a survey class on Western music. "There are few resources anywhere in the world like Phil Schaap. It would be a shame for Columbia to have that resource and let it stay hoarded away in WKCR."
Phil's father, Walter Schaap, added, "He's become an orphan at the university, and I think he's hurt deeply by it."
But Professor Sisman, the department chairwoman, reiterated that Mr. Schaap had a thin résumé for a professorship and had never formally applied for the post.
"He has done wonderfully for us and been a real resource as needed," she said. "But I thought he was spoken for and that he had his career going."
Robert E. Pollack, dean of Columbia College from 1982 to 1989 and now a biology professor, said that few would dispute Mr. Schaap's expertise, but that "he's at the pinnacle of a different mountain at Columbia," one that seems unlikely to lift him to a professorship.
Mr. Schaap admits that he does little to ingratiate himself to academia. He avoids music department discussions and lectures, and refuses to pursue a graduate degree. He is often critical of typical academic approaches to jazz, preferring to speak to the musicians rather than consulting texts.
"Columbia owes Phil Schaap a lot, and I'd like to see them recognize his intellectual excellence and productivity," Professor Pollack concluded. "But you don't suddenly become a professor by living for 30 years in a student radio station."
Too Many Absent Friends
"It's one of the greatest tragedies of all time," Mr. Schaap said the other day, kneeling on the soiled carpet in the WKCR studio to adjust a tape player. He was lamenting that the reel-to-reel tape he long used deteriorates with age, and that, all told, he will spend 20 years transferring his interviews to digital audiotape.
There are signs of age and change elsewhere in his world. For one, Mr. Schaap, who was always the gangly guy with the untamed hair, is less wigged out. The hair is neater, and the Lester Young Fan Club jacket has given way to a blazer and tie. His friends wonder, has Phil Schaap actually grown up?
He certainly surprised many of them by marrying several years ago — he always seemed betrothed to jazz — but he and his wife, a schoolteacher, have since separated.
He is lonely for another reason. "I grew up with friends 40 years older than me, and most of them are dead now," he said.
One of those friends was Buddy Tate, the saxophonist, whom Mr. Schaap first met at 6. He had been the last living member of Mr. Schaap's beloved Basie band, and Mr. Tate's death in February hit Mr. Schaap extra hard.
"It's like he has 600 grandparents, and there's someone dying almost on a weekly basis," said Ben Young, Mr. Schaap's former student.
Moreover, the charmed jazz world Mr. Schaap glimpsed as a child, with the thriving nightclubs on 52nd Street, is all but gone. The slow decline of jazz from its heyday sometimes weighs heavily on him.
In the studio one day recently, he turned briefly morose. He had just been a guest teacher in a Newark school district where "not one person — student, teacher or administrator — has heard of Teddy Wilson," the pianist who played with Benny Goodman during the swing era.
And Mr. Schaap's father is ill, so one day there will be nothing left for him in Hollis. Soon, there may be nothing at Columbia, either.
But Mr. Schaap has no intention of abandoning his mission, even if it means leaving New York. What else is there to do but pass it on? For Papa Jo Jones, and for jazz.
v. 2.1 wchb1
Lucent and Alcatel Call Off Merger Talks
NEW YORK (AP) -- Merger talks between French telecommunications giant Alcatel SA and Lucent Technologies Inc. were called off Tuesday after intense negotiations over the long holiday weekend failed to yield an agreement.
In a statement, both companies said that the negotiations in Paris had failed, but didn't disclose why they ended the talks.
Sources said disagreements over how to share control of the combined company were the main roadblocks preventing what would have been one of the largest takeovers of a U.S. company by a foreign concern.
Lucent officials apparently balked because Alcatel refused to treat the deal as a merger of equals.
``Lucent was negotiating a merger, not an acquisition, and when it became clear that was not the way things were going the company decided to pursue its own path,'' said one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Another source said Lucent wanted equal representation among the combined company's senior managers and on its board, but Alcatel would not agree to those terms.
Analysts had said the new company would have a work force of more than 200,000 but would probably have had to cut 20,000 to 30,000 jobs to trim costs.
Since the start of the year, financially plagued Lucent has announced plans to reduce its work force by as many as 16,000 jobs as it streamlines operations and sells off some of its factories.
Analyst Steven Koffler of First Union Securities said Lucent faces an uncertain future without the backing Alcatel would have provided.
``This is going to be tough because of a lot of internal problems they're having and because of the state of the industry right now,'' he said.
News reports set Lucent's price at between $23.5 billion and $32 billion.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the talks centered on a deal at the lower price that would have excluded Lucent's 58 percent stake in Lucent subsidiary Agere Systems, a maker of semiconductors used in communications systems.
Murray Hill, N.J.-based Lucent, which was spun off from AT&T Corp. in 1996, is the second-most widely owned stock in America, owned by 5.4 million investors. The first is insurer MetLife.
Lucent's research arm, formerly known as Bell Labs, has been a wellspring of U.S. technological innovation over the years. Its 30,000 scientists have had a role in developing such landmark inventions as the transistor, the laser and superconductors.
But Lucent has fallen on hard times amid a string of strategic missteps and profit disappointments that led to the ouster of chief executive Richard McGinn and a major restructuring. The company's shares are hovering at about one-tenth of their all-time high hit in late 1999.
What made the ``deal possible is that Lucent is weakened, both financially and strategically,'' said Jean-Claude Delcroix, a Brussels-based telecommunications expert at technology research firm Gartner. ``It made poor investment decisions in the past, while its strategic vision for the future has floundered.''
Analysts said that a deal by Alcatel, which chief executive Serge Tchuruk has built into a diversified maker of cell phones, high-speed telecommunications equipment and Internet switches, would have made it a major player in the U.S. market.
More than half of Alcatel's sales are in Europe, while 23 percent of its revenue comes from the United States.
In trading Tuesday afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange, Lucent shares were down 11.5 percent, or $1.08, to close at $8.32 a share, while Alcatel's U.S. shares were down 70 cents, or 2.5 percent, at $27.41.
In extended trading Lucent shares rose 2.8 percent, or 23 cents, at $8.55 a share, while Alcatel's U.S. shares were up $2.34, or 8.5 percent, at $29.75.
But much worse,
is the following information about RealNetworks:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=683499
LGJ: I've been wondering
how long it would take for the reality of this and the Duets basic premise to sink in with our shareholders.
Here are a few more quotes from that or other articles about MusicNet:
"When a user downloads a song, it remains available for 30 days, at
which point the user can decide to renew the license for 30 more
days, as long as the monthly fee is paid again. For the moment, songs
cannot be copied to a portable music player, or purchased for
permanent use. (Features of both MusicNet, and Duet)
But at least at first, neither service will allow users to purchase
the music permanently because of record company concerns about
cannibalization of their sales of CD's if consumers are able to
cherry-pick the songs they want from an online service.
By playing show-and-tell with their nascent services in front of the
Congressional panel, record company representatives are in part
seeking to pre-empt any Congressional effort to induce them to offer
online catalogs more quickly or completely than they might like."