The discussion began when moderator Jason McCabe Calacanis asked whether Napster, perhaps the year's most innovative software program, presents a problem for artists. Chris and Rich Robinson voiced their agreement. The crux of the issue is royalties, and the fact that artists aren't generally receiving them for music available online. We think we've developed a way for artists to make more money than they ever have and we want to be a forum for that. Rich Robinson asked.
Merchandise is where the money is made.
It's like the '60s, when you could produce a single and distribute it yourself. Our songs are our lives. That's the way we've chosen to be creative and they're not something to be tampered with. Despite this assumption, Jupiter Communications predicts that pure digital music distribution will account for a measly 3 percent of sales by 2003. If that's true, the record industry's current immobilizing paranoia of digital music distribution via the Web may prove less short-sited than sites like CDNow and SonicNet hope.