We celebrate with an Headlines Extra on the arts online. For more arts and technology news and Web resources of interest to the nonprofit arts community, subscribe to Open Studio's Weekly Digest. The Arts Online, a national initiative of the Benton Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, provides Internet access and training to artists and nonprofit arts organizations. A searchable database delivers titles and abstracts of relevant documents as well as information on how to obtain them.
Users can access reports, publications and speeches.
The new network is developing a searchable Internet database on the history and current activities in the field, information services, communications, online learning and a training directory on the Web. A conflict is brewing as record labels are quickly getting hip to digital distribution and the promotional power of the Net, and are hoping to monopolize every moneymaking angle of the online world. Traditionally, record labels have brought in their share of the revenues by selling records, often using contracts to minimize the artists' take of the profits. Record labels took ownership of the music, its marketing and sales, reserving only a tiny percentage of the take for the artists who make their money by merchandizing ancillary products, like concert tickets or T-shirts. But the rise of MP3s and freely available digital music online has record labels reassessing their business models.