Piracy is one reason why major record companies feel uneasy about the Internet. Unable to ignore so large a market, they want help in getting their message across to the strange, young denizens. Warner paid IUMA to put short samples of music online, along with pictures and information about the artists. It was similar to what Patterson and Lord were doing already.
Now, however, like many others, the two were looking ahead to new business models. Lord had a bunch of possibilities in mind.
One was that people would pay if they liked what they heard, and maybe even give in advance. Another was that they would receive little gifts——maybe clay cats?——for making donations.
Patterson, however, offered some models that were more conventional. Gasp, his comments even sounded like an actual business plan.
First, he said, he and Lord would take orders for CDs and tapes online for companies such as Tower Records. Then IUMA would go the next step. It would sell files of music electronically. Fans would be able to use Web browsers like Netscape to encrypt credit card numbers so hackers couldn’t intercept them. Eventually IUMA would sell music for instant listening without customers first having to transfer it to their hard disks. “There could be some kind of royalty treatment,” Patterson said. “You might pay two cents every time you listened to a song. Or you could just buy an album.” Some good possibilities existed here as long as no one gouged. If people could hear music with just a tiny investment up front, that might benefit new performers.
More immediately, IUMA was helping fledgling musicians and others by way of an informal support network. Sue Few, a Santa Cruz woman who’d formerly worked for record companies, went online with a newsletter called Sound Check and offered a stream of tips on subjects such as copyright law, musicians’ unions, royalties, and lining up bookings. “Booking people aren’t so bad, are they?” she wrote. “If they enjoy your tape and feel you’ll fit well with their customers, you’ll get booked—simple as that. So they don’t return your telephone calls—keep calling until you talk to a live person and still keep calling until you get an answer and a date from them.”
IUMA itself was a calling card of sorts. Record companies and clubs could cruise the archives looking for bands to sign up.
Most important of all, however, IUMA helped potential fans and musicians get together. At the time I toured the IUMA area you could check out offerings by “Last 15 Bands” just uploaded to the archives, by artist, by label, by location, and by song title. Or you could click on a database with a number of options. I myself wanted to know more about Scott Brookman, who had written “When I Die You Can’t Have My Organs,” and who, as a result of IUMA, had been on National Public Radio.
A digitized photo showed him to be a bearded man with glasses. Something white was against his face, though I couldn’t quite discern the shape. I hoped it wasn’t a stray from an anatomy lab.
Messages on the screen said IUMA would let Netfolks listen to Brookman’s “Organs” in stereo or mono. I clicked on the latter option and watched the bottom of my screen as it showed the number of bytes passing over the wires from a computer in California to my 486DX-class machine. Within 45 seconds I’d received a 119K file. In size it was equivalent to maybe 60 double-spaced, typewritten pages even though this was music not text.