Cherry

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By BILL DESOWITZ

Contributing Reporter

While the music industry prepares for the onslaught of Internet distribution, the newly formed Cherry Lane Digital consulting firm is poised to reap the benefits of the digital domain.

In its first month of operation, the L.A.-based division has immediately begun helping music companies strategically maximize online distribution opportunities and procure higher royalty payments. Cherry Lane Digital is also bringing artists closer to their fans via one-to-one relationships on the Internet.

The timing couldn’t be better. Everyone from superstar David Bowie to rock chart climber Limp Bizkit is hitting the Net with full force this month.???????????? And Cherry Lane Digital appears to have all the resources to market the Net for all it’s worth.??????????

The new consulting firm was conceived as a joint venture between Cherry Lane Music Publishing Co., which has administrative and co-publishing deals with the likes of DreamWorks SKG, HBO and 4Kids Prods.??????????(“Pokemon”)??????, and OneHouse, which advises music and software companies how to use the Internet. Thus, Cherry Lane Digital can aggressively put all the right people together to exploit every revenue possibility in the digital world.???????STILL FDONT KNOW WHAT THESE DO???????

“We’re trying to move people from an analog base to a digital base,” explains Liz Dubelman, president of Cherry Lane Digital. “We don’t want clients left behind. We keep an eye on the digital market??????? so they can be left alone to manage their intellectual properties. We can’t be all things to all people, so we try to figure out what works best for a particular client.”

This includes various strategies: From planning and monitoring Web sites to promoting and distributing music samplers on the Internet.

In fact, one of Cherry Lane’s clients, E Pluribus, an independent label owned by the rock group Counting Crows, has formed its own online radio station, the perfect vehicle for Dubelman’s division.

Another plan is to turn a local club, The Jazz Bakery, into an online jazz business center. “It’s all about marketing synergy in the digital world,” Dubelman adds.?????????

With everyone worried about digital piracy, Dubelman’s division??? is paying very close attention to copyright protection. “The Rolling Stones are one of our clients, and we’re constantly monitoring their name on the Internet,” she says. “We use different tracking software and a lot of researchers. You don’t want to shut down fan sites. There’s a lot of profit associated with this, and a whole new way of selling merchandise. But there’s a lot of misuse of merchandising on the Web that we have to monitor.”?????????MAYBE THIS IS OUR WAY IN

While downloading compressed audio and video files onto computer hard drives has become increasingly popular as well as controversial because of the piracy issue???????????? Dubelman and her colleagues have embraced?????????????an alternative known as “streaming.” This involves playing a file while it’s still downloading the equivalent of a Net broadcast.

“It’s the difference between ‘push’ and ‘pull’ technology,” Dubelman offers. “When I get the New York Times delivered every morning, that’s called ‘push.’ But when I go online to read the New York Times, that’s called ‘pull,’ because I’m pulling what information I want, and they can tailor it for me.

“It’s what streaming is all about. With downloading, it’s very time consuming and a technical nuisance. Say your computer suddenly crashes. Who do you call? Also, we found that once a user downloads a single, there’s no incentive to buy the CD.

“But with streaming you can borrow music off the Internet that’s customized to your needs. You can play anything you want, when you want. You can play it on your computer or in your car. You decide on the playlist.”whats incentive to buy???????????

Dubelman believes streaming is where the music industry is headed, but she doesn’t think the CD will become obsolete anytime soon. And yet the writing is clearly on the wall. Just last week, DreamWorks Records signed a promotional agreement with Music.com to place DreamWorks artists on several of its???????????????????? prime Web sites.

According to published accounts, it’s all part of a struggle to maintain control of intellectual property in the digital world. Whereas some independent artists have reportedly embraced downloading as a way of bypassing conventional distribution to keep all of the profits, streaming allows mainstream companies to profit big time on the Internet.

“Streaming puts a pragmatic face on the business,” Dubelman says.

Eventually, the industry will evolve into an online delivery infrastructure, according to proponents of streaming. That means music will become a subscription service rather than a software product. Everyone will be in the digital loop and all piracy problems will theoretically be solved through encryption. In other words, why copy it if you can get it whenever you want?

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