Word: bertelsmann
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...NAPSTER? When Bertelsmann boss Thomas Middelhoff announced that the free music service would start charging a subscription fee by summer, a lot of people were surprised--including Napster CEO Hank Barry. "We haven't decided on a time schedule at all," Barry told Reuters. So what's holding it up? Before Napster can charge for downloads, it has to cut licensing-fee deals with most of the record companies (not just sugar daddy Bertelsmann), many of which are still suing Napster for "pirating" their music. As long as the labels prefer punitive damages to a piece...
...Napsters of the world weren't designed to make the Shawn Fannings of the world rich - more to Stick It To The Man, and change the music business from without. And it's already working. Back in October, while the appeals process was still underway, Napster and Big Fiver Bertelsmann cut a deal to turn the renegade into a profit-making (and officially sanctioned) music-selling arm of said Man, with funding by Bertelsmann and mechanics by Napster...
...Bertelsmann and Napster b) Time Warner and AOL c) Vodaphone and AirTouch d) Gucci and LVMH
...music-swapping program. He didn't realize that the task was too hard, that people were too selfish to share, that big companies would shut him down. By the end of 2000, Napster had upended music's business model, survived a legal threat and found a sponsor in Bertelsmann, the media behemoth. Even if it wasn't supposed to happen this way, music may finally have changed the world...
This comes just as a worldwide trend toward locally produced television is kicking into high gear. But the newcomers are not fazed. "Movies like The Matrix were in that deal," Koenig says. "Kirch and Bertelsmann have a tremendous library of films, but they will still need to put up blockbusters from time to time when the public stations run something big." Either way, a wedge exists between the big old German boys and Hollywood's hot new indie producers...