Issue Date: August 19, 2001
Online music, Round 2
Is there life post-Napster? Yes. Traffic at six swap sites has surged as millions download Napster clones like Morpheus, Audiogalaxy, Bodetella and KaZaA, according to the Web tracker Jupiter Media Metrix. These new sites are as fast and user-friendly as Napster was but have smaller song catalogs. I downloaded KaZaA from CNET's Download.com and in minutes had Moby and Massive Attack on my hard drive. Admittedly, it is illegal (although these new sites may be more resistant to legal attack). But until the music industry launches a legal alternative, consumers are left to pick from the limited offerings at sites such as MP3.com, or any-song-any-time, peer-to-peer services such as KaZaA.
Meanwhile, record labels are racing to fill the void. BMG, EMI and Warner Music promise to launch a song-swapping service called MusicNet; Sony and Universal hope to set up a rival called Pressplay. But stay tuned: The digital music revolution has yet to play out; a legal, livable solution may be waiting in the wings. -- Rula Razek
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My Web: Yancy Butler
As the star of "Witchblade", TNT's summer sci-fi hit (Tuesdays, 9 p.m. ET), Yancy Butler, 31, fights bad guys with a flick of her magically dangerous wrist. In real life, the New Yorker uses her perfectly normal fingers to guide her through cyberspace on her new pearl-white iBook. Where she goes:
At self.com, she gets ideas to stay healthy despite a 16-hour-a-day shooting schedule. "I'm really into vitamins -- especially B, because it takes care of stress. I've read a lot of stuff about complex B vitamins there."
The gravelly-voiced actress, whose dad is Joe Butler of the '60s band the Lovin' Spoonful, keeps up on the music scene at rollingstone.com. "People mention newer bands and I have no idea who they're talking about. I'm into classic rock 'n' roll. These days, bands defy being categorized."
-- Michele Hatty
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