Rockbites: NYC indie label TVT drops Napster lawsuit

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January 2001 • Rockbites Alternative Daily

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NYC indie label TVT drops Napster lawsuit
26 January 2001

TVT Records, one of the largest US indie labels and party to the primary industry lawsuit against music-file sharing service Napster, has become the first to drop all legal proceedings. They announced yesterday that in lieu of seeking more than US$1 billion in damages, they will participate fully in Napster’s forthcoming fee-based service first announced in collaboration with Bertelsmann AG (BMG) last year.
    TVT president and founder Steve Gottlieb said “The future [fee-based] Napster offers the opportunity to reach music fans in unprecedented and as yet unimagined ways. Word-of-mouth has always been critical to breaking our artists -- now we have harnessed the power of the fastest growing 'word-of-net' vehicle in existence. It is high time that the industry embraces a service that the public has so emphatically said they want.”
    The deal, which was signed and sealed yesterday, will eventually put TVT owned and controlled master recordings directly onto Napster. Gottlieb also becomes an official advisor to Napster, whose CEO Hank Barry said “This new arrangement is further evidence that the alliance we developed with Bertelsmann is the right direction for the industry to take.”
    The Napster deal is the third major step toward online music delivery taken by TVT in as many years. In 1999 they posted 1,500 tracks for free download in timebombed Windows Media format, and last year they started selling dozens of albums by Internet download in collaboration with HMV record stores. The Napster MP3 deal far outshadows those forays in visibility and potential impact on the industry. Artists potentially affected include Autechre, Guided By Voices, KMFDM, Laibach, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Nothingface, Sevendust, Snoop Dogg, XTC, and dozens of others, not to mention soundtracks and TV themes. | TVT Records | | Napster | | top of page |

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