Internet Underground Music Archive

Vitaminic, a leading European online music venture, is expanding its presence in the United States by acquiring the Internet Underground Music Archive, a pioneering online effort to promote little-known bands. IUMA founder Jeff Patterson said that Vitaminic, which is based in Milan, Italy, agreed to pay EMusic of Redwood City, Calif., $900,000 in cash and stock for IUMA.

Vitaminic, a leading European online music venture, is expanding its presence in the United States by acquiring the Internet Underground Music Archive, a pioneering online effort to promote little-known bands. IUMA founder Jeff Patterson said that Vitaminic, which is based in Milan, Italy, agreed to pay EMusic of Redwood City, Calif., $900,000 in cash and stock for IUMA.

Troubled online music retailer EMusic of Redwood City, Calif., has stopped funding the Internet Underground Music Archive, a pioneering online music venture designed to promote little-known bands. EMusic bought IUMA in June 1999 in a stock swap worth roughly $7.6 million, although the value of those shares has since tumbled to less than $200,000.

Troubled online music retailer EMusic of Redwood City, Calif., has stopped funding the Internet Underground Music Archive, a pioneering online music venture designed to promote little-known bands. EMusic bought IUMA in June 1999 in a stock swap worth roughly $7.6 million, although the value of those shares has since tumbled to less than $200,000.

Music is one of the largest subject categories on the World Wide Web, where many thousands of pages have been created by major record companies, tiny independent labels, artists and online publishers of electronic magazines, among many others. Online service providers such as America Online (AOL), Prodigy and CompuServe also have music sites. To explore the Web's cybermusic scene, a good place to start is Yahoo!, the Web search tool. Go to Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.

Worried about where you'll find free music if the Recording Industry Assn. of America succeeds in its bid to shut down Napster and other music-swapping sites? A solution may be at hand. All you have to do is be one of the first 10 people to name your newborn "Iuma," after the Internet Underground Music Archive and you or your child will receive $100 worth of free music each month for the rest of your kid's life. According to the contest rules, IUMA, a unit of New York-based EMusic.

In a plush suburban home just north of this seaside city, a young woman named Dracon and her girlfriend Goddess are gathered around a computer in their living room. Picori, a friend who has stopped by to visit, plops down in front of another terminal on the floor beside her housemate Banshee, who is already typing away on his laptop computer plugged into a wall jack. The group is silent, save for an occasional fit of laughter, even though it is having a conversation with 20 of its friends.

The music industry has sputtered its way into the Internet Age, with technological innovation sidetracked by the battle between major labels and youthful geeks over free music. Now, two music-loving programmers -- alumni of the company that created the groundbreaking Gnutella file-sharing network -- are trying to chart a path to peace between the labels and the geeks. Their company, Santa Cruz-based Mediacode Inc.

Ian Rogers was winding up his college days and suffering from a bout of senioritis when, to pass the time, he added a page to the World Wide Web about one of his favoritebands, the Beastie Boys. As the weeks passed, Rogers added more to the Internet site--a news nugget one day, a digitized photo the next. Then he got a call from the rap group's management team. Rogers was afraid they would try to shut him down.