Recording Industry

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.

Tom McCauley didn't plan on making house calls when he started in the music business. As a recording engineer, McCauley made a good living working out of the many commercial studios that had grown up throughout the Los Angeles area to serve the music, film and television industries. But with the advent of software that allows high-end recording from a personal computer, the 53-year-old Sherman Oaks resident has traded the quasi-industrial atmosphere of the commercial studio for his customers' garages or living rooms.

Tom McCauley didn't plan on making house calls when he started in the music business. As a recording engineer, McCauley made a good living working out of the many commercial studios that had grown up throughout the Los Angeles area to serve the music, film and television industries. But with the advent of software that allows high-end recording from a personal computer, the 53-year-old Sherman Oaks resident has traded the quasi-industrial atmosphere of the commercial studio for his customers' garages or living rooms.

Warner Music Group, in a sign that the struggling recorded music company is seeking to bolster its ranks of artists, has tapped producer Rob Cavallo for the newly created position of chief creative officer. In that role he will help develop acts across all of the Warner music labels including Atlantic, Asylum, Electra and Warner Bros. Cavallo, a multiple Grammy winner, has a strong track record with credits that include Green Day's "American Idiot," Kid Rock's "Rock N Roll Jesus" and most recently the top-10 release "Brand New Eyes" from the rock band Paramore.

After Joseph Edward Gallegos shot to death three friends from Orange County this week, his minister and friends were quick to note the 18-year-old man's obsession with hard-core rap and suggest the music played a role in the killings. The suggestion that Gallegos, who died in a police shootout Tuesday several hours after slaying his roommates, was at least partly motivated by a form of rap characterized by violent street tales coincides with a national debate about lyrics and their message.

Many record industry executives think of file-sharing networks as a den of music thieves, but Brady Lahr sees a vein of gold waiting to be tapped. Lahr, co-founder and president of Kufala Recordings, is one of a number of file-sharing advocates who argue that the networks can play an important role in e-commerce.

Susan Philips has a conscience so sensitive to ethical failings that she feels guilty if she leaves her shopping cart adrift in the grocery store parking lot. Her influence is reflected in her elder daughter's career choice: Miriam Philips, 22, wants to be a rabbi. On at least one moral dilemma, though, mother and daughter are on opposite sides. To Susan, downloading music on the Internet without permission is wrong. To Miriam, it's just what you do when you go to college.

The 53-year-old diabetic with a weakened heart, a white, unkempt beard and several missing front teeth awakens in his $35-a-day room the size of a jail cell, cradling his electric guitar. He gets dressed and shambles a couple hundred feet down the street to a seedy BART plaza in the Mission district. He sits on a battery-powered amplifier, plugs in the guitar, puts a cardboard donation box on the ground and begins to play and sing.

"And now the Moment of Truth!" says Frank Farian, creator of Milli Vanilli, inventor of Rob and Fab, the pretty faces who--can you believe it!--people actually thought were singing. Farian, the German producer who blew the whistle last month on his own fraud, swivels around from his 84-track mixing console, the Pontiac-size machine on which Milli Vanilli was really made, and furnishes the promised honest-to-God truth. It's a record album.

Whitney Houston did not have to sing a note Thursday night to spark a rousing ovation from a crowd of celebrities and record-industry heavyweights.

Blue Microphones got its start building high-end studio microphones for the recording industry, making a name for itself as a niche player. But niche no more. With a nudge from Apple Inc., the Westlake Village company built a low-cost microphone for use with music recording software. That mic, called the Snowball, has become a hit with aspiring pro musicians and dedicated hobbyists who make demo recordings on their laptops instead of shelling out $50 an hour or more for studio time.

There may be no second acts in American lives, but there's always another act for an American idol. "American Idol's" first champ, Kelly Clarkson, returned to the top of the U.S. pop charts, with her new album, "All I Ever Wanted," bowing at No. 1, an encouraging start after disappointing sales of her 2007 effort, "My December." The new album sold 255,000 copies in its first week in stores in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan data released to Billboard.

Brushing aside character references from an array of Swedish pop musicians, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge refused Friday to lower the $1-million bail for a hip-hop artist accused of killing a jazz pianist in a Hollywood crosswalk. Judge Monica Bachner said she had reviewed 21 letters submitted on behalf of David Jassy, including a dozen from friends in the recording industry, but found no "unusual circumstances" to change his bail. She said Jassy's Swedish citizenship made him a flight risk as did his foreign family ties, which include an 11-year-old son in Sweden, a brother in Italy and other relatives in Gambia.

Few industries inspire more enmity than the record business. It's been tainted since the birth of rock, with transgressions that include payola, greed, a reactionary aversion to technology and a plantation mentality toward its bread and butter -- the recording artists. Thanks to the Internet and the MP3 revolution, karmic justice has finally been served: The record industry has toppled like a house of cards. To many, its collapse is less a crisis than a beautiful sunset.

Once upon a time, A&R were the sexiest letters in the music industry's alphabet. Executives in the artists-and-repertoire division of every major record label were charged with discovering and nurturing new acts, setting them on the path toward gold and platinum albums and Grammy Awards. These high-powered talent brokers would spend their nights scouring nightclubs and street corners after days combing through stacks of homemade recordings in their quests for pop music's next big thing.

National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People Executive Director Benjamin Hooks released a 20-page report Monday alleging that racial discrimination is "rampant" at virtually every level of the $4-billion recording industry itself. Power within the industry, Hooks said, is "virtually the sole preserve of white males" even though more than a quarter of all sales are attributed to black artists.

Re "Music Industry Tries Fear as a Tactic to Stop Online Piracy," April 30: The Recording Industry Assn. of America battling online piracy reminds me of a bricks-and-mortar company fighting a Web-based company. Of course the Web-based company is going to hurt the bricks-and-mortar's business to a degree, but instead of fighting they ought to recognize each other's place in the world and change their business models accordingly. Online music file-sharing is here to stay. From now on, some music will be physically purchased and some will be downloaded free.

Paul McCartney said Monday that negotiations on a long-awaited deal to make the Beatles' catalog available on the online music service iTunes have stalled. "The last word I got back was it's stalled at the whole moment, the whole process," the former Beatle said. "I really hope it will happen because I think it should." The band's holding company, Apple Corps Ltd., has so far declined to allow the Fab Four's music on any Internet music service, including iTunes. Record label EMI, which owns the Beatles recordings but needs Apple Corps' permission to release the music in new formats, said it was still trying to resolve the matter.

Back in the day, you weren't anyone in the blues world unless you were signed to Chess Records, the label that made stars out of a generation of rough and tumble musicians, notably Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon and Howlin' Wolf.