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now a top ad site
But MusicCity.com faces Napster-style lawsuit
By Marty Beard
If the music industry is Hercules, then the peer-to-peer file swapping industry is the Hydra: Cut off one head and two more instantaneously grow to replace it.
Two years ago, the five major record labels first sued Napster, an early music-swapping site, understandably threatened by the rise of peer-to-peer technology that allows surfers to download files in the MP3 format for play on their computers without paying for them.
The courts eventually emasculated Napster, ordering it off-line until it could guarantee that it wasn’t facilitating piracy.
But numerous other file-swapping services have since arisen to take Napster’s place, among them MusicCity, Gnutella, BearShare, LimeWire and KaZaA.
MusicCity.com is arguably the most popular of these services. And that popularity has caused the site to become a top-level ad domain.
For the week ending Sept. 23, MusicCity.com ranked No. 7, with 124 million ad impressions served, reaching 1.92 percent of the online audience.
The Nashville-based site, which launched in April, first appeared among the top-25 ad domains in July, at spot No. 24. Ads that run on MusicCity include banners for DirecTV and skyscraper-style ads for MP3 Studio software.
At any given moment, more than 600,000 users are connected to MusicCity, and those users are sharing more than 70 million files, according to its web site.
MusicCity offers a piece of free software called Morpheus, which allows people to log on to the MusicCity network. According to the web site, Morpheus is downloaded one million times a week. (Odd trivia bit: At one point, the word Morpheus was the fourth-most-frequently-misspelled search term on the search engine Google.)
Morpheus has been downloaded more than 21 million times from CNET’s Download.com site.
Then yesterday, CNET ceased offering downloads of Morpheus, doing so in response to a lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America against MusicCity, along with KaZaA and Grokster.
In a statement, the RIAA and MPAA refer to the services as "21st century piratical bazaars where the unlawful exchange of protected materials takes place across the vast expanses of the internet."
Napster’s successors potentially pose more of a threat to the entertainment industry because they allow users to trade movie files, in addition to music files.
Additionally, the new file-swapping sites don’t as a rule maintain a central index of available songs or central servers, making the services more elusive legal targets. A court order to shut down the services might not prevent people who already have the software from sharing files.
Still, if legal precedent holds, MusicCity and its ilk may well be on their way to becoming history. The issue is really one of time and how fast the courts might move.
|
Top 25 Properties |
|||
|
Property |
Unique Audience (000) |
Reach % |
Time Spent per Person (hh:mm:ss) |
|
1. AOL Time Warner |
38,416 | 52.1 | 0:15:54 |
|
2. Yahoo |
30,115 | 40.8 | 0:26:01 |
|
3. MSN |
29,234 | 39.6 | 0:22:15 |
|
4. Microsoft |
10,818 | 14.7 | 0:04:36 |
|
5. Excite@Home |
8,884 | 12.0 | 0:12:08 |
|
6. Lycos Network |
8,420 | 11.4 | 0:08:07 |
|
7. eBay |
6,778 | 9.2 | 0:37:14 |
| 8. Walt Disney Internet Group | 6,162 | 8.4 | 0:14:23 |
|
9. Google |
5,805 | 7.9 | 0:05:58 |
|
10. eUniverse Network |
5,691 | 7.7 | 0:08:17 |
|
11. About-Primedia |
5,279 | 7.2 | 0:05:15 |
|
12. Amazon |
5,008 | 6.8 | 0:06:59 |
|
13. CNET Networks |
4,418 | 6.0 | 0:06:35 |
|
14. InfoSpace |
4,172 | 5.7 | 0:05:08 |
|
15. EarthLink |
3,936 | 5.3 | 0:05:35 |
|
16. AT&T |
3,340 | 4.5 | 0:10:44 |
|
17. Ask Jeeves |
3,340 | 4.5 | 0:05:15 |
|
18. ClassMates Online |
3,011 | 4.1 | 0:03:55 |
|
19. Vivendi Universal |
2,876 | 3.9 | 0:07:16 |
|
20. Gannett LTD |
2,820 | 3.8 | 0:07:08 |
|
21. iWon |
2,719 | 3.7 | 0:28:05 |
|
22. New York Times Digital |
2,668 | 3.6 | 0:09:34 |
|
23. Gator.com |
2,623 | 3.6 | 0:06:27 |
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24. American Greetings |
2,503 | 3.4 | 0:06:46 |
|
25. Symantec |
2,384 | 3.2 | 0:05:30 |
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Source: Nielsen//NetRatings |
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Top 10 Advertisers |
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Advertiser |
Impressions (000) |
Unique |
Active |
|
1. Microsoft Corp. |
445,230 | 22,836 | 30.95 |
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2. Yahoo |
345,240 | 18,824 | 25.51 |
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3. AOL Time Warner Inc. |
277,096 | 20,830 | 28.23 |
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4. Providian Financial Corp. |
250,832 | 24,987 | 33.86 |
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5. Bertelsmann |
200,985 | 16,402 | 22.23 |
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6. Nextcard Inc. |
174,740 | 14,098 | 19.11 |
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7. Classmates Online Inc. |
139,529 | 16,169 | 21.91 |
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8. Citigroup Inc. |
92,111 | 15,798 | 21.41 |
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9. Cassava Enterprises Ltd. |
89,956 | 12,805 | 17.35 |
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10. eBay Inc. |
79,399 | 11,941 | 16.18 |
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Source: Nielsen//NetRatings |
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Top 25 Domains |
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|
Domain |
Unique Audience (000) |
Reach % |
Time Spent per Person (hh:mm:ss) |
|
1. yahoo.com |
28,396 | 38.5 | 0:26:19 |
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2. aol.com |
26,721 | 36.2 | 0:12:28 |
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3. msn.com |
26,070 | 35.3 | 0:19:31 |
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4. passport.com |
13,525 | 18.3 | 0:02:40 |
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5. microsoft.com |
10,238 | 13.9 | 0:04:31 |
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6. ebay.com |
6,394 | 8.7 | 0:36:57 |
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7. netscape.com |
6,312 | 8.6 | 0:08:58 |
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8. geocities.com |
6,281 | 8.5 | 0:04:27 |
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9. go.com |
5,987 | 8.1 | 0:14:37 |
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10. google.com |
5,802 | 7.9 | 0:05:58 |
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11. excite.com |
5,360 | 7.3 | 0:15:10 |
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12. cnn.com |
5,265 | 7.1 | 0:11:33 |
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13. msnbc.com |
4,869 | 6.6 | 0:09:46 |
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14. amazon.com |
4,671 | 6.3 | 0:06:22 |
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15. lycos.com |
3,788 | 5.1 | 0:09:47 |
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16. earthlink.net |
3,516 | 4.8 | 0:05:51 |
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17. classmates.com |
3,008 | 4.1 | 0:03:55 |
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18. compuserve.com |
2,891 | 3.9 | 0:18:55 |
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19. about.com |
2,890 | 3.9 | 0:04:09 |
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20. iwon.com |
2,719 | 3.7 | 0:28:05 |
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21. angelfire.com |
2,685 | 3.6 | 0:04:00 |
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22. gator.com |
2,602 | 3.5 | 0:05:53 |
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23. tripod.com |
2,562 | 3.5 | 0:03:31 |
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24. ask.com |
2,510 | 3.4 | 0:05:27 |
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25. time.com |
2,396 | 3.3 | 0:04:46 |
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Source: Nielsen//NetRatings |
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|
Top 25 Advertising Domains |
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|
Domain |
Impressions (000) |
Active Reach (%) |
|
1. yahoo.com |
1,112,852 | 32.32 |
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2. msn.com |
852,729 | 31.12 |
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3. aol.com |
339,732 | 30.32 |
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4. ebay.com |
160,327 | 5.77 |
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5. netscape.com |
137,640 | 7.3 |
|
6. lycos.com |
106,586 | 3.93 |
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7. musiccity.com |
124,258 | 1.92 |
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8. go.com |
87,548 | 6.54 |
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9. monster.com |
81,058 | 1.9 |
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10. att.net |
43,468 | 2.64 |
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11. pogo.com |
70,808 | 2.33 |
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12. msnbc.com |
37,597 | 5.99 |
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13. compuserve.com |
31,247 | 2.86 |
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14. cnn.com |
35,301 | 4.65 |
|
15. excite.com |
53,586 | 3.7 |
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16. cnet.com |
21,380 | 2.32 |
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17. netzero.net |
20,552 | 1.43 |
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18. time.com |
18,408 | 3.34 |
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19. fastclick.net |
14,642 | 4.06 |
|
20. nytimes.com |
16,306 | 1.5 |
|
21. cartoonnetwork.com |
25,593 | 1.66 |
|
22. looksmart.com |
23,833 | 2.19 |
|
23. audiogalaxy.com |
27,637 | 1.03 |
|
24. mapquest.com |
19,592 | 2.39 |
|
25. zdnet.com |
10,370 | 1.46 |
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Source: Nielsen//NetRatings |
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|
Top Ten Banners |
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|
Advertiser |
Impressions (000) |
Unique Audience (000) |
Active Reach (%) |
|
1. Classmates Online Inc. |
123,780 | 13,051 | 17.69 |
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2. Nextcard Inc. |
40,368 | 8,151 | 11.05 |
|
3. BMG Entertainment |
33,919 | 7,714 | 10.45 |
|
4. Bonzi.com |
47,959 | 7,530 | 10.21 |
|
5. DietSmart |
22,472 | 6,685 | 9.06 |
|
6. Debticated Consumer Counseling |
21,527 | 6,664 | 9.03 |
|
7. eDiets |
12,565 | 6,589 | 8.93 |
|
8. Providian Financial Corp. |
18,932 | 6,378 | 8.64 |
|
9. Debticated Consumer Counseling |
19,179 | 5,984 | 8.11 |
|
10. BMG Entertainment |
24,436 | 5,910 | 8.01 |
| Source: Nielsen//NetRatings | |||
|
Average Usage |
|||
| Current Week | Last Week | % Change | |
|
Number of Sessions per Week |
6 |
6 |
0 |
|
Page Views per Week |
212 |
207 |
2.42 |
|
Page Views per Surfing Session |
34 |
33 |
3.03 |
|
Time Spent per Week |
3:13:21 |
3:10:15 |
1.63 |
|
Time Spent During Surfing Session |
0:31:08 |
0:30:30 |
2.08 |
|
Duration a Page Viewed |
0:00:55 |
0:00:55 |
-0.92 |
|
Active Internet Universe |
73,786,146 |
72,919,922 |
1.19 |
|
Current Internet Universe Estimate |
169,225,512 |
169,109,808 |
0.07 |
|
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings |
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October 4, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Marty Beard is a staff writer for Media Life.
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