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Publication:Billboard
Source:PRINT

SITES & SOUNDS: OpenSpace Launches With Radio Web Services: Seattle Co. Offers Customizable Content, Including E-Commerce Options

By CATHERINE APPLEFELD OLSON

September 04, 1999

RADIO DAYS: The longtime community-action slogan "Think globally, act locally" is also an apropos mantra for new Seattle-based company OpenSpace.com, which seeks to infuse local radio stations' Web presence with customizable content and a means to generate revenue.
OpenSpace, which makes its formal debut at the National Assn. of Broadcasters Convention-held Tuesday (31)-Friday (3) in Orlando, Fla.-will provide stations with services including E-mail, chat, news, sports, weather, stock quotes, horoscopes, and commerce opportunities, as well as sell advertising for the site. The stations would then simply provide their brand identity, their music, and any additional content, such as local lottery information, that they want to include.
Founded by Jeff Lill, one of the chief architects behind the Microsoft Network, and VP of marketing Richard Rosen, OpenSpace uses a variation on the HTML-based dynamic publishing technology that helped fuel Microsoft Networks' content. "Yes, it's all about the content and the brand, but right now the technology also matters," says Rosen. "If you are publishing with the wrong technology, you are losing a good majority of what you can achieve on the Internet."
The concept of localizing sites has been kicking around the Internet almost since its inception and was at the heart of Time Warner's now-defunct Pathfinder network, as well as the local affiliate "NBC Neighborhood" initiative of NBC, which more recently has focused its Internet strategy on Snap.com and Xoom.com.
OpenSpace is not the first company to provide a means for stations to sell music online. GetMedia and WebRadio in June joined forces to enable WebRadio's more than 90 affiliates to sell CDs directly from their playlists. The GetMedia technology enables users listening to a song to click a button and see the title, get artist information, and buy the CD without leaving the site.
But Rosen says that both individual stations and station groups that have various pieces of the puzzle are all falling short of the complete portal picture. "There are lots of people who want to do portals, and we are the portal fairy," he says.
"OpenSpace is about the whole local experience. You just don't come to a site to buy music from the playlist. If we can replicate the features of a Yahoo! or Excite, at the end of the day we believe people will spend a lot more time on a station's site . . . Right now, the fact is that a lot of these sites suck, and the local ad guys don't want to sell them. We are focused on making the sites good, quality destinations."
The company is looking to do barter/syndication deals with both individual stations and station groups. Its first client is R&B station Kiss104.7 Atlanta (www.kiss1047.com), a Ring Radio affiliate; Ring's Nashville R&B station will come online at the end of August, Rosen says. "We administer the software and do the content deals and give the stations an easy-to-use Web-based technology to publish content."
As for the content it brings to the party, OpenSpace has deals with UPI for national and world news, Launch for entertainment news, and GetMedia for music sales.

So what's to stop a station from making a deal with, say, the Weather Channel on its own? Rosen says companies that take that route often are cutting themselves out of the chance to cull important demographic information.
"When a station does a deal with Weather.com and has a co-branded site, it might look just the same, but when a user puts in his ZIP code, that ZIP code goes to Weather.com. In most cases the station doesn't get the information at all," Rosen says.
Beyond radio stations, Rosen says, the OpenSpace model makes sense for local TV stations, newspaper franchises, entertainment conglomerates, or "any company with a lot of brands under their label." He says EMI is interested in a test run.
"I don't see Sony's portal," he says, "or a portal for Cond Nast or News Corp. or Time Warner, now that there is no Pathfinder. None of these companies have done it themselves. We talk to companies all the time that say they want universal chat across all their sites, universal registration across all their sites, and are waiting for the technology to be developed. We say it's here."
MCY'S CHILD'S PLAY: Download site Mcy.com is bringing something unusual to the digital-distribution arena-children's music. The company has acquired digital-distribution rights to the music catalog of Drive Entertainment, which brings an additional 1,800 songs to its roster, including those of artists Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, and Waylon Jennings.
But beyond its offerings for adults, Mcy will begin selling albums from Drive's Golden Records label. Golden, the label counterpart to Golden Books & Video, owns the rights to soundtracks from such book and video properties as "The Poky Little Puppy" and "The Saggy Baggy Elephant." Perhaps most significantly, Golden also owns some of the masters to the soundtracks of early Disney animated movies such as "Snow White," "Pinocchio," and "The Jungle Book," which it co-produced. Release plans for those albums have yet to be determined.
Back in the grown-up world, Mcy.com also purchased the digital rights to selected artists' works on the Modern Records label, including previously unreleased Stevie Nicks solo albums and material by Natalie Cole, Foghat and Jeffrey Osborne, as well a new release by the Jacksons.
RANDOM BITS: K-tel Online has named Randy Malinoff to the new post of GM. Malinoff, who previously was executive VP of marketing for Entertainment Internet Inc., will oversee all of K-tel's Internet operations . . . CDbeat.com has hired music engineer/producer Brad Morrison to consult on the design of its CD-enhancement software.
Tunes.com has postponed its initial public offering (Sites + Sounds, Billboard, Aug. 21) until sunnier skies return over the online music market. Tunes had intended to go public the week of Aug. 16 but delayed in light of sagging stocks from competitors like MP3.com, Musicmaker.com, and Liquid Audio.