A New Level of Power Coming Online

The Shift Is On From Music Library Discs To Internet Portals

By Dan Daley

August 1, 2004    Source: Film & Video

Significantly, many music libraries are turning to third-party providers for search-engine options. mSoft is a Los Angeles company that has been making aggressive moves into the market in the last year. The company’s increasing ubiquitousness is also leading to a cultural change in library operations: with all the data converted to MP3, WAV and AIFF files (and, in some cases, Windows Media 9), the sharing of access to multiple libraries is becoming a reality. As a result, mSoft is becoming "the Swiss consulate of music libraries," says mSoft VP of Sales & Marketing Doug Perkins. "We’re becoming an aggregator of library data, and other libraries can use us as a sort of portal between them."

mSoft Out Front

The most assertive of those moves is Online Music Search (www.hsrny.com), a service launched in May by Manhattan post house HSR. It offers access to more than 900,000 music clips from over 100 libraries, including AMP and Killer Tracks, through a single portal using mSoft’s combination of hard-disk drives, holding 15 TB of music files, and its Internet-based search engine. "It’s the largest library in the U.S. now," asserts HSR president Howard Schwartz.

Using the Boolean search algorithm also implemented by consumer search engines such as Google, users can input keywords into the site as they search for the perfect tracks, using fields ranging from specific titles to composers, genres, instruments or even moods. One critical function is the ability to search by library from a pull-down menu. This feature acknowledges the fact that many smaller libraries continue to specialize in certain specific types of compositions and genres. It acts as a hedge against the homogenization that such massive aggregation can lead to. Users will pay a small premium over what any of the libraries represented in the HSR portal would charge through their own sites, says Music Director Andrew Knox.

Other features include the ability to create both user and project profiles and the ability to create favorite-tracks lists, with the added ability to request exclusivity on specific tracks, also for a premium. Low-res downloads for audition purposes take the form of MP3 files at a 128-kbps data rate. Final versions can be accessed in the uncompressed WAV format.

The New Online Experience

"We’re acting as an agent online and we’re also moving the industry away from physical media and toward a complete online library experience," says Knox. "At the same time, the search engine is designed to make it easy for people without music training to easily search the database."

Non-Stop Music (www.nonstopmusic.com) started using the mSoft server/Web site system approach at the beginning of the year. However, like some other companies, they’re using it in a more closed-loop manner, limiting access to only their own music libraries.

"People have come to know us for some very specific types of music," says Non-Stop East Coast Regional Manager Ben Porter. "With aggregated libraries, if you’re looking for a rock track with bongos, you’re not just going to the people who specialize in that anymore." Porter agrees that music libraries are facing the same issues encountered by Google in the larger world. Basically, the searches return responses based on how popular certain pieces become, and popularity is based on the keywords entered. "It can lose the uniqueness that many people want in music tracks," he adds.

Non-Stop uses an operational model that’s becoming increasingly popular. The company’s tracks are loaded onto hard drives, which are then distributed to clients just as CDs were. The client’s computer then browses to the library’s Web site to use the search engine to identify tracks, which are then retrieved from the hard drives.

This approach allows for customization of features. For instance, Non-Stop offers downloadable PDF files for licensing, which can be filled out online or printed and faxed back. (It also serves as at least a perceptual buffer between the equipment in editing bays and the Internet, which a few library executives said is still considered a dangerous neighborhood to leave Avids connected to for any length of time.)

Market Realities Drive New Strategies

Killer Tracks is owned by BMG Music, which acquired it as part of the completion of the Zomba Music acquisition last year. It’s part of an ongoing consolidation that mirrors that of the larger industry. So does the library’s transition to an online model, according to Dennis Pontillano, director of marketing. He says Killer Tracks spent a year analyzing both market needs and available resources in creating a new Web site (www.killertracks.com) expected to become operational later this year. They’ll use an mSoft search engine/hard drive configuration but will continue to offer the libraries on CDs, as well.

Killer Tracks’ additional features include downloadable track data, such as publishing information, in MS Excel spreadsheet format, as well as searches by country and nationality, reflecting the company’s recent acquisitions of several international music libraries.

Music will be tagged in several file formats, and Killer Tracks is also providing MP3s at two levels of quality: 128 kbps, a de facto standard compression level for online music, and higher-resolution versions that run at 320 kbps and boast better sound fidelity. "The point of that is to allow users to import MP3 directly into their Avid editing systems," Pontillano says. "Radio is becoming a big user of MP3, and the lower-resolution files are fine for that, especially AM radio. But MP3 is also becoming a choice for video editors who want to use the files as temps against picture and as finals, so we’re offering a higher-resolution version for them."

Aircraft Production Music (www.aircraftmusiclibrary.com) is also transitioning to a search engine/hard drive model. Managing director Paul Greenberg says space is becoming an issue for large clients. "There’s simply too many CDs that people have to keep on hand," he says.

mSoft’s Perkins agrees. A recent sale of a system to ABC television was prompted, he says, by the fact that the network had to reinforce the flooring in its studios to hold the weight of thousands of CDs. "They had to move rolling-rack shelving in there to deal with it," he notes. "The cross-referencing alone was getting onerous."

More Serious About Security

Music library users will notice some other changes in the future. The library industry has always operated on a kind of honor system. Users were expected to report their uses of music clips and pay licenses accordingly. It was, says one library executive, "a system of honor among thieves," noting that implementations of music for applications such as corporate presentations and educational programs were not as trackable as broadcast uses. The profiles that users create for themselves in an Internet-based model will, by design, also act as a monitoring system.

Off the record, another library executive notes that clients will likely be watched more carefully online. "When we see clients auditioning certain types of files a lot but not requesting licenses, that will tell us something to watch out for," the executive says. "The honor system is still in place, but it’s that much more of an incentive not to avoid paying what is a pretty minimal license cost to start with."

Ben Trust, general manager at Megatrax Music, says his library is using multiple search engines, including Sonomic; Play Music Finder, which allows keyword searches in foreign languages; and Fresh Ground Music Source, whose features include a project manager function with the ability to link projects between multiple sites. "More projects now have multiple decision makers," he explains.

Smart Sound Software (www.smartsound.com) is one of a handful of libraries bucking the open-framework trend by staying with a patented and proprietary encoding system for its Web portal, despite the fact that much of its content is derived from other libraries, according to PR director Richard Manfredi.

However, he says, that approach allows Smart Sound to offer additional functionality, such as the ability to download clips in specific lengths based on client length requirements. Smart Sound is singular in that respect. Says Ben Trust, "People have their ways of editing, on Pro Tools or whatever, and they simply don’t want to change that. We look at ourselves increasingly as raw materials providers. We don’t want to impinge on how they manipulate the data."

Tuning the Search Results

Megatrax is also creating "homegrown" versions of keyword searches for some of its larger clients, such as HBO, in which the users can agree on what descriptors are best to find specific pieces of music. "This really underscores the fact that there is no standardization of search-engine parameters out there," says Trust. "It’s a totally subjective area.

Play Music Finder actually has a board of advisers, made up of representatives of various libraries, which meets periodically to help define search terminology, he says. Trust further points out that such refinement of search parameters has a longer-range goal for libraries: broadening their customer appeal beyond the audio post industry into other business sectors that might use music clips.

However, Trust— whose father, Sam, founded Killer Tracks and co-founded APM, and who thus has a family history deeply invested in music libraries— is cautious about how advanced technology is applied here.

"The CD is becoming less important to library music," he says. "But I can’t see them completely going away. Boolean searches might not get you want you really want but rather what a consensus of other users think you mean by certain words.

"Searching through CDs on a manual basis has a certain charm. There’s the sense of discovery that takes place doing it like that. When you reduce it to a level at which it’s all text and logic, you run the risk of losing the gems you find by accident."