Online music focus of talk

As the Napster lawsuit awaits the decision of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the online music industry could well be back on track to be the Internet's most widely-used service. Or so argued David Packman, president of business development and public policy and founder of myplay.com, who led a discussion with about 40 students yesterday afternoon in Steinberg-Dietrich Hall. "While U.S. courts try to interpret copyright laws with regard to digital distribution of intellectual material, college students continue to consume more music than any other music-buying group," said Packman, a 1991 Engineering graduate who was the kick-off speaker of the Musser Schoemaker Leadership Lecture series. Myplay.com provides an on-line "locker" for its customers to store music online and play it whenever and wherever they choose. Packman focused his presentation on points he viewed as relevant to college students -- in particular, those entering the job market. But what kept students most interested in Packman was his detailed analysis of how technology has revolutionized the music industry and to what extent it will continue to do so. In 1999, 34,000 albums were sold worldwide and 50 million MP3 files changed hands each day. As traditional mediums of distribution -- such as radio and television -- become over-crowded, the web becomes the means to deliver music to the number of interested listeners. Packman attributed the digital future of music to a few key statistics: more than 300 million people are connected to the Internet; America Online reached approximately half of those users; and over 50 percent of the United States is now online. "This guy gave me a pretty good idea of what type of initiative it takes to be successful in an entrepreneurial venture," said College sophomore Kevin Leung, who was among one of few non-Wharton attendees. Beyond the skewed glamorous public opinion of dot-com land, Packman described the arduous process that he and his co-founders undertook to conceive of and obtain funding for myplay.com. The company tried not to go into an overcrowded domain, such as those that encompass eMusic, MP3.com or Real Networks. "We have established a fifth category of Internet space for music distribution," Packman said. Dubbed the online locker, this space is intended to support a private location on the Internet where people can access their entertainment globally. In this domain, myplay.com has yet to be challenged by any formidable competitors. While MP3.com scrambled to launch myMP3.com last year, it faced litigation that slashed its market capitalization from $3 billion to just over $300 million. "The world is going to be a completely Internet environment," Packman continued. "Ultimately, people are going to store everything on the net and not on their PCs."