Pitchfork

[Posted Wednesday, November 5th, 2003 06:00:00 Pitchfork Central Time]

Cory D. Byrom and John L. Ferrer report:
As the latest attempt at legitimizing music downloads, Audio Lunchbox promises to try their hardest to woo you with their roster of indie labels willing to give up the goods. Co-founder Morgan Harris offers the some insight into the humble goals the indie-centric service has set for itself: "Audio Lunchbox is the premier online destination for downloading the hottest independent music and getting the latest scoop on upcoming and established artists. Our goal is to offer the most complete, genre diverse library of independently distributed digital files at one destination."

Harris hopes to lure music fans with more than 120,000 tracks from over 35 indie labels, including Epitaph, Anti-, Razor and Tie, Barsuk, Vagrant, Artemis, Slowdance, Better Looking, and KOCH, as well as the majority of the content offered on CDBaby.com. And the site expects to add tracks from 100 more labels in the next 90 days, Harris reports.

Striving to be much more than just another music download service, Audio Lunchbox will also act as a lifestyle site showcasing what's new in indie music and featuring the latest info on all your favorite new and established artists. A website that showcases new music and offers up-to-date info on independent artists? That sounds stupid. Who would read that?

One of the more interesting aspects of the service, and the aspect most likely to keep any major labels from knocking on their door, is the lack of any Digital Rights Management (that's DRM to you and me) imbedded in any of the music offered. That means you can download it and then burn it, trade it, rip it, scatter it, smother it, and cover it as many times as you like. At a around a buck a file (or ten for an album), Audio Lunchbox hopes to capture some of iTunes' business while giving its users the same flexibility that file-sharing enthusiasts have enjoyed since the demise of Napster.

What's that? Demise? Napster? The only thing more pathetic than a reunion of a forgotten, welcome-worn screaming-guitar rock band is the comeback of the most infamous, snowball-starting, much-beloved-but-long-ago-replaced software created since Lotus 1-2-3. Much like, say, a Motley Crue tour, the return of Napster is pointless, too expensive, and not especially interesting to anyone but nostalgia fetishists.

Roxio is supposedly hoping that the marquee value of the name Napster will attract people to use this pay service instead of iTunes, MusicNet, MusicWave, Tune Time, Music City, or EZ-MP3 (I made most of those up instead of doing research, but I bet you didn't even notice). Of course, as always, there are barriers: just as the original Napster never came out with an official Mac version (co-opting the shareware clone Macster instead), the new software shuns not only Mac users of every stripe but Windows 95 and NT users as well.

Nonetheless, the resurrected Napster boasts 500,000 songs from a combination of indies and majors, adding content from Billboard, Yahoo!, and Launch as well as 40 commercial-free, interactive radio stations on the service's premium level. Like iTunes, Napster hopes to lure users with the promise of exclusive tracks: the first batch of Napster exclusives includes live sessions from Guided By Voices, MxPx, Brian McKnight and Cold. The service debuted last month with an equally exclusive (and eclectic) showcase at the House of Blues in Los Angeles. Interpol, Dashboard Confessional, and Ludacris were among the performers at the bash, surely one of the stranger live dockets of 2003.