News: November 2000

New "Audio Portraits" Debut on ASCAP Web Site

ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) has announced a new marketing and technology partnership that will provide a new career-enhancing service for its members. The collaboration, with ASCAP-licensed BEHINDtheBEAT.net, streams unique Audio Portraits of ASCAP writer/artist members, which will be rotated regularly to ensure maximum exposure for the writer/artists as well as provide extra interest and enjoyment for visitors to the ASCAP website. Portraits not currently being featured will be archived.

Phil Crosland, ASCAP's Senior Vice President for Marketing, calls the Audio Portraits "a wonderful opportunity for career development for ASCAP members." Crosland feels that this "new media opportunity" will particularly benefit those artists whose work is lesser-known. "[The Audio Portraits] provide an awareness factor, a behind-the-scenes look at people who might not be as familiar to the public," Crosland commented. He also hopes that the Portraits will "increase the already active traffic on their website." The ASCAP site currently receives around 6 million hits each month.

ASCAP members to be profiled are selected by BEHINDtheBEAT. Formed in early 2000 by two former National Pubic Radio producers, BEHINDtheBEAT is a company that produces radio-quality online portraits of musicians and their music. ASCAP is currently functioning as one of BEHINDtheBEAT's "development partners," according to John Rieger, Executive Editor at BEHINDtheBEAT. They are hoping to form similar partnerships with a major record retail site, and a major "music portal" on the web. Eventually, BEHINDtheBEAT aims to sell their portraits for syndication. Rieger hopes that in this way, they can replace the usual "30-second sound bytes" currently provided on a variety of sites with "thoughtful journalism."

Rieger claims they were "delighted" when ASCAP expressed interest in featuring their content. The fact that ASCAP's site is so "heavily-traveled" made it seem like "an excellent place to debut [their] content," a kind of content that Rieger claims has been absent up until now. "You look around on the net, and there's a lot of music criticism, the usual hype, but can't find the voice of the artist." According to Rieger, "artists love it, [far] more than they like florid press releases. They like the chance to speak directly to their audience."

ASCAP makes recommendations to BEHINDtheBEAT as to which of their members would be good candidates for Portraits. If BEHINDtheBEAT is interested, they will contact the artists and construct Portraits. ASCAP reviews the Profiles and decides whether or not to post them on the site.

The first six profiles are: Dan Hicks, Dusty Trails, Jurassic 5, Nava, Papa Roach and Willie Nile. Additional Audio Portraits will be added to the site regularly to augment coverage in ASCAP's Playback magazine and other editorial features. Rieger characterizes the "jazz portion" of the catalog as "especially wonderful." He particularly enjoys creating Portraits of jazz musicians because of their "intelligent approach to music," and also because in this way he can address what he sees as the "enormous gap" between "their ability and the attention they get." Recently, they have added profiles of Charles Lloyd, Babatunde Lea, and Marian McPartland to their catalog.

In the next few months, ASCAP hopes to profile over 150 members and their music. Crosland wants to feature "the greatest breadth of ASCAP membership," including both classical and jazz musicians. He explained that they are "looking at a mix," not only of genres, but also of better- and lesser-known artists.

Established in 1914, ASCAP is the world's largest performing-rights organization with over 100,000 composer, lyricist and music publisher members. ASCAP is committed to protecting the rights of its members by licensing and collecting royalties for the public performance of their copyrighted works, and then distributing these fees to the Society's members based on performances.