2.
The first licence to use the technology has been granted to the
Global Music Outlet, an online music distribution service founded
by ex-South African Anthony Stonefield.
"Johnny was the first major artist I approached who was
willing to allow me to use his music to experiment with online
music marketing and distribution strategies," says Stonefield.
"I'm not entirely sure if Johnny understood at the time
that his participation allowed me to begin revolutionising the
global music industry. Even though he is not considered a 'major'
artist in North America, he is pretty well known within the American
online community that is, demographically, more worldly and eclectic
in their music tastes than the offline masses."
Stonefield visited Clegg during a trip back to South Africa in
1995, logged his laptop computer onto the Web, and showed the
artist a site he had done for his Best of Savuka album. "He
thought it was interesting, but he was looking a little uneasy.
Then I said that I really want to start distributing his music
throughout the world in electronic format, i.e. on a pay-per-download
basis. At that point I was used to getting anything from complete
shocked incredulity to manic enthusiasm from most music folks.
I can't say that I got either from JC, because his response was:
'Now, you're not running up a overseas phone bill here, are you?'"
Clegg agreed, however, as long as his manager, publisher and
record distributor in the US, one Hilton Rosenthal, agreed. "Hilton
said okay, let's try it. A year later Hilton and I went into
partnership in GMO, bringing much needed industry savvy and a
handful of records from major artists."
In the meantime, Stonefield was selling more and more Johnny
Clegg CDs via the GMO web site (www.globalmusic.com).
"Then a particularly motivated Clegg fan in Oregon, Sheila
Millage, contacted me. She wanted to help in some way spreading
the word about Clegg, so I told her that if she starts and runs
an online fan mailing list, I would support her as much as I
could. I suggested the name 'Scatterlings'."
Today the Scatterlings list is a buzzing, enthusiastic little
community, several hundred strong, hosting regular listening
parties and Sunday online chat sessions. GMO hosts a central
information page for the list at <www.globalmusic.com/Scatterlist.html>
It also happens to be the first online fan club for a South African
artist that was not set in motion by a record company or artist.
It was, rather, a natural consequence of enormous online interest
in Clegg's North American tours. On one tour, Clegg himself discovered
that a significant proportion of the awareness of particular
gigs had been created by announcements made by fans on the Internet.
That highlighted for him the power of information, but it still
didn't sell him on the virtual community. "I am connected
to the Internet, but I really use e-mail more than the Net as
such. I don't monitor the Web and I don't monitor the Scatterlings
list. As far as the list is concerned, I regard the Internet
really as a talk shop for people who are interested in my lyrics
and my words and some of the things I have to say and some of
the ways in which I do that. I think there's some very able and
adept commentators who are on the Internet who will comment in
a way which will probably answer or deal with all those questions.
"I'm not interested in getting involved in arguments and
interpretations and justifying and explaining. For me, I put
out a record, the record stands up or it doesn't stand up, finished.
"I know there are people who, like myself, when I read a
poem or I read a piece of interesting writing or I hear a great
melody or key change, I'm actually interested to know why or
how the guy stumbled on that. I respect the interest that is
generated by what I do; I just don't have the energy and time
to open myself up to having to deal with that."
Su
Mrozinski 04.00