Liquid listening - interview with Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes regarding the Liquid Audio downloading technology on the Internet - Interview

Interview, Nov, 1997 by Brendan Baber

The futuristic new technology known as Liquid Audio equals instant audio gratification. Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes plugs in

Music has been available on the Internet for years, though usually in the form of pirated copies brought to users by not terribly ethical Web sites. That's all about to change, thanks to a new program called Liquid Audio, which allows users to download CD-quality songs directly from the Web, without breaking any laws or poaching anyone's royalties. The first group to embrace this technology is Duran Duran, whose new single, "Electric Barbarella," from the band's upcoming album, Medazzaland (Capitol), can be found at http://hollywoodandvine.com/duranduran. Keyboardist, songwriter, and all-around high-tech guy Nick Rhodes talks about where Liquid Audio is leading us.

BRENDAN SABER: Do you yourself use the Internet?

NICK RHODES: Yes, but I couldn't while away my life on it. It's turning out to be the most incredible library in the world; using it for reference is fantastic. The other day, I was looking at the Amazon site [an online bookstore], where you can order any book you want. That's such a luxurious service. Now that the Internet's faster, it's more interesting. When it was slow - well, I'm not terribly patient. Waiting for half an hour to download something that turns out to be totally dull is a drag.

BB: Could you explain what Liquid Audio actually does?

NR: If you've got a computer and you're hooked up to the Internet, you can log on to the Liquid Audio site and preview thirty seconds of our new single. If you like it, you can download the normal version for ninety-nine cents and keep it. You can also download a special version we did for the Internet, which is $ 1.99. If you do that, you get to look at an unedited version of the video. It's that simple. The fidelity is pretty much CD-quality, and it's protected, so you can't make a billion copies for your friends.

BB: Assuming the technical glitches could be worked out, would you like to deliver an entire album over the Internet?

NR: Not as a replacement for traditional retail. We're also doing cross-promotions with music stores - Blockbuster, Tower, Music Boulevard, CD Now - so that people who want a hard copy of the album can go to the stores' Web sites and get it sent straight to them.

BB: Just like Amazon, but with music.

NR: Yes. You'll be able to say, 'That's what I want? even if you don't feel like going out in the rain to the store. In the future, I see labels having their entire catalogs on the Web. I'd love to be able to go to my favorite artist's site and say, "These are my ten favorite songs, and I'd like them in this order. Can I have a hard copy on CD, please?" Technology that lets the public decide what they want can only be good. Freedom of choice, as they say.

BB: But sometimes our desire for choice conflicts with a corporation's agenda. I'm fascinated by how the music industry reacts to this: when they embrace it, and when they adopt a scorched-earth policy.

NR: Yes, in the past we've had ideas about technology, and haven't been able to move on them because of the record industry's fear of anything new. It's like when CDs first came around. People said, "This is terrible! Customers are going to tape CDs! This is such good quality - what's going to happen to the industry?" Now, with Internet audio, it's, "Are records going to become obsolete? Everybody's going to want to download things directly! This isn't going to work!"

BB: So your label wasn't too keen on releasing a single over the Internet?

NR: We met with considerable resistance. Their first response was a blanket no. We tried to force the situation. but it didn't go down too well, Then they must have had some kind of secret meeting, because suddenly they said, "OK, we'll do it." Now they're so keen on the idea that they're starting to do it with other artists, which is great. They should.

BB: Have you seen your fans' Web pages?

NR: Yeah, and there are so many of them. It proves that many of our fans are using the Internet and liking it, which is one of the reasons we wanted to work with Liquid Audio. We're launching our own site, which will be www .duranduran.com. The funniest thing is that somebody else had that address and we had to wait to get it back.

BB: There's no clear copyright law for domain names. It's almost lawless, like the Wild West.

NR: I was really quite shocked. We were going to do a site earlier, but we felt the Internet wasn't fast enough to do anything interesting. Now we're using all the technology that's out there, and making it very "handmade," unlike a lot of other musical artists' sites I've seen. They tend to be done by design houses, and they're very slick. I wanted ours to have a relationship between handmade and high-tech, which is something I'm very interested in. I want it to be interactive.

BB: Interactive in what way? That's such an abused term.

NR: Well, for example, we're going to have a space called a junk box where people leave us samples of things that we could use in our songs. It's going to he evolving all the time. I think there's plenty of creativity on the Internet, but I haven't been blown away by one particular music site yet.