Fans Rush for info online who's watching who? By GEOFF MARTIN One of Toronto's most popular exports has been causing quite a stir on the Net recently, as the maniacally devoted fans of progressive rockers Rush have been combing Web sites for any crumb of information about the band's upcoming album, which is to be its first in six years. Message boards were all aflutter when a New Jersey deejay claimed to have the inside scoop on the band's 17th album, and told fans that it was to be called "Vapour Trails." Not long after that, another fan posted a message to the popular Rush site www.r-u-sh.com stating that he had received an advance copy of the album and that he planned to post samples of the
OFans are scanning the horizon for Rush's next album
album later that day. This triggered an absolute feeding frenzy from fans all over the world and within several hours, the site's server suffered a seizure as a result of the relentless door-knocking front Rush fans. The site's Web master was forced to pull it offline. Worse still, the entire episode appears to have been a hoax, as no samples have been seen on the site to date. Anthem Records, the band's label, have tried to satiate the fans' unquenchable thirst for all things Rush and recently confirmed that the reported album title and a subsequently leaked track list were correct and launched a mysterious Web site at www.officialrush.com. At press time, the site featured nothing more than a stark black background and a simple blackand-white graphic portraying an eye looking back at the visitor, perhaps to indicate that the band's members have been watching its fans just as closely as they're being watched themselves. Anthem also announced that the first single from the album, called "One Little Victory," would be released to radio stations on March 29 and that the rest of the album would hit stores on May 14. If there are any fans so dedicated that they can't wait that long, they can always spend their time planning for RushCon 2002, which is a Toronto convention dedicated to Rush, its fans and its music, scheduled to take place in July. Few pop culture icons command a following dedicated enough to inspire an entire convention, but Rush is apparently now in the impressive company of fellow rock band KISS and Star Trek - you can find the proof at www.rushcon.org. Time to get to work, Hilary Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) president Hilary Rosen is back to her constant whining about digital music piracy, claiming that the record industry slid by up to 10 per cent in 2001, thanks in large part to the scourge of MP3s. Rosen revealed numbers showing that U.S. record company shipments in 2001 had been reduced by 10.3 per cent over the previous year and that the total dollar value of shipments had fallen by 4.1 per cent during the-same period. The recording industry tracking firm Soundscan also supported these numbers, showing that sales of compact discs, the industry's most popular format, were off by 5.8 per cent from the previous year during the year-to-date ended February 17. Rosen acknowledged that there were likely other
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factors that affected the industry, such as critical fourth-quarter release schedules that were thrown out of whack in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, but she couldn't resist the urge to place the lion's share of the blame on MP3s. "When 23 per cent of surveyed music consumers say they are not buying more music because they are downloading or copying their music for free, we cannot ignore the impact on the marketplace," Rosen said in a statement. Of course, it couldn't be that the music industry is growing horrifically stale in the age of Britney Spears and 'NSYNC, could it? One need only look to the snooze-inducing Grammy Awards last month for the answer - ratings for the event (which is supposed to feature the very best the industry has to offer) were down nearly 20 per cent over last year's totals. By those numbers, Rosen might want to think about encouraging record labels to groom some innovative new talent, rather than going after people who are downloading copies of last year's hits. Copyright Board: Get your wallets out There are plenty of uses for recordable CDs other than burning illegal copies of music, but the Copyright Board of Canada wants to start charging you a lot more for them, under the ignorant assumption that's all they're being used for. Everyone who purchases a blank CD in Canada today already pays a 21 cent levy on each disc, but the Copyright Board is proposing to nearly triple that amount for 2003-2004, raising the levy to 59 cents. The tax is currently paid at the manufacturing and distribution level, who then pass these costs along to the consumer. The proceeds of the levy go to the Canadian Private Copying Collective (www.cpcc.ca) and are then distributed to copyright-holding Canadian musicians. The Copyright Board is also proposing a brand new levy on portable MP3 players that would see a levy of $21 per gigabyte of storage, which would raise the price of a $599 Macintosh iPod by more than $100, and would jack the price of a 20 GB Creative Jukebox, which retails for about $600, by a staggering $420. You can read the full proposal at www.cb-cda.gc.ca, and you can read up on the fight against it and sign a virtual petition thanks to the Canadian Storage Media Alliance at www.sycorp.com/levy/index.htm. •
TORONTO C O M P U T E S ! A P R I L
2002
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