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Lycos to unveil online hub for music fans
Added: (Mon Nov 15 1999)
NEW YORK, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Echoing the 1977 disco hit,
I Just Want to Be Your Everything,'' Lycos Inc. (NasdaqNM:LCOS - news) aspires to be an online hub for music fans, and on Monday launches a network of sites that helps them research artists, listen to songs and buy CDs online.
"Lycos Music'' is the latest stanza in the Waltham, Mass.-based company's strategy to increase traffic and grow revenues via music, one of the Web's most popular hobbies. Lycos is the No. 4 most popular Internet media network.
Located at http://music.lycos.com, the site adds programming, fan club features, search services, and shopping features to Lycos' already rich system, allowing enthusiasts to find news on a performer, electronically transfer tunes to a PC, or buy CDs through a Lycos-affiliated retail partner.
"Lycos Music is going be a site that will draw traffic away from almost all music sites online as we integrate those services in a sort of holistic way,'' said David Pritchard, senior director of marketing for Lycos. "They no longer need to go elsewhere."
Internet music delivery has exploded to become one of the most popular consumer uses of the Web, thanks to so-called MP3 data compression technology, which enables everyone from garage bands to top artists to post their work on the Web.
But drawing away eyes and ears from other sites may be a tough task for Lycos, due to the many thousands of music sites on the Web, which range from record industry promotions to retailers to sites built by admiring fans.
Moreover, other Web heavy hitters are also turning up the volume on Internet music. Recently, Yahoo! Inc. (NasdaqNM:YHOO - news) introduced its entertainment site, Yahoo Digital, and America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) is also beefing up it music arsenal.
Still, Lycos, with a reputation for embracing grassroots Web trends first among major sites, has made it clear it wants to be a key player in the arena. This year it introduced a search engine that scours the web for MP3 files, launched an online radio network, and acquired Sonique, a popular desktop software program for playing downloaded music.
Industry audience statistics prove the initiatives are paying off, the company insists.
"With 12 million unique visitors on our site that are interested in music, that's three times CDnow's (NasdaqNM:CDNW - news) entire audience, six times MTV.Com's and six times MP3.com's (NasdaqNM:MPPP - news) entire audience," Ron Sege, executive vice president for Lycos, told Reuters, citing other favorite music sites. MTV.com is a unit of Viacom Inc. (NYSE:VIA - news).
Like other Web media companies, Lycos is seeking to evolve from its roots as helping users locate Web sites into an online center for selling goods, so-called
electronic commerce.'' It is banking on music to help drum up
e-commerce'' revenues, which it hopes to double as a percentage of total revenues.
"We are anticipating that (e-commerce) will grow, (such) that -- a year or so out from now the mix will be balanced between advertising revenue and commerce revenue, each representing about 50 percent,'' he said.
In August, Lycos reported total revenue for the fiscal year ending July 31, 1999 of $93 million.
Lycos is also tweaking its Angelfire (www.angelfire.com) online community, by adding a focus on entertainment and music. New features will allow aspirant musicians and enthusiasts to build their own Web sites, with links to the Lycos Music network. Bands looking to promote themselves online can digitally transfer their MP3-coded music to Lycos, who will manage - or "host'' -- the recordings.
Shares of Lycos closed on Friday at $58.94, up $2.63 on the Nasdaq stock market.
By Franklin Paul