Words &music

SHARP MUSICNOTES: Internet-based sheet-music store Musicnotes celebrated a merry December 2002 by surpassing both 10,000 customer orders and 16,000 digital downloads for the first time. The performance beat the Madison, Wis., company's sales goals by 20%, according to chairman/CFO Tim Reiland, who terms current monthly sales now in the "comfortable" six-figure range.

"Musicnotes is three times as big as it was last year," CEO Kathleen Marsh adds. "One of our competitors went under this past year, even though they spent over $25 million on the digital sheet-music business. But our sales are approaching $200,000 per month—and we're just getting started. I'm pretty excited about our prospects for the future."

Marsh notes that December sales tripled, continuing a growth trend. "The holiday season had a positive impact, but it feels like our business has moved to another level," she continues. "What has been most encouraging about sales over the past few months is that it's been quite broad-based, with no single factor driving sales."

Marsh does point to the late-November introduction of its Macintosh Viewer as a December sales spur. Cited, too, is the increasing online shopping trend. Counting a "tremendous number of new customers in November and December," head of marketing Bill Aicher adds, "What is interesting about our business model is that once customers experience the fun and convenience of our site, they become repeat buyers and also tell their friends and family about musicnotes.com."

Aicher also credits the company's "close watch" on popular music trends for its ability to foresee which songs will hit big as sheet music—and then make them available to customers quickly. A current case in point is its digital-only version of Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful," which easily led December sales on musicnotes.com. The song was arranged and published by Musicnotes through its agreement with Famous Music Publishing, which enables Musicnotes to produce arrangements of songs not currently available in a traditional printed format.

"Close relationships with our publishers, coupled with the technological advantages of our digital sheet music, allow us to release music concurrent with the release of the CD and video version of the song," says Marsh, whose company's catalog encompasses 15,000 digital sheet-music titles, in addition to more than 260,000 traditional music titles, books, CDs, and videos available through its site via mail-order. The digital sheet music for "Beautiful," Marsh adds, was ready for download prior to the music video—well ahead of its availability through traditional sheet-music suppliers.

But on a flatter-sounding note, Marsh reports a lawsuit filed by Musicnotes against Swanton, Vt.-based online sheet music and music-instruction resource stagepass.com for copyright and trademark infringement pertaining to its use of the musicnote.com domain name. Stagepass, which is an affiliate of Sheet Music Direct—the online print-music Web site owned by Milwaukee-based print-music house Hal Leonard Corp. and its European counterpart, Music Sales Ltd.—intends to contest the suit, according to owner Kevin Sharples.

" 'Music notes' and 'music note' are generic terms that have been used forever," says Sharples, who claims that his musicnote.com domain name was registered before that of Musicnotes.



SHARELL'S SHIFT: Music industry veteran Jerry Sharell, who most recently served as director of media relations for Warner/Chappell Music, has been appointed president/CEO of Society of Singers. The Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization, which was established in 1984 by Ginny Mancini, provides scholarships in the vocal arts and offers financial assistance to professional singers.



NEW LIFE FOR BLUEBIRD: Live From the Bluebird Café, the Emmy Award-nominated music-TV series inspired by Nashville's eminent singer/songwriter showcase club, will begin taping its fourth season in February, to air on the Turner South cable network in June. "The show is a great outlet for artists and songwriters to perform their hits for an ever-growing TV audience," co-producer/café owner Amy Kurland says. "With fewer TV outlets for artists and writers, we hope to fill the hole left when TNN changed formats."