Hip-hop radio veteran sings a different tune at Napster.MICHELLE MICHELLE Mid-Infrared Echelle Spectrograph Santosuosso's quest to find the next big thing in music has led her to Napster Inc., where she recently became vice president of artist and label relations. Last October, Roxio Inc. purchased the file-swapping service that defined online music--and piracy--before filing for bankruptcy. It is now a subscription service offering users free access to 30-second samples of 500,000 titles and songs to burn to CDs for $9.95 a month and 99 cents each. In her position, she will be securing new music for Napster's database and working with labels and artists in producing weekly recording sessions at Napster studios. Santosuosso started in music as a hip hop hip-hop or hip hop n. 1. A popular urban youth culture, closely associated with rap music and with the style and fashions of African-American inner-city residents. 2. Rap music. adj. DJ while studying English at Arizona State University Arizona State University, at Tempe; coeducational; opened 1886 as a normal school, became 1925 Tempe State Teachers College, renamed 1945 Arizona State College at Tempe. Its present name was adopted in 1958. in Phoenix. A couple of programmers in the audience from KZZP-FM, a top-40 station, offered her a job as music director and she quit school in 1989. She worked there and elsewhere to get hip hop on mainstream radio at a time when station owners and advertisers were skeptical about its appeal. "Nobody was playing hip hop back then," she said. "I helped flip 92.3 FM The Beat in L.A. (now 100.3 FM) into a hip hop station. It was scary scar·y adj. scar·i·er, scar·i·est 1. Causing fright or alarm. 2. Easily scared; very timid. scar for people who owned radio stations. They thought hip hop could only sell advertising for African American African American Multiculture A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. See Race. urban audiences." For similar reasons, she switched to online music. "Before deregulation Deregulation The reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry, usually enacted to create more competition within the industry. Notes: Traditional areas that have been deregulated are the telephone and airline industries. , radio really sought to be an active source of new music and as a program director, you had more freedom to break out new bands," she said. "Now, with these giant radio clusters, the emphasis is on being familiar. So radio stations do play new music, but play less new bands and keep older songs in the rotation longer." To justify charging for what was previously free (and illegal), Napster offers its 1.5 million users message and chat services, lists of the most popular downloads, music magazine articles and the weekly recording sessions. Santosuosso, who lives in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. , is unmarried and enjoys oil painting in her free time. |
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