The paper reported: "It must be music to their ears. The three co-founders of online music retailer N2K stand to share over $10 million after the merger with CDnow is completed. The deal is expected to be closed after shareholders vote next week, on St. Patrick's Day."

"Co-founder Jon Diamond, 39, will become chairman of the new company, which will be called CDnow/N2K Inc. until a new name is agreed upon. Meanwhile, co-founders Larry Rosen, 58, and Robert David Grusin, 64, are both expected to leave the company."

"The value of Diamond, Rosen and Grusin's total options, which will be exercisable after the deal is closed, are each worth $3.45 million, according to a document recently filed with the SEC."

"Rosen, a native New Yorker, will have a seat the board. He had been chairman and CEO of the company since 1996, until undergoing heart surgery last fall. At that point, Diamond, then vice chairman, took over as acting CEO. N2K President and Chief Operating Officer Jim Coane is also expected to leave once the merger is complete."

"After the $330 million merger is final, one corporate name and one online brand will be chosen. Some insiders expect CDnow to be the company name as well as the single web brand, with N2K's Music Boulevard fading into music history."

"As of Sept. 30, CDnow had accumulated losses of $43.6 million and N2K had losses of $110.2 million. The two companies have $41.8 million in marketing and advertising obligations in 1999. N2K was Silicon's Alley's first successful IPO. CDnow is based in the Philadelphia suburbs."

"CDnow fell 3/8 yesterday to 14 3/8. N2K also dropped, closing down 9/16 to 11 5/8."

I hope they got their money in cash because in a matter of months, that stock could be easily be worthless.

Once the deal goes through, this week, a source at N2K revealed that the genre sites, including Jazz Central Station and MilesDavis.com would disappear, meaning literally hundreds of pages of multimedia jazz content would cease to exist in cyberspace.

Having started a record label, GRP, and then selling out for megabucks to a conglomerate, MCA, one wonders if it was the intention all along of these already wealthy men to add a few more million to their holdings by prospecting for Internet gold? Or did they do it all just for Jazz?

Before N2K grew into what was billed as the first "Internet Music Entertainment Company," its sole focus was Jazz Central Station, whose initial goal was to create a comprehensive destination for the entire global online jazz community.

There were just a few jazz sites on the web at the time, in late 95, including Jazz Online, which was the first and remains that only successful commercial jazz site. The rest were primarily fan pages. Record labels had yet to take utilize the web, in fact the major labels still don't (in the next issue I'll rate their sites).

JCS, with Larry Rosen at the helm, had a much more grandiose plan--it was to be a gathering spot for fans, listeners, musicians and the jazz industry itself. An all-in-one tent that possessed so much content, users would never leave.

While JCS was developing, N2K itself was transmorphing. Before JCS actually debuted on the web (it started on the first, totally ludicrous version of the Microsoft Network), N2K merged with Telebase Systems, a Philadelphia area owner of the online CD retailer, Music Boulevard. With the addition of an online CD store, JCS now had the ability to sell product. Accordingly, more employees were brought on board and larger offices were secured.

With a genre site such as JCS closely aligned with a retail site, the company founders decided to create additional genre sites, the formula being that the content on the genre sites would motivate users to purchase the appropriate CDs from the online store. And so Classical Insites was beget, which soon became the official web home of the Leonard Bernstein estate, and Rocktropolis, a rock site, was purchased and retooled.

But that formula never really panned out. The cost of creating and mounting all that content was out of proportion to the resulting, rather meager CD sales. Advertising became the real revenue engine, but it was never enough.

The final element in the mix was a record label, N2K Encoded Music, whose mission was to utilize the web as a marketing and sales vehicle. That also never came to fruition. There was never any synergy between the label and the web bastions of the company. After establishing Phil Ramone, a very respected producer as company president, the label signed up all manner of jazz, rock and classical acts, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars producing enhanced CDs (like the 8 track and Quad Sound, surely destined for the scrap heap of oblivion). Ironically, only the jazz arm of the label survives, recently swallowed up by Warlock, a label that just happens to be owned by Adam (son of Morris the notorious) Levy.

The first major Net business based in New York's Silicon Alley, the N2K juggernaut seemed to be picking up steam, even though there was no real revenue stream in sight. Larry Rosen's merlin like ability to sell private investors on the boundless potential of the Net had quickly catapulted N2K to hundreds of employees. Now it was time to take it public, a well orchestrated IPO that would launch the company's next moves with an infusion of $80 million in cash. When the necessary papers were filed with the SEC, they were promising a break even point sometime in late 99, with actual profits on the horizon sometime in the year 2000.

After eighteen months on the web, and the cash from the IPO, JCS was redesigned as an artist/database driven site, with three new components--a full-time streaming radio station, WBGO-FM, a weekly news magazine, Jazz Track, and an extensive community area, undoubtedly the most successful in terms of repeat visitors was the community area.

Then, things began to unravel at N2K. The first major stumbling block proved to be the content and the personnel necessary to gather and post it. Also, advertising revenues were nowhere near their projections.

And the retail side of the revenue stream, the sale of CDs online, was also declining. Competition in this arena was particularly fierce, with CDNow leading the pack and a new player, Amazon, the major player in books, about to now sell CDs as well. Music Boulevard also had an insurmountable problem with name recognition. The domain was listed as www.musicblvd.com, but how many users knew that was the abbreviation?

After a brief moment as the "technology stock of the moment," the stock price plummeted. Funds dried up. Soon there was a hiring freeze and staff cutbacks. The label stopped signing acts.

When Jazz Community Coordinator left the company, she was never replaced. With no captain at the helm, the community soon ran adrift. In essence, the BBS area of JCS quickly degenerated into online version of the Jerry Springer show. Interestingly, at the height of its popularity, users identified themselves by their real names. But once the focus was gone, many of the posts became anonymous.

The downfall of N2K can be attributed to several factors, a grandiose scheme for content that proved financially impossible to implement, a total lack of understand of users needs and how to meet them, an unrealistic idea of revenue streams and a poorly managed, bloated company unable to go with the flow of this constantly changing medium.

We'll miss Jazz Central Station and the Miles Davis site. Although their pages were sometimes too long to load and the complexity of the sites themselves a bit daunting, they were rich with interesting bits and pieces of Jazz. And we have to thank Larry Rosen, no matter what his motives, for creating such grand showcases for this music, so early in the emerging world of cybermedia.

As for the future of jazz on the web, digital distribution looms large on the horizon, but even the most gifted soothsayer couldn't write the script for what will happen in the next decade.