UMG SETTING NEW SITES

InsideSessions, the interactive educational effort created by Universal Music Group (UMG) and Penguin Putnam, Inc., recently released a line of DVDs and videos incorporating footage from InsideSessions's online career-guide programs MusicSessions and WritingSessions. Now those without Internet access can finally hear Fred Durst's epochal lectures on the influence of German philosopher Walter Benjamin on the Post Modern music industry.

"The Music Guide: An Insider's Guide to Breaking In" is now available on DVD and video, at $24.95 and $19.95 respectively, and includes insight from artists, record execs, managers and producers including Durst, Elton John, Sting and Shaggy, among others. "The Writer's Process: From Concept to Publication," featuring best-selling authors Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Tom Clancy and Nora Roberts, is also available. The long dreamed-of project pairing Clancy with Shaggy on a duet has yet to be realized.

In addition, Universal Music Enterprises (UME), the catalog marketing arm of UMG, has announced the development of four new consumer websites. UME, which has its own site, developed web portals for its TV marketing label, UTV Records, catalog and film and TV music divisions and its custom music group, Universal Music Special Markets. The sites will expand the company's promotion and marketing reach and quadruple the number of press releases we get each week. In the works is a website for the company's maintenance closet.

Finally, Universal Music and Video Distribution (UMVD) has set up a business-to-business "extranet" to allow the sharing of content within the organization. The password-protected system, according to a release, "serves as a central, one-stop source for media, merchants, marketers, vendors and other business partners to obtain instant access to a wide range of information from UMG's extensive artist catalogue and related digital assets." Also, there will be a chat room so you can dish with other industry people about that dreamy Jim Urie.