If sheet music or MIDI files play an important role in your music making, Net4Music (www.net4music.com) is for you. Boasting a collection of more than 60,000 titles, this site is a wonderful resource for all musicians, regardless of musical preference.
Finding music is easy. The site's search function asks you for a title and delivery medium (sheet music, MIDI file, or both). Hot Picks in a wide range of musical genres are also listed. When you locate a composition of interest, you can audition it as either an audio or MIDI sample. Prices for individual compositions are on a par with those you would find in a traditional music store.
Net4Music's editorial content covers a broad range of topics. The site even has an innovative feature that helps you publish your own compositions.
Media Enforcer (http://mediaenforcer .tripod.com) is a line of defense for owners of digital media. The application helps you track your intellectual properties and prevent their theft. Media Enforcer is designed to put the responsibility back on the offending users. It checks all servers on all Internet services for illegal material and provides you with the identifying information you need to either ban the users from the service or, if necessary, hold them accountable in a court of law. The current version supports Napster and Gnutella, and the company is adding more services . . . Anticipating the release of DVD-Audio discs, Dolby Laboratories (www.dolby. com/tech) has posted a white paper titled "Guidelines for Producing Music in 5.1 Channel Surround" in the Technical Information section of its Web site. The paper, available as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file, describes the origin of multichannel audio for the cinema, the differences between mixing for film and mixing for music, and how to set up a 5.1-channel monitoring environment. It also provides suggestions on how music mixers might best employ the format's six channels . . . HitQuarters.com (www.hitquarters .com) is a new, free Internet contact service designed to help producers, songwriters, and musicians find the people they need in the constantly changing music industry. The site, which HitQuarters claims has the largest database of its kind, contains information about important musicindustry figures, company descriptions and contact details, classifieds, and more. With HitTracker, the site's search feature, you can find out who is credited with breaking a particular artist. Still in its formative stages, HitQuarters plans to eventually provide newsletters, chat rooms, links, and articles.