Press mentions

Adam in the media:

Ka-Boom! Box
by Tom Laskin on 11/09/2006
Keyboardist/turntable jockey Adam Powell has musical experience far beyond the confines of Wisconsin, and Madison ex-pat Dan Bitney has made his mark globally with influential Chicago post-rockers Tortoise.
http://www.isthmus.com/isthmus/article.php?article=4758

Madison Music Project -- Ka-Boom!Box
by Kristian Knutsen on 11/03/2006
Situated in the realm of dubtronica-pop, Ka-Boom!Box is a funky synthesis of reggae, pop, dance and just about any other genre intended to get things moving. A fusion of Madison music veterans and relative greenhorns, th ...
http://www.isthmus.com/daily/article.php?article=4720

The Industry Standard
December 6, 2000 issue
"But beyond Gnutella and Freenet, which can be cumbersome to learn and use,there's a batch of second-generation companies looking to tap into Napster's zeitgeist without drawing the wrath of the Recording Industry Association of America. Still, just coming up with a cool peer-to-peer application doesn't mean that it'll be made available to the world. Before it decided to pull the plug on the service in mid-October, Angry Coffee's "Percolator" promised to turn visitors onto new music while looking for the tried-and-true. "Run a search at Angry Coffee using the Percolator engine and enjoy unsigned, independent music along with whatever you were looking for in the first place," says the company's Web site. "It's free, there is no software ... and it's much faster than using Napster."

While excited about how peer-to-peer has changed the musical landscape, Angry Coffee's CEO, Adam Powell, has just about reached the conclusion that the future of p-to-p is bleak indeed. (The 30-year-old San Franciscan said he voluntarily pulled down his company's Percolator music search engine - in part because of a pending deal with EMI to promote Radiohead's "Kid A" but mostly because of fear of being sued out of existence.)

"What we're seeing is that once again there is little opportunity to make money and there is little opportunity to really distribute and promote your stuff," he said. "A networked system where you can trade music files should have been a revolutionary thing: It should have changed everything and leveled the playing field and made things easier for artists when it comes to promotion." Instead, Powell said that established artists, like the Beastie Boys, have gotten the message loud and clear from their labels that they're not to personally use the Net for distribution. Powell thinks the p-to-p war is basically over, except for the shouting. "You're going to have three or four subscription services, and none of them will contain all of the catalogs or all of the songs that Napster does," he said."

ZDNet
November 26, 2000
"Radiohead - Whether Capitol Records likes to admit it or not, Napster distribution was the promotional centerpiece of Kid A in the absence of extensive interviews, photo shoots, or videos from the band. Kid A debuted at No. 1 on Billboard - who needs Total Request Live?

Currently available at: Napster, AngryCoffee.com"

San Francisco Chronicle
October 18, 2000 issue
"We feel we've held on to some indie credibility," Powell says. "I'm conflicted, though -- what if we do wind up becoming rich dot-com yuppies? I'm not going to lie and say I don't want to make money. And right now musicians have nowhere to play. Rock is pretty much dead in this town."

San Francisco Chronicle
October 12, 2000 issue
"But Adam Powell, chief executive officer of San Francisco Net music company Angry Coffee, one of the sites that helped promote Radiohead, said the rapid rise of 'Kid A' demonstrated the growing power of Internet music in the wake of the 'media attention and fan hysteria' surrounding Napster. 'It's clear to me that Napster and file-sharing technologies had at least something to do with it,' Powell said."

Inside
October 11, 2000
"The iBlip appeared on Angry Coffee, which until last week had a search engine that linked to Napster and other peer-to-peer exchanges. CEO Adam Powell says that he could see from his site's traffic that people went to download tracks from Napster rather than stream the album through the iBlip once it became available. 'It's not what Capitol wanted us to do but it all comes out to the exact same effect,'' says Powell. 'The top pirated artists are also the top sellers, and Napster is key in building buzz.'"

LocalBusiness.com
October 6, 2000
"Angry Coffee had made available an online search engine that let users search for and download MP3 music files, much like Napster's offering, but its results included independent musicians. However, Powell said the start-up is now working closely with music label companies to offer its technology as a service, and has taken the search engine down as a measure of good faith."

The Wall Street Journal
October 2, 2000
"Even without a final ruling by the court, the specter of a suit from the record industry is causing other Web sites to pull Napster-like search features. Last week, for example, Angry Coffee (www.angrycoffee.com), a San Francisco company, turned off a music search function from its Web site.

"Adam Powell, president of the company, said he didn't want to end up in court; he also wanted to encourage the music industry to move toward Internet distribution. His own company recently won a deal to promote the new album by Radiohead, a British band."

C|Net
September 27, 2000
"One of the major music labels has taken a first tentative step toward relaxing tensions with the file-swapping world, teaming to promote a new album with a pair of Napster-inspired companies. Capitol Records, a subsidiary of the EMI Group, is in the midst of promotions with file-trading companies Aimster and Angry Coffee that feature the upcoming Radiohead album. The label hasn't released any of the band's downloadable music to the companies, but it did provide short video files and--in Angry Coffee's case--a full version of the album to be streamed from the sites."

The New York Post
September 21, 2000
"Radiohead did use the 'Net to promote the album. Fans can hear the new album on Angry Coffee (www.angrycoffee.com), a file-sharing site which focuses on indie artists, as well as on the label's Web site (www.hollywoodandvine/radiohead)."

The Atlantic Monthly
August 25, 2000
"It quickly caught on, spawning imitations and variants, commercial and nose-thumbingly uncommercial... Angry Coffee."

D-Business
July 31, 2000
"If the RIAA did sue AngryCoffee, the cost of fighting the mighty RIAA could devastate his company, Powell said. 'We would win in court, but incur tremendous legal expenses in the process. I'm not interested in spending a million dollars in legal fees just to keep our doors open.'"

Wired News
July 28, 2000
"A federal judge has shut down Napster's file-sharing application. Adam Powell of Angry Coffee joins Tim Mitchell and Brad King to discuss how the ruling will affect file sharing and the online music industry in general. "

The front door of Wired News.
July 27, 2000
"Napster may have had another reason for banning Percolator. Unlike most of the open-source options for downloading MP3s, Percolator is easy to use. "It's just like using any other Web search engine," said Powell, who believes the future of digital music downloads will be Web-based."

Angry Coffee made the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
July 26, 2000
"That was something of the vision of AngryCoffee, a San Francisco music-oriented Web site, which last month used agent software to allow its users to search several music sites at once, including Napster's, when looking for a particular song.

Mr. Powell, AngryCoffee's chief executive, said the service would be a boon to music lovers, since with a single request, they could survey the Net's growing number of music-sharing sites and have all the results listed on a single page."

Slashdot, ZDNet and MSNBC all picked the story up.
July 26, 2000

music4free.com
July 1, 2000
"Napster Blocks Web-Based Search - Angry Coffee, an audio tutorial site, has launched two new services. The first was to allow indie and unsigned artists to submit music to the site, and the second was a web-based Napster search called Percolator. The idea behind this was that someone would go to search for a big name artist, and above the results, there would be a link to a random indie artist to give them promotion. "We're hoping to take people trained by the Napster paradigm and funnel them to indie and unsigned artists," said CEO Adam Powell."

immedia.com.au
July 1, 2000
Angry Coffee makes it into Australian author Chris Gilbey's book, The Infinite Digital Jukebox. "If you are following the whole debate about digital downloads including Napster, then this site is definitely worth a visit if only to see what they are doing. In many respects it is similar to www.mp3.board.com who are also the subject of a lawsuit from the RIAA. Angry Coffee has created an HTML front end... a browser interface to Napster."

mp3italy.com
June 27, 2000
"Percolator allows searching for MP3's on the network of Napster, and the MP3 database of independent artists managed by Angry Coffee at the same time. The CEO Adam Powell states, " We decided to develop a software that gives the user the possibility to find any song they want, and that encourages the download of independent artists " and adds: " It is clear that there is no way to stop the technological innovations from Gnutella and Napster and does not interest us to follow, only because these companies follow of the debatable strategies. What we want is give the Independent artists a real possibility to be discovered in the mainstream. "

"Elbow Grease" -- Webmonkey news letter
June 22, 2000
"Hey so LISTEN UP!: AngryCoffee (http://www.angrycoffee.com/), the love-child of Webmonkey contributor Adam Powell, now has this super-fine, chase-cutting search function (called "Percolator"-get it? Haha!), that allows you to get right at those MP3s sans Napster, and features bonus music recommendations. Oh Adam!"

news.webnoize.com
June 22, 2000
"While Napster Inc. busies itself preparing a defense against a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), it must also consider what to do about a San Francisco start-up that has launched an MP3 searc h service that searches Napster's servers.

"'We're looking at [Percolator]," said Hank Barry, CEO of Napster. "We're just at the beginning of our understanding of it.'

"Powell said if he is pressed legally to shut the site down he will release the code behind Percolator. The move would offer anyone who wants the formula to build a web site that taps into Napster and provides access to illegal MP3s.

"'That's the trump card we've got against the RIAA,' he said."

Citysearch.com
February 15, 2000
Interview with Adam Powell, CEO
"Adam Powell took his interest in music online several years ago, becoming one of the pioneers in the business. Now he's a front player in applying music to the web. Powell shares his thoughts with citysearch.com on what the future holds."

WIRED
February 1, 2000
WIRED interviews Adam Powell, CEO of Angry Coffee.