Site Bytes

This section is where people can find breaking stories on everyone from Madonna and Wu-Tang Clan to Sleater-Kinney and The Verve.

``For anyone who wants to know what is going on, right now, in the world of contemporary music, they need only visit the new SonicNet Music News,'' said Goldberg, who is also SonicNet's senior vice president.

The Music Guide section is a vast database of information about music, and contains a library of more than 30,000 artists. The area also has an incredible inventory of album cover art, photographs and reviews, and includes an on-line events calendar and annotated guide to the best music Web sites and newsgroups.

SonicNet's Station functions as ``a launch pad for all entertainment information available on the Web.'' It features audio and video channels providing music (courtesy of the interactive cable channel The Box) and music videos 24 hours a day on the Streamland channel (http://www.streamland.com), the Internet's first site for full-length music videos on demand.

There's also plenty of live cyberchats and artist chats for music fans who enjoy that sort of thing.

Melanie C. Redmond is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania. E-mail her at mredmond@sas.upenn.edu