by Steve O'Hear
April 8th, 2008 | Posted in Audio | 
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When Wal-Mart first starting selling DRM-free music through its online store, we had one major complaint. Alongside those iPod-friendly MP3s from EMI and Universal Music, sat copy-protected tracks from the two remaining major labels that were only compatible with PCs running Windows and supported PlayForSure devices. A sure way to confuse customers and create a very poor shopping experience, we concluded.
Along with a redesign of the Wal-Mart online music store, the “world’s largest retailer” has finally ditched DRM completely but at a cost. Rather than successfully negotiating licensing deals with the DRM-free holdouts – Sony BMG and Warner Music – Wal-Mart has sacrificed music from those two labels completely (tracks from Sony BMG’s Neil Diamond seem to be the exception, reports Wired).
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by Daniel Langendorf
April 7th, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | Comments Off
Back in December we noted how the professional sports leagues in the U.S. were displacing traditional media as a first-stop source for all your major-sports needs. At that time, the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NHL were all over the map with their online offerings.
While content was dizzyingly plentiful, it often felt like the sports leagues were throwing everything they had at the Web. Sometimes an overall strategy was apparent. Most of the times there was none.
The National Hockey League (NHL) is tidying up its broadband efforts by introducing a new higher-quality video player for nhl.com, a bunch of new channels, and more advertising options just in time for the Stanley Cup playoffs, which begin Wednesday.
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by Daniel Langendorf
April 7th, 2008 | Posted in Audio, Mobile | View Comments
Record labels sure seem desperate these days to get their music in your hands any way they can. What’s next? Free music in your corn flakes?
Samsung, the No. 2 mobile handset maker, has signed a deal with Warner Music that will put Madonna’s upcoming album “Hard Candy” and video for the single “4 Minutes” preloaded on its F400 music phone.
Granted, the F400 comes with Bang & Olufsen speakers, but come on. What will any of the players gain here?
Will Madonna sell more Samsung F400 phones?
Will Warner Music sell more Madonna (or music from its catalog) just because it’s on the latest Samsung music phone?
Will Madonna sell more albums and ancillary content because she’s so cutting-edge mobile?
What’s Madonna demographics these days anyway? Aging pop fans with disposable income willing to buy yet another cell phone? Do the world’s youth even care about the Material Girl, even if she does say this next album “will kick your ass?”
In case you are one who does care, Madonna’s “Hard Candy” will be released April 29 — and the F400 is already available in the U.S. The F400 will be released in “early June” in France.
In other markets, carrier Vodafone and Warner Music have an arrangement that will make the new music and other content from “Hard Candy” available exclusively to Vodafone mobile customers prior to its general release.
But don’t expect Madonna in your corn flakes. At least not yet.
by Steve O'Hear
April 7th, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | Comments Off
Internet TV platform Babelgum has always pitched itself as serving the interests of independent video producers who want to find and connect with niche audiences. By tapping into the Long Tail, the company maintains it’s possible to “find an audience that rivals or exceeds the mainstream TV audience in any local market.” Having run an online film festival of its own – with the public face of film director Spike Lee, no less – Babelgum recently redesigned its Internet TV application and accompanying website around three communities of content: Films & Festivals, Motorcycling and Nature & Conservation, along with the usual social networking bells and whistles (member profiles, messaging, discussion groups and content recommendations).
But, perhaps more significantly, Babelgum has also crossed a line, moving away from being purely a content distributor to also commissioning original and exclusive content of its own. Last month, the company announced plans to set up a $10+ million production fund, telling Variety that Babelgum was “transforming into a digital media studio.”
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by Steve O'Hear
April 6th, 2008 | Posted in last100 weekly wrapup | Comments Off
Here’s a summary of the week’s digital lifestyle action on last100. Note that you can subscribe to the weekly wrapups, either via the special weekly wrapup RSS feed or by email.
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Digital lifestyle news
In the same week that Apple’s iTunes became the No. 1 music retailer (overtaking Wal-Mart), MySpace announced a new joint venture with three of the four major record labels. To be rolled out in stages over the next few months, MySpace Music will offer paid-for, DRM-free MP3 downloads (no details on pricing or quality), ad-supported music and video streaming, ringtones for cell phones, concert ticket sales, and merchandise.
On the Internet TV front, Blinkx launched BBTV.
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by Daniel Langendorf
April 4th, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | Comments Off
Just in case you get stuck working this weekend, or you’re at the office late Monday night, don’t despair. For the first time ever, CBS College Sports Network and the NCAA will broadcast the Final Four over the Internet — also the first time that a major U.S. sporting event championship has been shown live online.
The Final Four will be available via the NCAA March Madness on Demand video player.
CBS and the NCAA have made each stage of the tournament available online with great success. From the First Round through the Elite 8, which sets up the Final Four, there have been 4.33 million total unique visitors to the NCAA March Madness on Demand video player, a 147 percent increase over 2007. (tvover.net)
Not only that, but CBS and the NCAA note that 4.5 million hours of live streaming of video and audio have been consumed in the first eight days of the tournament, surpassing the entire 2007 total.
Since NCAA March Madness on Demand began in 2003, the first 56 games have been available online, but the Final Four has not. By the time that one team walks off the court with the championship — let’s hope it’s UCLA — all 63 games of the tournament will have been broadcast over-the-air and “in the cloud”.
by Daniel Langendorf
April 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Audio | Comments Off
At the Family Force 5 concert tonight, the lead singer of the warm-up band The Maine said to the thousands of kids in attendance, “This next song is ‘Count em one two three’, and it’s out on MySpace.”
The significance of John O’Callaghan’s statement is astonishing, especially in light of the official announcement today of the formation of MySpace Music. MySpace, the social networking site that boasts 30 million registered users, has formed a joint venture with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, and Warner Music Group to make their entire digital music catalogs available for downloading and listening at a new site, which will be introduced later this year. (WSJ, NYT)
EMI, the fourth major label, is not taking part in MySpace Music yet but is expected to at some point. (Previous last100 post.)
MySpace Music will offer paid-for, DRM-free MP3 downloads (no details on pricing or quality), ad-supported music and video streaming, ringtones for cell phones, concert ticket sales, and merchandise. When it’s up and running, MySpace Music will be a direct competitor to iTunes, now the No. 1 music retailer in the U.S., as well as other online music stores such as AmazonMP3.
Analysts are noting that MySpace Music is a step in the right direction for music companies, but that “Apple will not be affected for the first few years because Apple’s iTunes store lives on the strength of Apple devices,” Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey told Reuters.
That may be true. For now. But do not underestimate the influence of MySpace on bands and their fans.
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by Daniel Langendorf
April 2nd, 2008 | Posted in Audio | View Comments
Here is a stat I thought I would see one day, I just wasn’t sure when. Paid downloads accounted for almost 30 percent of all music sold in January, bringing even closer the day when the sale of digital music outpaces the physical product.
Here is another stat I thought I would see, I just wasn’t sure when. Apple’s iTunes Store has surpassed Wal-Mart as the No. 1 music retailer in the U.S., according to the NPD MusicWatch Survey (via Ars Technica).
Pretty amazing, considering iTunes opened for business almost five years ago (April 18, 2003). MP3.com, Cductive, eMusic, and others, were attempting to sell digital downloads before Apple, but it was the arrival of iTunes — in conjunction with the sale of iPods to Mac and Windows users — that legitimized online music.
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by Steve O'Hear
April 2nd, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | Comments Off
Blinkx, the company behind the video search engine of the same name, has finally launched its Internet TV service, BBTV (Broadband TV). Like others in this increasingly crowded space, which includes Joost, Babelgum, VeohTV and HP-backed Next.TV, BBTV is a desktop application that utilizes Peer-to-Peer networking to deliver a full screen experience readily suited to long form content such as television episodes or feature films.
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by Steve O'Hear
April 1st, 2008 | Posted in Audio, Mobile | View Comments
Nokia is hard at work repositioning itself as a provider of Web services and applications built around its hardware offering, rather than being thought of as just a handset maker — albeit, the world’s number one handset maker.
At the center of its ambitious plans is Ovi, the company’s consumer facing Internet brand (see our previous coverage). Ovi’s tag line is “the key that unlocks every door” (Ovi means “door” in Finnish) and initially consists of a desktop and mobile Web portal that gives one-stop access to Nokia’s current Internet services: maps, music downloads, games and photo/video sharing. Eventually, Ovi may also act as a gateway to other, third-party, Web services, such as social networking sites or competing media sharing services (e.g. YouTube or Flickr). Right now, however, it appears that Nokia only plays nicely with the rest of the Web to the extent that Ovi supports RSS and offers a few Flash widgets, so that content uploaded to the service can be syndicated on blogs, social networking profiles or eBay, for example. Likewise, Ovi can pull in similarly syndicated content from external sites.
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by Sarah Perez
April 1st, 2008 | Posted in Net TV, Other | Comments Off
This post is syndicated from ReadWriteWeb.
Chumby Industries, makers of the Wi-Fi video and widget displaying device, the Chumby, have just announced $12.5 million in Series B funding today. The company notes that this new financing is going to be used to “accelerate growth of the company, and expand and broaden the Chumby Network to other screen-based Internet connected devices.” How did this little gadget get so popular? And why would you want one? Read on to find out.
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