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Sony BMG has a (half-baked) plan for a subscription music service

sony bmgThis is getting a bit embarrassing. Every few days a record label stands up and announces a new digital download scheme that will revolutionize the recording industry and save the environment.

OK, maybe not save the environment. We have Al Gore for that. But definitely the record industry. Somebody needs to save the recording industry, and it can’t always be Steve Jobs, so today it’s a dude named Rolf Schmidt-Holtz.

Schmidt-Holtz is the CEO of Sony BMG, the world’s second-largest record label behind Universal Music Group and ahead of Warner and EMI. Schmidt-Holtz told a German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, that Sony BMG is working on a subscription service that would allow customers unlimited access to the label’s entire library for a monthly fee, roughly US$9-$12.

Best of all — besides saving baby seals — the Sony BMG plan will work on all digital music players, including the ubiquitous iPod. And maybe, just maybe, if everybody behaves and stops pirating music, customers “could keep some songs indefinitely — that they would own them even after the subscription expired,” Herr Schmidt-Holtz is quoted as saying.

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Report: Two record labels ready to sign on for new MySpace Music

myspace musicThere used to be a time when you could only download legal digital music from the iTunes Store and a handful of little-known indie sites. Now there seems to be legal downloading on every street corner, with the record labels cutting deals with everybody except iTunes.

The latest deal to gain legitimate steam is one between MySpace and two of the top four record labels, Sony BMG and Warner. According to a report today in the News Corp.-owned New York Post — coincidentally the owner of MySpace — the social networking site is close to signing deals with Sony and Warner as it puts together MySpace Music. The venture may be announced as early as this week, the Post notes.

“Everybody’s operating with a sense of urgency to try to close it out,” an “industry insider” told the Post.

The new MySpace Music is expected to be a mix of pay-per-download and ad-supported streaming audio and video. As the Post notes, no money is expected to change hands as the labels are “trading content rights in exchange for minority equity stakes in MySpace Music and the chance to participate in the advertising revenues that News Corp. hopes to generate from the service.”

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Forget about getting any work done, every episode of "South Park" now available online

britneyEvery episode of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” available online is bad enough, but now we can watch 12 years worth of “South Park.” Man, I will never get anything done ever again.

(Try concentrating while playing the recent “South Park” episode “Britney’s New Look.” Impossible.)

Announced at the end of November, “South Park” episodes have finally come to the Web, legal, of high quality, and nicely organized, with minimal commercial interruption. Viacom/MTV, owner of “South Park” home Comedy Central, and SouthParkStudios are giving us every episode for free at southparkstudios.com.

At the site you can stream full episodes, organized by season, and all sorts of clips (controversial goes without saying). There’s also “South Park” news, games, crap (downloads, mobile, and the store), and a fans section. Unfortunately, you cannot embed full episodes, but you can embed the 3,000 available clips.

SouthParkStudios is a joint venture between “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker and Comedy Central, with the parties splitting ad revenue 50/50. In addition to housing “South Park” content, the studios will also serve as a home for other animated projects from Stone and Parker. The arrangement also allows MTV Networks to expand its online video reach.

And now back to Britney’s new look.

The Myka downloads and delivers torrents right to your television

mykaGizmodo featured a product today that I must say is interesting: The Myka is a device that makes it easy to download torrents and play them on your living room TV.

It’s no muss, no fuss BitTorrenting, perfect for people who don’t want to mess with downloading torrents and watching them on a computer, or preparing them for play through some bridge device to a television.

The Myka, which sort of looks like a beefed up Mac Mini, connects to the Internet via LAN or WiFi, has HDMI, Composite, S-Video and SPDIF connections, and a choice of 80, 160, or 500 gigabytes of storage. You can even add a USB expansion hard drive to a port that actually works, unlike what’s found on the AppleTV. It runs a Linux OS and is pre-installed with BitTorrent software.

Prices range from $299 to about $460.

For those of you who want to download and watch legal torrents, like CBC’s program “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister“, or other fare (wink wink), The Myka might be a product worth exploring.

From an adorable laughing baby to a girl named Lisa, YouTube names video award winners

youtube video awardsThere are awards for everything, so it’s only natural that YouTube honors the mostly-amateur artists who submit their work to the online video sharing site.

YouTube today announced the winners of the second annual YouTube Video Awards — and the content ranges from silly and amateurish to totally captivating. There’s an adorable laughing baby, Harry Potter puppets (including a naked Dumbledore), a blind painter, a 25-year-old Minnesota PhD student who sings an original song now covered by Green Day and John Mayer, and a girl named Lisa.

Granted, the content is far from professional or semi-pro at best, but that’s the point. If you want to see spit and polish, watch the Oscars or the Emmys. With the YouTube awards, you’ll see a laughing baby fall over, a human TETRIS performance, a dramatic show about friends who play online games, and a gripping short film about Lisa and her mentally ill mother.

While the “highbrow” write off the YouTube Video Awards as a “major yawn”, we think otherwise, especially as more devices — other than the AppleTV or TiVo — bring YouTube into your living room. When YouTube is readily available on your television, just like network and cable or satellite TV, then what’s the difference between it and NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and all the other channels?

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Jockeying for position is over: Time for the U.S. mobile industry to innovate

verizon wirelessThe jockeying for position is over. It’s time for the U.S. carriers, the world’s handset manufacturers, and third-party application developers to innovate the mobile wireless future.

Today the U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced that the big winners in the 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction were, indeed, Verizon and AT&T, the two biggest players in the industry.

Verizon won the coveted C-block for $4.74 billion, besting Google’s bid of $4.71 billion. Going into the spectrum bid, which began at the end of January, many industry followers had hoped that Google would take its bid seriously as a way to shake up a stagnant industry.

google springGoogle committed to bidding the minimum of $4.66 billion, which triggered a rule that the winner of the 700 MHz C-block spectrum would have to open its network to any device, any application. Just by bidding, Google dictated the new rules of the game — rules that Verizon must now follow.

at&tAT&T won 227 regional licenses around the U.S. Those licenses, along with the piece of the 700 MHz puzzle it already owned, allows AT&T to further enhance the quality and reliability of its existing network and wireless broadband.

“It means that the two big guys just got much bigger,” Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus, told Reuters.

It also means that the jockeying for position is now officially over. The remainder of 2008 will be for the carriers, handset manufacturers, and application developers to introduce their initial products — and you can bet these will be far from perfect. There will be missteps, misfirings, false starts, claims of so-and-so being unfair, buggy software, crappy hardware, and disappointment, but these are the growing pains of an industry in transition

2009 is still the Year of Wireless.

For now, with the auction over, here’s how the U.S. wireless industry shapes up for the remainder of 2008.

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They're not lying: CBC to release TV show for download, free, legal, and via BitTorrent

canada’s next great prime ministerCourtesy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a phrase I never thought I’d read:

“The show will be completely free (and legal) for you to download, share & burn to your heart’s desire.”

CBC announced that it will make the March 23rd episode of the show “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” available the following day as a “high quality, DRM-free” download using BitTorrent technology. CBC also will distribute a version formatted for iPods with video.

“Nope, we’re not lying,” CBC said in its release.

CBC is the first North American broadcaster to freely release one of its programs without DRM using BitTorrent. “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” will be available for download to anyone in the world.

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Excitement continues: wireless auction ends in U.S., winners will be known within 10 days

fcc wirelessI know you can’t wait — it’s better than who is going to make it to the Final Four. OK, not really, but the largest and most lucrative wireless spectrum auction in U.S. history ended today, and we’ll know within 10 days who won the coveted C-block.

Presumably it’s Verizon, the No. 2 U.S. carrier, and not “telecom” upstart Google, but who knows? Maybe there is a surprise or two in the final results. Or not.

Even so, the auction will bring in $19.5 billion for the Federal Communications Commission, with $4.744 coming from the C-block winner. The winner can claim its prize within the year and start building that super-duper, next-gen, open-access wireless network we’ve been hearing about.

All in all, the event took 38 days to complete with 261 rounds of bidding. For a blow-by-blow account, see RCR Wireless News.

Report: Apple is exploring "all you can eat" and subscription models for iTunes Store

itunes all you can eat take 2It comes as no surprise. Apple is said to be in discussions with the major record labels to allow customers unlimited access to the entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for iPod and iPhone devices.

The Financial Times reported late today that negotiations for an “all you can eat” model — similar to Nokia’s “comes with music” deal with Universal Music Group — are underway, although it appears Apple and the labels are still a ways off for anything to happen.

According to the FT, Nokia “is understood to be offering almost $80 per handset” to music industry partners. Apple has offered only $20 per device, according to two unnamed executives.

“It’s who blinks first, and whether or not anyone does blink,” one executive said to the FT.

Exploring an alternative or an “in addition to” business model for iTunes comes as no surprise as Apple, a consumer savvy company to begin with, is clearly protecting itself against future shifts in the market and/or consumer behavior.

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Microsoft hedges bet, licenses Flash Lite from Adobe

adobeApple is gambling against Flash. Microsoft is hedging its bet.

Just two weeks ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the scaled-down, cellphone-friendly version of Flash, dubbed Flash Lite, just wasn’t good enough for the iPhone because it would spoil the phone’s “full web experience”.

With so much Flash content on the Web — in the form of videos, ads, casual games — Job’s proclamation was viewed by some as a major disappointment in the evolution of the iPhone.

Today Adobe said it has licensed Flash Lite (and Reader) to Microsoft for use in smartphones operating the Windows Mobile OS. Microsoft does not manufacturer these phones like Apple does the iPhone; rather, it licenses Windows Mobile to cell phone makers like Samsung, LG, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson.

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