« April 2005 | Main | June 2005 »
May 24, 2005
BMG Columbia House Music Books
Bertelsmann to Merge BMG Direct with Columbia House
The Journal's take on Bertelsmann's intent to acquire Columbia House - reportedly for $400M - and merge the record and DVD club with its own BMG Direct. It says:
Book and record clubs have an anachronistic feel in the digital age. Well, sort of. One might ask, isn't a record club a logical migration path to a digital music subscription? You know Jupiter loves the music
subscription business. Well, not really. The customers that subscribe to music clubs are mostly CD purists. But still, you'd like to see a company that knows the subscription music and DVD business experiment a little more with online cataloging, at least. Actually BMG Direct has a very interesting online project. Yourmusic is very low-key, but it's a
great way to buy bargain CDs with a subscription rather than the old "we'll mail it to you first" plan.
Posted by roymond at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2005
MusicAlly
One of the many digital music newsletters, but perhaps an interesting read...
Sign up for a free month of access and read through their archives.
Posted by roymond at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)
Subs & Label Agreements
This Business Week piece runs
down the usual background about subscription vs. a-la-carte music services. Interestingly, the article reveals a couple
of basic details about the economics of providing music subscriptions. These companies must pay the labels about six
dollars per subscriber per month. In the cases of Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo! Music Unlimited, that provision fee
furnishes unlimited music streaming and downloading to the desktop to the customer. For portable downloads transferred
to a player, the labels charge providers eight dollars per month per subscriber. This is why Rhapsody and Napster both
offer a second, higher subscription tier for portable downloads.
Yahoo!’s refusal to adhere to this artificial value structure is a blow to labels on behalf of consumers. Why should there be a surcharge on portability? Such an extra charge is unprecedented in music retailing. I have been pounding this message since the launch of Napster To Go, and I’m happy to see Yahoo! implicitly agreeing by offering one subscription rate whether or not the user carries the music around. the labels are still getting their money, of course, but are not happy with Yahoo!’s devaluation of music on the consumer’s behalf. And Yahoo! might not stay happy with the non-profit revenue level. I hope that if YMU eventually raises its price, it will continue to refuse the surcharge model.
Posted by roymond at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2005
Wiki Success
Factors That Make Online Collaborative Projects Successful: The Wikipedia Experience
Wikipedia, the Web-based, free-content encyclopedia, which is written collaboratively by volunteers, has been, and continues to be, a phenomenal success. Founded in January 2001, today, it is one of the most popular reference sites on the Web, receiving around 50......
Posted by roymond at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)
Group Blogging
Group And Multi-User Blog Platforms Compared
Multi-user and group blogs are a new, rapidly emerging reality, representing one of the most interesting aspects of the strong market adoption and diversification process that the new generation of online publishing tools is giving life to. Photo credit: Alexander......
Posted by roymond at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2005
Media Trends Study
A new survey by BURST! Media finds that Internet users say they are spending more time online — and less with other media.
Posted by roymond at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)
Creationism vs Distributionism
The Most Prescient Grokster Brief (pPod)
This is a first in a series of posts focused on the previously discussed concept of the "pPod", or Policy Pod -- a massively converged, multi-purpose device that, at the very least, symbolically represents where both technology and policy are headed in coming years.Iphone_2
It's becoming increasingly apparent to the wireless carriers that they will soon be major players in the business of distributing entertainment content. The early, shocking revenues garnered from ringtones clearly accelerated this thinking.
Posted by roymond at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2005
IODA
ioda: Independent Online Distribution Alliance
IODA is the industry-leading digital distribution company for the global independent music community. Run by an experienced team of digital music experts with a passion for independent music, IODA distributes thousands of releases from independent labels to digital music outlets around the world.
Posted by roymond at 08:46 AM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2005
DRM Conference NYC
DRM Strategies Conference & Expo, New York - July 27-28, 2005
Jupitermedia's DRM Strategies Conference will be held July 27-28 at the Puck Building in New York City. This will be the most comprehensive event on digital rights management business and technology issues ever held - a must-attend for those involved in content security in both consumer media distribution and information security for businesses.
The conference program has been posted. Please visit http://www.jupiterevents.com/drm/fall05/glance.html
Posted by roymond at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2005
Broadcast Flag lowered by Courts
Entertainment: Industry Article | Reuters.com
A U.S. appeals court on Friday struck down a Federal Communications Commission rule designed to limit people from sending copies of digital television programs over the Internet.
"We can find nothing in the statute, its legislative history, the applicable case law, or agency practice indicating that Congress meant to provide the sweeping authority the FCC now claims over receiver apparatus," the three-judge appeals court panel said in its opinion.
Posted by roymond at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)
Digital Rights Management Watch
Posted by roymond at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)
DMP Background article
DRM Watch: Digital Media Project Releases Spec for Interoperable DRM
The Digital Media Project (DMP) has released its first major set of
specifications,
which were approved at the DMP General Assembly in San Diego on April 15.
At the heart of this set of documents is a specification called IDP-1
(Interoperable DRM Platform, Phase 1) for portable audio and video devices.
Posted by roymond at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)
May 05, 2005
Fanning the P2P Flames
EMI signs up for 'authorized' online music sharing
LONDON (Reuters) - The world's third-largest music company, EMI Group Plc EMI.L, has signed a deal with Snocap, a technology firm that is working to create a legal peer-to-peer music-sharing network.
Posted by roymond at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)
International Conferences on Music Information Retrieval
Has an overflowing page of papers produced for these conferences. Including this one on Managing Metadata
Posted by roymond at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)
Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution
If you haven't read this book, it's a very interesting view into a future model that makes as much sense as it makes waves, and as easy as it is to write off as "crazy" from an industry point of view, it is very stimulating.
Chapter 1 is now online.
This fortnight we feature an excerpt from the book "The Future of Music:
Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution", the first chapter if this
riveting read.
By David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard http://www.futureofmusicbook.com
Posted by roymond at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)
May 04, 2005
DMP Call for Contributions
This document is a Call for Contributions issued by the Digital Media Project (DMP). It addresses the problem of how Traditional Rights and Usages (TRU), that Users of media have traditionally exercised in the analogue space, can be carried over to the digital space, noting that this should be done having in mind the need, on the one hand, to safeguard the Rights of those who have created Work and produced valuable Content and, on the other, to offer Users, and particularly End-Users, the possibility to fully exploit the benefits of digital technologies. A companion document “Issues in mapping Traditional Rights and Usages (TRU) to the digital space” (dmp0410) provides specific information about this Call.
Posted by roymond at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
The Digital Media Project update
The 6th DMP General Assembly has approved the set of Phase I Technical Specifications and References (Approved Documents) designed to support the implementation of Value Chain centred around Portable Audio and Video Devices, i.e. Devices without network access...
Posted by roymond at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)