Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas!

This will probably be my last post before going home to Oslo for Christmas - I'll be leaving tomorrow morning from Stansted. Really early as well.

Because this is my last day at work before Christmas - I am feeling in proper Christmas spirit and started thinking of my childhood christmas memories - and with that the regular Norwegian christmas TV series for kids - Jul i skomakergata. Jul i Skomakergata is a Norwegian TV-show produced in 1979. It is a televised advent calendar, meaning it is sent from December 1st to December 24th. It has been broadcasted several times in Norway by NRK and is one of the most treasured tv-programs in Norwegian TV history. The story revolves around shoe repairer Jens Petrus Andersen, played by Henki Kolstad, and and his shop. He is visited by friends and towns people that need their shoes repaired before christmas. A part of the show consists of showing a clip from Sandmännchen (Jon Blund in Norwegian) which tells children about the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child.

So with a couple of clips from YouTube from the series, I say to you all: Merry Christmas!

Blend your Ipod

My Ipod (20GB model from 2004) broke last week after a long and hard service. I tried in despair to repair it - but ended up with chucking it a couple of times on the floor out of pure frustration. Now, THIS is what I really should have done:

Snail suicide part 2

Yep, here's another one - and in our soup! Yuk!

Snail suicide part 1

News from the music biz: eMusic up, iTunes down...

Some news that I found very interesting this morning:

According to Forrester Research latest report, the first-half, monthly iTunes download levels were down 65 percent. Despite being numbers from January-June, it still shows an interesting development. Apple needn't worry though - we all know they make money out of selling Ipods...

On the other hand, the non-DRM indie label store eMusic finally crossed the one hundred million download mark, an accomplishment that took about three years to reach.... yeah! This is great news for the supporters of non-DRM music (i.e. ME!).

... and now it's Friday - so have a great weekend folks!

Ingjerd
x

Radio Revolution on your Ipod?

From Market Watch:

Portable Net radio goes on sale

By Frank Barnako

By the end of next year, you might be able to listen to any of thousands of Internet radio stations on your iPod or Zune.

Of course, Apple or Microsoft would have to buy into the idea by, perhaps, embedding Net radio technology being developed by two different companies. Both will show their ideas at next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Cambridge Consultants will show its design in prototype. The Iona Wi-Fi portable radio could be built and sold for as little as $60, the British-based company said. "The hardware is programmable ... capable of supporting MP3, WMA, AAC, AIFF and WAV data formats," Cambridge said in a news release.

Additionally, Torian Wireless of Melbourne said it has both an existing product and a design for adding Net radio capability to other products. The company is taking orders for the inFusion on its Web site for $229. The device includes an FM tuner, has 16 presets, and can be used as a recorder. Last August, Torian's founder, George Parthimos, said he had hoped to have distribution in stores but now says that will happen next year. Torian also has developed a design specification to embed Net radio into other products, and it, too, will be on display at CES. "The Internet Radio Module allows manufacturers to add Internet radio functionality to products including home stereo systems, amplifiers, and portable boom box units," Parthimos said.

EMI and Last.fm create music discovery tool

Author: Sam Matthews | Source: nma.co.uk | Published: 14.12.06

Record giant EMI has paired with digital music service Last.fm to create an online music mapping tool to help fans discover new music.

EMI's Tuneglue-audiomap tool links consumers to recommended artists, websites and retailers, based on a comparison of the listening preferences and profiles of other music fans from Last.fm.

Recommendations will be for both EMI and non-EMI artists as well as site links, artist biographies, competitions and sign-ups for EMI acts.

Eric Winbolt, digital media manager at EMI Records, said, "Tuneglue-audiomap offers music fans easy visual cues for the discovery of new music. Most important, however, is the complete trustworthiness and relevance the service provides - being based entirely on Last.fm's powerful 'scrobbling' data, a media player plug-in which reports users' listening behaviours of daily personal track recommendations.

Opinion: "We're still a hit driven culture"

Opinion piece posted to paidcontent.org

Definings Hits In Today’s Music World Means Merging Revenue Streams

Posted by Jimmy Guterman - Mon 11 Dec 2006 10:26 AM PST

Listen, kids, put aside your copy of The Long Tail and know this: The music business has always been a hit business, with the majority of buyers, most of them casual fans, interested in hearing just one song by a particular performer.

The genius of the record industry in the 1960s was sensing major performers’ artistic move to the LP and changing their business to reflect that. That one smart response got the industry through the 1970s and the reissue boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s. But that well has run dry. More than a decade ago, the major labels all but stopped promoting singles to retail (or, in many cases, even manufacturing singles), and that led to a world in which millions of fans revolted against $19 list CDs with one good song by downloading them for free as soon as the opportunity arose. Again, most fans weren’t downloading full albums—they were stealing and swapping individual songs.

Early fans of legit online music services like the iTunes store may have hoped that the buy-by-the-song environment would lead to a return to the single to its rightful place as a profitable business. That has happened, but not in the way people may have expected. Jeff Leeds leads the NYT’s latest look with a case study of how major labels are trying to squeeze more cash out of each single. You can hear the R&B singer Akon sing via a variety of online services—and, in the few weeks since his new album came out, he has sold 269,000 ringtones, a market that didn’t exist not so long ago. Leeds’s article notes that the very definition of a hit is changing, with more attention being paid to more revenue streams. The day of the first-week blockbuster are likely over—several months back, a Johnny Cash album debuted at Number One on Billboard despite having moved fewer than 90,000 units—but add the new streams to the old ones and suddenly there’s a real business there again.

Using an unnamed Warner Music artist as the example, Leeds walks through an internal cost analysis of “a successful hip-hop record released in the last 12 months”: “Sales of the CD accounted for roughly 74 percent of domestic revenue the company took in from the project, or roughly $17 million. But sales of an array of digital products added almost $6 million — about two-thirds of that came from ring tones of hit singles. The figure also included roughly $330,000 from mobile phone games related to the performer and $94,000 in sales of cellphone ‘wallpaper,’ or screen backgrounds.”

Some of these new businesses may turn out to be predatory such a record companies getting into talent management, an age-old practice that has left many performers broke. Still, it may provide a way out for an industry that needs it badly. As record-chain owner Joe Nardone puts it, “Everybody’s still hoping for the best, but the best ain’t what it used to be.”

EMI Toes DRM-Free Waters, Offers Norah Jones MP3 Single

From digitalmusicnews.com

EMI is now offering a Norah Jones single in the open MP3 format, a monumental step for the label. The ultra-popular jazz pop singer is positioning the unrestricted single, "Thinking About You," on Yahoo Music, a move that bucks longtime label thinking on protection. The development also follows a lengthy campaign by Yahoo Music executive David Goldberg, who has tirelessly rallied against the use of digital rights management on music files. "Most people believe they can get enough value from what they get for free," Goldberg said during an executive forum in Los Angeles earlier this year.

Norah Jones, signed to the legendary Blue Note label, part of the EMI family, isn’t the only major label artist to experiment with MP3s. Christian rockers Relient K are also tossing a DRM-free single onto Yahoo, and Jessica Simpson started the trend in late June by offering name-customized MP3 tracks. The change of format means open access to the iPod, a critical change for consumers. Now, expect EMI - and other majors - to closely watch the numbers, and ratchet up the experimentation if early gains are realized. Meanwhile, the move largely validates the business model of eMusic, a company that has been offering an MP3-based independent artist catalog for years. eMusic has sold approximately 100 million downloads over the past three years.

..... about time! :-)

Next Generation P2P: Using P2P for distributing Music, films and TV online

Last week I spoke in a panel about the Next generatoion of P2P - Here is a brief synopsis written by DCIA's CEO Mary Lafferty:

Next Generation P2P: Digital Hollywood Europe: Synopsis (Pt 2)

Marty Lafferty

07 Dec 2006

Marty Lafferty, CEO of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) gives us a synopsis of the Next Generation P2P sessions at the recent Digital Hollywood Europe conference held in London's docklands.

Ingjerd Jevnaker (pictured right) distinguished the use of P2P for live streaming as separate from file sharing. P2P essentially means interconnecting users computer-to-computer on the same level, and this can be to share bandwidth as well as content. There should be no contradiction between P2P and protecting content. Because of legacy issues tainting P2P's image, however, some successful P2P applications don't advertise that they use P2P – and users don't care. Meanwhile, other P2P networks have increased their popularity with almost a revolutionary appeal to consumers by emphasizing P2P. The biggest emerging failures are digital services that use DRM in too draconian a manner. Flexibility is needed.

P2P companies now are either going open source and in some ways underground and non-commercial, or working to get consumers to sign onto licensed models. We need to encourage the technology sector to support and advance legitimate uses of P2P on multiple networks; and we need to encourage the entertainment sector to think about alternative business models, such as adopting RawFlow streaming and integrating ad-supported commercial content with user-generated content (UGC). In the coming future, there will be no more TVs – PCs will become the video appliance.

Les Ottolenghi explained how P2P is a superior delivery method for rich media content, with INTENT MediaWorks now delivering 370,000 licensed files per day up from 10K/day a year ago and participating in such groundbreaking efforts as the recent Coca-Cola sponsored Jay-Z P2P-exclusive promotion. INTENT uses DRM to track content, converting the open P2P universe into an ecosystem for legitimate business, which is emerging as primarily ad-supported. Licensed content is provided free, giving instant gratification to end-users, with the result that 84% of discovered files are retained. Unified file-discovery across all P2P and social networks has also emerged as an important attribute for success; hence INTENT has just launched its DelveDown service to provide that functionality.

Fostering the community nature of the channel is also very important, and P2P is uniquely configured for social networking. Post-Grokster, major entertainment companies are showing more interest in working with INTENT and, globally, copyright court cases have reduced the reluctance of majors to move forward and embrace P2P. It is critical not to let telecom firms dictate what happens regarding further innovation by eliminating net neutrality. We also need to work to make files smarter – so that content packages themselves have intelligence – plus continue to improve interoperability and attract higher quality content to be licensed for P2P.

Daniel Harris (pictured right) provided Kendra's perspective on P2P from its alliance of content owners and software makers. Daniel's vision is that any application on any device should be able to browse any catalog, and there should be universal interoperability. Record labels have had different ways of managing their catalogs, historically; now we need to show them that with P2P it is possible to aggregate databases and achieve across-the-board content monetization. P2P can bring benefits of non-centralized search and publishing to all sorts of content databases.

P2P can be used for information transfer – not just file transfer. Standardization will help make this a commercially viable consumer medium. It is increasingly futile to pursue legal strategies when open standards are proliferating. Huge advancements could be made in commercial development by simply bolting payment systems onto traditional P2Ps and letting developers earn money by working to make this happen. It is time to embrace, support, and extend P2P with open standards to build a market that has enormous potential. Let's empower developers to make this succeed with the reality of more open standards.

Trevor Albery cited Warner Bros.' recent development of new business initiatives in the P2P sphere, while also continuing a strong focus on anti-piracy activities. Examples include licensing BitTorrent and the joint venture announced earlier this year with DCIA Member arvato mobile using its GNAB platform for the In2Movies service in Germany. So far, these approaches have involved offering filmed content in traditional business models, but with a P2P delivery aspect. It is still the very early days for the P2P distribution channel, and now is the time for experimentation in what is a nascent industry in order to learn what will work best.

There should be no apologies for the Grokster case, which was about profiting from inducement to infringe copyright, not about P2P technology. Today's challenge is to build good services that will excite consumers and compete with unlicensed online content. There may well be more litigation, as the channel continues its legitimization. We need to bring all stakeholders together to make DRM work better so that P2P can safely monetize content. P2P will find its place among distribution channels, while DVDs will continue and other electronic distribution will as well.

Anthony Rose outlined Altnet's experience from 2001, when, in retrospect, its approach was ahead of its time. Altnet pioneered DRM-protected content distribution through open P2Ps, but major entertainment content rights holders initially resisted. Now that legal settlements are complete, however, Altnet is finally obtaining licenses. Its newest offering, the Global File Registry (GFR), connects people who own content with people who use content. Five years ago, there was much innovation in the P2P space, but then Web 2.0 became more innovative as P2Ps faced litigation. Now we are at a stage where the transport layer for P2P works quite well, but how people use it is still not working as a business. We need renewed innovation here – for example, with better indexing technologies – so that users will not be polarized.

Of concern is the fact that dispute settlements have bi-furcated the development community into those who want licensed distribution and those who are trying to anonymize usage. What should be obvious is that value will be generated by large-volume licensed-content distribution. Social wrapping in P2P is also an area of high potential. Consumers are more empowered than ever and, therefore, trying to dictate their behavior harshly will fail and drive them to the waiting darknets. The desire for control must be tempered; the winning play will be one based on equilibrium. The future will bring an increase in hybrid systems with a mix of centralized and distributed servers.

Reproduced with permission of the DCIA. For more information, plan to attend the day-long P2P MEDIA SUMMIT NY on February 7, 2007.

Zune Sales Slip After Thanksgiving Weekend Burst

From DigitalMusicNews.com

Sales of the Zune player slipped following a solid Thanksgiving weekend,
according to a retail finding from NPD Group. The researcher ranked the Zune
at number five for the latest period, down from an encouraging number two
spot earlier. SanDisk reclaimed its previous second-place position after
cutting prices by a whopping 50 percent, part of an aggressive holiday
blitz. And ruling the roost once again is Apple, whose iPod is comfortably
floating at number one. The iPod commanded a 75 percent market share during
the first nine months of this year, according to NPD.

NPD tracks major retail outlets, though its Thanksgiving finding seemed
incongruous with Amazon rankings. After Black Friday, the high-energy
shopping day that follows Thanksgiving in the United States, iPods dominated
Amazon sales. Within the consumer electronics category, several iPod models
crowded the top ten, while Zune barely made the list. The Amazon figures may
have been a bellwether, especially if Zune buyers are not generating strong
word-of-mouth. The NPD data also excludes Apple stores, where a large
percentage of iPods are sold. Meanwhile, Microsoft is continuing to heavily
advertise, though breakouts like the refreshed iPod shuffle could be
stealing attention.

Sony BMG is first major label to sign up to Pandora in UK

Sony BMG is the first UK major record label to license its artists' repertoire to internet radio service Pandora in exchange for a slice of ad revenue.

Pandora, which has taken the US by storm since its launch last year, is due to roll out to UK customers by next spring. It will offer free streaming tracks from Sony BMG acts including George Michael and Shakira.

The free radio station is based on the Music Genome Product, the largest ever analysis of popular music. Each song in Pandora is analysed by one of 50 trained musicians and assessed against some 400 musical attributes to capture the song's identity.

Users of Pandora enter the name of their favourite song or artist and the service creates a bespoke radio station matching their musical tastes.

Pandora is in talks with the other major labels, EMI, Universal Music and Warner Music.

Brands that regularly advertise on Pandora in the US include T-Mobile and Motorola. The UK Pandora team is currently signing up UK advertisers.

Jon Davis, head of new media at Sony BMG, said, "This deal will stimulate interest in our back catalogue. Pandora can offer highly targeted ads that we can take a percentage of."

pandora.com

Copying CDs onto computers to be made legal

Copying CDs onto iPods will be made legal in the next few weeks according to early indications from the government's review of intellectual property rights.

The UK's current copyright laws mean copying CDs onto computers is illegal.

The review will focus on formalising the situation by bringing in a 'private right to copy'. according to music trade body British Music Rights.

The BMR also said there will be detailed commentary about how creative industries can work with technology industries to develop a more organised approach to legal content services, removing illegal content as well as how best to exploit music in the digital age.

In addition, reports from the Sunday Telegraph over the weekend suggest the copyright extension term of 50 years will remain unchanged, despite widespread industry support to extend the term to 95 years, the same as in the US.

The review, commissioned by Gordon Brown, is being led by the former Financial Times editor, Andrew Gowers.

(from NMA.co.uk)

Not looking so good for Zune...

From Digital Music News:

Surveys Show Respectable First Week Zune Sales

The Zune performed respectably during its first week, according to a pair of retail research findings. NPD Group estimated that the Zune grabbed 9 percent of total portable MP3 player sales during the period, while Current Analysis reported a 7 percent share. The player was released on November 14th in the United States only, and quickly edged out the previous number two player manufacturer, SanDisk. Meanwhile, the iPod retained its dominance and delivered a 63 percent share during the week, according to the NPD report. The tallies, which involved major retailers, contradict earlier reports suggesting soft demand for the Zune.

Apple may experience a small dent in sales, though it remains to be seen if the Zune can pose a continued threat. Alternatively, Microsoft could find itself in the unenviable position of leading a crop of iPod killers, all of whom have been relegated to a collective 25-30 percent share in the United States. Meanwhile, a survey conducted over Thanksgiving weekend by Reuters pointed to a strong preference for iPods. Reuters talked to consumers at major malls, and found that 7 percent of prospective buyers would select a Zune. But the iPod was chosen 80 percent of the time, reinforcing the difficult challenge ahead for Microsoft. Elsewhere, the Zune currently ranks poorly on Amazon, while a collection of iPod models have grabbed top slots.

It also looks like Apple are going for wireless antennas in their Ipod's...thereby strongly suggesting Ipod phones... now, that will be interesting!


Apple Patent Strongly Suggests iPod Phone

An iPod phone now appears inevitable, and bets are being placed on details like pricing, release date, and form factor. Just recently, Apple filed a patent outlining a mobile device that "may correspond to the iPod," a development that largely confirms earlier speculation. The filing, recently made public, was originally filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office in August. The application describes a "tube-like" player constructed with "zirconia" and "alumina," and a device that would be "cost effective, smaller, lighter, stronger and aesthetically more pleasing" than competitive mobile music phones.

So when will the device hit the streets? Predictions vary, though some are pointing to an unveiling at the Macworld Conference & Expo in January. Others suggest a later date, though most expect a release within the first two quarters of next year. It appears that Cingular Wireless will carry the device within the United States, though the mobile company refused to comment on the possibility. Meanwhile, the player is likely to combine the iconic iPod scroll wheel with a traditional telephone keypad, and the form factor could resemble the iPod mini.

A copy of the patent application can be found here.