Thursday, August 16, 2007

snapshot 8/16/07

The resurrection of free
With The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal said to be looking at removing the “pay wall” around their online content, and others – including CNN, Google and AOL – having already done so, one question springs to mind: Are we seeing the death of paid content online, and the return of free as a business model?

Google – which now owns YouTube – appears to have come to a similar realization, and recently closed its Google Video service, which charged users to download movies online. One of the most prominent services to switch from a paid subscription model to a free one is America Online, the former Internet giant that merged with media conglomerate Time Warner in 2000, in one of the most ill-fated business deals in modern memory.


Can Universal turn the tide against Apple's iTunes?
Nobody knows, but in a six-month experiment the world's biggest music label will try to switch people away from iTunes, the world's biggest music download store. Pick a side!

The bait for the switch is copy protection, known as DRM (digital rights management). Users who continue to shop online at Apple's iTunes Store will still get their Universal music encumbered with Apple's DRM. If they go to a different store, they can buy unprotected MP3s of the same tracks for the same price, or less. Vivendi's Universal Music Group owns more than a dozen labels including Decca, Mercury, Polydor and Deutsche Gramophone. It distributes music by a wide range of artists from Bing Crosby to Amy Winehouse, including 50 Cent, Black Eyed Peas, Elvis Costello, Gwen Stefani, Prince, Stevie Wonder and Shania Twain. The unprotected tracks will be sold by several iTunes rivals such as Amazon.com, Rhapsody and Wal-Mart, plus the new gBox.com. Universal says it will advertise on Google to drive traffic to gBox.


Like music free, but don’t like breaking the law?
YourFreeMusicDownloads.com launched today with a free music service available to the first 100,000 registered users. Fans seeking free music downloads are encouraged to register as soon as possible in order to gain access to the website’s catalogue of over one million songs. All songs in the Your Free Music Downloads.com catalog are in MP3 format and can be played on a computer, on an iPod or any other portable media player.

Your Free Music Downloads is an ad-supported free music download site with a catalogue of over 1,000,000 legal MP3 songs currently growing by 500 songs a day. Unlike other ad-supported free music download websites, Your Free Music Downloads does not embed ads in the track. Instead, when registering, users are asked to complete a short survey that generates revenue.


Kiosk eases portable music hassle
The task of filling an MP3 player with songs is set to become even easier, thanks to an invention by a Belfast company. It lets customers buying CDs or DVDs in the stores transfer the content to iPods, MP3 players or mobile phones before they leave the shop.

The firm, Ripfactory, is selling its CD2 (CD squared) system to music stores in the UK and overseas, including north America. He says another reason for its popularity is that it includes software which allows the user to browse other music while waiting for the transfer to complete. The touch screen kiosk can load up to four CDs at a time, and will also transfer data such as cover art, album titles and track listings.


Netflix Lowers Prices for DVD Rentals by $1 ... Again
Netflix just lowered its prices on the "three DVDs out at-a-time" plan again, taking it down a buck to $15.99 a month. Our jaws dropped as we saw the above notice in our inbox, because it was just three weeks ago when Netflix had lowered the price to $16.99. Hey, keep those price reductions coming, Netflix! Pretty soon, they'll be giving them away. We have a price war on our hands between Netflix and Blockbuster, folks, and it looks like we movie buffs will be the winners.


will.i.am shares love with musicane widget and drm-free release
As part of Universal's growing DRM-free experiment, Musicane has created a will.i.am widget to coincide with the Interscope release of the Black Eyed Pea founder's solo single "I Got It from My Mama" on August 28th. The Musicane widget acts as a media player on websites, blogs and social networks selling both digital and physical product and can be added with a single line of code.

In a somewhat revolutionary move from a major artist, will.i.am is sharing the monies earned from Musicane product sales with fans that embed the store onto their blogs and social network profiles. Fans who pre-order the album will get a free download of the new single, as well as exclusive remixes. All of the downloads will be DRM-free mp3's.


MySpace Prepares Talib Kweli, M.I.A. Album Exclusives
MySpace is now pushing a number of high-profile streaming album exclusives, part of its growing music initiative. Starting this Friday, MySpace is offering an exclusive peek at the upcoming Talib Kweli album, Eardrum. The preview, at myspace.com/talibkweli, will last through the album release date of August 21st. Kweli (Blacksmith/Warner Bros.) has roughly 200,000 MySpace friends.

Also in the mix is M.I.A. (XL/Interscope), who is readying her second studio album, Kala. The Sri Lankan artist is now previewing the release on myspace.com/mia, though the action only lasts through Thursday. Additionally, MySpace is also featuring a preview from the New Young Ponys (Modular), a UK-based group that is now pushing their debut album in the United States.

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