Thursday, November 8, 2007

snapshot 11/8/07

Companies fail to block music threat
Tim Most companies do not stop staff from downloading music from the Internet, despite the risks posed to work computers, a survey has found. Two-thirds of IT managers polled said they do not block employees from taking music off the Web, even though they named it as the biggest threat.


Blockbuster tests pricing, new formats
No. 1 movie rental chain Blockbuster Inc said on Thursday it was testing pricing for its rental formats and will experiment with its store layouts to add downloading stations, books or beverages in a bid to shore up its customer base.

Ideas for its retail format include creating an interactive area in stores for children, a destination for downloading entertainment onto portable media devices or a kiosk for Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 video game console.


Sneak Peek At Next Week's Zune Upgrade (Including DRM-Free Tracks)
In general, the Zune community upgrade is about changing the focus from device-to-device to PC-to-PC social networking -- a good idea, considering that not enough people own the devices to make the in-person sharing feature very appealing.

Members of the community (no Zune required) will be able to create an online profile called a Zune Card, with their own image, background, bio, music listening habits, and currently-playing song. Like other social networks, this one will let you add friends and comment on their pages. Friends will be able to recommend tracks to each other, but will only hear a 30-second clip, as opposed to the "3 full listens" limit that the device-to-device sharing permits. Zune Cards can be embedded on other social networks, where they will continue to show up-to-date information. The Zune community will also host Last.FM-style charts that show which artists, tracks, and albums are getting the most play.

Zune Marketplace will see the addition of a DRM-free MP3 of about 1 million tracks, out of the over 3 million the store sells. According to Zune's marketing director, Microsoft refused to add watermarks to these unprotected MP3 files, although some labels had apparently asked that they be used. Genres will be expanded from 9 to 17, plus additional subgenres. A folk music expert I know says he's been employed by Zune to flesh out their folk section, and I've heard other data that indicates Microsoft is serious about incorporating lots of musical expertise into the store.


eMusic Hits 350K Subs & Adds Labels
eMusic announced that it has surpassed 350,000 paid subscribers with a new catalog total of more than three million tracks from 20,000 labels. Since establishing its subscription model in 2003, eMusic has sold 165 million downloads. The 350,000 subscriber benchmark comes just six months after eMusic reached 300,000. eMusic customers include conventional web-based subscribers and subscribers to eMusic Mobile with AT&T.


The Promise of Digital Music: Still a Few Dots Unconnected
Catchy song that no one recognizes. Oops, no song ID system on any of our devices. Solution: ask bartender, get band's name.
Search for WiFi to download song from iTunes store. Oops, no WiFi. Edge network won't let you download or stream songs. We give up because we're supposed to be in a bar engaging with our friends, not music shopping.
Some time later, half the group re-locates to pizza place. What the heck, let's try for WiFi again, because we're media analysts, dammit. Success!
Search iTunes on band's name. Problem: band name is also popular song title. Entails more searching. Possible solution: search on band's name on other sites. Problem: iPhone malfunction -- inability to enter text in Yahoo Music search form. Back to iTunes. Play clips of, like, seven or eight songs, because we're not just media analysts, dammit, we're digital music analysts.
Finally, success! Song identified and purchased from iTunes store.
Verdict: Way too much effort for normal human beings.


Radiohead's Web venture spooks Wall Street
Wall Street is taking record labels to task for lackluster Web sales, spiraling CD revenue, and the defections of marquee acts such as Madonna and Radiohead.

"No matter how many people the RIAA sues, no matter how many times music executives point to the growth of digital music, we believe an increasing majority of worldwide consumers simply view recorded music as free," Greenfield wrote.


iTunes Alternatives
As the comment section from our recent post about the latest iTunes update shows, not everyone is in love with iTunes. Especially for Windows users, the program can be buggy, hog memory/system resources and it tries to force users to organize and store their music in a certain way (hey, some of us have very specific, if a bit arcane, organizational methods and we don't want iTunes to force us to put everything in "My Music" in artist/album folders).

The program's strength lies with its perfect integration with the iPod and the iTunes Store (which for all intents and purposes, IS iTunes the application). So what do you do if you don't like iTunes - but still want a program that will easily (and reliably) work with your iPod? We've scoured the web and found the best iTunes alternatives, both for music and iPod management for Windows, Linux, and yes, even some OS X alternatives.


Further evidence for iTunes video rentals
Evan DiBiase has posted more evidence for upcoming iTunes video rentals. After the recent iTunes 7.5 upgrade he examined the new binary to find what strings had been added. What he found sure looks like video rentals and, possibly, Video on Demand. New strings include: rental-content, rental-bag, getvodaccountselectionlist, GET VOD ACCOUNT SELECTION LIST and supportsRentals among others.


The Orchard Plays Madison Avenue Card, Spins Branding Division
The Orchard is now jumping into the branding and advertising arena, a growing area of importance for the music industry. The digital distributor unveiled its Branding & Agency division this week, and outlined plans to thread music and technology into advertising campaigns. "This group's mantra is, 'Engage Customers Through Music,'" explained Orchard president and chief executive Greg Scholl. "We help our clients give their consumers the music these customers want, while developing and retaining brand awareness for the product or service the customer provides."

The group is targeting retailers, big-name brands, and advertisers, all of whom are increasingly tapping music to win the hearts-and-minds of consumers. The Orchard pointed to a number of existing relationships, including those involving P&G, Pringles, Seagate, Hallmark, Jaguar, Badoit, Euro, Digitas, and Young & Rubicam. The move further broadens the company model beyond digital aggregation and distribution, a core component of the Orchard model.

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