snapshot 12/07/07

Keith Richards reissues rare single on iTunes
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is reissuing his 1978 solo single "Run Rudolph Run" on iTunes just in time for the holidays, his spokeswoman said on Thursday. The tune, popularized by Chuck Berry, will be sold on a two-for-one basis with Richards' more-recent rendition of Toots and the Maytals' "Pressure Drop."


SmugMug adds HD, iPod video sharing
Online media sharing site SmugMug today rolled out a major upgrade that provides an edge over Flickr and other media sharing sites, including .Mac. The site is now one of the first to provide both photos as well as HD video: users can upload QuickTime-ready video up to 720p (1280x720) that can be played at native resolution. High-resolution videos are automatically downsampled for extra editions that will scale properly for DVD players and iPods; the iPhone and iPod touch are supported as well and now play video directly from the website, SmugMug says.


Xbox, Gamefly beef up music offerings
As record stores stock fewer music CDs, the music industry is turning to video games as an alternative method of distribution. Both Microsoft, developer of the Xbox 360 game console, and online game rental service GameFly introduced new music initiatives. Microsoft has added downloadable music videos from Sony BMG to the Xbox Live Marketplace. Free promotional videos have been available on the platform since its November 2005 launch, but the new iteration adds a pay-to-download option featuring a far greater catalog.

Meanwhile, GameFly has begun giving away five digital downloaded tracks a month to members of the online game rental service. GameFly and partner Brandracket--a music licensing and marketing agency--will select the five songs. Anyone visiting the GameFly Web site will get one of the songs, while only subscribers can access the other four.


Research Study: iTunes Video Failing To Duplicate Music Success
Forrester Research, Inc has released a new research study that is critical of Apple's iTunes video attempts, and states there is room for competition in the industry.
The iTunes video experiment of selling TV shows for $1.99 and movies for upwards of $9.99 — although a great service to the 4% of online adults who regularly buy video on iTunes — is not a mainstream model. Importantly, it won’t translate into what Apple really wants: increased demand for sophisticated hardware like the iPod touch and Apple TV.


Kadoink dials up music over the phone
A carrier-agnostic platform for sending music over the phone, has launched a beta in the United States. If it all works out, it could convert the cell phone into a music promotional tool. Kadoink says it gives fans "the ability to evangelize their favorite band or new music...instantly to their own group of friends through the phone."

Bands reach out and touch fans through Kadoink by uploading audio files to the site's servers. These files can then be placed in a widget that is embeddable in any web page, including social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook. From there, fans can send the audio files to as many as a thousand numbers in what Kadoink calls a "blast." Senders have the additional option of adding his or her own personal introduction, so that unspecting recipients aren't caught off guard. Since these messages are sent as a regular voice call, Kadoink's service works on any mobile phone and does not require any additional client to be downloaded.


Nabbr Launches Player With Content From Majors. Grabs More Funding
Widget promotion network Nabbr has announced agreements with all four major record labels, to launch the Nabbr New Music Player. Each week 10 videos will be featured, allowing the 41 million monthly visitors to Nabbr's network of 180 sites to embed a video’s individual widget or the entire program into their social network profiles.


Watching full-length TV programs on Internet increasingly popular
Watching a favorite show you missed on television on the Internet is increasingly popular, two recent studies show. Horowitz Associates found that 16 percent of high-speed Internet users watched at least one full-length TV program online during a week, double the number from last year. Horowitz just released its report: Broadband Content and Services 2007. (Online Media Daily account.)

The Nielsen Company found that 25 percent of the 1,599 Americans surveyed in October have watched full episodes of a TV program in the past three months. (New York Times.)


Amazon vs. Wal-Mart: MP3 Store Showdown Before iTunes Final Battle
Now that EMI and Universal have seen the light and started offering music in DRM-free MP3 format—and according to well-founded rumors, Sony and Warner are also exploring a DRM-free launch in 2008—online music stores finally have the means to get iPod-friendly and take on iTunes. As you know, iTunes only offers AAC files, a small fraction of which are DRM free, so Amazon and Wal-Mart have launched MP3 stores to lure people looking to buy their newly-freed tunes elsewhere. So, iTunes defectors, where should you go? Into the familiar embrace of Amazon, or into the hairy, bologna-scented arms of Wal-Mart? I took them both for a spin, and made the call.

How do the prices compare between the sites? Well, from my unscientific sampling, Amazon seems to be the cheaper choice. All of Nirvana's albums, for example, are $9.22 on Wal-Mart, and that's for the censored versions. The listings for the uncensored versions all say "Not available for download. Buy this on CD from Walmart.com." No, no I won't.

Other price discrepancies include Air's Pocket Symphony ($8.99 on Amazon, $9.22 on Wal-Mart), Broken Social Scene's self-titled album ($7.99 on amazon, $9.44 on Wal-Mart), and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane ($8.97 on Amazon, $9.22 on Wal-Mart). More often than not, the prices are better on Amazon.

And a lot of albums that are on Amazon aren't available at all on Wal-Mart. Boxer by The National? Nope, no albums from The National at all on Wal-Mart, nor of Smog. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, Sound of Silver by LCD Soundsystem and Horn of Plenty by Grizzly Bear are all available on Amazon and missing from Wal-Mart as well.

You've also got to be careful, because some albums available on Amazon in MP3 are only available on Wal-Mart's site in locked-down 128kbps WMA. Wal-Mart does have the decency to state whether or not a track "Plays on iPod," though, so you're cool if you pay attention. See the Band of Horses' Cease to Begin example here:

Praising Amazon over Wal-Mart isn't the same as saying Amazon's selection is amazing. A lot of times they don't have the complete catalog of an artist (Grizzly Bear's newer Yellow House isn't available on either, for example). And obviously you won't find anything from Sony or Warner on there.

But by and large, the selection on Amazon, especially of independent label artists, is clearly superior to Wal-Mart's. And not having to deal with WMA results mixed in with your MP3 searches is much better. The Amazon version feels a bit more elegant to me, but it really is a personal preference: in terms of functionality, neither one really beats the other.

Wal-Mart also has a program for downloading songs that requires a scary ActiveX script to install—and yes, unlike Amazon's, this thing is only available to Windows XP and Vista PC users. No Macs allowed. The Download Manager is harder to install too, with IE fighting you every step of the way to get it running.

It works a lot like Amazon's program, hiding in your task bar and waiting to be loaded up with songs by the site, but there are fewer preferences. I couldn't even find an option letting me pick a download destination. It only gives you an option to add it to your Windows Media Library, which is useless to me, but later I discovered a "Wal-Mart Purchased Media" playlist in iTunes. When it finishes, it gives you the option to play the song, which if you do opens the song in Windows Media Player regardless of what your default MP3 player is. Worst of all, I had to search for the location of the downloaded file itself. It ended up in My Documents/My Music/Downloads/Artist/Album, again, totally pointless for my purposes. Not having the ability to select a destination folder is bad design; not telling people where to find their freshly paid-for music is idiotic.