snapshot 7/22/08

Report: TiVo, Amazon team up on sales pitches
TiVo--a company well-known for helping TV viewers skip commercials--is teaming up with Amazon.com to make it easier for consumers to purchase products they see on television commercials and talk shows, according to a report Monday on The New York Times Web site.

A "product purchase" feature on onscreen menus will provide TiVo customers with links to buy products like books, compact discs, and DVDs featured on programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Late Show With David Letterman, and The Daily Show, the newspaper reported. Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo plans to offer the feature to advertisers and programmers, giving viewers the chance to purchase products during commercials and product placements in shows, the paper reported.


One Paul Westerberg album: 49 cents
Here's a bargain: Paul Westerberg this weekend released an one-track, 44-minute song via Amazon.com, distributing it to the online seller with the help of TuneCore. The cut, really one 44-minute album, is available for 49 cents. It's essentially one long, scruffy, low-fi melding of a dozen-plus Westerberg songs.


Baynote, Strands, RichRelevance — will they survive the “recommendation engine” consolidation?
A recent Yankee Group report says the technology is promising, yielding up to a 400 percent increase in click-through rates on some sites. However, Yankee predicts a consolidation. ATG already acquired one player, CleverSet. “In the next 4 to 5 years, only three to four personalization engines will survive in each major market,” according to the report, which also says companies will fight over the mobile sector next.


eMusic Makeover Starts Rolling; Album Pages First
Got 2.0? eMusic is now rolling the first in a series of site changes, part of a broader reach outside of its borders. Last week, the company outlined an agenda that included the integration of YouTube videos and Wikipedia bios, outside commentary, and exportable widgets. Other aspects of the plan are inside the fence, including the introduction of a revamped, highly visual navigation. The focal point for the first-wave change is the album page, a highly-trafficked component of the eMusic site. Alongside album information and tracklisting, the album page now includes related content from Wikipedia, Flickr, and YouTube.

In turn, the album page can also be exported into networked environments like Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, Twitter, and StumbleUpon. "Blogs and recommendations from friends are now more relevant in music discovery than what music critics have to say, but what's missing is a place that brings that all together," said eMusic chief David Pakman.


Long Live the Jewel Case
I realize, of course, that most music is still purchased on CD. Even so, one aspect of the recent Last.fm redesign surprised me -- on album pages, every release is now displayed as if it's in a jewel case, complete with a black plastic tray and the faux-sheen of the plastic over the CD insert.