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Pandora Update
September 1st, 2010We’ve detailed the genius of Pandora before in these blog pages. Last week, they added a new feature: Stations based on musical genre.
The way Pandora has worked until now, is that you select a band or a song that you like, and Pandora puts together a fantastic playlist of similar artists or songs. With the the feature, you can simply choose from over 100 different channels or “micro-genre stations”. The feature feels very similar to satellite radio, but with added options. Consumers can choose a “thumbs up” button or a “thumbs down” button to shape the playlist and the music they hear.
According to Michael Zapruder, “We wanted to find a uniquely Pandora way to address this consumer need so we created a number of genre stations that are carefully seeded with relevant songs and constantly refreshed with new releases.”
A listing of the available channels can be found here.
Social Network Advertising Soars
August 30th, 2010According to their most recent study, Digital research group EMarketer says US advertising on social media sites is expected to increase 20% over last year to $1.68 billion. The study, which is conducted every 6 months measures sites around ther world such as LinkedIn, Classmates.com, MySpace, and more.
The expected increases are primarily due to the strong performance of Facebook. According to the study, half of the expected $1.68 billion will be spent at Facebook and by 2011 advertisers are expected to spend over $1 billion at the site.
DVR Usage Growing
August 23rd, 2010A recent survey conducted on the eve of the new fall season shows what we have all suspected: Fewer and fewer people are actually watching television programming at the time it actually airs. According to the survey, 62% of television watchers across the country said they use some type of video recorder and watch the shows on their own schedule.
Add to this information the fact that more people are spending their tv watching time streaming movies and television shows on services like Netflix, and you can see why the advertising industry is in a state of reinvention. Television commercials just are not the effective platform they used to be.
The web is a booming mecha for advertisers. Streaming video and advertising on sites like YouTube and Hulu are commonplace today. Increasingly, advertisers need to move quickly to capitalize on the immediacy of web content. Royalty free music is a fantastic option for web content creators needing background music for their web advertising. It is quick, affordable, and easily licensed.
Cool New Music Discovery Site
August 20th, 2010Like discovering new artists? Or maybe you just like staying on top of the latest music buzz. Well, here is a cool site you should check out. Rather than charting music based on albums shipped or songs downloaded, We Are Hunted is a a site that charts the 99 most popular songs of any given day based on tracking social networks, blogs, forums, Twitter, MySpace, Spotify, and others.
Each day the website, based in Queensland, Australia, offers up a list of the 99 most popular songs in a number of categories including Emerging, Popular, and Remix tunes. It also serves up results for a number of standard music genres like Punk, Electronic, Rock, Pop, Folk, Hip Hop, etc.
Results can be filtered by song or by artist and the interface is elegantly simple. Songs can be played from the site or purchased. This is a cool site for music fans of any genre.
Re-Inventing MySpace
August 19th, 2010Having been surpassed and left for dead by the social media juggernaut Facebook, MySpace is struggling to find it’s identity. To that end, they are making continued efforts to define themselves within the context of music discovery.
Last week MySpace launched “Romeo”, a music video player that plays a randomized selection of music videos to match a users mood. Users can choose from fifteen genres such as hip hop or rock and select from thirteen different moods including chill or naughty. The application then serves up a steady stream of videos interspersed with an advertisement approximately every 15 minutes.
Touting Romeo as a music discovery tool, President of MySpace, Courtney Holt, says the application will allow people to “…find an artist that you’ve never heard of before that you will fall in love with.
While users cannot search for specific songs, they can “love” a video which will intern serve up more similar artists and videos. Romeo is available as a free app for the Apple iPad and as an application that can be played from any standard web browser. It is not currently available for the iPhone.
Breaking Down Creative Commons
August 17th, 2010Rick Carnes, President of the Songwriters Guild of America wrote a piece last week for the Huffington Post regarding the pros and cons of Creative Commons Licenses on the future of songwriters. While he might be a bit idealistic, Rick is a smart man with a lot of experience and makes good sense.
The comments section is a thought provoking discussion on the subject from posters on both sides of the argument. At one point, Rick makes the point that “Just any song can’t replace any other song.” Original works always carry some value that can not necessarily be replicated with a different song. I can’t agree more. Anyone who has ever done audio post can tell you that if you take 5 (seemingly) similar pieces of production music and throw them up against your video, some will work ok, some won’t work at all, but when you find the right piece there is no substitute that can take it’s place.
Check out the article here.
Limewire Trial Update
August 13th, 2010Lime Wire has been in the news quite a bit for their legal issues regarding their file-sharing site. In fact, we’ve touched on the subject a couple of times here.
Here is the recap and the latest news in the ongoing drama:
Warner Music Group is seeking monetary damages from the file sharing site as well as a permanent order to shut down the LimeWire website an freeze the assets of its founder, Mark Gorton. In May, a U.S. District Judge ruled that Lime Wire was liable for inducing copyright infringement.
As is typical, the case is moving through the legal system very slowly. The latest update to the story is that Lime Wire has now requested a jury trial in separate lawsuit filed by music publishers. This is of interest to the creative community as the outcome could very well be a reflection of how seriously the average American (or at least a jury of average Americans) consider copyright violation and file sharing to be.
For now all we can do is wait.
Is MySpace Toast?
August 10th, 2010In 2005 News Corp purchased MySpace as part of a $580 million deal. As part of it’s earnings call last week, they announced that they lost $174 million in the fourth quarter. They lost $136 million in the same quarter of the previous year. In addition, the MySpace advertising deal with Google will either expire or be renegotiated with less favorable terms in the next few weeks.
News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch claims that the new management team at MySpace is confident and their prospects are bright.
Only time will tell.
Piracy Hurts Everybody
August 6th, 2010There has been much discussion about the effects of digital piracy on the large record labels, the megastar artists, and the James Camerons of Hollywood. Piracy effects those of us in the stock music industry as well. What most people seem to miss is the fact that the segment of the entertainment industry that is getting crushed under the weight of piracy is the small to midsize independent artists.
Ellen Seidler is a perfect example. Ellen is a filmmaker who, along with her directing partner, invested $250,000 of her own cash to make a movie called And Then Came Lola. Their hope was to at least break even on the project and pay off the debts they incurred to produce the movie.
It wasn’t long after the movie was released that Seidler realized that there were close to 2,000 versions of their film online with over 10,000 download links. They have found their film being pirated on Russian websites, Chinese sites, Arabic sites, and more. They even found a website selling their DVD with Spanish subtitles. Problem is, they didn’t release it with Spanish subtitles.
Unlike a big budget Hollywood film that can actually make money before the movie goes to DVD, independent productions that don’t get a theatrical release depend on DVD sales, DVD rentals, and video-on-demand to generate revenue. When that revenue stream is pirated, the filmmaker is hit hard, and jobs are lost. Set designers, makeup artists, cameramen, and aspiring actors are left without work.
And we, the entertainment hungry masses, will eventually be the losers.
Navy SEAL vs. Pirates?
August 4th, 2010Former United States Senator Bob Kerrey has agreed to lead the Motion Picture Association of America. Kerrey, who some may remember from his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination of 1992, will replace Dan Glickman as the CEO of the MPAA.
Kerrey, who is said to be respected in both political parties, is a former Navy SEAL and was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service in the Vietnam War. He has a reputation for being tough, and for getting things accomplished.
This is just what the MPAA needs. The MPAA and the Recording Industry of America have been working to get the cooperation of internet service providers in the fight against online privacy. Their hope is that the ISPs would issue a warning to customers accused of pirating music or films, and then follow that up with some sort of service interruption. Thus far, the major ISPs are reluctant to go so far as cutting off service to their customers. Eventually, these issues may end up being decided on Capitol Hill, and Kerry knows his way around there.