knofun

My buddy Mike Kelley and I whipped up this app called iMpackin, if you have an iphone check it out. Homepage is at iMpackin.com.

digital media, entertainment application, impackin, iphone

So yesterday I was bummed to find that Google is leaving the radio advertising space. This is, in the immortal words of The Dude, a bummer man. We were having a lot of fun promoting sites on traditional radio, so much so I blogged about it. Oh well que cera cera, on to TV advertising.

But then today I get this email from the AdWords team:

Dear AdWords Advertiser,

Beginning on May 31st, we will discontinue the current Audio Ads
platform. We have decided to exit the broadcast radio business and
focus our efforts on exploring internet-based solutions that will
deliver relevant online streaming audio ads. Stay tuned for more
information about these initiatives later this year.

What does this change mean for you?
- Campaigns: Your active campaigns will continue to run up until
May 31st, but will no longer run after that date. You will not be
able to create any new Audio Ads campaigns after May 30th.
- Reports: You will continue to be able to access your reports for
all past campaigns up until June 12th. If you would like to keep
records of your campaign data, please run the reports as soon as
possible while the system is still fully operational.
- Billing: You will continue to be able to access your billing
information indefinitely.

We’re sharing this information with you now so that you’ll have
time to make other arrangements for your audio advertising after
May 31st. If you have questions, please feel free to contact us at
audio-support@google.com.

Sincerely,

The AdWords Team

Hey, thanks for the newsflash!

digital media, geek stuff, ventures, web marketing advertising, adwords, google, radio

Last week digg had an article entitled “Warner Music chief has epiphany, praises Apple”, which linked to this story on AppleInsider which “borrowed” from this MacUser article. My oh my what have the apple fanboys brought us now?

In the article(s), Bronfman Jr. is quoted as saying:

“We used to fool ourselves,’ he said. “We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.”

Wow, at first glance this seems like an intelligent, albeit late, and well articulated insight. But let’s get into context here. Who the hell is Edgar Bronfman Jr. and why does him saying something most intelligent people know already make news?

Well, he is currently head of Warner Music, owners of little labels like Atlantic and Bad Boy. Put it this way, someone waaaaaaaay down on the org chart from him cuts Puff Daddy’s checks. Where did he get all this paper? The old fashioned way of course, he inherited it. Loooong story shorter, he sold off the assets of his family’s company Seagrams (you drink it we distill it we used to bootleg it), including a 25% stake in chemical giant DuPont for $9 billion, so he could invest in his real love which is entertainment. He did this by buying stakes in various production houses like MCA and Universal Pictures, but pretty soon he realized he needed a partner. Enter Jean-Marie Messier and Vivendi, a multi billion dollar french conglomerate that was also moving out of their traditional businesses into new media and entertainment. In 2000, Edgar thought it would be a great idea to merge the two companies into one and form a internet-music-movie giant in a move that cost him all his remaining shares in Seagrams and his new media company. He resigned as chief in December of 2001, just before the value of the company plummeted more than 80%:

In 2004 he bought Warner Music Group for $2.6 Billion and here we are. Along the way he has always been very vocal about his opinions on Music and Technology. In 2000, he likened the use of Napster to slavery and communism which garnered a shockingly intelligent response from Courtney Love. After becoming head of Warner, he endorsed the RIAA’s lawsuits against consumers, going as far as to say that parents should be held accountable for their kids downloading habits. That was of course before he admitted his kids download unauthorized music too.

I had the pleasure of meeting both Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Jean-Marie Messier when they came to San Diego to buy MP3.com for $372 million in cash and stock. I distinctly remember having a bad taste in my mouth as he stood at the podium telling us all that we could “put the ugliness of my.mp3.com behind us” and “move forward in cooperation with the majors.”

Listen you jerk, you bought the solution you are looking for now in 2001, but were too (stupid? arrogant? ignorant? smart?) to realize it. Now you are giving advice to the mobile industry whose ringtone business has supported your sagging bottom line for the last 4 years on how to handle their consumers, and how you shouldn’t go to war with them. I know you didn’t go to college (neither did I really), but that one should be common sense. Trying to buddy up with the mobile industry now and seem hip to all your consumers who do what they want regardless of the whims of an entertainment tycoon will not work. How about you step up to the plate and do something real, like condemn the RIAA’s CONTINUING practice of suing your customers. Funny how you think its ok to make a lot of public statements on how pirating music is tantamount to evil, but you can mince words and beat around the bush when you are admitting you were wrong. Just say you were wrong, and then actually DO SOMETHING to correct the practice of “going to war with your customers.”

In the words of Michael Corleone, “I hope they will have the decency to clear my name with the same publicity with which they have now besmirched it.”

digital media, entertainment, file sharing / p2p, rant bronfman, itunes, music, riaa, warner

digital media, entertainment

Ok, another stumble I fell in love with. MP3Salad is a site that uses the Google API to search for MP3s on the web. Super easy and extremely functional, plus I discovered DJ Cham.

digital media, entertainment

People have been hating on DRM ever since its inception. Consumer groups have railed, boycotts have been held, but still you hear from industry heavyweights like Ted Cohen:

“The DRM makes the business model possible,” he said. “Without DRM, you can’t have the business models and give people choices.”

But ever since The Great Steve Jobs ranted on DRM, tunes, shall we say, have been changing. EMI has announced a major change in policy by selling their songs through iTunes with no DRM restrictions. Now it looks like Microsoft is pushing at the labels as well:

“Consumers have indicated [having DRM free music] is important to them so Zune has been working with a variety of partners to head in this direction. This is a time of transition for the music industry and Microsoft is committed to striking a balance between delivering the best consumer experience while still protecting the rights of the content owners.”

God, what’s next? A legal music store that sells what consumers want and how they want it?? Shocker!!

I feel obliged to give some equal space to the opposition so here’s what Christopher “Buy DRM” Levy has to say on the subject:

Christopher Levy of the closely held Austin, Texas-based BuyDRM was one of those who was not so eager to contemplate the possibilities in the wake of EMI’s announcement. His company provides DRM technology to artists and record labels and he views the EMI announcement as a desperate move by a desperate music company trying to get around iTunes’ dominance in online sales.

“This is not the bellwether for the rest of the industry,” said Mr. Levy. “As long as there is media, there is going to be digital rights management. We can’t assume the music industry as a whole will abandon this. All things of value have some protection, and that’s not going to change.”

digital media, entertainment

Fast Company’s February issue has a great article on a quiet little company called Musictoday. Little may be kind of a misnomer because they help more than 700 artists connect with and monetize their fanbase. They provide end to end services for artists, including building their web presence, managing their fan club, and marketing their brand to their fans.

This is the kind of innovation the music industry needs, and we all knew it was just a matter of time before evolution reared its head. Suing your customers is not evolution, its regression and fear. In a time when all we read about is how the RIAA has sued another 800 file sharers and how record label after record label is losing money and going out of business, this story should be a shining beacon of hope that the industry is healthy. Because, after all, people want to buy their music. They WANT to support the artists they like.

digital media, entertainment, file sharing / p2p

Yes, another study proving what people (smart, respected industry folks at that) have been screaming at the music industry for years now:

A new study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.

Entitled “The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis,” the study matched an extensive sample of music downloads to American music sales data in order to search for causality between illicit downloading and album sales. Analyzing data from the final four months of 2002, the researchers estimated that P2P affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe.

Yes, its true. Will this keep them from claiming under oath with a straight face that downloading a single song can cost them upwards of $10,000? No.

digital media, entertainment, file sharing / p2p

That is actually a generous noun, maybe it should be CNN+Reuters+NPD = RIAA propoganda. CNN.com published a Reuters story titled Illegal downloads grow despite lawsuits with the slug underneath reading “The music industry has started winning lawsuits in the last few years, but the number people downloading illegal music continues to slowly increase.”

Ahem. BULLSHIT! To quote Reuters on the exact nature of these lawsuits, “the music industry started winning lawsuits against individuals in the last few years.” Um, name one. Oh you mean the extortion letters that the RIAA’s thugs lawyers send to their customers demanding $3,000. Yes, people have settled but I have yet to hear of the RIAA actually fighting and winning ONE of these lawsuits.

No surprise here, Reuters is getting its data from NPD. I went on a tear of NPD’s suspect data back in June and CNET actually pulled a story because of it. I just wish these guys would do some homework or actually care. But no, its all about a catchy headline and some pageviews. They also quote “industry experts” like Wayne Rosso, former “CEO of Grokster”. Give me a break, that’s like saying “Hugh Hefner, publisher” Rosso is a scam artist, Grokster scammed both its users and the technologists it licensed from, and cheated them both in the end. Hey Wayne, how is that Mashboxx service coming? Any customers? Any funding? Any product??? Hellooooo?

*yawn* Seriously I am putting the laptop away now. Sorry for yelling.

digital media, file sharing / p2p, rant

So I just read Steve Jobs’ open letter on DRM and the iTunes store and I was just beginning to craft a response to post here. Then I got my Michael’s Minute email and found that MR had beat me to most of the points I was going to make. Of course, when reading these posts one has to remember that Steve is trying to push Apple, iTunes, and the iPod, while MR is trying to push open standards - which is covered by his MP3Tunes.com offering. To his credit, Steve has done an amazing job opening up digital music to the masses. To HIS credit, MR had the epiphany the industry is heading towards in 2000.

Both of these guys are talking about opening up DRM and really getting to the heart of what consumers want. They are both technologists and it shows, the difference being MR jumped first with ideas that were WAY ahead of their time. Jobs played it a little safer (although in all fairness he was sitting on billions in the bank and a company with a solid revenue stream while Michael had investors money and wall street to answer to) by waiting for the dust to settle a little bit after Napster and then walking in to the record labels like some kind of savior. Clearly Jobs emerged the winner from that scenario, after a 400% increase in his stock price while MP3.com was sold for cents on the dollar to Vivendi then CNET. He may be smiling now, but Michael must get some small satisfaction from knowing the industry would love to have his my.mp3.com now instead of suing it into oblivion.

My favorite point to make in discussions with “industry people” is that although they make a big fuss about releasing digital music without a DRM system, they do it millions of times EVERY DAY. Nearly every CD you have ever bought is digital music with no DRM, and I am glad both of these guys make that point, although now I will have to come up with a new favorite point. Here is my favorite exceprt from Jobs’ rant:

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

At any rate, I am sitting in a hotel in hollywood and really shouldnt be on my laptop, just had to comment on these industry heavyweights helping shed some light on a seemingly simple problem. Happy weekending!!

digital media, entertainment