NEW YORK — Amazon.com Inc. said Wednesday the company will launch a digital music store later in 2007 with millions of songs, free of copy protection technology that limits where consumers can play their music.
The Seattle-based company said music company EMI Group Plc , home to artists ranging from Coldplay to Norah Jones to Joss Stone to Pink Floyd, has licensed its digital catalog to Amazon, the second such deal in a month.
“Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO.
Digital Rights Management, or DRM, has been demanded by the music industry to contain piracy by preventing users from making multiple copies; but its critics say it restricts consumers and therefore hinders the growth of legal music uses.
Early last month, EMI said it would make its music available online without a key anti-piracy measure, becoming the first major music group to take the risk in a bid to grow digital sales.
With all music companies struggling from a drop in the sale of physical albums, EMI, announced its first deal with Apple Inc. and the iTunes online music store in April.
One indication of popularity of a band or music artist these days is how many friends they have on MySpace and how many times their music is played and commented upon. I recently came across a service that now helps you get those new friends. Contrary to the advice given in the classic Dale Carnegie book mentioned above, some new enterprising service provider, mysocialMarketing.com, now offers you a way to buy them. A package of 3000 to 6000 new friends is available for the unbelievably low price of US $149, a saving of $150 off the regular price. 10,000 profile views and song plays can also be purchased for an additional $299.
Here is one of their pitches:
"It's quickly becoming common knowledge that many major labels will not consider a band on MySpace unless they have at least 25'000 profile views! Don't miss out on that opportunity simply because of a technicality.Ok, time to level the playing field! We'll now send unique people to your profile to rank up your views and song plays lightning fast."
I am seriously reluctant to advertise them, but at the same time these types of services need to be exposed. This is really bad for social networking.
Several cable television veterans are putting their band back together and taking their act to the Internet.
Next New Networks, a New York-based Internet start-up run and backed by former executives of MTV and Nickelodeon, will announce plans today to begin a series of video-oriented Web sites — what the company calls micro-networks — on niche topics like do-it-yourself fashion, comic books, car racing and cartoons.
[Snip ...]
Next New Networks plans to blend elements of old and new media into a type of hybrid entertainment that is different from traditional television and user-generated sites like YouTube. Its various Web properties will revolve around professionally produced videos of three to eight minutes, which it plans to pitch to sponsors as safe and predictable places to advertise online.
Many of the programs will solicit contributions from their audiences, but the company will screen submissions before they approved as final product. The company plans to generate some programming itself while also identifying talented video contributors and bringing them into the Next New Networks fold.
It is starting with six Web sites, including Fast Lane Daily (fastlanedaily.com), which features a daily news program for auto enthusiasts, and ThreadBanger (threadbanger.com), which offers a five-minute weekly show with MTV-style anchors who discuss the homemade-clothing culture.
Mr. Seibert, the creative director, is bringing two existing video sites to the network: Channel Frederator (channelfrederator.com), a weekly program on animation, and VOD Cars (VODCars.com), a curated collection of video clips from the car culture.
The founders believe the Internet offers a programming opportunity similar to the early days of cable, which traditional media firms are not exploiting.
“The nature of big media companies is about incumbent brands and repurposing and refashioning their material for the Web,” said Mr. Scannell, the chief executive. “We have no incumbent brands. We’re a white sheet for creative people.”
Mr. Miller, who left America Online last October under pressure from his bosses at Time Warner, cited the founders’ cable experience as the reason he is backing the company.
“To me these guys are returning to their roots,” he said. “They are unshackled from large media environment where it is much more about what your quarterly goals are, and can go back to developing new networks and ways of communicating with audiences.”
In part, Next New Networks is also challenging the idea that the chaotic terrain of sites like YouTube and MySpace can be a friendly place for advertisers.
“Video sharing is awesome, but advertisers are knitting their brow,” Mr. Scannell said. “They want to know what they’re backing. There is a place for brands to deliver something that is consistent.”
Piper Jaffray's predictions for online ad spending keep going up, and are now expected to go beyond the $80 billion mark by 2011. Higher growth rates at the close of 2006 are one factor, but the research firm points to the people as the true driving force. As more consumers take the reins when it comes to controlling their media diets, and spend more time online and creating their own content, advertisers will continue to boost online budgets. Several prognostications are made in the firm's new "User Revolution" report, including the domination of video online, a Google dynasty, and the death of the portal.
In December, Piper Jaffray & Co.'s Internet ad revenue forecast for 2011 was at $78 billion, but today's report raises that estimate to $81.1 billion. "We have more confidence in the growth rates," of the Internet, said Safa Rashtchy, managing director, senior Internet analyst for the company. According to Rashtchy, when measuring Internet ad spending, the firm includes search advertising, display ads, text links, video advertising and e-mail, but excludes mobile and iTV.
The explosion of niche content online and the related segmentation of audiences will continue to drive online ad spending by small advertisers that otherwise cannot afford mass market vehicles. This "will actually give more power to small advertisers," Rashtchy said. Still, big brand advertisers will continue to shell out the lion's share of online ad dollars, he continued, noting consumer packaged goods and automotive advertisers will maintain their big spender positions. "Over time, there won't be much difference between the Web and the rest of the media channels….It will reflect overall advertising dollars out there," he added.
From this report on CNN, it's about what you would expect ... cultural differences yield a difference in look, feel and dynamics. I expect we'll see more and more of these kinds of cultural shadings and nuance, and that there will come to be observable patterns in how people share, comment and use advertising in such a space.
The tools and services offered by Qumana are designed from an ease of use point of view, and hopefully offer little in terms of cultural barriers to their use. The content assembly and advertising selection and placement capabilities we offer users let them make the choices and stay in control of what they want to do and how they want to do it.
If we had an arrangement with a major Japanese advertising supplier, the users of Mixi could go about assembling and publishing content, and could use advertising supplied by Mixi in a work-and-revenue sharing arrangement .. getting content into circulation with appropriate Mixi-approved advertising woven into the content.
Mixi is projecting 4.8 billion yen ($40 million) in sales, mostly advertising revenue, for the fiscal year through March, more than double what it made the previous year. Its initial public offering last year earned more than 6 billion yen ($50 million), catapulting Kasahara to dot-com stardom.
Fumi Yamazaki at Technorati Japan, a blogging search company, isn't too upbeat about MySpace's chances in Japan as people usually don't want to switch social-networking services.
"Mixi and MySpace may be able to appeal to different needs," she said. "But there are some hurdles MySpace needs to overcome."
Even MySpace Japan Vice President Naoko Ando acknowledged MySpace isn't about to put Mixi out of business, but she believes Japanese can use both.
Ando is hoping that Japanese may want to check out American musicians, who offer tunes, messages and virtual friendships on MySpace. The site plans to use its Softbank partnership to sign on Japanese artists.
MySpace also has strengths in video sharing. It's among the leading sites where users post video clips, but MySpace does not yet offer video sharing in its Japanese service and is trying to win over copyright protection groups here, said Softbank spokesman Takeaki Nukii.
Mixi started offering video sharing earlier this month.
Qumana has been selected as one of the select IT companies in British Columbia on Rocket Builders ‘Ready to Rocket - Ones To Watch’ list for 2007
Compiled by the Canadian-based firm Rocket Builders, the ‘2007 Ready to Rocket - Ones To Watch’ named a small select group of British Columbia technology companies gaining traction within the information technology trends that contribute to faster growth than the IT sector as a whole. These companies represent high-potential growth in revenue and profile and that are beginning to be of real interest to potential partners and venture capitalists.
“Companies that make our annual ‘Ready to Rocket - Ones To Watch’ list come from a variety of technology businesses and industry sectors across British Columbia, and Rocket Builders has a credible track record of identifying these emerging companies,” says Geoffrey Hansen, managing partner at Rocket Builders. "Many promising companies are too early in commercialization, too early in first revenues, or in transition to new markets or business models. Based on the potential of their technology alone, we recognize their potential in a "Ones to Watch" list."
About the Ready to Rocket 25 and the Ones To Watch
Each year, based on analysis of trends that will drive growth in the information technology sector, Rocket Builders identifies twenty-five (25) private companies that are best positioned to capitalize on the trends for growth. This selection methodology has been an accurate predictor of growth with "Ready to Rocket" companies exceeding the industry growth rate. Also, many of these companies raise investment capital and each year many of the profiled "Ready to Rocket' companies are acquired. To be eligible for selection to the "Ready to Rocket 25" list, companies must be a nominated Canadian-Controlled Private Corporation, and have a commercialized product on the market that has customers and is generating ongoing revenue.
Additionally, Rocket Builders also identifies early-stage high-potential companies it places on its 'Ones To Watch' list
"Many promising companies are too early in commercialization, too early in first revenues, or in transition to new markets or business models. Based on the potential of their technology alone, we recognize their potential in a "Ones to Watch" list." Visit: www.readytorocket.com
About Rocket Builders Rocket Builders is a market strategy and consulting firm focused on helping technology companies to capitalize on market opportunities. Since 2000, we have been engaged in market research, market planning, business development initiatives, strategic selling, and product launches for over 100 organizations. As a service to the local community, each year Rocket Builders shares its insight on market trends to showcase the most promising information technology companies in British Columbia through its “Ready to Rocket” event. Visit: www.rocketbuilders.com
The recent announcement that YouTube will share advertising revenues with members who contribute their work to YouTube is yet another marker is the steady march towards dissembling the structure and dynamics of the traditional broadcast media industry.
The other service cited in the article has been sharing revenue for a while, but is not the Web 2.0 darling status acquired by YouTube based on it's acquisition by Google.
Qumana's business model has since the beginning been based on sharing advertising revenue with users who use the Q-Ads service to attach relevant advertising to their social media content.
The bulk of social media sharing (the 'social' in the term social media, tho' there's more to it than that) still happens on and in blogging networks, and IMO this is unlikely to change in the near future.
As advertising gets more and more relevant to niche markets, and gets easier to identify, pull and place into or alongside media-born work created by personal publishers, we believe that Qumana's value proposition will get stronger and stronger.
Joe Eigo, a martial arts expert in Toronto, used to pay hundreds of dollars a month for computer and hosting services to distribute his own acrobatic and martial arts videos on the Web, in the hope of raising his profile in the TV and film industry.
Today, not only is he able to distribute his content to millions of people at no cost using a popular online video-sharing site, he has also been paid nearly $26,000 (U.S.) by the site owner.
Welcome to the new world of user-generated content on the Internet. What some people consider quirky material at best, companies are increasingly starting to view as a valuable asset. So valuable, in fact, they're willing to pay for it.
Metacafe, a private firm based in Palo Alto, Calif., and Tel Aviv, has been paying thousands of dollars to participants for over a year.
Every video on Metacafe that is watched more than 20,000 times, and is rated 3 out of 5 or higher by viewers, starts earning the producer $5 for each subsequent 1,000 visitors.
Metacafe rates Mr. Eigo as its top earner. One of his clips has been viewed more than five million times and has helped him attract the attention of several producers and film companies, he said.
“It's an amazing opportunity for anyone who wants to produce their own material now. The Internet has become more popular than television,” he said.
We consider Performancing to be a competitor for both Qumana and Q-Ads, and we have noted in the past that they offer a fine blogging editor for Firefox and have or had a good concept for an advertising network.
Personally speaking, I hope things over at Performancing get sorted out .. they are or were helping with progress in this space.
Apparently Wilson, who says he still owns 35% of the business, isn’t happy about the closing of Performancing’s ad network. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have known it was happening. On his personal blog, he writes:
"I don’t know what the communication problem between Performancing management is, but there appears to have been some decision making without the benefit of having all the facts.
When I resigned from the company and passed the reigns to Chris, the situation needed a lot of work, but was OK - we had a couple of options on the table for moving forward including picking up talks with one prominent blog player re the aquisition of PFF, or ScribeFire as it’s now known.
I’ve emailed Chris and Patrick, though at the time I’ve no idea if Patrick will still be playing an active role as him and Bill, from Text Link Ads need to dump their shares in Performancing this year due to non-competes after their MediaWhizz aquisition.
January 16, 2007 – Vancouver, B.C.: Qumana Software Inc. (Qumana) is pleased to announce it has released a version of the Q-Ads tool for IE 7, Microsoft’s newest version of its flagship browser. The new Q-Ads tool for IE 7 can be downloaded at the Qumana web site (http://www.qumana.com/qads)
The Q-Ads tool for IE 7 helps users who have upgraded to MS IE 7 choose and place text-based advertising into content that they have created. It provides an easy-to-use and innovative way to add advertising to the content people are creating for the Web.
Q-Ads for IE 7 complements the existing versions of the Q-Ads tool, which work with IE 6 and with Firefox 1.0 and 2.0.The Q-Ads program is designed for personal publishers who want to add advertising to content they create, and for social media and web properties who want to offer their users ways to create and share advertising-based revenue.
Qumana also offers the Q-Ads tool for MS LiveWriter and the leading Qumana offline blogging editor Qumana 3.0, designed specifically for bloggers and others who assemble and remix content from the Web.
Content attracts attention ... attention drives advertising. Use Qumana’s Q-Ads to place effective text-based advertising directly into your content … like online direct mail advertising meeting your readers’ attention.
About Qumana
Qumana Software Inc. is an advertising and web services company that provides web properties and personal publishers with market-leading methods for delivering and adding advertising to online content. Qumana’s mission is to make blogging easier and more profitable for bloggers globally. Qumana is run by Internet industry veterans, hardcore bloggers, software purists, and world-class designers committed to keeping things simple. For more information, visit http://www.qumana.com/
For more Info: Fred Fabro - CEO and President, Qumana Software Inc.
Hugh Macleod of GapingVoid, arguably an important voice in marketing philosophy and practices in the blogospere, if not Web 2.0, points to Christoper Carfi's Social Customer Manifesto and accompanies it with a provocative cartoon.
* I want to know when something is wrong, and what you're going to do to fix it.
* I want to help shape things that I'll find useful.
* I want to connect with others who are working on similar problems.
* I don't want to be called by another salesperson. Ever. (Unless they have something useful. Then I want it yesterday.)
* I want to buy things on my schedule, not yours. I don't care if it's the end of your quarter.
* I want to know your selling process.
* I want to tell you when you're screwing up. Conversely, I'm happy to tell you the things that you are doing well. I may even tell you what your competitors are doing.
* I want to do business with companies that act in a transparent and ethical manner.
* I want to know what's next. We're in partnership…where should we go?
At leat two of them are pertinent for users of Qumana, and those who may have heard of Qumana and Q-Ads but have yet to try the tools and service, or are wondering about why and how to integrate them into their work flows.
3. Blog advertising will become the hot ad medium of the year and ad agencies will screw up big-time as they learn the ropes.
Savvy advertisers have already learned that it is possible to have outrageously high click through and conversion rates through obscenely cheap and highly targeted blog advertising.
Bloggers won’t tolerate invasive, annoying, flashing, heavy-handed ads, and agencies will stumble as they try to understand the type of advertising that can beat any traditional medium, hands down, when properly executed. I have consistently achieved click thru rates as high as .857%, and averaging .268% with niche-focused blog ads.
People who read blogs are looking for specialized, high-touch information from experts in particular areas. The right ads directed to those niche audiences can work wonders.
4. Widgets in new Mac and PC operating systems will introduce millions to truly customizing their online experience.
The age of invasive advertising is over and companies will have an enormous branding experience if they provide/sponsor the information people need and want to see every day in widgets.
Essentially, widgets are a way to provide RSS feeds in a frame the user loads onto the page or site of their choice. They allow people to use stupidly named RSS feeds without understanding that they are transferring code.
By lightly branding widgets, companies that provide information consumers want to keep on their desktop or home page have the enormous opportunity to have their brand name in front of customers every day in a positive, almost subliminal way.
Brilliant synthesis and summary of what we all know is going on ...
Random excerpt:
"Part 1: Protecting A sharing economy ..
Part 2 is something we've just begun; a new way to use metadata in the infrastructure to link the sharing and the commercial economies ... to produce the opportunity for people to live in a sort of a hybrid space ... where for the sharing economy their stuff is free, and if their creative work is to be used in a commercial space there's a simple way to clear and understand what the permissions are for that to work
For example .. MySpace, Gary NewVision artist .. what's really creative is the way he's begun to deploy his rights .."
Detecting click fraud collaboratively and in real time should be quite a feat. I suppose it would mean much less relative arbitrary auditing, and probably much more transparency about why any given click would be approved or not.
If it succeeds, it should make quite a difference.
Just in case the Googles of the world ain't paying attention:
This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will provide a commercial solution to click fraud identification and prevention. The current existing solutions can not detect the so-called software click. This STTR project proposes a real time collaborative click fraud detection and prevention system to detect these software clicks. The approach draws on data mining techniques for fraud identification using detailed user activities. An accurate and efficient classification method based on association rule mining and data stream mining will be formulated to identify the click frauds.
The system will protect Pay-Per-Click advertisers from click fraud and improve their return on investment. The new data mining techniques discovered during the course of this research will be applied in multiple fields related to online business marketing, user analysis and other fraud identification processes.
The Guardian (UK) has put out a new list (and commentary) on the 100 Most Useful Web Sites. I might argue about some of their choices, but I am not really mainstream ... I am pretty much immersed in several areas of what is sometimes called Web 2.0.
Scrolling down the list, it is considerably more Web 2.0-ish than in previous years, meaning that the list is crammed full of web sites where users interact, participate, and either (or both) take content to remix and publish or upload content for others to use.
While many people have complained about the term, the Web is clearly becoming a vast arena for copious amounts of "user-generated content".
And while content has long been considered "king" (it's what attracts the mainstream metric of eyeballs), this relatively new report from Bear Sterns (The Long Tail: Why Aggregation & Context and Not (Necessarily) Content are King in Entertainment) concentrated on television / video suggests that increasingly context and the aggregation of material will play critical roles. Thus, Bear Sterns concludes that a key part of creating value is how content is packaged (Slide # 29) ... for distribution and use (use being a term that covers many forms of what people do with content).
Anyway, back to the 100 Most Useful Web sites. i think that this is an irreversible trend pointing us to an environment where people will eventually move back and forth seamlessly between two worlds, and in many cases sites like those on the list play an essential role in many peoples' daily activities (if they don't already).
Two years ago most Britons didn't have broadband and Web 2.0 was barely a twinkle in a developer's eye. Things have changed - as our cream of the crop for 2006 shows
In 2004, the internet was a different place: there was, for example, no YouTube, and most Britons online didn't have broadband. That's changed dramatically: now, more than 75% of users have broadband, and the arrival of Web 2.0 has brought sites where the interaction is as fast as if it were on your machine. So we've revisited the "cream of the crop" that we brought you two years ago.
Some of the crop is brand new; some has stood the test of time. As before, we have 100 sites in 20 categories.
It's becoming increasingly popular to use a video clip as an integral part of a blog post, and usually to help "anchor" a post's focus and meaning.
Its also becoming clear that advertising can be shaped to fit the ambient or direct subject area of a blog post, and that paradoxically using keywords to choose and place ads gives you more control over the advertising strategy for your blog.
Here's Joe Q. Public, talking about getting paid to blog about a product or a service using PayPerPost.
Re: the video clip ... I surfed over to YouTube, ran a quick search, found this and viewed it. Then, it took me one click to save the embed code, one click to open the Insert HTML function, and one click to say OK ... then finally one more click to publish the blog post.
Content in circulation in various social networks where people are sharing ... video clips, songs, recipes, recommendations ... is what advertisers are after. They are seeking better ways to reach increasingly harder-to-reach niche markets.
Put the tools into the hands of the people who are making and growing the networks, and who are "using" other people's content and mashing it together with their own.
Offer Qumana and Q-Ads to your audiences ... use them to reach into and "shake hands" with your readers, advertising-wise.
