some facts on downloading movies

From PaidContent.org: (a great resource, btw), here are some interesting facts
-- StarzTicket, the Starz-RNWK joint venture: "On average, our subscribers are downloading about 10 movies per month," said Bob Greene, senior VP. "That's [about $1.30] per movie [for $13 per month]."
-- Movielink: about 1,000 movie titles available for download, and about 100,000 downloads per month...
-- CinemaNow: a collection of about 7,000 licensed movies, which it expects to increase to about 10,000 by the end of the year. About 3,000 are available for download"

Download the Report from "The Summit for the Future" (Club of Amsterdam)

This was a great event that was organized by Felix Bopp and the Club of Amsterdam; a great meeting of some very bright and informed people. The report is here - enjoy.

The Future of Music: ITConversations (audio streams and downloads)

IT conversations did a great interview with Dave Kusek, my co-author and me, on.... you guessed it: The Future of Music Book. You can download or stream it by going here.

:The music-industry incumbents are threatened by the new technologies of music distribution. How are they reacting, and how are musicians using the Internet on their own to make more money for themselves? In this interview with two music-industry insiders, Dave Slusher discovers the current state of digital music and possible courses for the future. David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard are the authors of the new book "The Future of Music" from Berklee Press. This book examines the assumptions built into the current music industry and its distribution mechanisms, discusses ways in which the ease of digital distribution and P2P technologies could be tapped, examines alternate payment mechanisms and licensing schemes, and looks to the future of music creation.

David Kusek is a musician, and at the age of nineteen he co-invented electronic drums at Synare, which helped ignite the disco era. He is also a co-developer of the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) standard that opened up electronic music to literally millions of people and is currently vice-president of Berklee Music. Gerd Leonhard is a music futurist and entrepeneur, former CEO of LicenseMusic.com ,a company that revolutionized music licensing, reducing the average transaction time for music licenses from six weeks to two hours. He is currently CEO of the ThinkAndLink, a boutique advisory agency based in Basel, Switzerland and San Francisco."

This interview is from the IT Conversations series Voices in Your Head, hosted by Dave Slusher.

Roger Mc Namee: Entropy - The Role of Digital Rights Management

Great feature on DRM on Roger's blog - worth reading 4 sure.
" Digital rights management is not the worst thing going on in the entertainment industry, but it may be a proxy for the technology problems facing the industry.  You may recall the fable from medieval times about the kingdom that lost a war because its king was killed in battle; the king was killed because his horse lost a shoe; the horseshoe fell off because it was lacking a single nail.  The lesson: for want of a nail, the war was lost.  If it turns out that the media industry loses out in the technology wars, the preoccupation with DRM may turn out to be the nail...."  Roger's new book is worth a read, too.

How bands use bitTorrent for videos

in wired

OURmedia.org is live

I've been waiting for this a long time --- finally, here it is -- congrats, JD!!!
"Ourmedia.org, a free global repository for grassroots media, allows anyone to upload, store and share digital works. The site will accept home movies, music videos, original music, audio interviews, photos, art, documentaries, grassroots political ads, animations, books, student films, software — any work in digital form." More details here

IF... TV Goes Down The Tube - The Media 2016

Good feature in Digital Lifestyles.
A couple of nuggets:
"Computers turned office life upside down. Now they’re focused on changing entertainment."
" With a TV connected to a broadband connection (and they will be broad by 2012), you will be able to access the content from around the connected world. Any subject you imagine will have content available about it."

Bertelsmann Launches New P2P Download Platform

Bertelsmann... back with deep pockets, again.... check this out.
"German media giant Bertelsmann, a former partner of file-sharing network Napster, is launching a new Internet platform for downloading and sharing movies or games over the Internet, it said Tuesday. Bertelsmann's services and technology arm arvato said it would sell the service, dubbed GNAB, to mobile phone operators, Internet providers or TV stations, which could then offer their clients legal downloads of large files under their own brand..."   I want to see this!

Only 2.8 CDs per year / per person... (US)??

From the FRUKT newletter: "BPI figures show that people in the UK buy on average 3.2 CDs each every year. The other top countries are; US (2.8), France (2.1), Japan (2.0) and Germany (2.2)".

Some pretty relevant numbers, imho. Clearly, CDs are not getting a whole lot of people excited anymore. If we could get 90% of people in the 'rich nations' to spend a very low flat fee on music, every year, that would be a huge sea change. Is this where Napster To Go is heading?

More on the above stats here

Is THIS the next big thing after the IPod?

ahemmmm

Wired: P2P: Music's Death Knell or Boon?

as usual... great coverage by Wired. Nice quote by Ted Cohen:
"We're at an inflection point here where we have a real chance to change the way the music business works," said Ted Cohen, senior VP of digital development and distribution for EMI Music. "We're interested in making sure everyone survives. I think this will be an interesting year and a turning point."

"The Future of Music": CORANTE Interview with Gerd Leonhard and Dave Kusek

From CORANTE "The record industry as we know it is dying, but the music industry is exploding" write authors Gerd Leonhard and Dave Kusek in their new book, "The Future of Music." Due to the digitization of music and the possibilities that digital media technologies afford, Leonhard and Kusek see a future where more musicians, more artists and more companies will share in a bigger pie.

In their book, the authors envision a future in which a good portion of digital music is provided via a utility-type arrangement - like water or electricity -, for a flat monthly payment, rather than sold ‘by the unit’ (i.e. as single downloads). The authors predict a promotion engine not driven from the top-down (i.e. by music industry tastemakers and kingmakers), but from the bottom up - by online music communities with members eager to share, and to communicate with each other about new artists. Depending on your point of view, that statement may sound alarming, pie-in-the sky, wise, or simply wrong. Yet through their experiences, both Kusek and Leonhard have earned the right to weigh in. Kusek is co-developer of the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) standard to enable musicians to record in inexpensive home studios. In 1993, Kusek worked with A&M Records to design and develop the first commercially available enhanced CD able to connect audio CDs to a PC. And Leonhard has high-level experience on the executive, entrepreneurial, and creative sides of the music industry. In 1997, he founded and served as CEO of LicenseMusic.com, a company that until 2002, streamlined music licensing for such clients as Disney, Paramount Pictures, and Fox TV.

Corante recently sat down with Gerd and Dave to talk about the future of the music industry in this digital era....

The fairest Digital Music Model (pdf)

by Todd Beals --- good overview. download here

Renting versus owning music - take 3

The debate on Napster To Go versus ITunes goes on and on, with many people wondering if a RENTING music model (a la Netflix for movies) will prevail, or a Buy Per Track model (ITunes). The debates are useful but not quite getting down to the bottom of things yet. A quick 2 points on this:

1) It's not either or (never is). Rather, I think users will rent for a cheap monthly fee that has them covered (see music like water), PLUS they will download individual tracks, and still buy CDs and DVDs. However, the difference is that with a SUBSCRIPTION model I can get a lot more people into buying music, at all - rather than 40% of people leaving the stores without buying, how about covering 80% of all consumers with a cheap flat-rate music subscription. This is where Napster wants to go, I'd say.

2) Guess what: you don't really OWN your tracks on ITunes, either -- there IS DRM on these tracks, and your rights to 'own' CAN be revoked --- it just feels like you own it since most people won't get near the limits that Apple's DRM (Fairplay) imposes on them. Fact is, though - we are just renting here, as well. Why else would people try to crack it?

More on Napster here

Paper on Peer-to-Peer Networking and Digital Rights Management: How Market Tools Can Solve Copyright Problems

Great paper by Michael A. Einhorn and Bill Rosenblatt

Michael A. Einhorn is the author of Media, Technology, and Copyright: Integrating Law and Economics(2004) and senior adviser to an international consulting firm. Bill Rosenblatt is president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, managing editor of the newsletter DRM Watch  and author of Digital Rights Management: Business and Technology (2001).