shiny dot bulletin

Thank you, you are an inspiration to me. Perhaps with your worthy example the television industry will smarten up and embrace this technology and use it to *everyone’s* advantage.

The music industry blindly chose to fight and are only now trying to catch up in largely futile ways, many of which I’ve written about here.

Cheers to your success!

From last100.com:

Inside story: the making of a legal TV ‘torrent’
by Guinevere Orvis
March 26th, 2008

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and not those of CBC/Radio-Canada.

Inside story: the making of a legal TV ‘Torrent’Last week, CBC released an official DRM-free BitTorrent of a prime time show– a first for a major north American broadcaster (see last100 coverage). Since then we’ve been getting hundreds of emails of support and one clear resounding message: give us more. This begs the question (sic), why aren’t broadcasters doing more? Why in the year 2008, seven years after BitTorrent’s birth and a lifetime in Internet years is this a groundbreaking thing? Let’s break down what it takes to get a legal torrent going and maybe we’ll get some answers.

The idea
First, the seed has to get planted. How it happened for us was when two weeks ago, Tessa Sproule (the head of digital strategy of CBC’s Factual Entertainment department) read this post on BoingBoing about how Norway’s public broadcaster had tested the BitTorrent waters and declared them warm & refreshing. Tessa decided she wanted to spearhead the effort for CBC to follow NRK’s lightly treaded path. Unfortunately, not every company has a Tessa. Companies need to have people championing new ideas, or watch their product slowly become irrelevant in favour of products from companies who are willing to innovate.

Still, how do you make it happen? When the average person wants to share a show torrent, they simply record it off TV, strip out the commercials and upload it. But when a media company decides to do it and wants to do it in a completely legal way, there’s a lot more that has to be considered. Let’s start with ownership.

Ownership
In big business, it can be challenging to start something completely new to an organization. Usually it involves convincing lots of people that your idea is brilliant and simply must be tried. Now try convincing people who you don’t even work with, at several different companies, maybe in different countries, all with different mandates. Impossible? Well, no… it’s technically possible in the same way that it’s technically possible that I’m going to win the lottery six times in a row. But, we can certainly hedge our bets a bit better by starting with something we own, or own with very few partners.

Read the full story.

Technorati Tags: broadcasting, canada, canadian television, cbc, DRM, drm-free, Guinevere Orvis, torrent technology, torrents

Report: Two record labels ready to sign on for new MySpace Music
by Daniel Langendorf
March 24th, 2008

There used to be a time when you could only download legal digital music from the iTunes Store and a handful of little-known indie sites. Now there seems to be legal downloading on every street corner, with the record labels cutting deals with everybody except iTunes.

The latest deal to gain legitimate steam is one between MySpace and two of the top four record labels, Sony BMG and Warner. According to a report today in the News Corp.-owned New York Post — coincidentally the owner of MySpace — the social networking site is close to signing deals with Sony and Warner as it puts together MySpace Music. The venture may be announced as early as this week, the Post notes.

[snip]

The new MySpace Music is expected to be a mix of pay-per-download and ad-supported streaming audio and video. As the <em>Post</em> notes, no money is expected to change hands as the labels are “trading content rights in exchange for minority equity stakes in MySpace Music and the chance to participate in the advertising revenues that News Corp. hopes to generate from the service.”

Read the full story.

Technorati Tags: last100, music industry, music marketing, myspace, myspace music, sony bmg, warner music

I can’t believe I missed this!

Technorati Tags: cover, cover song, gnarls barkley, gone daddy gone, violent femmes

http://theblackkeys.com

… smartest fucking marketing web site I’ve seen in a long time. What better way to encourage people to listen to your new track.

Thankfully the song’s good too.

Technorati Tags: black keys, good web sites, music sites, sites that dont suck, web design, web marketing

I wish I could be in Ottawa tomorrow - I think this topic is so important. Even as someone who’s worked at a major label and frequently licenses content and acquires licensed content for clients, I find the landscape extremely difficult to navigate, especially when it comes to podcasting (check out the Podcasting Legal Guide for Canada).

Sunday, March 30; Sam Trosow talks about Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide at Collected Works - 2:00 p.m.

Between the Lines and the Collected Works Bookstore invites you to meet Sam Trosow, author of Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide. Sunday, March 30, at 2:00 p.m. at Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeebar, 1242 Wellington Street West, Ottawa. ** In an age of downloadable culture, the subject of copyright is inescapable. Whether you’re an artist, consumer, or teacher, copyright will be a part of your everyday life. Yet no resource exists to explain Canadian copyright law to ordinary Canadians.

Or if you have a couple grand to spend (or your company has), this conference is happening in May, co-hosted by David Baskin of the CMRRA and Barry Sookman of McCarthy Tétrault.

From http://arstechnica.com

Sony BMG plans to join the crowded pool of digital music services by launching its own music subscription service… sometime. Sony BMG CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz said that the service would allow customers unlimited access to Sony BMG’s entire library for a fee of €6 to €8 per month (roughly US$9-$12) and that the company was working with other labels and gadget makers in order to make it more appealing.

Schmidt-Holtz told German language newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he believes the venture will pay off for Sony BMG, assuming enough customers are interested. He also acknowledged that the service would become more attractive if more big names joined in the initiative, and to make that happen, Sony BMG was in talks with other unnamed labels. Schmidt-Holtz also indicated that the company was trying to work out deals with handset and gadget makers, like the one Nokia has with Universal.

The service would definitely be a subscription service, Schmidt-Holtz said, complete with music that expires if you don’t renew. Curiously, he added that service would ideally work on all digital music players, including Apple’s iPod. But expiring music requires DRM, and there is yet to be a universal DRM scheme that works on both Apple-made devices and everything else. He did indicate, however, that there might be a way to purchase individual tracks (a la Napster) in order to build a digital music collection that wouldn’t disappear later.

Read the rest.

Hands up if you think this will work?

Didn’t think so…

If you haven’t visited the the Song Chart pool on flickr yet, you’re really missing out.

This is a groove I do deeply dig.

Check it out: EW’s Indie Rock 25

Obvious omissions include singers-songwriters such as Elliott Smith, but according to EW’s own rules, band really means *band*.

Radiohead’s In Rainbows makes the list which seems like part of some weird affirmative action program for major label refugees - it’s just not their best album, “indie” or not. (see EW’s reasoning here)

Damn is it good to see Neutral Milk Hotel on the list and Spoon and the Shins and The Smiths and and and… but one day soon, can we forget about Bright Eyes and Interpol? I honestly don’t think history will be kind to these two.

EW’s Indie Rock 25

via BoingBoing:

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is about to follow Norway’s NRK and become the first major North American broadcaster to release one of its shows as a DRM-free torrent:

Sources indicate that the CBC is set to become the first major North American broadcaster to freely release one of its programs without DRM using BitTorrent. This Sunday, CBC will air Canada Next Great Prime Minister. The following day, it plans to freely release a high-resolution version via peer-to-peer networks without any DRM restrictions. This development is important not only because it shows that Canada’s public broadcaster is increasingly willing to experiment with alternative forms of distribution, but also because it may help crystallize the net neutrality issue in Canada. The CBC’s mandate, as provided in the Broadcasting Act, requires it to make its programming “available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means.” Using BitTorrent allows the CBC to meet its statutory mandate, yet with ISPs such as Rogers engaging in non-transparent traffic shaping, millions of Canadians may be unable to fully access programming funded by tax dollars. If the CBC experiment is successful, look for more broadcasters to do the same and for the CRTC to face mounting pressure to address net neutrality concerns.

From mashable.com

800,000 transactions in the first week have generated $1.6 million in revenue. And that’s after Trent himself urged his fans to freely exchange and distribute the album via P2P. I guess this is the final nail in the coffin of the theory that “you cannot compete with free,” but we’re sure that the music industry will keep singing that tune for quite a while.

See also: Nine Inch Nails Album Generates $1.6 Million in First Week from Wired.com