MaxxoMedia Digital Media and Entertainment Trends

Google has launched another incredible addition to their already stellar mapping services. Now you can view street level images of cities and explore them in a whole new way. Currently available for New York, San Francisco, Miami, Las Vegas and Denver. Check it out here or click on the picture below. It will be interesting to see how people use this new tool to enhance their web experience.

Price Waterhouse Coopers has released their Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2006-2010 book.

• In depth global analyses and 5-year growth projections for 14 industry segments
• Covering every major region – US, Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA), Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Canada
• A single point of reference for top-level comparative data for the industry
• All the information industry executives need to stay ahead of the curve — right on their desk or PC

Here are some facts and figures excerpted from the publication.

Filmed Entertainment

The filmed entertainment market consists of consumer box office spending for theatrical motion pictures plus spending on renting and purchasing home video products in both DVD and VHS formats. It also includes online film rental subscription services, such as those whereby DVDs are delivered via overnight mail, and streaming services, whereby films are downloaded via a broadband Internet connection. The figures do not include music videos (which are counted in the Recorded Music chapter), or video-on-demand (VOD), or pay-per-view (PPV), or movie distribution by cable, satellite, or telephone companies (which are covered in the TV Distribution chapter).

A sampling of global facts and forecasts:

• “U.S. box office growth will average 4.3 percent compounded annually during the next five years from a weak 2005, taking total box office spending from $9.0 billion in 2005 to $11.1 billion in 2010. However, admissions in 2010 will remain below the levels achieved during 2002-04.”

• “In EMEA online subscription services and video streaming services are entering the market. Together they will reach $2.2 billion by 2010 from only $216 million in 2005, averaging 59.1 percent growth compounded annually.”

• “In Asia Pacific high-definition video and reduced piracy will stimulate the sell-through market. We project sell-through spending to grow at a 6.2 percent compound annual rate to $6.2 billion in 2010 from $4.6 billion in 2005.”

• “Countries in Latin America are supporting local production through various subsidy programs. As the experience of 2004-05 indicates, the success of local films can have a dramatic impact on the overall market.”

• In Canada sell-through growth will average 4.9 percent compounded annually to $3.8 billion, and rentals will be flat at $1.3 billion.”

According to Netpop I Play, a new report from Media-Screen, broadband users spend an hour and 40 minutes (48% of their spare time) online in a typical weekday, and more than half of that is spent accessing activities related to entertainment and communication.

Josh Crandall, managing director of Media-Screen, says “Many broadband consumers go online for entertainment, and to talk about entertainment with other fans. Marketers need to leverage that interest…”

Search engines and social networking sites are gaining in popularity, says the report, influencing an equal number of people as magazines and newspapers.  48% of younger users say they learn about new entertainment through community, review and video sharing sites and blogs. Only 25% say they learn about new entertainment through television. 

Crandall goes on to say “Currently, the proportion of advertising resources devoted to the Internet (about seven percent according to ZenithOptimedia) is nominal relative to the value it generates… among fans… consumers, on a typical weekday, spend more than 40% of their time consuming media online…”

Two online media activities – sending email and visiting Web sites for personal reasons – are more popular than watching television, says the report:

And, the report find that roadbanders spend 27 percent of their overall time online, or about one hour and forty minutes, on leisure and entertainment

Other topics covered in the Report include:

• Online versus offline sources used to learn about bands, TV shows, movies, games and web sites
• Community-based activities such as rate/review a product, publish a personal page, upload a video or audio file
• Influence of user-generated sources and content
• Fan-related activities
• Entertainment content accessed online by psychographic group
• Demographics of population and usage among gender, age and income

For more information, please visit Media-Screen here.

When it takes at least 16 clicks to find and purchase content on a cell phone, mobile search seems like a godsend..

Peggy Anne Salz offers an in-depth examination of the mobile search and content delivery landscape based on the competitive intelligence white paper presented at the March 2007 mobile search conference.

According to Leichtman Research Group, Inc., the nineteen largest cable and telephone providers in the US, representing about 94% of the market, acquired over 2.9 million net additional high-speed Internet subscribers in the first quarter of 2007. The top broadband providers now account for 56.2 million subscribers, with cable companies having over 30.7 million broadband subscribers, and telephone companies having over 25.4 million subscribers.

Additional broadband findings for the quarter include:

• The top telephone companies added 1.49 million subscribers, 51% of the net broadband additions for the quarter
• The top cable providers had a record tying quarter with about 1.45 million subscribers added
• Telephone companies have added more broadband subscribers than cable providers in each of the last ten quarters, acquiring about 1.86 million more subscribers than cable over that time
• The top cable broadband providers have a 55% share of the market, with a 5.3 million subscriber advantage over the telephone companies

Other related findings from the first quarter of 2007 include:

• The top cable companies added a record 1.1 million telephone subscribers
• The top cable companies added over 1.2 million digital cable subscribers, the most net additions since the fourth quarter of 2002
• The top cable companies added about 200,000 basic cable subscribers
• The three largest telephone companies added over 150,000 wireline video subscribers, and added 335,000 video subscribers in DBS partnerships

Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “The top cable companies now have over 30 million broadband subscribers, and about 10 million telephone subscribers, to complement their enhanced TV offerings.”

For more information about LRG, please visit here.

Social Network Marketing, the Sky is the Limit

Led by MySpace, social networking is a cultural phenomenon that is still developing a stable revenue model. Even so, it is estimated that in 2007 marketers will spend $900 million on advertising and marketing on social network sites in the US, mostly to create profile pages and sponsored promotions. Online social networking have become a cultural phenomenon over the past several year, sparking thousands of media stories, blog postings and television exposes. The basic concept is simple enough: Online social networks enable people to create profiles, describe their interests, share their thoughts in blogs or postings, and connect with other people. But the variations on the theme are endless. MySpace, still the largest player by far, is estimated to generate $525 million in the US this year. Facebook is expected to generate $125 million and both should continue to see healthy revenue increases. Combined, the two account for 72% of US social network ad spending in 2007 and 75% in 2008.

by Kelli Richards

PassAlong Networks, offers a very robust platform for independent artists called Speakerheart. PassAlong is all about creating new digital media services that empower the connection between artists and their fans. While the major labels are working to figure out what comes next in their evolution, there’s a massive, thriving independent music market. PassAlong figured out that this burgeoning indie music community needed a highly effective, easy-to-use method of enabling online commerce for artists through a system enabling direct transactions between fans and artists.

Speakerheart is such a service. It enables artists to upload their own albums and tracks & convert their songs to ringtones; in turn, it allows fans to preview songs (and ultimately music videos), and also to purchase tracks, ringtones, CDs, and merchandise if it’s available. Artists can take the Speaker (preview function) and Heart (bookmark function) and transport these functions across the Web via promotional tools known as “Shelves”; these will allow fans to browse the artist’s Speakerheart ’shelf’ on the artist’s web site, a MySpace page, a blog, or wherever HTML is accepted. Another nifty feature (one of my favorites) is that the artist can set their own pricing for a track; no longer are they tied to a 99 cent model where they’ll make a few pennies if they’re lucky. Now, they can set the pricing higher or lower than 99 cents a track (at their discretion); Speakerheart keeps 25 cents as a transaction fee — and the rest goes directly in the artist’s pocket. This means that artists no longer have to sell millions of copies of a song or CD; since they’re keeping the vast majority of the proceeds they can get by quite nicely on smaller volumes. PassAlong is the first company in the space to make variable pricing available for MP3 downloads. Speakerheart offers a big step in the right direction in terms of artist & fan empowerment.

Bridging the divide between digital and physical, DiscRevolt provides a tangible solution for selling digital media. Artists upload songs to DiscRevolt’s website and design their own artwork for a plastic download card. The cards are then printed by DiscRevolt with a unique redemption code on the back. Artists sell the cards to fans at live shows, and the fans can then download songs or albums from the artist’s online page.

Many independent artists make most of their revenue at merchandise tables after they play a live show. Audiences connect with a band or song, and are most likely to pay for music during the post-gig buzz. As bands are moving from CDs to digital downloads, they need something to hook potential customers when they can, instead of asking them to download later. Which is a challenge DiscRevolt aims to solve. The start-up describes its download cards as a cross between a gift card, a backstage pass and a baseball trading card. They’re designed to be collectible items, attachable to lanyards or backpacks or rear-view mirrors. The fact that artists design their own artwork, and often make cards in limited runs, adds to the appeal.

Pricing is set at 500 cards for USD 250. Each card gives fans access to 15 credits worth of the artist’s material on discrevolt.com. Artists set their own prices, but DiscRevolt recommends USD 5 per card, which brings the price per song to 33 cents for buyers, and gives artists a 90% profit margin. Since artists buy the cards upfront, profits are received as soon the cards are sold. Which can be useful while bootstrapping a tour. It also provides a user-friendly download avenue for bands that haven’t yet made it to the front page of the iTunes Music Store.

DiscRevolt is currently in beta, and is offering artists 100 free cards if they sign up before May 15th. The website currently only supports MP3 audio files (at any bitrate), but future releases will also support other media files such as video and PDF files of liner notes, lyrics and artwork. Something to set up locally? And although musical artists are the main target group for this type of service, how about BookRevolt? At lectures or other events, both published and unpublished authors could sell cards for downloads of audio-books or e-books, or supplements to printed work, or use the cards as a promotional tool, giving away digital copies of sample chapters without having to worry about hosting downloads.

Website: www.discrevolt.com
Contact: info@discrevolt.com

Source: http://www.springwise.com/weekly/2007-05-16.htm#discrevolt

Spotted by: Ozgur Alaz

From KenRadio.com

According to a new study by E-Poll, which focused on the viewing of video content, showed the youth are leading the way, with 26% of males 13-34 frequent viewers of video on devices other than a TV. Teens are by far the most prevalent users of mobile video devices such as iPods and cell phones. The proliferation of user-generated content and expanding viewing platforms makes for a dizzying array of viewing choices. The study of consumers 13+, to see what they are doing with this freedom to choose, found that among those that view video content away from the TV the desktop computer had 75% of the group.

On iPods and cell phones, viewing of video content happens almost anywhere (traveling, school, work outdoors, social events), mostly in the afternoons and evenings. Most watched content includes: music videos, TV programs, movies, videos on websites. Considering television viewers, 13% currently transfer video content from their computer to their TV. In addition:

* Almost half didn’t know it was possible to transfer video to their TV
* About 50% would like this functionality but only 17% would pay $100 or more for a device
* Almost 1/3 would still be interested, even if it required a complicated installation
Over half of those who watch video content online (55%) say they are interested in transferring this to their television sets. New devices to make it easy to transfer from computer to TV are hitting the market. Increased awareness and education will increase the adoption of moving content from computer to TV.

Submitted by LeeAnn Prescott on May 1, 2007 – 5:07pm.

Today USAToday released the Hitwise US News and Media Report, which examines trends in online news consumption over the past year. One of the most striking trends over the past year has been the increase in traffic from News & Media websites to video websites. The share of traffic leaving News and Media websites and going directly to Entertainment – Multimedia websites increased by 196% from April 2006 to March 2007.

More details can be found here.

30% consumers age 12 and over own an iPod or other portable media player, this is more than a one-thrid increase from last year (compared to 22% ownership in Jan 06), according to a study by Arbitron. 54% between the age of 12-17 and nearly four in ten adults age 18-34 currently own an iPod or other portable MP3 player.

The number of online digital audio downloaders has grown nearly 25% in the last year. 16% have purchased MP3’s or digital audio over the internet, up from 13% in Jan. 06. More than one-third of weekly online radio listeners have purchased audio from an online download store (iTunes, Amazon). Those who listen to online radio platforms, such as online radio or podcasting, are much more likely to have purchased downloadable music that the average user.

Fewer than 10% report less time with over-the-air radio specifically due to time spent with their iPod/portable MP3 player. Although 70% aged 12 and older do not own an iPod/portable MP3 player, and an additional 15% report the device has had no impact on radio listening, 9% say they are listening less to over-the-air radio. On the other hand, 5% report spending more time listening to over-the-air radio due to time spent with their iPod/portable MP3 player.