Archive for February, 2008
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
Authored by Guy Kawasaki This piece was originally published on Guy’s blog How to Change the World Guy’s bio can be viewed here.
Avenue A Razorfish released the 2008 Digital Outlook Report yesterday. The purpose of the report is to help Avenue A’s clients understand consumer behavior in the digital space. In the report experts cover topics such as media spending, mobile web usage, social influence marketing, the state of search, and behavior targeting. Here are some tidbits from the report:
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Friday, February 22nd, 2008
By Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia
Reselling tickets, once viewed as illegal and a rip-off of consumers, is now being legitimized. Over the past few months there have been a number of large acquisitions of “ticket resellers” made by leading e-commerce companies in an effort to take advantage of this lucrative secondary ticket market. eBay purchased Stubhub for $365 million; last month Ticketmaster purchased TicketsNow for $265 million. Many of the tickets that are re-sold on these secondary marketplaces are initially purchased from the Ticketmasters of the world.
The new combined business model aims to cut in the venue owners and promoters. Ticketmaster President and Chief Executive Sean Moriarty said, “Clients who five years ago were not willing to allow a ticket to be resold now want a piece of it.”
The size of the secondary ticket market is hard to judge, but estimates range from $2.5 billion to $5 billion a year in the U.S. So it’s no surprise that new companies are popping up looking to enhance the experience and take a slice of the pie.
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Friday, February 15th, 2008
By Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia
Not long ago, people had few choices for finding new music. These included listening to the radio, hanging out in their friend’s bedroom listening to their collection, or subscribing to a music magazine. All three were really limiting.
Radio limited the music they played to the hits; you were limited by the number of your friends’ record collections, which were limited by their budget … and the same with magazine subscriptions.
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Thursday, February 14th, 2008
Will.i.am interviewed by Tamara Coniff from Billboard Magazine at the 3GSM Conference in Barcelona Spain.
The mobile industry, not the record business, will create the next wave of music superstars, according to Black Eyed Peas founder Will.i.am.
Speaking at Mobile Backstage, a GSMA/Nielsen production for the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, powered by Billboard and the Hollywood Reporter, the artist said the record industry was now “like a grandmother — and the artists of tomorrow need to do deals with her granddaughters. It’s the mobile industry that will produce the Michael Jacksons and Madonnas of tomorrow.” (more…)
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Saturday, February 9th, 2008
From Springwise
Customised content has long been held up as the Holy Grail of digital publishing, and idiomag is making that promise a reality with a personalised, daily digital magazine about music that is based entirely on members’ individual interests.
Launched just over a year ago, UK-based idiomag uses a system of weighted tagging to customise both content and advertising to readers’ personal musical tastes. Readers initially name their favourite music topics and weight the relative importance of each of them in the content they will view. idiomag then uses that information to serve articles, tracks, videos and other multimedia content in a high-quality, audio-visual virtual magazine format that readers can enjoy in page-by-page fashion. idiomag has content partnerships with publications including Billboard, 365mag and Hip Hop Nation as well as popular blogs such as Aurgasm and BlogCritics. It has also built up a large team of its own journalists across the UK. As readers rate the appeal of the content they view, idiomag intelligently adapts subsequent issues to reflect those changing preferences.
Not insignificantly, advertisers benefit from idiomag’s personalisation system as well, with the ability to serve nonintrusive, full-screen and rich-media advertisements that closely match readers’ interests. A newly incorporated social element, meanwhile, uses Facebook integration to let readers get their idiomag within the social networking site, view their friends’ magazines and capture articles they like, submit articles, and view trends and favourites among the other idiomag readers on the site. idiomag also offers widgets to incorporate the magazine on other social networks, blogs or home pages. Subscriptions to idiomag are free for readers; advertisers are charged on a CPM basis, and revenue is shared with content providers based on their content’s popularity.
When readers get the content they want and advertisers reach their target audiences in a targeted way, it really is hard to see a downside. One to bring to other niches, localities and topic areas!
Website: www.idiomag.com
Contact: andrew.davies@idiomag.com
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Friday, February 8th, 2008
By Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia
18 months ago two friends had a conversation about how technology has been changing the landscape of the music business.They agreed that companies like Pandora, Amazon and iTunes were changing how people experienced artist recordings. But, they were concerned that a very important part of the music business was not being addressed - the live performance. They talked about how no one was really focusing on this aspect of the business. So it was decided they would.
What makes this conversation interesting is that it took place between Danny Socolof, a 25 year veteran of the music industry and Jeff Henshaw, a founding member of Microsoft’s XBOX team.
Socolof is a pioneer in pairing brands and music with The Who, Led Zeppelin and well known brands like Pepsi and Apple’s iTunes. He has been responsible for some of the most memorable live performances in the past quarter century including Woodstock ’98. Henshaw was with Microsoft for 18 years and last lead efforts to bring new entertainment experiences to the XBOX.
Both men are firm believers that a powerful platform of great software and services is the key that unlocks amazing entertainment scenarios. DeepRockDrive.com is the brainchild of that conversation.
The two are very passionate about making a difference. “To engage fans and artists in a new community and platform that bring the live performance into the digital media age and create value all along the way – value to fans, value to the artists, value to the labels – that’s what DeepRockDrive is all about,” said Socolof.
In the past six months they’ve built a state of the art HD studio, launched the site, raised $3 million in capital and ramped up to 25 employees. They currently produce 20 to 30 shows each month that are broadcast live around the world.
Fans can request an artist perform for them on DeepRockDrive and artists can invite the fans to participate in the live show. DeepRockDrive provides a tool set including digital concert posters and widgets that allow people to create demand and spread it out over the web on Facebook, MySpace and any other website. The widgets link back to DeepRockDrive to report to fans and artists how the demand is building.
Once a band has attracted 1000 votes, the band is invited to the Las Vegas studios for a very unique performance experience. Entering the DeepRockDrive studio puts the artist and fan in direct contact. Fans get to choose the playlist and the band receives incoming interactive feedback from fans while they are performing. For the first 45 shows, fans have attended from about 25 different countries.
“Anyone with access to broadband has a front row seat at DeepRockDrive,” said Socolof. “We intend to build out partnerships with radio and other media around the world. Any time a show is promoted, it’s applicable to everyone in that Internet audience or local listening audience with access to broadband.”
Currently artists need to come to the DeepRockDrive studios to perform. But the larger plan is to expand beyond the Vegas studio to providing tools that will enable the DeepRockDrive experience from venues around the world. Henshaw said, “The current studio is a lab to experiment with, perfect and innovate around the experience, so we can deploy those tools economically and enable venues around the world to participate around the platform.”
People can experience the show on their terms rather than forcing them into one narrow vantage point. Four real time HD streams over the internet represent the four cameras which the fans can switch to in real time to get different angles. If viewers want to focus on the guitar player or drummer – they can just switch the camera.
The artists agree to bring in their set list and let the fans in the audience decide which order to play the songs. Fans use tools developed by DeepRockDrive to combine digital applause and shout outs with user name and location information that gets pumped directly onto huge monitors on the soundstage. The goal is to create direct conversations in real time during the show between the fans and the artists.
Fans can also snap screen grabs during the show featuring the band and share those photos on their web pages, Flickr, Slide and other sites. In the works is a photo snapshot application that users can use during the show to take images of the band and post to a gallery. Then the band can vote and fans win prizes like free tickets to future shows.
In late February, DeepRockDrive plans to launch a Facebook application expected to extend the reach of the site and the experience. We are going to “unleash it on over 60 million people to let the requesting and inviting happen a lot more fluidly as a part of their everyday lives.”
Socolof says DeepRockDrive is building a long term viable economic model for everyone in the chain. All shows cost $6.99 and the ticket price is shared 50/50 with the artist. The content created during the show is given to the band so they can they can post to their sites that same night. Deals are in the works to help bring the HD content to DVD, get released as video singles and shared from fan sites.
Henshaw admits that artists come into the studios a bit apprehensive – “They tend to take a song or two to realize that the audience is out there, on the Internet, and master the interactive experience. After the shows, we frequently hear artists announce that they’ve never experienced anything quite like it. They really get off on the real time, global access to the fans.” Users and artist feedback is strong – but they admit they have a ways to go. “We are constantly innovating to enhance the experience for both fans and artists.”
Lately they’ve had a lineup of potential partners including charities, bloggers, both major and indie labels and they are looking to partner with media – radio, print organizations.
The opportunity for the radio industry is to consider DeepRockDrive as an online experience extension for big events they present. “Radio is so important for building up affinity for music – but radio needs to be relevant in the new digital age and DeepRockDrive can be a partner,” said Socolof “and we are very open to these type of partnerships.”
http://www.deeprockdrive.com
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Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
By Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia
To TXT or not to TXT We all know cell phone text messaging is a great way to quickly connect with someone. Everywhere we look people are hunched over their phones, tapping on the keys feverishly. But what about texting while driving?
I know you would never do it .. .but even though the overwhelming majority of adults think that driving while texting is dangerous, two in three adults (66%) who drive a car and have used text messaging say they read text messages or e-mails while driving — and 57% of them even admitted to sending text messages or e-mails from behind the wheel. On January 1st, the State of Washington was the first state in the nation to enact a new law that prohibits text messaging while driving and more states are not far behind.
So what is the technologically well-connected person to do? How can you communicate safely on the go? Enter instant voice-messaging for your mobile phone from San Francisco based Pinger. The service helps you keep your eyes on the road and minimize distractions while you drive. Combined with a hands-free headset, Pinger’s instant voice messaging service is a safer way for drivers to stay in touch from the road.
By simply calling Pinger, saying the name of a contact, speaking their message and then hanging up, drivers are able to send a message to any U.S. mobile phone while keeping their eyes on the road. Your message is delivered instantly — no ringing, no greetings, no lengthy prompts. Pinger is fast and efficient like e-mail, but with your voice. It’s mobile like text messaging, but with more personality.
Group Messaging Made Easy
Pinger provides more than just safety on the road. Recently, it launched Pingercast messaging, a mobile phone promotional tool for political candidates, artists, media companies or anyone wishing to create a personal relationship with supporters and fans.
Pingercast messages are used to send audio messages directly to consumers’ mobile phones. “The Pingercast service enables marketers to get to difficult-to-reach consumers in a very personal way, on their mobile phone,” said Greg Woock, CEO of Pinger. “When you hear John’s messages, it feels like he’s talking directly to you. Compared to a 160-character text message, Pingercast messages enable senders to share up to five minutes of audio. The Pingercast service is for any marketer with audio content, whether it’s movies, musicians, or anyone wishing to talk to a group in their own voice.”
Subscribers can forward messages to their friends, who can then sign up to receive new updates on their mobile phones. It’s a great way to get out a message. To collect names, Pinger works with customers to create branded HTML or Flash(tm) widgets suitable for a website or MySpace page so fans can easily subscribe. Users can also sign up through a Facebook application or even by texting a shortcode.
Check them out at www.pinger.com
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