MaxxoMedia Digital Media and Entertainment Trends

Want to snag Pearl Jam’s new single “Just Breathe” without having to pay for it? No problem. You can do an old-fashioned switch-a-roo and swap one of your tweets in exchange for an iTunes download of the track.

The band is using Culture Jam’s custom Twitter application to manage the Twitter whuffie track exchange, so retrieving your free copy of the live recording is a simple-three step automated process.

Click the “Connect to Twitter” button on the application landing page, grant the application access to your Twitter account and tweet as instructed. You can then redeem your music download using the provided iTunes gift code and the I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine deal is complete. Should you also want to take home one of 15 White Vinyl LP editions of the Backspacer album, you can enter to win that as well.

Pearl Jam’s Twitter giveaway is by no means unique, but it does signify that giving away free tracks via the microblogging site is a trend that here’s to stay. Obviously more and more artists are realizing the power of a message spread through Twitter’s real-time digital airways.

via The Price of Pearl Jam’s New Single: One Tweet.

CBS should be pleased with its choice to allow Microsoft to sync Xbox LIVE to Last.fm, as the partnership has already netted the streaming music service nearly a million new subscribers. Last.fm went live on Xbox last Tuesday, and both companies are already hyping the deal as a success in terms of the numbers. CBS (NYSE: CBS) says it broke a record for the number of new profiles created in a 24-hour period, and that Xbox LIVE users had already streamed more than 120 million minutes worth of music.

Less clear is whether there is money changing hands: neither company would comment on whether Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is paying CBS a rev-share, since only Gold (paying) Xbox LIVE subscribers get access to Last.fm.

Aside from a potential rev-share from Microsoft, the million new subscribers can still add to CBS’ bottom line, as they’ve instantly increased the reach (and targetability) for the ad-supported Last.fm service. In a statement, CBS Interactive Music Group President David Goodman said the company was looking forward to the next “big opportunity” to “expose new users” to the Last.fm brand, a hint that similar partnerships with other device-makers could be coming down the pike.

Meanwhile, Microsoft talked up the other new features that it launched for Xbox LIVE: Twitter and Facebook integration, as well as a new Zune-branded content download store. The company said nearly two million people—or roughly a tenth of the total user base—had logged into their Facebook accounts through Xbox LIVE in less than a week. No hard stats on Twitter, though Microsoft spokesman David Dennis told CNET that there had been “tweets from nearly every market” that the Xbox LIVE service was available. As for the Zune marketplace, the comany said 1.7 million members visited in less than a week, though it didn’t say how many actually purchased content.

Related

• As Last.fm, Facebook And Zune Go Live On Xbox, Sony Preps Social Features For PS3
• Last.fm To Take Over CBS HD Broadcast Stations In Four Markets
• Last.fm Founders Quit, CBS’ Goodman GM For Now; But Why?

via Pair Plan Venture to Sell Music Subscriptions – NYTimes.com.

The idea of selling monthly subscriptions to a vast catalog of online music has met with only limited success. That isn’t stopping a new batch of entrepreneurs from trying to make it work.

The latest and perhaps most surprising entrants to the field are the European entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. In 2001, they created and financed Kazaa, one of the original peer-to-peer file-sharing services that hurt the music industry. The two have created and financed a secretive start-up called Rdio, with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Rdio and similar start-ups are reinventing a concept pioneered earlier this decade by Rhapsody, a service majority-owned by RealNetworks, and the tamed version of Napster, now owned by Best Buy. A few hundred thousand Rhapsody and Napster subscribers pay monthly fees of around $15 for the right to stream an unlimited number of songs, at any time, from their PCs and mobile devices.

But with modest membership growth at best, neither service has managed to challenge iTunes, with its many millions of users — or enticed music lovers from pirating music. Moreover, Yahoo, AOL and MTV Networks have abandoned their own music subscription efforts.

But as CD sales continue to plummet, and the music industry searches for a profitable future, entrepreneurs with various approaches say they believe they can finally make music subscriptions work. Rdio is hoping to introduce a music subscription service by early next year that offers seamless access to music from both PCs and cellphones. The big challenge will be to get licenses from the major music labels, which have not viewed past digital music efforts by Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis favorably.

“The ironies are very interesting,” said Drew Larner, Rdio’s chief executive, who says talks with music labels are continuing and confidential.

Since they started and sold Kazaa years ago, the founders “have shown they understand content and they have always been up front with the labels about what they are trying to do.”

Mark Piibe, the head of digital business development at the EMI music label, confirmed that talks were under way with Rdio and said there was no reluctance to deal with the pair. “They’re businessmen with a real track record of innovation,” he said. “They are bringing a lot of new ideas to music distribution and there is no reason why we wouldn’t talk to them seriously.”

Related articles by Zemanta

• Joost founders building music service (guardian.co.uk)
• Skype founders to launch Rdio while Joost UK goes into administration (telegraph.co.uk)

By Mark Levy, CEO MaxxoMedia

MCPS-PRS, the U.K. music publishing licensing and collecting organization, recently released a proposal suggesting that new digital media companies that want to license their copyrights should provide equity in their fledgling companies in exchange for the license.

They cited as some of the reasons behind this proposal:

1. Start-up firms present an undeniable headache for music rights entities. At incorporation, emerging firms tend to lack the financial resources, both in terms of cash holdings and cash revenues, to pay otherwise standard fees for music rights.

2. Emerging firms are not stable entities, in terms of their chances for success and the nature of their business models.

…and…

Here’s an article from Slate about a proposed plan by Warner Music Group to fight piracy and in essence give the people what they want – freedom to download whatever they want, DRM free and share it all they want for a flat rate fee every month.

I actually like the idea to a point. I’ve been a Rhapsody subscriber for years and find great value in the subscription model. The underlying question I have in the Warner plan is if the music is freely shared all around the net, how do they account and pay to the artists who work so hard to produce the music in the first place.

Let me know what you think.

—–

The Music Industry’s Extortion Scheme by Reihan Salam

The record labels want you to pay a tax on music. It’s not as horrible as it sounds.

What would you do if a bully—let’s call him “Joey Giggles”—kept snatching your ice-cream cone? OK, now what if Joey Giggles then told you, “If you pay me five bucks a month, I’ll stop snatching your ice cream.” Depending on how much you hate getting beaten up, and how much you love ice-cream cones, you might decide that caving in is the way to go. This is what’s called a protection racket. It’s also potentially the new model for how we’ll buy and listen to music.

Let’s back up for a second. Four companies (Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, and EMI) control a staggering 90 percent of all record sales in the United States, and they’re hopping mad. CD sales are in free fall, and the recording industry’s revenues have shrunk from $15 billion to $10 billion in less than a decade. Instead of blaming themselves for failing to embrace the Internet soon enough, Big Music has pointed the finger at piracy, shaking down scofflaw MP3 downloaders with capricious, multimillion-dollar lawsuits. This has not strengthened the record companies’ position—at this point, they’re losing money and everybody hates them.

Now Big Music is mulling the Joey Giggles approach. Warner Music Group is trying to rally the rest of the industry behind a plan to charge Internet service providers $5 per customer per month, an amount that would be added to your Internet bill. In exchange, music lovers would get all the online tunes they want, meaning that anyone who spends more than $60 a year on music will come out way ahead. Download whatever you want and pay nothing! No more DRM! Swap files to your heart’s content—we promise, we won’t sue you (or snatch your ice-cream cone)! More

Sonific.com goes offline on May 1, 2008

A message by Gerd Leonhard, Co-Founder & CEO

As a consequence of a the unworkable music licensing situation and the resulting lack of solid revenue modeling Sonific’s founders and investors have decided to temporarily take Sonific.com and Sonific.net offline.  While we are looking for other ways to realize our vision we are also open to talking to any interested party that may have use for Sonific’s user base, content relationships, technologies or distribution network (please contact us anytime to find out more). Together with some other partners, we may also investigate the concept of making Sonific a paid-for service that is provided to artists, record labels and other content providers on a white-label basis.

Here are some background details on our decision:

From Paidcontent.org Rafat Ali

A known secret of the music industry: the labels, though becoming open to new business models from startups, are asking for a hefty upfront advances for licensing music and in some cases a substantial equity stake in the company, and Billboard explores the practice. Someone like Universal Music Group is making the equity stake standard in any deal, our sources say.

Among the examples: troubled online ad-supported music service SpiralFrog has given more than $3 million in upfront advances to UMG alone before it even went live, and has paid additional millions in licensing fees since the original term expired. Imeem is said to have paid major advances and gave labels equity in the company, the story says. We reported on the Buzznet-UMG deal last week, which involved equity as well.

By David Gales

Music Purchase vs. Subscription

The Big Idea behind music subscription plans is that they may be an idea whose time has come. The debate over the benefits of music subscriptions vs. music purchases has heated up lately. A number of subscription services have been in the market for a time, including Rhapsody, Napster among others. iTunes, the world’s second largest music retailer, is said to be looking at the idea, in a bundling format with the iPod. Among music companies, there is some concern that subscriptions would be so popular they would hasten the demise of the CD, still an important profit center for music labels.

AT ISSUE: Can music subscriptions provide enough economic fuel for the music industry to replace the revenue lost by un-paid consumption of music?

BIG IDEAS VIEW: For purposes of this discussion, consumers are defined as those who listen to music on radio, online and other promotional media, and customers are those who pay to own or listen to music. There are dozens of issues around this topic, but key to our thoughts are the following.

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.

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.

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.”

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

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

By Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia

The web has forever changed the way people experience music. Here are a few sites I found this week that are cleverly combining elements of social networks, games and artificial intelligence, enabling people to discover and share music like never before.

Music Discovery Game

www.thesixtyone.com is a music discovery game that rewards those who help others listen to good new music. The name of the site pays homage to US Highway 61. According to the founders, “Muddy Waters rode the 61. So did Bob Dylan, Ike Turner and B.B. King. Elvis grew up in the housing projects along it. Highway 61 was the road by which people left to find better opportunities. And by leaving, they took their music to the world.”

On thesixtyone.com, musicians upload music and listeners decide which songs go on the home page. Both musicians and listeners can create profiles to share the music they are interested in and gain influence points, which can be used to help promote the music they like. If you like a song, just click the “bump” button to increase its bump count. Each “bump” increases the artists points in the system.

There is a real-time updated leader board of both the top performing artists and the listeners with the most points. Points record progress, reflect community status and can be spent to bump more songs and influence the community.

http://www.thesixtyone.com

Community Lyrics Search

If it’s lyrics you are looking for, a solid place to start is www.Lyricsmode.com. This new site has combined social networking and lyrics sharing by allowing members to upload lyrics into the site. LyricsMode is a comprehensive online music resource that provides a huge selection of lyrics for music compositions. They boast more than 550,000 lyrics for more than 20,000 artists and are adding new material daily.

In addition to the lyrics on each song, Lyricsmode offers a YouTube widget that you can embed into web pages showing the video and the lyrics to the song. You can also request and share lyrics or get the ringtone to the song.

http://www.lyricsmode.com

Social Playlists and Streaming Music

MeeMix wants to provide the new generation of media consumers with an Internet radio that will give them what they want, when they want it and without having to work to get it. The service is based on an advanced analysis of personal taste in music. With MeeMix, choose a song or artist, and a playlist based on this input will be automatically built. The music will start playing immediately as MeeMix creates a personalized radio station.

The founders spent eight months developing a technology that uniquely identifies individual musical taste by using content and behavioral-based methodologies. The MeeMix algorithm is a taste-prediction tool, which not only points out songs similar to the ones selected by the user, but also takes geographical, behavioral and psychological characteristics into account in order to deliver songs that will match the user’s unique personal taste.

For example: If a 16-year-old girl from Japan and a 22-year-old guy from New York request the same song, then parameters beyond song selection will be considered to personalize the playlist. When songs are rated, the Internet radio station becomes more in tune with the listener’s music preferences. For instance, if you rate a song, they understand how you liked it and adjust the station accordingly. The more songs the listeners rate, the better the station will become a reflection of their unique music tastes.

Every member can set up his or her personal profile, and interact with other members in a variety of ways and throughout the site, including similar musical tastes or shared passions.

http://www.meemix.com

From DMWMEDIA.COM 

Recording artist Moby this week launched a website that will offer his music for free licensing to independent and student filmmakers to use in their noncommercial works, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The MobyGratis.com site currently features about 70 pieces of music. “I was a philosophy major and I had a minor in film,” Moby told THR. “Ever since then, I’ve had a lot of friends in the world of independent and non-profit film production. Their recurring complaint is that it’s really difficult to license music for movies that have no budgets, so I thought I would start this Web site which very simply provides free music to non-profit indie films.” Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/1var8 (Hollywood Reporter)

http://www.mobygratis.com