Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA by Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Amazon‘s DRM-free music sales outlet Amazon MP3 overtook eMusic as the #2 online music outlet and is now second only to iTunes just 6 months after launching, reports USA Today. Amazon has deals in place with Warner Music, Sony/BMG and Universal, offering a catalog of about 4.5 million DRM free songs. Apple, which still controls 80% of the digital download market, offers about 2 million DRM free tracks, including EMI and indie labels, according to the article. eMusic CEO David Pakman disputes the findings in his company’s blog, 17dots. (Cynopsis Digital, 3/27, USA TODAY 3/25)

 
Forget the traditional radio premiere: R.E.M.’s new album, “Accelerate,” debuted on the social networking application iLike.  The roll-out, the first of its kind for a major act, will allow fans to stream and share “Accelerate” in its entirety beginning March 24, a week ahead of the album’s April 1 release date.

I will say this, finding the album on iLike was not as easy as clicking my heels together and googling “R.E.M. Accelerate.”  Instead, I had to google “R.E.M.” and “iLike” which seems to demonstrate that I, the typical music fan, would need to remember where exactly I had heard the album was debuting one week early.  Hmmm.  This R.E.M. album is an interesting temptation back to the sound of their past.  It’s the end of the world as we know it and frankly that’s alright with me.

 
Shares of Google declined after a report by comScore showed slower growth in the number of people clicking on Internet advertisements in February, the second straight month of disappointing results. Google got about 99% of its $16.6 billion in sales last year from online ads. (Iwantmedia.com 3/27, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=amGIKMv25vHI  3/27)

 
Barack Obama sure knows how to capitalize on his celebrity fame in order to fundraise for his campaign.  Anyone who makes a donation from now until 11:59 EST on Monday March 31st will be entered into a sweepstakes to have dinner with the candidate.  The contribution amount does not matter.  One entry per donation. 

 
YouTube has rolled out a new tool designed to help content producers, advertisers and media planners analyze viewer traffic. The free YouTube Insight provides metrics on the popularity and effectiveness of clips or ads and offers publishers specific data such as days when traffic spikes, U.S. states that demand the most streaming or the duration when a clip remains popular. (Mediaweek 3/27, The Wall Street Journal 3/27)

(Below) Glad to see Comcast finally trying to attack the problem by working with the network rather than against it.  VERY impressive new strategy by a generally conservative distributor.  Props Comcast.  Props.

Comcast and file-sharing firm BitTorrent have entered into an agreement to work together on issues related to management of online traffic. Executives hope the collaboration results in BitTorrent’s technology running more efficiently on Comcast’s broadband network and enabling Comcast to handle higher numbers of video files, particularly during peak usage times. (The Wall Street Journal 3/27)

 
As Techcrunch alluded to in an earlier post, online photo-editing applications keep getting better as the competition heats up between startups like Picnik and FotoFlexer. Today, a very large competitor, Adobe, is entering the market by releasing a Web-based version of Photoshop for editing pictures called Photoshop Express. It is in public beta and anyone can sign up. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/26/adobe-unveils-webtop-version-of-photoshop-picnik-is-not-scared  3/26)

 
April 1st marks the kick off of a new season of Sundance Channel‘s The Green block, but viewers can get a free sneak peek of the documentary series Big Ideas for a Small Planet on iTunes this week. Subsequent episodes go on sale for $1.99 a day after they air. (Cynopsis Digital, 3/27)

 
Former AOL directors Laurence Hooper and Dan Goodman are launching a new venture on Facebook. Their startup, Loladex, is a local search engine that uses recommendations and ratings from online social networking platforms to return more specific results. (Iwantmedia.com 3/27, http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2008/03/24/daily32.html  3/26)

I like the functionality of the application but I’m just wondering if anyone thinks about the design element here.  Can’t anyone apart from iLike design an application that’s pleasurable to look at?  One other thing about Loladex that needs to be fixed: the application lists restaurants as my recommendations on my Mini-Feed even if I give a restaurant a thumbs down.

 
It takes either a very brave or very foolish company to enter the browser wars. But that is exactly what AT&T is doing—in a small way. I was just shown a demo for Pogo, a 3D browser based on Mozilla that is in private beta (we should be getting invites in a couple weeks). It is a project that comes out AT&T’s business development group and Vizible, a Toronto-based company whose 3-D rendering engine gives Pogo a very different look than other browsers. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/26/att-is-working-on-its-own-3d-browser-pogo-what-are-they-thinking  3/26)

Guinness World Records TV, already available on YouTube and Joost, added channels on Dailymotion and Veoh this week. Plans include launching language specific channels with the platforms. (Cynopsis Digital, 3/27)

 
ROO Group signed a deal to integrate Viewdle‘s white-label facial recognition search software into its media player environment. The software will be able to search faces instead of just metadata tags. (Cynopsis Digital, 3/27)

 
Online video views recovered in February, according to the latest Nielsen VideoCensus results. A total of 115.8 million users (down from 116.7 million in Jan.) watched 6.3 million streams (compared to 5.9 million last month.) YouTube increased its share of worldwide videos served on the web significantly. The sites were responsible for 2.9 million videos (48.5% of all videos, compared to 42.9% last month) and 70 million of the web’s 115.8 million unique video viewers. (Cynopsis Digital, 3/27)

Top Brands by Video Streams for Feb. 2008
Name                                           Total Streams (000)    Unique Viewers (000)
YouTube                                            2,918,799                   70,222
Fox Interactive Media                             405,996                   21,028
Yahoo!                                                 244,784                   21,220
MSN/WindowsLive                                  163,812                    9,323
Nickelodeon Kids & Family                        155,961                    5,769
Google                                                 122,948                  18.638
Disney Online                                        121,933                    9,606
Turner Entertainment New Media                96,991                    6,850
ESPN                                                     84,053                    4,464
AOL Media Network                                  81,537                   11,469
Source: Nielsen Online VideoCensus

Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment