22 January, 2010
Today YouTube launched YouTube Music Discovery, basically a music video suggestion tool, although they call it a “Music Discovery Project and Playlist Creation Tool”.
There is a lot of ambition in a name like that, which I will get back to later, but it can best be described as a way to quickly turn YouTube into a video jukebox with an automatically generated, relevant playlist based on one artist. You select, say, Eminem and boom, there is a page with a playlist of 40 music video’s, 10 of which are Eminem clips and 30 of which are by “related” artists.
Taylor Swift, anyone?
On the YouTube disco page you can click one of the suggested artists, or you can enter an artists’ name yourself. Strange enough, the latter feature doesn’t work in a recent Read on…
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22 December, 2009
This week, at iHollywood’s Digital Living Room conference a Sony US marketing manager stated that company plans to build out an area on the PlayStation with it’s own, original TV programming. Meaning that with a connected Playstation 3, you don’t need a TV subscription to see the TV shows.
MTV your PS3
Sony already released the Vidzone Music Video application for PS3 this month, offering “your own personalized version of MTV” on the Playstation 3. This free app offers unlimited access to high quality music video streams, and the ability to build custom music video playlists, turning the PS3 into an MTV type station - but one that actually shows Music Videos ;)
From MTV to HBO
The ultimate goal is to transition from a Read on…
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26 October, 2009
Last night Youtube streamed a live U2 concert from the Rosebowl in California. You can still see the recorded HD stream, which has great quality. The playist can be found here. During the live show, an integrated Twitter widget displayed comments from Twitter that were marked #U2, adding an extra layer of interactivity, which was, though hardly innovative, still nice.
PR machine
So, why is YouTube’s PR machine all over this event? We’ve seen enough live webcasts before, right? The truth is, Youtube is far Read on…
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9 June, 2009
Apple® today introduced the new iPhone™ 3G S, according to Apple “the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet”. This thing was pretty much conceived while Steve Jobs was either very ill or had already left the office for his sick leave. As such, it offers us a first glimpse of what life without Jobs could be like for Apple. Interesting. Let’s take a look at the new features.
Big features
The 2 really big features of this new iPhone are improved speed —up to twice as fast as the last iPhone, according to Apple —and longer battery life. I will be VERY interested in seeing Read on…
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17 April, 2009
An hour ago the verdict in the case of The Pirate Bay Four was announced. The four defendants were accused of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Peter, Fredrik, Gottfrid and Carl: Guilty. The four receive 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000. An hour after the official verdict the Pirate Bay gave a press conference, some highlights of which can be found here below.
Illegal downloads
The Pirate Bay Four operated the Swedish Bittorrent site “The Pirate Bay”. The court has considered its verdict for some weeks, before releasing the verdict (available here) today. The prosecution claimed that Read on…
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22 March, 2009
The American online music service SpiralFrog that was free to use, missed a critical lily pad this week and has shut down as a result of its debts. The Ad-funded US service signed deals with EMI and Universal some time ago but failed to secure deals with Sony or Warner.
Spiralfrog closed its operation yesterday, unable to pay back a ten million dollar loan in convertible notes. The DRM-protected music service allowed fans to download and play tracks to their computers with a video advert appearing before each play.
Ad-funded model under pressure
Spiralfrog is the second ad-funded music service to Read on…
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25 February, 2009
Do you like Reggaeton music? Or Gospel? Or Beyonce? Chances are, you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed :) The “Music that makes you dumb” project shows that there is a clear relation between your musical taste and your intelligence. Or at least a relation to your chances to succeed in college, as defined by the average score in the SAT test, a standardized test for U.S. college admissions..
The x-axis represents the SAT score, while the colored boxes indicate either music genre or artist/composer. The chart maps the 133 most popular (out of 1,455) favorites from 1,352 different schools. This image shows the central piece of the chart. Click to enlarge.
Country beats Classical
Overall, fans of Lil Wayne’s music scored the lowest in SAT while the highest scorers were listeners of Read on…
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14 February, 2009
Local data, but part of a worldwide trend: the Belgian Entertainment Association reports that in 2008, video games made 247 million euro, more money than either music or DVD sales.
Rapid growth
The growth of the share of games in the entertainment spend can be called spectacular. In 2006, games only had a share of 27% of all entertainment sales and the category was in 3rd place after music and DVD’s. In 2007 music sales were overtaken and in 2008 games had a share of Read on…
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3 January, 2009
The American year-end music sales figures released by Nielsen SoundScan show that while more music is consumed than ever, actual music sales have never been lower than in 2008. There was an increased number of paid downloads, but that failed to make up for the dive in the sale of compact discs.
Physical album sales fell 20 percent, while digital album sales rose 32 percent. The record of 65.8 million digital albums sold, still slowed down by DRM, could not compensate the loss of CD sales, and as a result total album sales were down 8.5 percent from 2007, for a new all-time low record. Again.
Singles drop revenue
Digital track sales were up 27 percent versus 2007, with over a billion units sold. This, also, is a bad trend Read on…
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2 September, 2008
Things are tough if you run a record label these days. Apple owns somewhere between 85 and 95% of the total market for selling music online - but it is not paying much to the record labels. The label’s margins are just cents per download, while Apple sits firmly in the top 10 best-selling retailers online, having sold more than 5 billion songs in iTunes. “The iTunes Store became the largest music retailer in the U.S. based on the amount of music sold during January and February 2008,” according to Apple. That is not just the largest download store, but iTunes is the largest music seller in the USA. Selling a database of 8 million tracks that are “owned” by the labels, but of which they see little return from Apple. That’s total dependence.
Self-release
And then there is the threatening trend that artists Read on…
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6 August, 2008
I’ve had some issues with my Sonos Digital music system in the past - but yesterday night, Sonos made my day :) It’s just one of those moments where you’re about to go to bed and suddenly you see something popping up in your mailbox that puts a smile on your face - and immediately you switch into full nerd-mode because you want to upgrade! right! NOW! Suddenly sleeping doesn’t seem so important anymore. These are happy moments in the life of a music and gadget nerd :)
What’s a Sonos, then?
The Sonos system Is a wireless, multi-room Read on…
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23 July, 2008
Sony and Amazon have announced a new partnership; Amazon’s just launched a video on demand service - and the new movie streaming service will connect directly to Sony’s Bravia TVs.
About time too, since consumers want completer offerings than downloading movies on a connected set. Users do not want to wait for a movie. As Amazon already learned, movies need to start playing right away, or a service like that just won’t take off.
The Amazon offering
The Amazon video on demand (VOD) service has most Read on…
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22 July, 2008
Returning from holiday, I found that Last.fm has launched a revamped website. Last.fm is a site I have been using a lot over the last years. It is a social music service that analyzes the digital music you play on your computers and MP3 players, then gives you recommendations based on your taste for new artists, it suggests new friends on Last.fm and it allows you to play music you own on any computer, streamed from their website.
The new look and feel is less cluttered, cleaner and there are some new features aimed at making it easier to find music.
New on Last.fm
For me, the best news is that Read on…
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10 June, 2008
Apart from Euro 2008, my main reason for having a quiet time on this blog is my latest geeky purchase - the Sonos digital music system. Now that I’ve had this in my house for about a month I figured it is time to share my experiences with those of you that care (if you don’t, stop reading ;)). I came across the Sonos system when visiting a friends’ house a while back (thanks for infecting me Dirk) and I was immediately impressed with the quality and responsiveness of the system.
Ever since I have given away my thousands of CD’s a couple of years ago and started buying digital, I have tried to access my digital music in the living room via Windows XP and Vista Mediacenters (not a great interface for large libraries, needs a PC to be always on) , Xbox (too noisy) and an Apple TV (could only sync 40 gigabytes to hard disk). I have a 280 GB collection so I was never quite satisfied with all of those solutions.
The Sonos solution
The Sonos system consists of a remote control unit and one Read on…
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Author: Jeroen Verkroost - Category: Tools, Music, Hardware - 1,905 readers - Comment (5)
23 March, 2008
Recorded music seems to continue down its path of devaluation. Since last Friday the new Madonna album “Hard Candy” is being released one-track-per-day to Vodafone subscribers exclusively before the album hits the stores. Effectively becoming a marketing tool for Vodafone Live’s music downloads, Madonna’s music is used to sell more mobile subscriptions and services.
Buy stuff, get music free
But of course you can also use music as a give away to sell more Nokia phones or iPods. This week it became clear that Apple considers launching a music subscription service that would allow iPod owners to listen to all the tracks they want for a one-off fixed fee. Personally I love the idea - if they would combine it with a new 3G capable iPhone it’s a definite killer.
Jobs does a turn
While Apple CEO Steve Jobs has previously Read on…
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7 February, 2008
There seems to be a lot of news around Microsoft these days :) As a European jockey of MSN Video, I am very happy to see the deal with MTV for MSN Video annouced. With this deal the short duration videos, some exclusive, from popular MTV shows like Pimp My Ride, Punk’d, Cribs and South Park will be available on MSN Video across the European region. Additional MTV shows will be added in the coming months.
MSN Video is a Read on…
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30 December, 2007
In 2007 the world just seems to keep getting better for those who are already ahead of the pack. If you can afford to always buy the latest iPod and if you can afford to regularly drink coffees in places where they cost $4.25 like Starbucks, here is some great news for you. Pretty soon you can just sit down in one of Starbucks’ comfy chairs, punch in your order for a Grande Mocchachino on your iPod and get an alert when the hot coffee is ready for you to pick it up at the counter. Now there’s some high tech line-jumping.
A great step
With the new Patent Application #20070291710 that Apple registered, you can Read on…
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27 September, 2007
Amazon, the long awaited rival to Apple’s iTunes, has finally launched its music download service. Unlike Apple, Amazon is selling DRM free MP3 tracks. MP3 music tracks are free of the restrictions that iTunes’ downloads have. With MP3’s users can copy or play their files on portable devices other than iPods just as easily, and are not forced to use iTunes or any specific software.
Not only are the Amazon downloads copy-trouble free, with most songs priced at Read on…
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9 September, 2007
In another twist on it’s digital strategy, MTV Networks will focus even more on selectivity, dropping the mass approach of its’ main web property. Over two dozen new sites will be launched, each devoted to individual shows, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Launching these sites will get MTVN to an impressive total of over 300 worldwide websites.
Selectivity instead of mass
The big change is not that there will be even more websites, but the fact that MTV is dropping Read on…
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