Bit Torrent: The Great Disrupter
When music-sharing networks Napster and Kazaa rose up earlier this decade, the record labels sued them into submission. Surely BitTorrent will be next—especially now that Hollywood is beginning to feel the pinch as well. Today there are roughly 1.7 million copies of Hollywood movies—typically the most popular ones—being downloaded at any one time using BitTorrent, a 12% jump from last year, according to online media measurement firm BigChampagne. Analyst Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that in 2004, the downloads cost Hollywood roughly $860 million, or 4% of box office receipts. In the same period the number of TV shows downloaded grew by 150%—about 70% of them snagged using BitTorrent. “In the David and Goliath scenario, there really is a David,” says Big Champagne CEO Eric Garland. “There’s a kid at a keyboard who writes this incredibly disruptive technology.”
posted by Unknown @ Monday, October 31, 2005,
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How to Build a Breakaway Brand
How ten companies, making products from drills to waffles, took good brands and made them much, much better -- By Al Ehrbar, Fortune Magazine
What do Gerber, Google, and Eggo have in common? They're all selling familiarity, trust, and quality—those intangible traits summed up by the word "brand." Right now that word is more important than ever before, because competitors are more instantly reactive and consumers more sophisticated than ever before. The Model T Ford was in production for 18 long years with little change; Sony's Cyber-shot digital cameras go out of production while the packaging is still crisp. And once upon a time shoppers pretty much believed the hype; these days Internet-powered bargain hunters are armed with accurate pricing and product information—and brutal in their search for value.
posted by Unknown @ Monday, October 31, 2005,
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As Stern splits, big markets lose rock radio
(from Billboard)
Infinity Broadcasting's preparations for the imminent departure of franchise morning host Howard Stern could leave rock music radio a collateral casualty.
"What Infinity is signaling is that a combination of celebrity talk and comedy appeals to its target market more than music in general and rock in particular," says Barry Sosnick, consultant and president of Earful.info. "When you have Infinity, a major player in broadcasting, indicating that music isn't a powerful draw for listeners, (that is) the most frightening implication."
Roadrunner VP of promotion Mark Abramson says New York's radio landscape will be "a very sad state of affairs" in January. "It will definitely impact albums sold," he says. "You're taking away New York's last remaining new (rock) music outlet, so of course it's going to have an effect. I've got to think that leaves a huge hole that hopefully someone will fill."
Full story...
posted by Unknown @ Sunday, October 30, 2005,
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Infinity Reveals Stern's Replacements, New Strategy
The long wait for Howard Stern's replacement on 27 stations owned by Infinity Broadcasting ended today. As expected, it takes more than one personality to fill the void left by the shock jock's pending exit to Sirius Satellite Radio in January.
posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, October 25, 2005,
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WHAT BLOGS COST AMERICAN BUSINESS
Blog this: U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs.
About 35 million workers -- one in four people in the labor force -- visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them, according to Advertising Age’s analysis. Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs. Forget lunch breaks -- bloggers essentially take a daily 40-minute blog break.
Blogs cover everything in real time -- true or possibly inflated or exaggerated -- from the war in Iraq, the White House and other news of the world as well as local and very local (MySpace is a perfect example of that and are any of the bedroom video blogs).
Read on at AdAge.com (free subscriber sign-on required)
posted by Unknown @ Monday, October 24, 2005,
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The Four Pillars of Yahoo!
Media companies are no longer in control of programming and content, consumers are. They are publishers and distributors of on-demand content. Content is pervasive. The shift from mass media to "my media" is well underway.
So how does Yahoo! plan to continue bringing value to consumers? Dan Rosensweig, chief operating officer of Yahoo!, explains his "4 Pillars."
They are:
*Search: Tools for finding, organizing, displaying, and publishing relevant content, information, and images. These include mobile, video, desktop, TV search functions and more.
*Content: Tools and resources for enabling consumers and businesses to find, create, use, watch, listen to, buy, enhance, manipulate, and share content. Basically, this is Yahoo!'s way of saying, "We want to help you do something with content -- anything you want."
*Community: Functions and features to help people connect with one another via groups, instant messaging, and more. There are currently 100 million Yahoo! IM users, by the way. The feature "My Web" reveals what fellow community members read and enjoy. The community, in essence, becomes a filter for preferences, and helps us navigate our way through what Peter Weedfald, Samsung's head of marketing, calls the "ADD [attention deficit disorder] economy."
*Personalization: Features like "My Yahoo!," which Rosensweig says 60 million people use globally, and "My Media," are about what he calls "discoverability." Personalization and customization features are what will ultimately help marketers build relevant and engaging messages. "We will know more about consumers, not less," through these types of features, Rosensweig says. In addition, automatic synchronization, which is the synchronizing of all devices across multiple platforms, will enable the steamlining of all information, including consumers' dislikes and likes.
posted by Unknown @ Saturday, October 22, 2005,
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Wanna See What The New Video iPod Looks Like Out Of The Box?
Engadget’s newest blogger pal Garrett M. happened to be very quick on the draw with his credit card after last week’s Apple announcements, and picked his damn self a spankin’ new iPod (with video). So check out the iPod’s unboxing if you’re too broke, too cheap, too not ready yet, or too not-down-with-iPods to buy one for your damn self.
posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, October 18, 2005,
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Internet opens new frontier in radio programming
Every hour, of every day, "podcasts" -- the latest front of the online revolution, let listeners download audio files and homemade radio programs onto personal computers or take them on the move with iPods or MP3 players.
"Podcasting" has exploded in popularity over the last year, allowing a motley collection of self-styled DJs, talk show hosts, and plain bores to spout off to the world.
Once the territory of computer geeks and the lunatic fringe hobbyists, podcasting is becoming big business, as giant global media firms sense a lucrative new market for their programmes.
Click the headline to read on...
posted by Unknown @ Thursday, October 13, 2005,
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INSIDE THE NEW WORLD OF LISTENOMICS
How the Open Source Revolution Impacts Your Brands
Bob Garfield wrote an excellent article in AdAge.com today. He states the information superhighway is beginning to reverse flow. Linux users, blogers, RSS feeders, Wikipedia, podcasting, "amateur" ad producers (or spoof political ads), internet radio...and the list goes on, it is more and more an open-source world. And that demand is not going away.
Read this important article and save it. In fact, this blog listing is a perfect reflection of the concept he discusses. Make sure you talk about it with your peers and colleagues. And get a mirror..you might want to really take a serious look.
Below is the opening excerpt. Click the headline to go to the full article at AdAge.com.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
By Bob Garfield, AdAge.com
Hear that?
In the distance? It’s a crowd forming -- a crowd of what you used to call your “audience.” They’re still an audience, but they aren’t necessarily listening to you. They’re listening to each other talk about you. And they’re using your products, your brand names, your iconography, your slogans, your trademarks, your designs, your goodwill, all of it as if it belonged to them -- which, in a way, it all does, because, after all, haven’t you spent decades, and trillions, to convince them of just that?
Congratulations. It worked. The Great Consumer Society believes deeply that it has a proprietary stake in you. And like stakeholders everywhere, they are letting their voices be heard.
Why? Because the information society is reversing flow. What began as an experiment among a few software nerds has, thanks to the Internet, expanded into other disciplines, notably media and law. But it won’t stop there. Advertising. Branding. Distribution. Consumer research. Product development. Manufacturing. They will all be turned upside down as the despotism of the executive suite gives way to the will, and wisdom, of the masses in a new commercial and cultural epoch, namely: The Open Source Revolution.
Yeah, yeah. Sure. Linux. Zzzzz. Wikipedia. Zzzzz. Blogging. Podcasting. RSS feeds. Zzzzzzzzzzzz. This cultish open-source stuff is undeniably a snooze -- a handful of evangelistic cybergeeks yammering on till little beads of white goo form at the corners of their mouths, as you struggle to remain conscious. If you can’t get jazzed by “Open Source Revolution,” fine. Maybe you prefer “Reverse Flow Economy,” or “Listenomics.” Whatever. Any which way, the herd will be heard. And, any which way, it is underway.
(click on headline to continue reading....)
posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, October 11, 2005,
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Scoping Sirius' Curious Car Count
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Sirius Satellite Radio's big numbers have a funny new car smell.
Sirius added 359,000 new users in the third quarter, nearly doubling its year-ago increase. At first blush that looks far more impressive than the 48% subscriber growth at rival XM Satellite .
But it turns out that not all those new Sirius subscribers are actual people.
posted by Unknown @ Monday, October 10, 2005,
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"What do listeners want? What they want when they want it and how they want it."
From John Parikhal, as posted on RAIN:
I think the core issue is "what do listeners want"? They don't want MORE channels. Right now, they already have so many choices they are overwhelmed. If they are tech
saavy, HD is just the latest in line behind satellite, WiMax etc. Based on our research, to attract consumers, HD has to consider ...
* Mostly — NO or very few commercials — that's one of satellite's attractions.
* Mainstream formats — they don't want all the clutter and they'd like a bit wider playlist.
* "Smart" niches — Blues, Reggae, Fishing Talk (no joke) etc.
Then, consider this — in an average 150 channel cable home, about 19 channels are usually watched. In markets with 25-30 terrestrial stations, the average person listens to 3-5 stations.
So, HD has to offer a lot of choices with the likelihood that around 10-12% of them will "stick" with any one person. In an industry that can't figure out the economics of the current system, this could be a real challenge.
What do listeners want? What they want when they want it and how they want it."
John Parikhal
Joint Communications
posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, October 05, 2005,
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Big Mess for Big Media
Disney, News Corp., Time Warner and Viacom have been market dogs this year. Can they recover? Many investors are biased against big media stocks this year and they have liberally sold their shares.
The stock prices of the four major media and entertainment firms are down an average of 11.2 percent through the first three quarters of 2005. The S&P 500, by way of comparison, is up 1.3 percent.
There are several reasons why all four stocks have been weak this year, such as concerns about a sluggish advertising market for many traditional forms of media, the Hollywood box office slump and slowing sales of DVDs.
What's more, many investors appear to be more attracted to the supercharged growth prospects of pure play Internet media companies like Google and Yahoo!
Still, some professional investors are starting to think that the sell-off in the media sector has been overdone.
posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, October 05, 2005,
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Media Usage Report: Media, media everywhere, and no time left to think?
The average American is a ravenous media junkie, consuming up to nine hours a day of television, web time or cellphone minutes, according to new research which raises fresh questions about how technology is revolutionising society.
From iPods filling commuters' ears, the screens scrolling headlines in the elevator at work to proliferating on-the-move tools like cellphones and Blackberry handhelds, media is everywhere in the United States, like much of the rest of the developed world.
posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, October 04, 2005,
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Swanni's Annual 'Best & Worst' HDTV List
The Good, The Bad and The Surprisingly Ugly realities of HDTV...some stars hold up better than others with that increased high-resolution.
According to Phillip Swann -- who stirred up some controversy with his first "annual" list last year -- has an updated one for 2005 after last month's Emmy Awards. According to him, "Jessica Alba looks even better in high-def, but Teri Hatcher and Demi Moore should run for cover."
If you like these Top 10 lists of the Best and the Worst for HDTV, read on...
Hey, we just cover the trends as we watch the media make news.
posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, October 04, 2005,
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Radio's Future: 'Talk Back To Your Bosses'
More from John Parikhal stirring things up at the NAB in Philly...
Though they weren’t singing “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades,” the panelists at the Future of Radio session on opening day (9/21) of the National Assn. of Broadcasters Radio Show here had no shortage of ideas about what the next generation of radio will look and sound like. The consensus: radio needs to make its content available in as many different containers as possible.
posted by Unknown @ Monday, October 03, 2005,
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