May 24, 2010
Volume XXX, Issue 11
Google Buys Simplify Media to Power Music File Sharing
Excerpted from TechCrunch Report by Leena Rao
Google just announced that it bought Simplify Media, a start-up that offers software that lets you share your iTunes music across platforms, including the web.
The software lets you share your photos and music using programs like iTunes, iPhoto, and Windows Media player. According to the start-up's site Simplify Media "connects people directly with their content, without the hassles of synching or uploading all their files. Simplify users can also share their personal media with family and close friends in a private, secure group."
It appears that that deal may have taken place in March, when the company announced a "new direction" on its blog, discontinuing its software to users and removing its iPhone app from Apple's App store. Clearly the new direction was over to Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
Google VP Vic Gundotra said that Simplify's technology will be used to offer a desktop app that will give you access to all of your (DRM-free) media on your Android devices remotely, using Google's new iTunes competitor on the web.
Adobe's Big P2P Plans: Eliminate Bandwidth Costs
Excerpted from beet.TV Report by Andy Plesser
With the imminent launch of Flash Player 10.1, Adobe will provide publishers with tools to dramatically reduce bandwidth costs with a new peer-to-peer system, explains Kevin Towes, Product Manager of Adobe Flash Media Server, in this exclusive interview with Beet.TV.
The new player includes a P2P program that will allow users to share streaming video (both live and on demand) with others.
Adobe provides a centralized management system called Stratus, for which it is paid by publishers, but the big software company does not host or stream these files.
Towes says the system will eliminate bandwidth costs in some cases, citing specific projections in this interview.
He says that the system will both be a profit center for Adobe, as well as means to deepen the value of Flash in the industry.
The P2P protocol will be suitable for much Flash video and Flash-powered video games, but not for high quality, broadcast quality video since P2P on the public Internet has limited capacity, he told me off camera.
The most recent version of the Flash Player, 10.0, had limited utility, allowing a small number of peers to connect. The new player will be far more robust, he says.
Please click here for an update.
Skype Expects 1 Billion Users by 2015
Excerpted from Bloomberg News Report
Skype Technologies SA, the distributed computing industry's greatest success in terms of consumer adoption, and now the largest provider of international calling, said the number of registered users will nearly double to 1 billion by 2015.
Half of Skype's registered users by that time will be business customers, who bring in 20% to 30% more revenue on average than consumers, said David Gurle, a Skype Vice President.
Skype, which is based in Luxembourg and started as a free P2P-based online calling service, last week began testing group video-conferencing, part of its push for corporate clients.
"This is our next big frontier,'' Gurle said.
Skype is also working with manufacturers to preinstall its software on Panasonic and LG Electronics televisions, and on Motorola and Research In Motion mobile phones.
Revenue grew by about 30% to $719 million last year, Gurle said.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Abacast's Jason Vosburgh deserves special recognition for providing Abacast's webcast services for our inaugural P2P & CLOUD MEDIA SUMMIT (P2PCMS) at Digital Hollywood Spring (DHS). The entire event is now available here to view session-by-session.
Abacast is a commercial quality, hybrid content distribution network (CDN), offering the most options in the industry to distribute and monetize rich media for the online radio, online video, and enterprise markets.
Our next public discussion of issues surrounding the entertainment sector's adoption of the distributed computing industry's newest offerings will take place on June 25th at the Content in the Cloud session during this year's Digital Media Conference here in Washington, DC:
"New services are emerging for music, games, video and other content freeing our hard drives and moving content into the cloud. In the ten years from Napster to Spotify, how have distributed computing technologies evolved through file-sharing to peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading and streaming, and now the cloud? What are the latest technological solutions and legal mechanisms for combating copyright infringement globally in this space? How are business models progressing and what more needs to be done to fully legitimize this distribution channel? What kinds of marketing and promotional tactics show the most promise for profitably exploiting these uniquely consumer-based systems?"
FTI Consulting sponsored the P2PCMS Policy Track, which featured a strategic overview of recently enacted laws and court rulings, as well as in-process regulatory changes that are of vital concern to industry participants. Panelists included Dow Lohnes' Jim Burger, Member; MasurLaw's Steve Masur, Managing Director; Consulting, Legal, Mediation & Strategy Services' Matt Neco, Principal; St. Edwards University's Gregg Perry, Assistant Professor; and Morrison & Foerster's Melody Torbati, Of Counsel.
KPMG Partner Mark Lundin delivered the opening keynote address focused on managing the risks of cloud adoption. He described the cloud marketplace, benefits and opportunities, operational and business considerations, risk mitigation strategies, and the future of the cloud. Among key risk mitigation strategies are a unified risk and compliance program, risk assessment, due diligence, contracting, auditing, and ongoing monitoring.
BitTorrent VP of Business Development Claude Tolbert followed with an exploration of the untapped promise of P2P in particular related to online video. He chronicled the past decade in this area, coupled with projections for explosive growth ahead. Although relatively little video consumption now occurs from online sources versus TV transmission systems, this will change as viewing devices change. Meanwhile BitTorrent is positioned to help enormously with this transition and will introduce publisher support features, and already has over 100 million regular users.
The Technology Track zeroed in on how innovations in P2P and cloud computing are affecting the evolving distribution chain. Panelists included Asankya's Norman Henderson, VP of Business Development; Yummy Interactive's Christopher Hennebery, VP of Software Distribution; Sivoo's Rich Moreno, Principal; Verimatrix's Neerav Shah, VP of Business Development; and Joyent's Steve Tuck, Director of Enterprise Sales.
Cisco Systems Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the IBM-Cisco Alliance Geng Lin zeroed in on the video cloud for business enterprises. Video now is like the web was in the nineties, except video delivers human interaction at scale. Business video has doubled from two years ago and is expected to double again in a year, with the education sector having the highest current percentage of video traffic and manufacturing expecting the sharpest increase. Geng talked through the business video life-cycle and the benefits of cloud.
Aleric CEO Vincent Hsieh offered a complete definition of cloud computing and how the Aleric cloud platform uniquely relates to that. He enumerated features and benefits of cloud computing for both enterprises and end users, but also pointed out the deficiencies in the four major types of cloud computing, which Aleric's secure cloud perform addresses. Vincent provided details of MyIVO, Aleric's dynamic cloud product and demonstrated how the company differentiates itself from competitors.
The Content Track focused on how to balance monetization and anti-piracy efforts to maximize profitability. Panelists included Independent Producer Melike Amjarv; Free Speech Coalition's Diane Duke, Executive Director; Copyright Clearance Center's Chris Kenneally, Director of Author Relations; BayTSP's Lawrence Low, VP of Product Management & Strategy; and Game-Based Marketing's Gabe Zichermann, Author.
Rovi Corporation Product Development Director Michael Papish forecast a "partially cloudy" infrastructure "with a chance of" dynamic data. This means a hybrid public-private cloud ecosystem, or a way to host services in multiple places at once. And the value of that in turn is creating a future of exciting solutions based on recalling data in real-time to power dynamic applications. In short, flexible hosting can give customers the ability to create powerful and scalable applications that create dynamic data.
Giraffic VP of Business Development Assaf Benjamin talked about his firm's boundary-less P2P video-on-demand (VOD) service for any content. He outlined the challenges online video distributors face and how Giraffic's technology addresses them. He added detail on data fragmentation, coding, and seeding, as well as network monitoring and reporting. He concluded with a discussion of how Giraffic, with its breakthrough technology and patents, presents a new standard for cost efficiency and user experience.
Alcatel-Lucent sponsored our conference luncheon, which included two sessions, a keynote address from Alcatel-Lucent Ventures General Manager Buck Peterson and a panel discussion moderated by Ubiquity Broadcasting President Steve Jacobs.
Buck Peterson provided an overview of the ventures group within Alcatel-Lucent and its strategy for supporting network operators in keeping pace with multi-dimensional demand. Internet service providers (ISPs) are challenged by the rising costs of P2P, and adding bandwidth alone won't solve the problem because of exponentially growing content sizes. Buck shared findings from Alcatel-Lucent original research in this area and outlined the company's compelling peer optimization approach. He then talked about its fascinating cloud computing strategy, telco virtualization.
The panel discussion addressed 'do's and dont's' for approaching major entertainment companies with new technology solutions. Panelists included TAG Strategic's Ted Cohen, Managing Partner (formerly EMI Music); Priority Digital Media's Amy Friedlander-Hoffman, President (formerly AT&T); Loeb & Loeb's Larry Kenswil, Of Counsel (formerly Universal Music Group); Pepperdine University School of Law's John Malcolm, Distinguished Practitioner in Residence (formerly MPAA);and Starz's John Penney, EVP of Strategy & Business Development (formerly HBO).
And finally, the Next Generation P2P & Cloud panel discussed prospects for "content in the cloud," including music, TV, and film. Panelists included Aleric's Vincent Hsieh, CEO; Ascent Media's Mick Bass, VP of Alliance Management; Grab Networks' Marcien Jenckes, President of Media and Content; Panvidea's Doug Heise, VP of Marketing; RedThorne Media's Ian Donahue, President; TVU Networks' Jim O'Brien, Senior Advisor; and Flycell's Adrian Rubio, SVP of Corporate Development.
Please click here to find out more about these valuable sessions. And plan now to attend the Digital Media Conference East on June 25th. Share wisely, and take care.
Skype's "Success" Speaks Volumes
Excerpted from Network World Report by Paul McNamara
By many measures Skype has been a remarkable success, primary among them (for me) that the videoconferencing it enables has managed to virtually reunite my sister in Minnesota with her family in Massachusetts.
However, Skype has not been the kind of financial success one would have expected from a company that once commanded $2.6 billion from eBay; and there are ample reasons to doubt that a financial windfall will ever happen.
Lee Gomes, a senior editor at Forbes, examines some of those reasons in a piece published this morning. He summarizes the problem tidily:
Revenue of $719 million isn't bad, but is hardly remarkable when your product is used by hundreds of millions of people.
Technologies like Skype are so disruptive, as they say in business school, that they tend to destroy the very economics of their own business. Thanks to Skype and its many imitators-every web chat program now has audio and video built in - there is no money to be made in computer-to-computer communications, certainly not among homes.
Yes, this has been apparent for awhile now and Skype has many fellow travelers in this rickety boat. However, it remains a remarkable characteristic of the Internet age that technology that can deliver so much value to so many people can be worth so little to the people who provide it.
uTorrent Expands, Launches Apps and Labs
Excerpted from TorrentFreak Report
uTorrent has come a long way since it saw its first public release in September 2005. Over the years it has grown to be the most widely used BitTorrent application with more than 50 million monthly users worldwide.
On the development side, the uTorrent team at BitTorrent hasn't been sitting still. This week they launch "uTorrent Apps," an exciting new project that could be considered another milestone. With Apps, users can easily install extensions and add custom features to uTorrent.
"Apps for uTorrent is a brand new web-based extensions framework that makes it easy for users to get more and do more with uTorrent without compromising the client's renowned lightness and speed," Simon Morris, BitTorrent's VP of Product Management says.
Similar to other apps, add-ons, and extensions in today's web browsers and phones, uTorrent Apps will allow third-party developers to develop applications that will integrate seamlessly with the client. At launch there are already four free apps available, developed in cooperation with uTorrent.
Among the apps that are currently available is a free virus scanner for BitTorrent downloads and the uGadget which allows users to monitor and control torrent downloads more easily from a browser. VODO, the BitTorrent powered distribution platform for filmmakers that is supported by all the major torrent sites, also has an app already.
For developers who want to code uTorrent apps there will soon be an SDK available. "Apps are a new type of file with a .btapp suffix that consists entirely of HTML and Javascript and can be added to the client and displayed using an embedded browser window, so very little extra code is needed," Morris explains.
The apps can be added to uTorrent from within the client and take just a click to install. We expect that most torrent sites will soon release their own apps to complement uTorrent. That's just the start though, the possibilities are endless.
The uTorrent "Griffin" release is part of the new uTorrent labs section where the development team is giving users early access to their latest projects. Besides Griffin, the remote access project Falcon and the live streaming project Pheon are also listed.
We have covered Falcon previously. Besides secure remote access, this client also enables users to stream torrent video files. Pheon is BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen's pet project and is expected to be released later this year.
AT&T - The Cloud's a Clear Winner for Carriers
Excerpted from Xchange Report by Tim McElligott and Tara Seals
It is understandable that with its catchy, new, very marketable name, cloud computing may seem far removed from the evolutionary steps it has taken and that there is confusion over what the technology actually is and does - and doesn't do. Whatever the definition, AT&T's strategy guru for business services, says the cloud is a clear winner for carriers.
Joe Weinman, Strategy and Business Development Vice President of AT&T Business Solutions, thinks the cloud is a perfect opportunity for operators to leverage their network assets, customer relationships and traditional services to create cloud services that are as compelling as they are differentiating.
Weinman will deliver a keynote address at the upcoming Billing & OSS World Conference & Expo here in Washington, DC, June 9th-11th, where he will provide his perspective on the ways Internet service providers (ISPs) can leverage the industry fervor over the cloud. Xchange interviewed Weinman about it ahead of the show.
Xchange: How do you define cloud and what is your company's strategy?
Joe Weinman: I have the Weinman definition of C.L.O.U.D. as an acronym: Common, Location-independent, Online, Utility on Demand. The common attribute has to do with the statistical multiplexing of multiple customers or applications into a common resource pool, which is a clear generator of economic value across many different industries. I have done extensive analysis both through simulation and abstract math into the assorted value drivers of cloud and one of them is usage-sensitive, on-demand pricing. It turns out that whenever there is variable demand with the correct attribute of variability, cloud computing generates clear economic value.
With that definition in mind, it's not just the typical resources like servers or storage, but many different kinds of services fall under that, and by that I mean hotel chains and rental cars and mortgage lenders all using the same model for accessing resources based on time, quantity and quality of those resources. Our strategy is to offer a variety of industry-standard cloud capabilities, such as our synaptic storage as a service, synaptic compute as a service, synaptic hosting, dozens of traditional software-as-a-service (SaaS) packages like e-mail, messaging, financial and e-business capabilities, but also to expand the portfolio to things like unified communications and collaboration applications.
Xchange: Have you proved the business case for either public or private cloud services? Is there one?
Joe Weinman: We are heavy users of these technologies. We are both internal users as well as offering a wide variety of services externally. AT&T has been in this business for over 15 years. It started as shared Web hosting using the World Wide Web back in the early '90s then evolved into a variety of utility computing and storage offers where we did a number of services like gigabit-per-month coupled with very innovative utility on-demand offers. We offered pricing on average CPU utilization that evolved into what we think of today as cloud, a high degree of virtualization, coupled with usage-sensitive pricing and flexible on-demand resources. We are now at 38 Internet data centers globally. So this all represents an evolution of that early work.
As for talking about private cloud, that term has a bit of a checkered history as to whether there is such a thing as a private cloud. If it means virtualization, automation and standardization, then yes there is such a thing; it is called best practices for running data centers today.
Please see Operators Should Have Their Heads in the Cloud for the full report.
Billboard Q&A: LimeWire CEO George Searle
Excerpted from Billboard Report by Antony Bruno
On May 12th, the same day that LimeWire CEO George Searle turned 46, a federal judge found the file-sharing service and Founder/Chairman Mark Gorton liable for copyright infringement.
"It kind of felt like my first birthday, the way I came into this world-getting slapped," Searle quips.
Searle isn't the kind of person one would expect to see leading a legally challenged file-sharing network. Before joining LimeWire in 2007, he was CEO of Mediaguide, an airplay monitoring service jointly owned by ASCAP and marketing company ConneXus. Searle co-founded ConneXus, where he developed a service that enabled consumers to use their mobile phones to identify and purchase songs played on the radio.
Since taking the helm at LimeWire, Searle has been working to strike licensing deals with the music industry to turn one of the most popular sources of unlicensed music into an authorized music service.
But this month's ruling has put that effort in jeopardy. In finding LimeWire liable for copyright infringement, US District Court Judge Kimba Wood cited evidence presented by the labels that the company was aware that its users were downloading copyright-protected content and that it even used Google AdWords to reach consumers entering search terms like "replacement Napster," "Napster MP3," and "MP3 free download."
In his first interview since the ruling, Searle speaks exclusively with Billboard about his reaction to the case and LimeWire's ongoing efforts to work with the recording industry.
Billboard: Given the history of litigation against file-sharing services, the ruling couldn't have come as a surprise.
George Searle: It surprised me a little that it happened so quickly. We expected the judge would call a conference before deciding. The court had a lot of evidence to sort through. The difficulty it faced was trying to assess LimeWire's intent after all these years. Paradoxically, the very thing LimeWire has done to respect copyrights and work with the industry were the things the court construed as an intent to infringe. Billboard: Like what?
George Searle: The LimeWire Store, settlement documents, plans that were never put in place because the company realized they were wrong, filters that were built but never put in place because the necessary industry cooperation wasn't there. But beyond that, the evidence supporting the court's decision comes down to a quickly scuttled AdWords program and the words of a former COO who settled with the RIAA. Unfortunately, the court accepted the plaintiff's construction of those facts.
Billboard: Can you explain the AdWords program?
George Searle: As context, I've been at LimeWire for three years and all of this preceded me. The AdWords campaign was independently created and implemented by a LimeWire intern. LimeWire management did not authorize the bidding and terminated the campaign once they learned of it. The ads mentioned music files, but also many other file types that LimeWire is useful for. And at the time, LimeWire had mixes of music authorized to share. But let me be clear: LimeWire did not and does not seek to attract copyright infringers.
Billboard: Rather than address each point of evidence, let's focus on the most important ones - that more than 98% of files requested on LimeWire infringe on copyrights.
George Searle: LimeWire considers this an open issue still in litigation. I can't say that I agree with any of the expert reports that were submitted. Whatever the numbers of files authorized for sharing versus those that are not, LimeWire does not know those numbers. It did not in 2000 and it does not now. LimeWire's searching and sharing functions are entirely decentralized. After downloading and installing LimeWire on their computers, we currently have no visibility into what types of content users seek, send, and receive with the software. Billboard: But if I were to download LimeWire today, I could use it to download unlicensed music. The ruling indicates that LimeWire should do more to prevent that.
George Searle: That's a good point. In assessing that LimeWire had the intent to induce infringement, the court included the failure to include mandatory content filters. The judge was very critical on this point. There are a few problems with this. Generally, as a technologist, I'm concerned this can lead to laws requiring providers of software to put filters in place and actively police their users to avoid infringement.
More specifically to her opinion, the Grokster ruling did not come out until 2005, and it was at that point the technological limitations and rules of conduct were established. In this case, the judge holds LimeWire of 2003 to a standard laid out in 2005. It's hard to successfully manage that. In any event, LimeWire has tried earnestly, aggressively and continuously to work with the music industry. The company did develop a hash filter to work in cooperation with rights-holders where the rights-holders would provide the hashes for the filter to work.
Unfortunately, the rights-holders LimeWire went to would not provide the hashes, and as such it was never taken out of beta. LimeWire representatives have met with content holders a hundred times to discuss this issue. Unfortunately, it's never come to fruition.
Billboard: Then what's your pitch to the music industry?
George Searle: We're trying to convince them that there's an opportunity. There's the law, and then there's business. File sharing is no longer a legal issue. It's not even a technology issue. It's a social issue, and it's definitely a business issue. With respect to the lawsuit and this approach to the problem, there are no winners. This is not going to resolve any of the industry's problems. It will do nothing to reduce overall file-sharing software usage. It does absolutely nothing to help the music consumer. And most importantly, it doesn't do anything to put money into the pockets of artists and songwriters and publishers.
Billboard: Explain the role you'd like LimeWire to play.
George Searle: I've been in meetings where I ask a music executive in all earnestness, "How can I best help you?" The knee-jerk response is, "Shut down LimeWire." It provides for an interesting discussion, because what's going to happen if we do that? We're building a revolutionary music service and we'd like to launch it smack dab on top of the file-sharing network. It's got to be a better alternative.
Our model for this is that it would have unlimited digital rights management-free downloading and streaming. An elegant media player with access to millions of songs on-demand synched to iTunes and other players so that when you plug in your device, your music is just there. Complete and instant access to your entire library across your desktop and devices and the cloud. Subscribe-able charts and feeds and playlists. Robust discovery features. Recommendations. Curated content. Dynamically created playlists. All the things you can't get from file sharing, and we've got a credible plan to make that work.
Billboard: So the file-sharing network is the free tier that attracts users to this new service?
George Searle: If we've learned anything from other file-sharing companies that have tried something similar, we've learned you have to preserve the core experience. There are few in the world that are able to distribute a desktop application as widely and quickly and successfully as LimeWire. We're completely redesigning the entire file-sharing experience to promote and sell the music service in contextually relevant ways. So we establish multiple triggers to illustrate and highlight the value and features of the service in organic and intuitive ways. It's a great platform to educate and inform.
Billboard: Isn't that the same freemium model that the recording industry is already pulling away from? How do you plan to compete with a service based on file sharing, when similar cloud-based models offer labels more control?
George Searle: I do think that the world will move towards cloud-based services. But we're not there yet. We view this as an opportunity. You're going to need unlimited downloads and unlimited streaming. Now is the time to blow out downloads. Now is the time for the industry to get ahead of the curve and utilize downloads that people need - until wireless networks become more ubiquitous - to get them into the cloud. We think we can facilitate that transition.
Billboard: The LimeWire Store has around 5 million tracks in its catalog. Any stats on how many of those are actually downloaded and sold?
George Searle: Well, let me qualify that, because I don't want to confuse our download store with what I just described. Most of our resources go towards building what we call internally this "best damn music service ever." Our current LimeWire Store is not that. It's not everything we want it to be in terms of feature set, in terms of catalog, and in terms of licenses.
Because of this, we have not marketed the store to the extent we could. But we've had some early success. In the last year, the LimeWire Store has added tens of thousands of new customers, I think 80% of which were subscription customers. We sell both a la carte and on a subscription basis. I think 40% of subscribers choose the most expensive tier, which is 75 downloads for $20 a month. The average payout per track to providers has hovered at just above 85 cents per track. There's a mental friction associated with transactional models. We need to make it easier to pay for music, and that's going to require new licenses.
Billboard: I'm sure this ruling isn't helping those licensing negotiations.
George Searle: Make no mistake, the judge's decision doesn't make it any easier. But quite honestly, I'm energized. I think the folks we're speaking with are as well. We've been in discussions for a while, and I think this decision catalyzes both us and the industry to focus on the opportunity at hand. The worst possible outcome is that this just slips into legal proceedings and we miss the opportunity because we haven't fully engaged. There could be a lot of reasons why we don't find an opportunity to work with the industry. I'd hate for time and some lawsuit to drive the process to that conclusion.
Billboard: So what's next?
George Searle: We'd made no secret about the fact that we want to work with the entire music industry. We've had numerous promising meetings with labels, publishers, and artists to develop models that will compensate all. We have very strong ideas about how to integrate relevant, contextual marketing into file-sharing networks. We've been thinking about this for a long time and would like to give it a shot. The industry has supported very little experimentation on trying to leverage distributed activity to everybody's benefit. Ten years after Napster, we're still wondering if there's a real business here. So we've expressed our desire to license music and settle the file-sharing dispute through a business arrangement, rather than a legal one. That goal has not changed because of this decision. That is our strategy. That is our plan. That is our hope.
Billboard: What if the litigation ends in an injunction and damages? What are your contingency plans?
George Searle: We're keeping our eye on the prize, and that's to engage the industry. I'm optimistic that we'll find a way to work meaningfully with the industry.
Meet Atrinsic, You Already Know Kazaa
Excerpted from World Market Media Report
Last week we spoke with Jeffrey Schwartz, CEO of Atrinsic, and were able to learn a little more about where he sees the company going in the coming quarters. Anyone who listened on the company's most recent quarterly conference call knows that the company is clearly in transition. The company has focused on switching to a subscription model through their part ownership of Kazaa.
Kazaa charges $19 a month for unlimited music downloads and Atrinsic receives 50% of all Kazaa subscription revenues. Right now, there are around 100,000 paid Kazaa subscribers. This will be the company's bread-and-butter product of the future given that there is a huge market for digital music downloads.
This vast market has already been tapped by tech giant Apple, iTunes downloads account for about 50% of all digital music downloads. The company must also compete with other subscription based digital music downloader's such as Rhapsody and Napster both of which boost more subscribers, 500,000 and 300,000 respectively.
On top of this there are still a few people who will go out to a store and buy a CD. Needless to say, there's an incredible amount of competition, so what separates Atrinsic, what is their competitive advantage? Local Exchange Carrier (LEC) Billing.
Atrinsic exclusively uses LEC Billing technology, or alternative billing. This means that instead of using a credit card to pay for your monthly subscription, it can be billed directly to your home or cell telephone bill.
What is the advantage in this you might ask? It's purely for convenience and security purposes. When using credit as a form of payment, personal credit information is shared. This information can pass through many avenues before finally reaching the destination where payment is completed. The credit data, once posted on the Internet, is there for the taking of anyone able to do so.
While credit has its place in the real business world, the virtual business world is too broad to be 100% protected from identity theft. Using alternative payment for services or products is a new way to maintain peace-of-mind and ownership-of-identity in this financial online world we live in.
Being able to bill your services and products to your telephone bill is a great benefit to the new online experience. Atrinsic also does LEC Billing for some non-competitive third parties as a source of revenue.
Of course much of the success of this company will rely on the levels of music infringement to drop. Today much of the music downloaded is done so without authorization and until there is a fundamental shift from the idea that infringing music is no big deal, companies like Atrinsic will have to compete with unauthorized downloaders as well.
Spotify Announces New Plans, Still No US Launch Date
Excerpted from Signature9 Report by Shawn Ingram
Spotify, the European P2P music streaming sensation is adding some new plans, as it launches into a new country. Unfortunately for Americans, that country is the Netherlands. The plans, however, might be another indication that the service is looking into the US market.
The new plans are called Spotify Unlimited and Spotify Open. Spotify Unlimited will cost users $8, or the equivalent thereof, for unlimited, ad-free streaming to a single computer, not unlike how MOG works for US customers.
Spotify Open doesn't need any payment or even credit card information. It includes 20 hours of listening per month to anyone that lives within a country that supports Spotify.
The problem with Spotify, for would-be American users is that despite constant promises from Spotify and its purchase of US servers in March, there is still no planned launch date. We've already gone through projections a few this year alone ranging from "early 2010" to "Spring," "Q3," and the latest "before the end of the year."
As Wired points out, the new plans are similar to the sort of deals that the RIAA approves for other services such as MOG. Meanwhile, MOG is working on a mobile app that could possibly be similar to Spotify, Rhapsody continues its service, and rumors are flying of Apple announcing an iTunes streaming service sometime soon.
If Spotify fails to get in the US market soon and either MOG or Apple come out with high-quality mobile apps that do the same thing, the chance could be easily lost. Despite its social features, Spotify likely can't win unless it has a presence before Apple expands its iTunes offerings.
The Pirate Bay Sails Again
Excerpted from Contactmusic Report
The victory of Hollywood's studios over The Pirate Bay (TPB) website has proven to be short-lived.
Although they had obtained an injunction against the German host site forcing it to cut service to TPB, the studios saw the BitTorrent tracker quickly return to life, hosted by the Swedish Pirate Party.
In a statement, Rick Falkvinge, a spokesman for the Pirate Party, said, "We got tired of Hollywood's cat-and-mouse game with the Pirate Bay so we decided to offer the site bandwidth. It is time to take the bull by the horns and stand up for what we believe is a legitimate activity."
He defended TPB as a search engine "and, as such, it is not responsible for the results," he observed.
Software Development Is Headed for the Cloud
Excerpted from Information Week Report by Charles Babcock
The cloud is a technology convergence that makes a new way of computing possible. In one sense, it's simply a new way of distributing low-cost central processing unit (CPU) cycles. But it also seems to me that the gains in economies of scale for running software in the cloud also apply to developing software for the cloud.
It may not work that way for everybody but the potential is clearly there. Salesforce.com says customers who develop on its platform can do so at a pace four times as fast as traditional software development. That's because database and other services are built into the platform. Best practices are well established and documented for newcomers to follow. To some extent, they have to be followed. Choices are limited so that Salesforce is assured that the software composed beyond its purview conforms to its platform and won't disrupt it. Force.com applications run in the same data centers as Salesforce.com CRM applications.
That's an example of the new order imposed on what were sometimes loosely disciplined or chaotic development practices in the real world. It has so far remained a relatively limited example - only a subset of Salesforce customers engage in the use of Apex and Visual Force to produce new apps. Nevertheless, there are forces afoot that guarantee that's about to change.
The Spring Framework was a simplifying and clarifying force for Java programmers when it first appeared on the scene in October 2002. It allowed them to stick to plain old Java objects instead of learning the many APIs and complexities of Java Enterprise Edition. The underlying framework could supply those APIs and the expertise to produce Enterprise Java Bean-like connectivity and function. The plumbing was built in and didn't need to be hand-crafted by every Java developer.
Now SpringSource is part of VMware, and under that mantle it has proceeded to acquire Rabbit Technologies, a supplier of a reliable message queuing service, and GemStone Technologies, a supplier of in memory caching for application performance. What's the leading virtualization software supplier doing with all this development stuff?
The answer, I think, is that VMware sees commanding the next generation of cloud applications as a likely avenue to seeing its virtual machines deployed in the cloud itself. Today, two of the leading cloud infrastructure suppliers, Microsoft, with its Azure cloud, and Amazon Web Services with its EC2, are not interested in running VMware virtual machines. But there's a second generation of cloud infrastructure providers coming along who are: Verizon Business Computing as a Service, RightScale as a front end to other cloud providers, Terremark, Hosting.com, Savvis, and AT&T's Synaptic Compute Cloud.
If VMware succeeds in seeding these clouds with virtualization management software, self provisioning and chargeback, then it is likely to supply them with a growing list of customers as well as Java developers make use of the Spring Framework. As SpringSource helps developers succeed with their next generation of applications, it helps VMware succeed in the cloud.
Microsoft itself possesses a powerful base of supplying easy to use development tools that command the loyalties of millions of developers. It's "all in" on the cloud because cloud computing is coming, whether it likes it or not, and Microsoft can embed development advantages into its cloud that others will find difficult to match. Visual Studio already has cooperative elements that work in Azure and collaborative database services that work between Azure and SQL Server in the enterprise.
Development can simplify and speed up in the cloud when the planned deployment will occur to the same environment where the development takes place.
As cloud computing moves into this new phase, it poses a problem for the cloud suppliers who got us this far. Amazon's pioneering EC2 brought a new level of integration to end users. They didn't have to worry about configuring servers or configuring storage when they needed more compute power. All they had to do was select the size they wanted, small, medium or large, and EC2 handled the integration.
The next phase, to me, is when development gets incorporated into particular cloud environments. One way of describing the result is framework as a service, although you won't find that on NIST's list of cloud definitions. But development is moving into the cloud, as evidenced by VMware's expansions and Microsoft's moves. There's a growing list of development specialists as well, such as Heroku's cloud services for Ruby on Rails developers.
VMware sensed this possibility without fully articulating it when it acquired SpringSource last year. Now it's connected with Salesforce to gain cloud data centers as its development strategy begins to take hold. VMforce, announced two weeks ago, united what PiperJaffrey called two of the top three cloud vendors of the future. That alliance has gone somewhat under-remarked for the giant step forward that it represents.
Development in the cloud is not yet a fully realized service nor an acceptable way of doing things on many IT staffs. But before the new decade is out, we'll wonder how we did it any other way.
MSpot Unveils Cloud-Based Music System for Android
Excerpted from Wired News Report by Eliot Van Buskirk
In the race to make music accessible from anywhere, MSpot's music service has a somewhat novel approach: Don't sell anything, yet, and don't sign any major label deals.
Instead, the service allows people to upload their music - be it purchased, ripped or downloaded for free - and access it from any Mac, Windows or Google Android device. MSpot's model avoids the stumbling blocks of licensing deals which have repeatedly delayed the release of a US version of Spotify - a paid, P2P streaming music service that's immensely popular in Europe.
Others - including MP3Tunes - have tried a similar approach and faced resistance in the form of the usual copyright lawsuits from record labels, but MSpot says it has the labels' blessings. That's despite not paying them a dime in licensing costs for the service.
Being cozy with Google might have helped as well. Daren Tsui, CEO of MSpot, unveiled the service in a high-profile slot during the keynote at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
"Today, how people sync music is they're manually connecting that USB cable, they have to transfer all their files, and any time your library changes, you've got to sync up," Tsui told Wired News. "With the music now in the cloud, we believe you don't have to do that anymore. Any changes happen in the background, and you see that on your mobile device."
MSpot is currently in private beta mode, but users can request invites on the company's website to try the web and/or Android version.
The way it works is simple: Rather than trying to recognize the music files on your computer and replicate it in the cloud, which would likely invite licensing issues with the labels, MSpot literally uploads your music collection from iTunes, Windows Media Player, and/or any folders you specify - maintaining any ratings and metadata you may have set up in iTunes by scanning its XML database. The upload process takes at least several hours depending on processing power and connection speed, but once it's there, you're good to go.
The company is still working out details of this freemium music locker service, according to Tsui, but plans to offer "north of 2 GB" of free music storage - or more for a monthly fee. All files are converted into 48-Kbps aacplus files (a standard format for mobile music streaming services), meaning that you can store over four days of music in a free 2-GB locker - plenty for most music fans.
You can listen to all of your uploaded music using any Mac or Windows computer, or an Android smartphone, with the option to view lyrics and artist biographies and discographies for songs recognized by MSpot. Again, all of this is free for up to 2 GB. The most-recently played songs cache automatically to the device so you can still listen without a strong Wi-Fi or wireless data connection.
One reason the labels are fine with MSpot's storage locker, said Tsui, is that the company plans to layer a music subscription service on top of this storage locker, in the hope that fans will pay for the ability to add to their collection. However, when they pay to store larger collections, none of that money must be paid to the labels.
The company already counts 6 million customers across 10 different mobile carriers for its various mobile media services, and this music locker service should attract even more.
MSpot's freemium music locker service for Android smartphones and computers will be available to the public at some point in June, with apps for RIM, Windows and possibly Apple smart-phones to come thereafter.
Apple, of course, is likely readying something similar, following its purchase of Lala. However, Tsui appeared confident that MSpot would be able to compete toe-to-toe with whatever Apple/Lala ends up looking like.
MSpot's Google Android app can play music while you're doing other stuff, and can pause/resume for calls.
The web and mobile apps display lyrics and other information for songs in your library that MSpot recognizes.
Why the Cloud Is Already Free
Excerpted from Digital Music News Report by Paul Resnikoff
Music fans already have enough music. What they need is a smart system for accessing and updating their existing collections from anywhere. And that is exactly what Google just announced. Sure, this helps Google and Android, but it does little to generate extra cash for labels and other rights-holders.
In fact, Apple is likely to toss something similar into the ring. Apple speculation is a nasty beast, though the Lala ingestion is looking like another gratis cloud enhancement. This is about getting music anywhere with total ease, not about generating extra purchases or access fees.
But what about Google's Android Market? Go ahead, buy a download. The option will be there, but this will remain a paid-for periphery. Currently, paid downloads represent five percent of total music downloads (according to the IFPI), and neither Google nor Apple have a compelling business interest in changing that.
Welcome to the cloud. It's free. And labels are just starting to realize it.
But wait. What about app versions of Spotify, MOG, and Rhapsody? This is the 'next big thing' the industry wants, but just like traditional subscriptions, the compelling offer is still competing with free.
This is not to say that MOG's $10 app doesn't have an audience. It does. But the brief history of digital music suggests that consumers won't pay en masse. Instead, they'll flock to the least complicated, least expensive (i.e., mostly free) option. They've already ripped and swapped thousands of songs, thanks partly to a road paved by broadbands ISPs. Now, they want more out of those collections.
And Google, Apple, mSpot, and everyone else is happy not only to oblige, but to build that future. But what do labels and publishers do about this? Do they let another huge opportunity go unmonetized? Do they allow another seismic consumer shift to happen without them?
Actually, major labels are currently trying to bend Apple over ahead of its cloud-based release. But sue Apple? According to one insider, labels are most likely to rattle the sabers and extract some sort of fee, then move on.
And Google? Actually, a critical structural distinction must be made here. Instead of tapping into a third-party server, the Simplify solution allows users to access their desktop collections directly. In many ways, this is a simpler construction, and Google has the infrastructure chops to get this done. But what this means is that Google is not creating another file - either through metadata identification or direct duplication. This is very difficult to sue, and a much different legal proposition.
And, do you really want to sue Google? Get into the courtroom crosshairs with Apple? Just look at how long it took the labels to tackle LimeWire. And Google is no LimeWire, that is for sure, just ask Viacom. But Google is a company that just pushed 'go' on a massive, free infrastructure for redistributing music anywhere. And that means more trouble for paid.
Coming Events of Interest
Broadband Policy Summit VI - June 10th-11th in Washington, DC. The most comprehensive, in-depth update about the implementation of the FCC's National Broadband Plan. No other forum provides the detailed coverage, expert insight and networking opportunities you'll receive at Broadband Policy Summit VI. The expanded program includes top-notch faculty who will address the most pressing broadband issues in six panel discussions, two debates and four keynote addresses.
Digital Media Conference East - June 25th in McLean, VA. The Washington Post calls this Digital Media Wire flagship event "a confab of powerful communicators and content providers in the region." This conference explores the current state of digital media and the directions in which the industry is heading.
NY Games Conference - September 21st in New York, NY.The most influential decision-makers in the digital media industry gather to network, do deals, and share ideas about the future of games and connected entertainment. Now in its 3rd year, this show features lively debate on timely cutting-edge business topics.
Digital Content Monetization 2010 - October 5th-6th in New York, NY. DCM 2010 is a rights-holder focused event exploring how media and entertainment owners can develop sustainable digital content monetization strategies.
Digital Music Forum West - October 6th-7th in Los Angeles, CA. Over 300 of the most influential decision-makers in the music industry gather in Los Angeles each year for this incredible 2-day deal-makers forum to network, do deals, and share ideas about the business.
Digital Hollywood Fall - October 18th-21st in Santa Monica, CA. Digital Hollywood Spring (DHS) is the premier entertainment and technology conference in the country covering the convergence of entertainment, the web, television, and technology.
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