September 20, 2010
Volume XXXII, Issue 4
Abacast Fixed-Price Streaming Lets Radio Broadcasters Focus on Profitability
Abacast, a provider of peer-assisted online radio streaming solutions, announced this week the launch of fixed-price streaming for both terrestrial and Internet-only radio stations.
Generally, industry pricing plans allow streaming costs to grow unpredictably with audience growth, inhibiting profitability. Abacast Fixed-Price Streaming is a tiered fixed-pricing model that allows broadcasters to grow their audiences without the risk of overage charges. Fixed-Price Streaming provides stable and predictable streaming costs, even while the broadcaster's audience is growing.
"With Abacast Fixed-Price Streaming, we have built-in headroom for audience growth," said Rick Peters, COO of Bluewater Broadcasting. "We can continue to grow our traffic, now knowing that it will lead to higher profitability for Bluewater Broadcasting."
"With the launch of our Radio Streaming Platform, we're introducing a fixed-pricing model with built-in audience growth, enabling broadcasters to focus on what they do best - producing great content and serving their advertiser clients - without having to worry day-to-day about audience growth costs," said Jim Kott, Co-President of Abacast.
Abacast is an online radio service provider offering one of the most complete, integrated suites of streaming, advertising, and analytics services available from a single vendor. Abacast services drive digital advertising revenue, grow audiences, and deliver top-quality user experiences for the online radio markets.
Abacast was founded in 2000 and has successfully served hundreds of customers and tens of millions of consumers.
Kazaa Offers Endowment for Up-and-Coming Music Content
Kazaa, a leading subscription-based online music provider, this week announced a special endowment to provide independent music content sites, blogs, and communities with financial support, editorial assistance, and technology resources for the creation of original and user-generated music content.
To kick-off the endowment, Kazaa has initially selected more than twenty up-and-coming music sites to support including; Electronic Music Feed, Reference Music, and 27 Miles Music.
"This effort is part of Kazaa's overall mission to ensure that music fans everywhere continue to have access to the music and content they want whenever and wherever they want it. While Kazaa continues to offer consumers state-of-the-art music downloads and music streaming services, to truly deliver on our promise, we needed to make editorial content available. With the endowment, independent music sites will now have more opportunities to flourish and have a voice in this industry," said Brett Chester, Director of Marketing for Kazaa.
Along with sites like MOG, which recently launched an editorial destination called the MOG Music Network, Kazaa's new program will help ensure continual exposure for original content that is powered by fans' passion for music. To learn more, prospective candidates should visit the Kazaa Facebook Page.
Kazaa, a subsidiary of Brilliant Digital Entertainment is a leading provider of major label, licensed music subscription services. It also offers online anti-piracy solutions and customer conversion platforms through its Global File Registry (GFR) product, an industry endorsed, anti-piracy solution for the identification and removal of infringing content and replacement with licensed content through its patented search-and-replace technology.
Spotify Approaches 10 Million Users
Excerpted from IAB UK Report
P2P music streaming service Spotify is expected to announce that ten million users have signed up to the service later this month. It is thought to have reached another significant milestone by increasing its catalog of free tracks to over ten million.
The service is currently only available in seven countries - the UK, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, the Netherlands, and Spain.
Anyone can sign-up for the service, which is available as a desktop app and on smart-phones. Customers will also soon be able to use it on a Sonos wireless system.
The service was created by Swedish start-up Spotify AB and launched in October 2008. On May 19th of this year, it had seven million users. A total of 250,000 were paying customers.
Spotify allows users to create their own playlists and stream music for free on its ad-supported version. Customers can also sign-up for Spotify Premium, which offers higher-bit rate streams, offline access to tracks, and exclusive albums and use on mobile devices.
Composer Earns More on Spotify than iTunes
Excerpted from The Next Web Report by Brad McCarty
If you've doubted whether P2P streaming services such as Spotify have any sort of longevity to them, then this might just make your day. In a report from composer Gisle Martens Meyer, he states that for the first time his Spotify payout has surpassed his payout from iTunes.
"I now make more money on streaming than downloads. I knew it would happen at some time, but didn't expect it that soon."
Meyer does offer a few caveats, though none of them would offer a direct impact that would negate what he's found. He is careful to say, though, that he feels that the numbers are caused by a greater adoption of streaming and, like downloads, this adoption will also one day plateau.
Until that time, however, it's great to see musicians getting their due from services that we love to use. Carry on, Spotify. You've done well.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 In the past couple of weeks, two important presentations were given in California by leaders of the television and technology industries that, when taken in context of one another, mark a historic turning point in online video distribution.
Discovery Communications' President & CEO David Zaslav spoke at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in Newport Beach, CA this week. And Apple Computer's CEO Steve Jobs previewed Apple TV earlier at a packed company event in San Francisco, CA.
Discovery is the world's number one nonfiction media company reaching more than 1.5 billion cumulative subscribers in over 180 countries through 100-plus worldwide networks - led by Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel, Investigation Discovery, Planet Green, and HD Theater.
To date, the company has not embraced online delivery of its television properties, opting instead to populate branded websites with short-form cross-promotional videos intended to drive full-length program viewership for its traditional TV channels.
But in Newport Beach, Zaslav said Discovery will embrace online delivery of content once it has been demonstrated that it can be monetized, which is expected to accelerate as services like TV Everywhere come to market.
"Our deals provide that distributors have the right to our content through to the TV set," he said. "We have been very careful about not putting our content out onto other platforms when the economic model doesn't support it."
"TV Everywhere is actually something we are very encouraged by. If we can get our content through TV Everywhere authorized out onto the web and Nielsen can measure it or someone can measure it so we can monetize it, it would be very attractive."
Meanwhile, what was most striking about Jobs' presentation was his demo of a "One Click" video-push system for moving content among screens. While many online video platform providers no doubt share this vision, no one else has actually shown it working.
Enabling consumers to move video content from their mobile devices or PCs with one click onto their home television screens (or back in the other direction) is more than a compelling feature and actually goes beyond the fundamental construct of TV Everywhere.
While online delivery of video content and browser-controlled navigation are highly innovative, these pale in comparison to empowering viewers to control at will all the devices on which their video content plays. And Zaslav hits a key point - tracking and measurement will be key to monetizing this coming "multi-screen" phenomenon.
But "One Click" means that consumers themselves will have an important justification to register their devices so that the experience works. Apple retail stores have been gearing up to serve as training centers for consumers to learn how to link all their devices together in anticipation of "One click." And Apple is building a billion-dollar cloud-based data center. These developments should aid measurement.
Other major players are moving in this direction as well. Brian Roberts previewed Comcast's networked device integration at the Cable Show and Verizon demonstrated similar functionality with a tablet a few weeks ago.
Increasingly, these multi-screen interfaces, which perform as super remote-controls, navigation systems, and content re-directors, will represent a critical competitive edge for tomorrow's IPTV multichannel providers.
Will the integration become simple enough for consumers to do for themselves - possibly with an assist from friendly coaches at the Apple store - or will legions of cable installers be required to manage this process, as they currently do for digital set-top boxes (STBs)?
As in other times of major disruption, industry observers would do well to watch for new players, including start-ups, to emerge as the old order inevitably starts to change.
We agree with Zaslav's confident view of what's coming. As multi-screen TV takes hold, major original content rights-holders like Discovery will enjoy significant new revenue streams. Share wisely, and take care.
Google Music to Let Users Stream All of Their Music
Excerpted from Softpedia Report by Lucian Parfeni
Google is said to be moving forward with its streaming music service and a new report shows some of the ideas the company has for the upcoming service. Google Music would be a traditional online store, just like iTunes, but would offer an optional cloud-locker service to hold all of your music.
Google has been working on an online music service for at least a few months. While the company has shared some details, there are a lot of questions about the service supposedly set to launch this year.
According to a report by Billboard, Google is taking a hybrid approach. It doesn't want to launch a pure online streaming service, which have proven popular but not very profitable, or a simple digital music store like Apple's juggernaut.
Instead, it plans to marry the two. The Google Music store would offer paid downloads, very much like iTunes, though the store would be accessible from the web and possibly through an Android app on mobile devices.
This part is fairly standard, where Google's approach differs is that the bought music can also be available online for streaming from a cloud-locker service which is said to cost just $25 per year.
This way, users could listen to the songs they bought on any Internet-connected device. What's more, the songs would be available offline as well on mobile devices.
But the really interesting part is that Google wants to make all of the user's music available online. The user's hard drive would be scanned and any music file, which Google has licensed as well, will be made available in the cloud locker.
The files include legally purchased tracks, ripped songs from a CD, and even from file-sharing networks. This last part seems the most interesting, but Google says it's key to getting people to use the cloud-locker.
These are just Google's proposals to the music labels, so there's no guarantee that this is how Google Music will look like. It is very likely that some things will change.
Apparently, though, the labels are pretty OK with most of Google's proposals, including P2P tracks, and the discussion now focuses mostly on the financial aspects. The songs on Google Music are expected to sell for the same amount as iTunes tracks.
The Benefits of iTunes Using Cloud Computing
Excerpted from Helium Report by Phillip Lop
If you want to understand the benefits of shifting iTunes to a cloud-based service, you need to understand what's wrong with iTunes as it stands, and what a cloud-based service could change.
iTunes may be the leading music store on the market, but that doesn't make it the most popular. As each version of the software is released, it effectively becomes more complicated and unwieldy and relies on certain key characteristics.
Your iTunes library effectively has a 'home'. Your music is downloaded onto one physical installation, be it a laptop or a desktop, and you must manage how you use the files that you have downloaded from there.
For iTunes, this is through a process of synchronization, which means connecting devices physically to your computer and allowing the transfer of music files. There is a small limit to the number of devices on which you can do this, but more importantly, there is an issue of vulnerability. That computer that holds your iTunes library is physically vulnerable. It could get lost, stolen, or damaged, and when it goes, your music goes with it.
While various back up options are currently available to mitigate these risks, it still remains a fundamental problem in managing music in this way. Worse still, however, is that after you have purchased music, if you delete it from your library (accidentally or otherwise) you have to download and pay for it again if you want it back (or enter into lengthy discussions with the Apple support team).
Cloud computing is, conceptually, a different way of managing resources and applications. Typically, cloud services are delivered over the Internet, meaning that whereas you may have previously been reliant on a particular piece of hardware, for a cloud service you are reliant only an Internet connection to help you access any particular cloud service.
Suddenly, you can probably see the potential to revolutionize iTunes.
You would be able to access YOUR library from any device, anywhere in the world. The concept of having a library of music on one machine would become redundant. You would have access to music that you have purchased (and presumably uploaded) whenever you wanted/needed it. You wouldn't need to worry about backing up your music library anymore. The concept of backing up and restoring lost data would be managed entirely within the cloud environment. You don't physically hold the only copy of the files anymore. (Skeptics would argue that you still should but the reality is that you don't HAVE to anymore.)
Once you had downloaded and paid for a song, you would always have access to it because it wouldn't be based around the single purchase of an item or file anymore. Now you would be purchasing access to that file, which is a rather less finite concept.
You wouldn't have to consider issues of capacity any more. As music libraries grow, they take up an increasing part of your disk space. Think about how inefficient that actually is. If 1 million people download the new Lady Gaga song through the iTunes store that means that there are 1 million distinct copies of that file.
Through a cloud environment that issue goes away. 1 million people might have access to that file, but through managing the capacity in a dynamic way, the whole process is infinitely more efficient. The issue of synchronization is that it limits your ability to customize. Everything will eventually revert to the 'master' library held on the source machine.
With a cloud environment, settings and customizations are driven around the device accessing the application, so how you use files on your iPod versus your iPad could be entirely different.
Unsurprisingly, demand for this service is high. A survey undertaken by 9to5Mac across just under 4,000 iTunes users indicated that at least 25% wanted a cloud-based service now. Realistically, once the other 75% fully understood what the term meant, you would expect the numbers to increase significantly.
How this would ideally work in terms of pricing remains unclear. Demand for this service reduces when the concept of a monthly subscription fee is introduced and, rightly or wrongly, users expect a company like Apple to offer this for free, given the commercial benefits that they receive, too.
Some consumers are naturally cautious, too. The shift to a cloud environment may offer much more freedom, but does rely on a certain loss of user control.
Think about it. If you download the new song by Lady Gaga currently, and it then gets banned, you still have your copy to own and enjoy. If it got pulled from the cloud environment, you'd have no say. It would be gone.
But that aside, it's clear that something has to change. The traditional iTunes application is clumsy, unwieldy and grossly inefficient. At face value, the cloud environment seems like the answer to everyone's dreams.
Research Says File Sharing Has Been a Boon to Artists
Excerpted from AVN Report by Tom Hymes
The conventional wisdom has held that the proliferation of file-sharing software programs and torrents has resulted in a profound loss of revenue for artists who need to control the distribution of their copyrighted material in order to survive and thrive. But new research conducted as part of a master thesis conducted by Norwegian School of Management students Anders Sorbo and Richard Bjerkoe suggests that the last decade has resulted in an increase in revenue for artists.
Though limited to the experience of the music industry in Norway, the study supports what many in the file-sharing movement have said, that freedom begets wealth.
According to an executive summary of the study, the authors found that the total music industry revenue in Norway was almost NOK 1.9 billion in 2009, up from NOK 1.4 billion in 1999. Adjusted for inflation, that represents only a 4% growth. However, total artist income, adjusted for inflation, was NOK 545 million in 2009, up from NOK 255 million in 1999, an increase of 114% for the same period.
The authors of the study estimated that the number of music artists in Norway increased by about 28% in the period from 1999 to 2009. On a per capita basis, that would mean that the artists had gone from NOK 80,000 in annual income from music to NOK 133,000, an increase of 66%.
The researchers also polled the artists themselves to determine the sources of their income, reports TorrentFreak. "Here, it was found that record sales have never been a large part of the annual revenue of artists. In 1999, 70% of the artists made less than 9% of their total income from record sales, and in 2009 this went down to 50%," the site said.
Not surprisingly, income from live performances had doubled during the same time period, with 37% of Norwegian artists making more than 50% of their income from live performances in 2009, up from 25% in 1999. As TorrentFreak notes, however, "few artists make a full living off their music, as most have other jobs aside."
While artists are making more money during the file-sharing boom decade from 1999 to 2009, revenue from record sales have decreased markedly, though TorrentFreak insists, "That can be just as easily attributed to iTunes as The Pirate Bay (TPB)."
And while the results of this study of music artists can hardly be shifted seamlessly to what is going on in the adult entertainment industry in some ways they are similar. Live content has retained a level of profit margin while revenue from recorded content has been in steady decline.
Another ray of hope for adult performers, quite distinct from the results of this study, can be found in the increasing acceptance of adult entertainment, which could lead to more opportunities for live performances.
Unlike music, however, which is rarely, if ever, under inherent legal threat, the adult entertainment industry needs to continuously fight to maintain its ability to simply exist. If it can succeed in that regard, the seemingly black hole of copyright infringement could possibly turn out to be a speed-bump on the road to greater fortune.
The Idiot Box Gets Smart - And Threatens Old Media
Excerpted from City AM Report by Juliet Samuel
Modern technophiles are already used to multi-tasking online. And with online mainstays now venturing into the coveted space of TV entertainment, attention spans are set to encounter another challenge.
Google TV is due to launch in the US by the end of the year to rival Boxee - a service built originally from open-source Xbox software code - while Apple TV has been slimmed down in preparation for its UK launch at a retail price of $99.
Preview screenshots show that Google TV users will simultaneously have the ability to watch TV in one corner of the screen and browse online content related to the program on the rest of it.
So while technophobes wheel out arguments against the mesmerizing gaze of television turning its consumers into passive couch potatoes, the TV of the future is more likely to join smart-phones and Twitter as a relentless source of hyperactIvity
But what do these sleek new appendages to the idiot box actually add? And, crucially, can these flashy services distract us from a more important development: the growing accessibility of low-cost - or even free - online TV.
Already it is possible to watch TV feeds online through services like Hulu and Ivi . And there is an ever-expanding range of TV apps for mobiles, such as Rok TV, which offers Blackberry users live feeds of ITN and Reuters for $5 per month.
Detractors argue that many of these so-called new developments are just rehashes of existing services. PC World's Barbara Hernandez dismisses Apple TV as "a glorified TiVo nobody needs". The Apple TV box lets users purchase episodes in TV quality a la carte - but why bother when you can watch and share many online for free through legal services like Hulu?
Hernandez suggests other functions that could help rivals out-maneuver Apple's prescriptive offering, including video-conferencing and an ability to store one's media library online.
Paul Entwistle of Pace - a leading manufacturer of set-top boxes (STBs) - agrees that making content mobile is key. In the future, he says: "The content will belong to the viewer, not to one particular device, and they will have the power to transfer it around the devices operating in their home, whether it's the TV, the PC screen, or the iPad."
But there is still a major barrier to the liberalization of TV content: old media. While new media firms like Apple and Google are striking deals that add limited functionality and don't threaten the subscription TV model, new firms like Ivi have less incentive to play nice. Ivi offers a full TV service for free on your computer (unfortunately only in the US), which it promised would be "highly disruptive".
Its CEO Todd Weaver says: "The cable industry has spent countless millions of dollars on so-called 'TV Everywhere' solutions to prop up outdated technology and business models. Ivi empowers its users to experience TV Anywhere, offering them major broadcast channels delivered live to their laptop or desktop, making the STB and any 'Web to TV' products obsolete. Instead of attempting to bring the web to the TV, Ivi intuitively brings TV to the web."
To compete in such a world, old media companies need to start offering services beyond mere content. Whether viewers are willing to pay the same prices just for a high-quality picture or the ability to search their programs remains in question.
In other words, your living room is about to be engulfed in the same dilemma that is tearing apart the traditional, paid-for music and newspaper industries: how to get users to pay for content they can now access for free.
So it's a shame that the new multi-tasking services on offer mean that we might not have the attention span to follow the debate.
Ivi Delivers What We've All Been Waiting for: Live TV on the Internet
Excerpted from VentureBeat Report by Dean Takahashi
Ivi announced this week it will offer a PC-based live TV service on the web.
The Seattle, WA based company is launching a downloadable PC application that takes a live feed from TV channels and distributes that stream, uninterrupted and without delays, to viewers worldwide 24 hours a day. Ivi is offering a 30-day free trial for the service to watch major broadcast channels including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, The CW, PBS and other local affiliates.
The Ivi TV player transforms a computer into a television with multiple channel offerings. Users can select the channel by using a simple channel guide. The TV player can be downloaded to any Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. It will soon be available on platforms such as mobile devices, tablets and set-top boxes.
The company claims Ivi will make set-top boxes (STBs) obsolete by allowing viewers to watch their TV shows anywhere, on any PC where they download the application. Todd Weaver started Ivi in 2007. He serves as chief executive.
One of the features that consumers have long wanted is a la carte TV channels. Most of the time, consumers may want only one or two channels. But they have to subscribe to a whole bundle of channels in order to get what they want. Ivi says it can enable such a la carte service.
The basic Ivi Air package contains over 25 major broadcast channels for $4.99 a month, after the 30-day free trial. More channels will be added each month for no additional costs. If you want time-shifting, or digital video recording that allows you to watch a show whenever you want, you pay 99 cents a month more.
Ivi hopes to create a bigger hole in the cable TV industry, which is losing lots of subscribers. Market researcher SNL Kagan reported that the cable TV companies lost 711,000 subscribers in the second quarter of 2010. Yankee Group said that pay-TV revenues are starting to decrease, partly due to rising cable service rates. Ivi claims that it has legal rights to run TV shows on the web and it will be paying royalties to copyright holders.
Ivi's service does not require buffering, or a delay which occurs as a video downloads to a user's system. You can watch the Ivi shows in any quality level you want. You can watch local content anywhere in the world. You can view New York City broadcast channels wherever you are. The company is one among many companies that are promising to disrupt the TV business. Others include Apple with Apple TV, Google with Google TV, Samsung with its TV apps, and Logitech with its upcoming Google TV STB.
GlideTV Offers Bigfoot Web-to-TV Interface
Excerpted from VidBlog Report by Steve Smith
I have to admit that I am not among the digerati who plug their laptops or a dedicated PC into their home theater. First, if I put one more fan-operated, CPU-driven device around my HDTV, I am certain to hit a kind of critical mass. Something is sure to catch fire. Second, I just never liked the idea. Call me a PC bigot or just a wishful thinker, but I always felt that hooking up a full-bore PC to my TV somehow was one geeky move too far.
I was looking for the more elegant solution to getting digital video from my AppleTV, PS3, Xbox or a more task-specific streaming media box. Worse, I didn't want to acquiesce to Microsoft's master plan of dominating my living room with Windows. This is how I rationalize myself out of guilt over the Xbox that I use most often for Netflix. Human self-deception knows no bounds. Or at least this human's doesn't.
From the Windows Media Center's interface to Boxee's, everyone has been trying to craft a better looking and acting guide for discovering Web video on a large TV screen. Yesterday GlideTV introduced a beta version of what seems to be a pretty slick interface. The San Francisco, CA based company's "Big Screen Browser" presents you with a wall of tiles that can drill into categories of Movies, Music, News, TV and Sports.
The catalog is kind of quirky in that it often will drop you into opportunities to buy some piece of TV or film content rather than watch or preview it. The hooks into Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes are all pretty good if your object is to buy something. If you really are looking to get some recent clips from Mad Men or have last night's MTV Video Awards must-sees surface, then it gets frustrating.
On the surface the search engine seems nicely arranged to target a query against most of the major search engines and video repositories like Hulu, YouTube, IMdb, etc. In practice, the results are mixed. I tried to search for "Ready to Assemble" to see if I might gather episodes from that branded IKEA show, and I ended up with anime and Gilligan's Island.
I am not sure what content experience GlideTV is aiming for right now, but the interface itself is quite good. Admittedly I played with it on PC and without the remote control it really was made to use, but the browser was uncluttered and kept the choices broad and sparse for navigation.
The pop-up search keyboard lets you access over a dozen vertical video searches. And the multiple windows are very nicely done, with separate panes sitting on a glossy base. If you want to drop into straight Web browsing, the software will import your desktop bookmarks. Web page zooming, tab navigation etc. generally are better than on any of my consoles' sorry excuses for a browser.
As a real guide to web video content, GlideTV's initial try at a big foot browser may have a wider reach than something like Boxee, but the latter's widget/app approach seems to result in a more focused web video viewing result.
Still, early days, as they say. But the race clearly is on to make a better Web-to-TV video browser.
37% of Young Netflix Streaming Service Users Cut Cable
Excerpted from CNBC Report by John Melloy
An alarming survey by Credit Suisse should serve as a wake-up call to the broadcast networks and cable companies that they need to take control of their revenue destiny right now, while they still have some negotiating power.
Analysts there found that 37% of Netflix subscribers aged 25-to-34 substitute Netflix for pay television. Almost 30% of users between 18-and-24 are using Netflix's streaming service instead of cable or satellite. The Credit Suisse survey was of about 250 Netflix subscribers.
"Netflix's low cost, subscription streaming service (with improving content) is our biggest worry and could become 'good enough' for consumers with moderate income and TV usage to use as a substitute for pay TV," said Credit Suisse's Spencer Wang and a team of analysts, in a 50-page treatise on the entertainment industry.
The team downgraded the whole sector to 'underweight' from 'market weight' because of the oncoming ubiquity of high-speed broadband opening the door for these delivery services.
Netflix, Xbox, and Hulu are already here, but Apple's revamped TV service and Google TV are coming this year. Amazon is reportedly working on a subscription service as well.
Shares of Netflix are up more than 150% this year. Disney, News Corp., CBS, Comcast, and Cablevision are all up less than six percent this year or in the red.
"Between cutting back on 'extras' and the fact that a true on-demand situation exists that is also portable via iPad and iPhone, the Netflix story just works," said Jon Najarian, co-founder of TradeMonster.com. "My worry is how long Apple runs with them before deciding to run the same through iTunes and crushes 'em."
Credit Suisse maintained that the content and cable kings are not necessarily overthrown yet. Their survey found that just 17 percent of Netflix subscribers of all ages and incomes are substituting that service for cable.
"In the near term, we submit that Big Media has a small window of opportunity to control its own destiny," said Credit Suisse in the note. "The major US entertainment conglomerates control approximately 70% of all TV viewing through their various broadcast, basic cable, and premium TV networks and channels. And, content remains the lifeblood for distribution systems."
But with their downgrade, they apparently decided that this is already an investable theme. Not all investors are ready to do the same.
"The analyst's premise is right," said Patty Edwards of Trutina Financial. "But I'm not sure how quickly this is going to eat into profits. People change habits slower than he might think."
Dabber Launches Free Version of its Popular Player
This week, Dabber launched a free version of its popular Dabber player, one of the most beautiful 3D-interface video-players for embedding on any webpage.
Now users can host their own online TV channels, display their best content and - best of all - change the look-and-feel and adapt the player to their web-pages. No more black, boring, sad-looking standard embedded video-players. Help make the Internet more beautiful!
Commercial parties can also use Dabber's entire range of improved, evolved, and very beautiful Dabber video-players - for only $75 - while non-commercial users can use them at no charge. And for only $95 per month, commercial users can have storage, traffic, content management, and access to all Dabber players.
Dabber offers a huge thanks to all those brave souls who ordered and implemented early Dabber players. Their orders, thoughts, feedback, and love have brought the company to this day.
New players and plug-ins are in the pipeline, for YouTube, Vimeo, JW, Flow, Html5, and other platforms. Dabber can already provide a CMS as a Wordpress plug-in.
For Dabber updates, please click here.
Burnbit Turns Any Web-Hosted File into a Torrent
Excerpted from Lifehacker Report by Adam Pash
Paste a link to any web-hosted file into webapp Burnbit, and it'll turn the file into a torrent you can download and share with other people - particularly handy for quickly sharing large files with multiple people.
So why and when might you want to use Burnbit rather than just using a regular HTTP-based download link? For starters, it's a good option if the server you're downloading from is particularly slow.
When you create a torrent using Burnbit, your torrent download will still download the file from the server, but it'll also download from any other user grabbing the torrent.
So in theory, your Burnbit downloads should always be at least as fast as the regular download.
Alternately, if you're trying to share a large file on your own servers and want to save a little money on the bandwidth, distributing the download via BitTorrent can make a big difference.
The nice part about Burnbit's integration with both BitTorrent and the web-hosted file is that the torrent will always have at least one seeder - your server.
Scayl Takes On Big E-Mails with P2P
Excerpted from Northwest innovation Report
Portland, OR based Scayl, a new start-up focused on sending and sharing gigabyte-sized files across the Internet, is one of the firms debuting at DEMO Fall 2010.
Scayl - which is headed by Bill Kallman - said it is providing a free-and-easy way to send and share very large files, including video files.
According to the firm, its software creates a self-organizing network which connects users to one another using a P2P network.
Kallman was formerly a VC at Timberline Ventures. The firm's CTO is Don Hoffman, who according to his LinkedIn profile has served at Intel, P2P firm Gnuterra, and etrieve, among other firms.
ScrapeTorrent Adds More Indexed Sites and Verified Torrents
Excerpted from Lifehacker Report by Kevin Purdy
ScrapeTorrent, the BitTorrent aggregator that's a perennial contender for your new favorite BitTorrent site, has updated to a Version 3 with verified torrent icons, a total of 14 popular tracker sites indexed, duplication filtering, and, for donors, RSS feeds.
That's the hit list of new features - otherwise, the site has the same stripped-down but powerful design and function. Fork over a little cash for the service, and you also avoid advertisements while you're looking up whatever it is you need multiple connections to grab. ScrapeTorrent is free to use otherwise.
Private and Unshaped P2P with Downstorm
Excerpted from My Broadband Report by Jan Vermeulen
Seed-boxes and other torrent downloading services are quite the contentious issue.
Besides the obvious concerns over copyright infringement, South Africans risk being called to task by their Internet service providers (ISPs) for violating the Fair/Acceptable Usage Policy (FUP/AUP) and/or terms of service of their uncapped ADSL packages.
Most ISPs employ some form of traffic shaping, or prioritization, on their default consumer packages. This means that they favor traffic such as normal browsing and e-mail over that of gaming and P2P services.
Heavy bandwidth users may be asked to switch to more expensive uncapped packages if they are found to be using services such as seed-boxes to circumvent the shaping policies of ISPs.
Regardless, seed-boxes remain a service people want to use and so we'll review those that have the courage to submit their services for reviewing.
When private trackers are involved, Downstorm technically classifies as a seed-box. When you download torrents using public trackers, however, you can't seed when you're done.
As may be gleaned from the name, private trackers are exclusive to members, which often gain access by invitation only. Public trackers are open for anyone to connect to.
Considering that Downstorm's pricing model is based on storage rather than bandwidth usage, limiting the uploading of torrents is a predictable restriction.
Downstorm's storage-based pricing models come in four flavors, ranging from Bronze at $6.85 per month for 4GB storage to Platinum at $26.43 for 35GB storage.
Effectively you only get two things by paying more: additional storage and more seeding slots.
If you don't plan on using private trackers or downloading files larger than 4GB then the more expensive Silver, Gold, and Platinum packages just provide convenience.
As long as you have space for the files you can keep queuing torrents. Since bandwidth is unmetered, all the extra storage space gives you is less frequent downloading and purging of your account.
Torrents are queued up by either uploading them from your PC or by providing Downstorm a link from which the torrent can be downloaded.
Links to torrents at torrent caches were tested and they work as well. Even though the file name of the torrent downloaded from a cache is gibberish, Downstorm's interface retrieves and displays the torrent's name and not just the name of the file.
As with other seed-box offerings, Downstorm uses a web-based interface. All the basic functionality you could expect is there and works, such as selecting specific files to download and compressing the downloaded files to download them in a single archive.
Testing some of the more popular torrents yielded decent speeds for a seed-box.
Aggregate download speeds with eight torrents running simultaneously reached speeds of between 35 Mbps and 40 Mbps. Single downloads of well seeded torrents achieved speeds of around 2 Mbps.
Overall Downstorm offers a decent torrent downloading service and a good web interface at competitive prices, with more features in the pipeline.
While not active yet, Downstorm also has promised a feature where it will e-mail you whenever a torrent has finished downloading and/or seeding.
The biggest issue with the service is the fact that torrents from public trackers can't be seeded at all. It would be nice to be able to seed any torrent, even if it's only 25%-50% of the torrent's size as opposed to the 50%-500% that's afforded to torrents from private trackers.
For some this might not be an issue at all, whereas seeding what you leech is very important to others.
Akamai: Gamers Aren't P2P Bandwidth Slaves
Excerpted from TorrentFreak Report
Two weeks ago we published an article calling for more transparency from gaming companies that use P2P technology to let their users distribute content. In the days after we published the article, one of the major players in P2P game distribution responded to our concerns. According to Akamai, gamers aren't P2P bandwidth slaves, they just need to read the end-user license agreement (EULA).
Previously, we drew attention to the growing use of stealth P2P clients for game delivery and the need to provide more transparency and control to players who are required to install P2P software during game downloads and updates. In particular, we highlighted complaints by gamers about the Akamai NetSession Interface (NSI).
Thankfully, some of the leading players in the industry paid attention to our call. Akamai's Bill Wishon contacted us in response to the article to discuss "some inaccuracies" that needed correction. The issues are summarized by Wishon in a comment here.
We welcome Akamai's efforts to help us address potential "inaccuracies." Here are excerpts from its statement which attempts to address the transparency issue:
"Akamai has had a user bill of rights and design principles published on our website for a few years now and have been using them to guide our development and design decisions. The guidelines you posted from Solid State Networks seem to align with these principles and perhaps take a more gaming centric perspective."
The NetSession EULA does state that our software runs as a background service, this is also stated in the technical info on our site. Transparency: Our software is visible in the normal places you would expect to manage a system service on the platform you are on."
The problem with Akamai's statement is that it does nothing to address the frustration expressed by so many users that do not appreciate that P2P software has been installed on their systems without their knowledge. Instead, it seems to imply that Akamai believes that its "commitment" to transparency has been met through the EULA disclosure.
Of course, this might be true if one assumes that every user carefully reads the EULA to learn that a system service is being installed by Akamai. But it also assumes that all users will understand what a service is and how and where a service operates on their system.
This is just not a realistic expectation for almost any subset of Internet users, including online gamers. And nowhere in the EULA are the implications of a having a continuously running P2P client on the user's system conveyed.
Also, upon examining Akamai's user "Bill of Rights" we are informed that "Users have the right to know what their Akamai NetSession Interface is doing at all times." This sounds great, until we read on to find that this functionality is provided through a command line tool.
This hardly seems aligned with the model of transparency advocated within Solid State Networks' Best Practices as Bill Wishon suggests.
It is apparent from the number of blog and forum posts available from Google searches that Akamai has been aware for some time that many consumers are upset by its stealth operational tactics.
There simply are no valid technical reasons that prevent providing a real-time and accessible view of the application's activity and its impact on user resources. Therefore, one might conclude that the lack of visibility of the P2P application is by design and that the company is most concerned with its own self-interests at the expense of all consumers. After all, the company stands to profit a great deal from selling its services using end-users' bandwidth that ultimately costs it nothing.
It is time for Akamai to acknowledge its shortcomings and start to live up to its claims of transparency and control. More importantly, game publishers need to be held accountable for how they choose to implement P2P software with their games.
Several TorrentFreak readers have named other offenders, including ijji's "Reactor," Square Enix's "Final Fantasy XIV," and THQ's "City of Heroes" as examples of games that natively use P2P in a manner that lacks a display of respect for their players.
We truly applaud Akamai for taking the time to explain its side of the story to us, but to reach true fairness and transparency it (and others) will have to step it up a notch. Also, we advise individual employees not to suggest that we were paid for bringing this issue up in the comment section. Clearly we must have hit a sore spot, but that shouldn't lead to more unfairness should it?
Coming Events of Interest
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.
M2M Evolution Conference - October 4th-6th in Los Angeles, CA. Machine-to-machine (M2M) embraces the any-to-any strategy of the Internet today. "M2M: Transformers on the Net" showcases the solutions, and examines the data strategies and technological requirements that enterprises and carriers need to capitalize on a market segment that is estimated to grow to $300 Billion in the year ahead.
Digital Content Monetization 2010 - October 4th-7th 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.
P2P Streaming Workshop - October 29th in Firenze, Italy. ACM Multimedia presents this workshop on advanced video streaming techniques for P2P networks and social networking. The focus will be on novel contributions on all aspects of P2P-based video coding, streaming, and content distribution, which is informed by social networks.
Streaming Media West - November 2nd-3rd in Los Angeles, CA. The number-one place to come see, learn, and discuss what is taking place with all forms of online video business models and technology. Content owners, viral video creators, online marketers, enterprise corporations, broadcast professionals, ad agencies, educators, and others all come to Streaming Media West.
Fifth International Conference on P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud, and Internet Computing - November 4th-6th in Fukuoka, Japan. The aim of this conference is to present innovative research results, methods and development techniques from both theoretical and practical perspectives related to P2P, grid, cloud and Internet computing. A number of workshops will take place.
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