SoundExchange, which collects royalties for digital streams and Internet radio, has collected royalties for 50,000 artists and labels who stand to lose their payout if they don’t register with the company by October 15.
“The agency, created in 2000, pays performing artists and record labels when their music is played on services like Sirius XM and Pandora — a royalty that the music industry has long sought, since terrestrial radio pays only songwriters and publishers,” explains The New York Times.
Right now the company has 70,000 accounts for performers and 24,000 for labels and other copyright owners, but it has struggled to get those parties to fill out the required documents.
The agency has paid out $1 billion since its start. Although the amount owed to the 50,000 unregistered parties hasn’t been confirmed, the artists and labels could lose out if they don’t meet SoundExchange’s October deadline.
ReDigi is rebranding the terms “used” and “recycled” to apply to digital media, a concept that copyright owners are having a hard time accepting.
The online marketplace enables people to resell music files they’ve bought and it hopes to expand into e-books and games in the future.
“A user downloads its software to determine which of his or her music files are eligible for resale,” explains Technology Review. “The company uses digital forensic analysis to verify that the person legally owns a file (rather than having ripped it from a CD or pirated it online): its ‘verification engine’ looks at data associated with the file to determine what its original source is, who acquired it and when, and whether it has been moved from other computers.”
“The company then deletes all copies from the person’s synched devices while transferring the original to its own cloud servers,” notes the article.
But the Recording Industry Association of America has sent the company a cease-and-desist order and now EMI’s Capitol Records is suing ReDigi for copyright infringement.
The case will be determined by one essential aspect of copyright law and ownership: the copy. If ReDigi is copying a song to its cloud services, it could stand to lose big in the lawsuit.
However, the company has “adopted methods originally developed in the banking industry to ensure that a digital song or book, just like digital money, is never in two places at once. Once someone else buys a user’s file, ReDigi transfers the license and deletes it from its servers,” the article explains. “The technology can’t, however, ensure that someone hasn’t previously stored a copy elsewhere.”
Digital-copyright expert Jason Schultz believes ReDigi has a fair chance of winning this unprecedented case, which he says strikes “at the heart of the future business models of creative industries.”
Record companies are looking at a big hurdle with YouTube as they continue the transition to a digital market. Today, almost two-thirds of people under 18 use Google’s video site to listen to music, according to a new report from Nielsen.
“Among adults, the most popular ways to listen to music were radio (67 percent), CDs (61 percent), YouTube (44 percent), Pandora’s custom-radio service (32 percent) and Apple Inc.’s iTunes (29 percent),” reports the Wall Street Journal.
“Among 13-to-17 year olds, YouTube was the most popular way to listen to music, with 64 percent using it,” notes the article. “Radio was next, with 56 percent, followed by iTunes (53 percent), CDs (50 percent) and Pandora (35 percent).”
For the record industry, this creates a challenge for monetization. “Record companies and music publishers typically realize some revenue from advertising that appears with their videos on YouTube. But it is only fractions of a cent per play, and not nearly enough to replace the revenue that has been lost as CD sales have been decimated,” explains WSJ.
Additionally, the popular YouTube app on Apple devices — which will actually be removed on the latest iOS update — doesn’t run any advertising, which means no revenue for the record companies.
“Three of the four major labels make their videos through a company called Vevo LLC, whose videos play on the YouTube website but not on its smartphone app,” notes the article. “However, consumers don’t use Vevo much — or at least don’t realize when they do. Only 7 percent of adults and 11 percent of teenagers identified Vevo as a way they listen to music.”
ETCentric previously reported on Google’s investment in premium original content for its “channels,” drawing big names like Madonna and Ashton Kutcher to create episodes and Web series. In a related story, Wired explains how Google is hoping its channels will bypass cable and become the one-stop shop for all content needs.
“Cable has run out of space,” says Shishir Mehrotra, the VP of product management at YouTube. “If you’re going to broadcast content to everybody whether or not they watch it, you can only afford to broadcast a few hundred channels. But if you move to a world where you can broadcast on demand to only whoever wants it, now you can support millions of channels.”
Aimed to lengthen viewing times and boost overall number of viewers — not just hits — YouTube’s channels cover a variety of content from surfing to Olympics to live coverage of Ramadan in Mecca. “The average American watches five hours of TV per day,” notes YouTube product manager Noam Lovinsky, and Google wants them watching on their platform.
The company is working to build awareness of the channels. A large black bar on the left side of the site is intended to drive user attention to channel subscriptions.
YouTube’s top channels are getting millions of views and users are unsubscribing to channels. Even though that might seem like a bad thing, to Google it means people care what content is in their subscription lists. YouTube will also tap into other Google services to provide users with channel suggestions.
Also, YouTube has to make the content available to everyone everywhere and consistent across all devices. This means taking over app development instead of having partners build their own apps for the service. By making all future apps HTML-based, YouTube won’t rely on manufacturers to update them.
According to sources close to the matter, “Apple is in talks with some of the biggest U.S. cable operators about letting consumers use an Apple device as a set-top box for live television and other content,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
As of yet, it doesn’t appear that Apple has made any deals, perhaps a sign of cable operators’ overall reluctance to allow Apple a solid foothold within the TV business.
According to WSJ, this move could indicate a shift in Apple’s approach to TV: “The talks illustrate that Apple is seeking a less radical path to expand in television than it has contemplated in the past, namely teaming up with existing service providers rather than licensing content to compete with them directly.”
As of now, Apple sell its $99 Apple TV, a box that allows for some Internet streaming onto TV sets, but not for live channels through cable operators. According to sources, this most recently discussed technology “could ultimately be embedded in a television.”
“For cable operators, the advantage of a deal with Apple is that it could allow them to reduce the money they spend buying set-top boxes, which are leased to customers for a monthly fee. It could also help them hang on to customers who can watch video through a growing array of Internet alternatives, as both traditional TV and Web video would be available through the same device,” suggests WSJ.
Businessweek spoke with Comcast CEO Brian Roberts about his company’s 2011 purchase of NBCUniversal and its future in an evolving business.
Speaking on the benefits of subscribing to Comcast rather than depending on a Netflix-type service, Roberts said: “We provide a breadth of live and catch-up content — what we define as this season’s content, none of which is available in the Netflix rerun world.”
“So from broadcast television to sports to news to the Grammys, the Olympics, this season’s episodes of ‘The Voice’ — all of those pieces of content and thousands of hours per month are not available on Netflix,” he notes. “So with all the press about cord-cutting, facts would say that [Netflix] has really been more additive. There are more multichannel video subscribers today than there were a year ago.”
Roberts believes “television will change more in the next five years than in the last 50. This will be really great for consumers,” he predicts, adding that “people want more control, more choice, and more personalization.”
He spoke on the $6 billion cost for the Olympics — and the $4 billion Comcast is expected to spend through 2020: “We paid a 1 percent increase over the prior Olympics for a decade of content and also received all media and technology rights to the Olympics for the next 10 years in the U.S. This means we have the rights to put Olympic content on all devices in and out of the home and even on devices that haven’t yet been invented.”
Roberts heralds Comcast for being ahead of the curve. “We were the first cable company or phone company to go all digital, and most of our customers now are digital… In each of the last seven quarters, we’ve added more new broadband subscribers than the previous quarter. So the pace of change at our company is accelerating, and there has never been a more exciting time to work here.”
Broadcast networks are now battling two streaming TV start-ups that transmit their content without permission.
“Alki David, the provocative media entrepreneur who recently launched an Aereo-like streaming TV service called BarryDriller.com, may have unintentionally just done broadcasters a huge favor in their fight to stop both online video services,” reports Adweek.
“That’s because instead of solely banking on a favorable legal outcome against Aereo in New York, broadcasters now have a second suit in a different jurisdiction,” explains the post.
This could potentially provide two routes for appeal to the Supreme Court if either lower court decides against them.
ABC, CBS and NBC have joined the FOX lawsuit against BarryDriller.com in a federal court in California. The networks are already seeking to stop the Barry Diller-backed Aereo service in a New York federal court.
“The problem the networks had in New York, they were trying to swim upstream to get away from the Cablevision decision,” notes David Wittenstein, partner and head of the communications practice for Dow Lohnes. “If you’re the networks, you go to another court in another part of the country. You start with a clean slate.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the Supreme Court overturned the underpinnings of Cablevision,” comments Mary Rasenberger, partner with Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard. “The Supreme Court has a more holistic view of copyright than the lower courts do.”
In a 2-1 ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, it was ruled that law enforcement “has the right to obtain location data from a cellphone in order to track a suspect without a warrant,” reports Ars Technica.
In the case, an accused drug trafficker named Melvin Skinner claimed that the government’s use of GPS location information retrieved from his phone was a “warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
“There is no Fourth Amendment violation because Skinner did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data given off by his voluntarily procured pay-as-you-go cell phone,” wrote Judge John Rogers. “If a tool used to transport contraband gives off a signal that can be tracked for location, certainly the police can track the signal.”
Judge Rogers referenced the 2012 Jones v. United States case, in which it was decided by the Supreme Court that law enforcement could not warrantlessly place GPS tracking devices on a suspect’s vehicle. He made the distinction that in this case, “no such physical intrusion occurred.”
“Here, the monitoring of the location of the contraband-carrying vehicle as it crossed the country is no more of a comprehensively invasive search than if instead the car was identified in Arizona and then tracked visually and the search handed off from one local authority to another as the vehicles progressed,” Rogers wrote.
U.S. District Judge William Pauley III has ruled that law enforcement officials can access a suspect’s Facebook profile without a warrant if they do so with a friend’s permission.
“The decision, which is part of a New York City racketeering trial, comes as courts struggle to define privacy and civil liberties in the age of social media,” reports GigaOM. “Judge Pauley’s ruling is significant because it is the latest in a series of cases that defines how and when police can search social media.”
During the New York investigation, police used an informant’s Facebook account to access suspected gangster Melvin Colon’s Facebook account. After reading threatening messages, the police obtained a warrant to access the rest of his information.
The judge ruled that actions by the police do not violate the Fourth Amendment because Colon made his information known to friends on Facebook.
“Colon’s legitimate expectation of privacy ended when he disseminated posts to his ‘friends’ because those ‘friends’ were free to use the information however they wanted — including sharing it with the Government,” explained Judge Pauley in the Bronx case.
The judge likened the methods to when police legally listen to a phone call as long as one of the parties agrees to allow the tapping to occur.
A group of technologists, lawyers and other interested parties have come together to do what most people don’t want to: read those horribly long terms-of-service contracts to which most simply click “agree.”
Called ToS;DR for “Terms of Service; Didn’t Read,” the project creates grades — from “Class A” (the best) to “Class E” (the worst) — based on peer-reviewed summaries, enabling consumers to make more educated clicks.
“For example, if you’re uploading photos to TwitPic, you might want to reconsider,” explains The Atlantic. “They give the site their worst grade, a ‘Class E.’ Why? Well, they have an easy-to-understand summary… If you click on ‘Read the Details,’ you get an extended explanation of these warnings and can also link back (almost like a Wikipedia page) to the ToS;DR discussion that led to the thumbs-down.”
The Atlantic post includes a screen shot which shows simple bullet explanations for Twitpic’s grade, like “Twitpic takes credit for your content,” and “Deleted images are not really deleted.”
“‘I have read and agree to the Terms’ is the biggest lie on the Web,” according to the ToS;DR site. “We aim to fix that.”
“The project hatched about a year ago at the annual Chaos Communication Camp event in Berlin as an outgrowth of the Unhosted project, which is a system for building Web apps that leave users in control of their data,” notes TechCrunch in a related post.
The ratings are based on German energy efficiency ratings for appliances, according to TechCrunch, which reports the site plans to officially launch later this month.
A new online survey from The NPD Group, “Kids and Consumer Electronics: 2012 Edition,” shows that kids are now starting to reach for tablets much more than before, challenging the long-standing popularity of gaming consoles.
“Video game console usage rates for children ages 4-14 are still higher than tablets, but this past year saw a strong increase in tablet usage among that age group: with a 13 percent increase in usage rate in 2012 vs. only 3 percent in 2011,” Mashable reports.
“Kids are using tablets to game, watch movies and TV shows, read books and listen to music — even occasionally for taking pictures — so they have embraced the utility of these devices quite rapidly,” according to Russ Crupnick of The NPD Group.
“Older kids also use the tablets for social media and communication, which squarely places these devices at the center for discovery and evangelism of new services and applications, as well as for brands and entertainment of all sorts,” notes Crupnick.
The study recommends that tablet makers start developing new tablets targeted specifically for children.
As for marketing, “…gaming systems and portable entertainment devices topped the list of devices over which children will have the most influence on future device selection,” explains the post. “And when considering a new purchase, ‘the type of technology and features offered by a new device is nearly as important as low price and good value,’ the survey noted.”
While social networks create traffic for ecommerce sites, they aren’t as successful in driving actual sales and revenue as traditional search and email, according to a report from online marketing provider Montate.
“Email was the leader in conversions to sales in the second quarter of this year, with 4.25 percent, ahead of search at 2.49 percent and social at 0.59 percent. When you look at average order value, search comes out on top with $90.40, followed by email $82.72 with social trailing with $64.19,” reports GigaOM per Monetate’s findings.
Facebook, Twitter and other networks are useful for building customer relationships and promoting conversations around products. However, because most people aren’t necessarily looking to shop while they use social media, they won’t follow through with a purchase.
Around 73 percent of Facebook users will view one product detail page, but 45 percent will leave after one page. For those coming from Google searches, just 56 percent will view a detail page, but 26 percent leave after the first page.
“It doesn’t mean investing in social media isn’t worth it,” notes GigaOM. “Social can still drive a lot of new commerce that might not have come through other channels. And for some retailers who integrate social well, there’s still a lot of upside… But retailers should be aware of the current limitations of social in driving revenue.”
With 488 million users accessing Facebook on mobile devices, and with mobile ad click-through rates 14 times higher than desktop ads, the social network has potential in the mobile sphere. But it will need to revise its Wi-Fi strategy to stay relevant.
Moolah Media conducted a study across thousands of campaigns, finding ads served to users over Wi-Fi performed significantly worse than those delivered over wireless networks.
As Wi-Fi is expected to represent 51 percent of all Web traffic by 2016, this presents a problem for Facebook.
“A mobile user’s carrier reveals a lot about who they are and how they might interact with an ad — information that’s essential for an ad to reach its target audience and to ultimately be profitable,” AllThingsD explains.
“Wi-Fi is a growing barrier to the success of mobile ads,” suggest the article. “And Wi-Fi isn’t the only issue: third-party browsers also hide the device type, and since they use proxy IPs, they often conceal the country location of the user as well — which makes it impossible to accurately target relevant ads, and results in massive losses for mobile advertisers.”
Even so, Facebook has the ability to combat this issue with its expansive data voluntarily provided by users. “And in addition to information explicitly provided on Facebook, the social network recently announced that it will be looking at how mobile users interact with other apps in order to deliver ads more efficiently,” the article notes.
“Facebook has the power to create targeted market segments, ones that are significantly more focused than just carrier name. And the now-public social network also has the resources to focus on post-click actions and backend quality — the unseen aspects of mobile advertising that truly matter to advertisers and can generate real profits,” AllThingsD concludes.
In 2011, mobile and digital content accounted for 36 percent of the 11.3 billion euros spent on games in Europe, reports media analyst firm IHS Screen Digest. That number is expected to hit 44 percent this year and rise to over half of all shares by 2016.
For traditional game distributors, this growth begs the question of how games like “Call of Duty” can stand up to popular Zynga titles on Facebook.
At Europe’s biggest gaming fair, Gamescom, the traditional makers are considering the free-to-play model. Heralded by mobile developers, the model allows customers to try out games before putting money down while also allowing developers to test what gamers do and do not like before building out the whole game.
“We like this new model,” says Frank Gibeau of Electronic Arts. “It’s a lot more like a life operation that you continuously build. It’s a lot more like a service.”
“Although the gaming industry is usually fairly resilient in economic downturns, the free-to-play and online segment is actually helping it grow through the tough times,” Reuters adds.
However, there were two notable absences from the gaming fair. Of the top three console makers, only Sony — the maker of the PlayStation — has been present at Gamescom. “Microsoft and Nintendo, makers of the Xbox and Wii consoles, respectively, have decided to showcase their products later this year,” the article states.
Mobile gaming presents an extra challenge to console makers beyond just competitive, affordable games. “At the moment, it’s not only what you play that is important, but also where you play,” notes Jim Ryan, chief executive at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.
Sony Computer Entertainment has announced that its PlayStation Mobile cross-platform gaming service will launch this fall, available on PlayStation Vita and Sony’s Xperia mobile devices.
“Previously branded the PlayStation Suite, it will provide a platform for third-party software developers and publishers to create new content like games for portable devices,” reports Reuters.
The new service will initially be made available in nine countries including Japan, Canada and the United States.
The Sony unit also says that Asustek Computer and Wikipad will participate in the PlayStation Certified licensing program, so users of mobile devices from those companies can access PlayStation Mobile content.
“Makers of iOS and Android devices depend on content to boost hardware sales and a community of developers to generate application software content,” explains the post. “Sony did not fully elaborate on its PlayStation Mobile plans in terms of costs and revenue projections, but it has pinned its long-term growth on mobile and gaming devices.”
