Albert Cheng, EVP of digital media for Disney-ABC Television Group, noted on a panel discussion on Tuesday that “ABC thinks of itself as a multiplatform entertainment company, with numerous distribution avenues, not simply a traditional broadcaster any longer.” Sirius needs to embrace a similar approach. I view Sirius not so much as a satellite radio service but rather a provider of “premium radio.” The HBO of radio, if you will. That is, its investment into aggregating premium content and programming ostensibly warrants the premium that end users are asked to pay. How that content is packaged and delivered will vary according to the various distribution platforms available to end users. 

Sirius is thus no different than HBO, Showtime, ABC or even The New York Times. Granted, the satellites that it’s spent hundreds of millions of dollars to deploy and operate may become obsolete or redundant in the coming years, but an obsolete distribution platform shouldn’t impact whether Sirius can make a business out of aggregating and providing “premium radio.”  Of course, whether they can do so, how long it will take and how big of a business it can be all remain to be seen.

Raghav “Rags” Gupta is V-P of International Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since 2005. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com.

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It is time for this to be changed, and I hope it happens.  It may well hasten the departure of music from FM radio, but that would be a market decision. In fact, some enterprising labels may calculate that they do indeed derive a greater promotional benefit and offer to waive the royalties for stations playing their repertoire.  But that should be the prerogative of the copyright holder.

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At one point, our ISP shut us off, and we had no Internet access at the office. I had to get an employee to drive a check over so that they would turn us back on. Even worse, our site went down when the people we bought bandwidth from got shut off themselves. It wasn’t our fault, but we were still down, and the worst part was that we didn’t have enough cash to migrate to another bandwidth provider. I’ll never forget one of our employees offering to make the Company a personal loan. I couldn’t accept it because I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to pay him back.

Amazingly, our users didn’t give up on us. They set up alternate forums to discuss what was going on, sent pizza to our offices and, most importantly, gave us moral support. I won’t go through the litany of hardship we faced but, suffice to say we almost went under a few times. We were able to survive through sheer will, the dedication of our employees and users and a lot of luck.  There were so many lessons learned, but, in particular:

1. Be as transparent with your employees and other stakeholders as you can be. At one point, we had to tell everyone in the company that coming to work was optional and that the next payroll was in doubt because of our cash issues. Even though it was bad news, they appreciated the transparency. In hindsight, I would have been much more communicative than I had been.

2. Cultivate a trusted adviser or mentor outside of the workplace. I think people should do this anyway but it helped me a great deal to have someone I could talk to about the issues I was facing and dispassionately help me evaluate the scenarios and available options.

3. Remember whom you work for and where your fiduciary duties lie. Yes, you ultimately work for yourself.  But, as a founder or management team member, you may have fiduciary duties to shareholders, both common and preferred, to employees, creditors and customers.  Their interests can diverge even in the best of times and especially so when things start going pear-shaped. I made some painful decisions that ruined a friendship but were for the ultimate good of the company and satisfied my fiduciary and ethical obligations — and, to reiterate No. 2 above, I’m glad I had a trusted adviser to help me make sense of things during such an emotionally fraught period.

4. Accelerate non-advertising revenue models. This is a more practical recommendation.  Even if your usage and advertising metrics are growing nicely, now is the time to accelerate development of non ad-based models and prioritize the other revenue streams more highly.  Your investors and poptential investors and acquirers will appreciate this. Not only that but they are likely to discount your ad-based revenues anyway, so any momentum you can show outside of ads will bolster your story.

5. What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. Easy to say, hard to live through. But just keep telling yourself this when things really, really suck.

6. Pray! Seriously, luck plays a big role. Do whatever you can to make your own luck.

While it’s going to be a bumpy road ahead that will involve a lot of pain for many people, I think it actually will be better this time around: The Internet, the web and mobile are real media with real users, real revenues and real business models. Add to that the fact that it’s orders of magnitude cheaper to develop and go-to-market than it was then, and I don’t think the downturn in our general field will be as drastic as it was back in the day.

Raghav “Rags” Gupta is VP of International Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since 2005. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com.

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E-Commerce/Transaction-based: iTunes immediately comes to mind. It may be profitable on its own, but we all know that Apple’s main business is to sell iPods and now iPhones. eMusic is the other one, and I think it has a real business on its hands — of course the vast majority of its repertoire is non-major label.

Music Subscriptions: This segment is dominated by Rhapsody and Napster. Neither is solely a music subscription service, but that’s what both are best known for. At any rate, neither is profitable. RealNetworks’ music business lost $1.9 M in the second quarter of this year. Napster? Well its stock chart kinda says it all; it’s currently trading for a little less than the cash it has on its books.

Ad-Supported Music: This includes on-demand audio and video and also Internet radio. The major players here are the radio divisions of companies like Yahoo, AOL, CBS (Last.fm and CBS Radio), MTV, Clear Channel, MySpace, Facebook and then independents like iMeem, Last.fm, Pandora, Live365 (my alma mater) and a number of others. It has been widely reported that the standard license for on-demand consumption is $0.01 per play, which amounts to a $10 cost-per-thousand plays, not including other costs such as publishing, bandwidth/streaming and ad sales and serving costs.

In short, I think its very hard for any of the ad-supported players to build a meaningful basis from licensed music. Instead, many of the larger players will use it as part of a larger strategy to attract audiences and offer related products that generate higher-margin revenues. For instance, Clear Channel might have a sponsor for its Stripped series, which will probably not have the same license cost as a regular music video. Or MySpace will sell an ad campaign around an event that it hosts. As for Internet radio, there is a lower royalty rate, but the CPMs are lower, too. Pandora’s founder was recently quoted as saying the service may have to throw in the towel if things don’t change with the fee structure. iMeem has licenses from several labels but it’s been reported that it gave up a significant piece of the company and agreed to onerous terms, so, needless to say, it likely isn’t profitable on its licensed music either.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of business models nor of the companies within each segment, and there may be companies within each that are profitable. But that’s beside the point.

The point is that the labels have been lulled into the conviction that their rates are ‘market’ since some of companies have been willing to pay such rates to license music as a loss leader. The labels have been penny-wise and pound-foolish in cutting deals with seemingly lucrative rates. However, that is not the recipe for a vibrant, competitive ecosystem of licensees large and small, with no one company having too much market share — which is exactly what I’d want if I were in their shoes.

The good news is that I know this has been recognized by people with the major labels, and they’re experimenting with new licensing schemes. Hopefully it’s not too late.

Raghav “Rags” Gupta is VP of International Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since ‘05. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com.

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They’ve been replaced by the web — in particular, by social networking communities and blogs. This is Radio 2.0. While I don’t blog about music as much as I’d like, I still get pitched very regularly by music promotion companies on new music. I can only imagine how much music blogs like Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan and bloggers like Fred Wilson get pitched. Moreover, the labels are embracing social networks as a new channel — the EMI/Sigur Ros/YouTube and Warner Bros/REM/iMeemiLike tie-ups are cases in point. Of course Clear Channel and MTV (outside of the U.S, at least) will still get plenty of world premieres, but I suspect this will decrease as MP3 blogs and social networks continue to gain relevance and audiences.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” you may sigh. Well, it’s unclear that these sites actually generate commerce revenue the way traditional marketing channels have. If that continues to be the case, then the artists and labels will have to figure out how to get a big enough piece of advertising and other revenue streams to warrant “giving” their content to these new channels. Regardless, we are seeing a changing of the guard: Maybe Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber is the new Jann Wenner; Ali Partovi or Dalton Caldwell, the new Bob Pittman.

Based out of London, Raghav “Rags” Gupta is VP of International Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since ’05, prior to which he was a senior executive at Live365. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com. The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of any company with which he is affiliated.

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• Drop their penny-per-play streaming-on-demand rates by 90 percent, to one-tenth of a penny
• Link streamed songs to a commerce opportunity, such as buying the MP3 from a store such as Amazon
• Upsell a premium subscription

I’m not sure that this will fully replace the foregone revenues from a decline in physical CD sales, but it does make a lot of sense. I’ve been privately telling my friends at the labels that their licensing pricing strategy has been flawed, notably that it’s skewed towards short-term financial rewards. I’ve also been telling them that they’ve priced out a large part of the market, which is one reason that so far it’s made more business sense for even well-meaning startups to beg forgiveness instead of asking permission.

In other words, the labels were able to ram the penny-per-play rate down the throats of major portals and distributors such as Clear Channel, AOL and Yahoo. These large companies were financially able to do the deals, and most likely looked at the licensing of the music as an investment or a loss leader to acquire users cheaply. A penny-per-play equals a $10 CPM. At that rate it is very hard to break even, let alone sustain a viable business (don’t forget to factor in other COGS like bandwidth, sales commissions, serving costs and songwriting royalties, which I don’t think are covered by the label’s rate). Factor in assumptions on CPMs, ad frequency and sell-through, and it’s hard to make the curves cross.

I’m not sure what the optimal rate should be — David’s suggested rate may well be it, but I don’t have the data. Another approach would be for the labels to get some equity participation from companies wishing to leverage lower rates, which would allow them to capture greater upside for the additional “risk” they’d be taking, whilst charging market rates to companies that can afford it.

Regardless, to use a tax metaphor, instead of having one tax rate aimed at the super-rich — which simply encourages tax avoidance in the lower strata — the goal should be to broaden the tax “base.” I know that the labels are already experimenting with this but, like David says, they need to act fast.

Based out of London, Raghav “Rags” Gupta is VP of International Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since ’05, prior to which he was a senior executive at Live365. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com. The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of any company with which he is affiliated.

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1. Can user-generated video be directly monetized and made to be profitable? The jury is still out on this, but I’m skeptical that the effective CPMs from running ads on UGV will outweigh the cost of goods sold (bandwidth, etc.) enough to make it a great business. In fact, one of the pioneers of UGV, VideoEgg, seems to be more focused on being an overlay ad network — that ought to tell you something. To date, UGV sites have kept going on the VC dollars they’ve raised and have used the audience gained by their user-created content to try to acquire, commission or license professional, quality content that can be profitable. So I think we’ll continue to see UGV being a loss leader of sorts. Ad format standardization should continue but, as I’ve written, it’s all about adoption.

2. Will recorded music continue the march towards being ad-supported? A flurry of deals from the
likes of iMeem indicate that the ad-supported model is very much top-of-mind with the major labels. Look for this trend to continue with lots of experimentation and some investment by the labels in the ad-supported model. But a great ad-supported business takes time to build. Remember that the labels have traditionally been wholesalers, and lack talent and experience in the media/ad model. But they are starting to change this by hiring new blood and tying up with partners that have an expertise in this area.

3. Will handset makers continue to gain more leverage with carriers? The iPhone may go down as not only a revolutionary device, but also a precedent-setting product in that it caused the balance of power between the handset maker and the carrier to shift. Recent announcements by carriers indicate a willingness to be more open with their networks and cede more power, and risk, to handset makers and others, who would in turn take on the burdens of customer acquisition in exchange for a greater piece of the upside.

4. As the social network turns, where will it go? Speaking of opening up platforms, most social networks have either opened up their platform to third-party applications or have plans to do so (either in-house or via Open Social). We have Facebook to thank for this. But what does that actually mean? How will the social networks and apps monetize this? Look for Facebook to iron out the wrinkles in Beacon, their monetization platform. After all, it’s still early days and advertisers will forgive them for being a bit brash. And if they start making some real money with Beacon, you can bet the others will follow.

5. Will there be a macro-economic slowdown and if so, what will be the effects on the online space? Two years ago, I felt we’d be in a recession by the end of the decade. The smart money handicaps it at nearly a 50 percent chance that there will be a U.S. recession in ’08. One way or another, it sure doesn’t look like it will be a boom year. The implications for online? I don’t think advertisers will abandon online advertising the way they did the last time around; in fact, they may even bolster their investments (to the detriment of less accountable media). But look for a flight to quality — to sites that clearly work, or are already trusted. That means Google, Yahoo and the other big boys. Marginal sites that are not a ‘must-buy’ in their category or not part of a quality network will suffer, as will unproven advertising media like widgets, UGV and virtual worlds. That would also spell trouble for startups that lack traction and are too dependent on an ad-supported model.

Obviously there are many more tech-related stories to track — going green, the wireless auction, the Olympics, etc. — but these are the ones that are top-of-mind for me. It should certainly be an interesting year!

Based out of London, Raghav “Rags” Gupta is VP of International Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since ’05, prior to which he was a senior executive at Live365. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com. The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of any company with which he is affiliated.

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Given all the hoops that need to be jumped through — technical, financial and legal, to name a few — negotiating content licensing deals with labels can take months. And that’s if they’ll do a deal with you at a price you’re willing to pay. Of course, the labels have sound business reasons for making companies jump through such hoops.

But from a practical perspective, a cash-strapped startup typically won’t have the patience, expertise or resources to ‘ask permission’ as such. Instead, they calculate that it’s better to move forward with bringing their product to market and deal with the consequences if and when they gain traction (because if they don’t gain traction, no one will come after them and it will all be moot anyway).

The founder of one innovative service (with good traction) whom I recently spoke to said his backers encouraged him to follow the ‘beg forgiveness’ route rather than negotiate directly with the labels. On the other hand, I know of another startup that has tried to negotiate direct deals with the labels over the past couple of years, holding up its full launch in the process. Traction for them? Not so much.

While the original Napster is one example where begging forgiveness didn’t pay off, more recent examples abound of successful startups that begged forgiveness once they had traction: iMeem, YouTube and MySpace immediately come to mind. I also know that some labels look askance at Last.fm and its $275 million acquisition price and, given the license fees it paid, are determined not to let that happen again.

It’s understandable that the labels want to capture more of the value that they feel their content creates. But in order to do so, they’ll need to not only increase the cost of begging forgiveness, but make it quicker and cheaper for sites to license their content. Finally, I think the labels recognize this and want to do something about it (full disclosure: my company, Brightcove, is working with some of them in this area)…but the quicker they do so, the better off they’ll be.

[Raghav “Rags” Gupta is VP of Consumer Services & Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since ‘05, prior to which he was a senior executive at Live365. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com . The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of any Company with which he is or has been affiliated.]

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But Live Nation has to be viewing this in a much larger context, hoping that having Madonna as the charter artist in their “Artist Nation” program will give them credibility to sign up other entertainers, both established and up-and-comers.Fox (NWS) used this strategy in 1994 when, as a then-upstart network, they won the rights to broadcast the NFL. It put them on the map, allowing them to win affiliate stations and subsequently increase their reach.

Viewed through this lens, the premium Live Nation is paying is basically coming out of their A&R budget as they compete with the labels, who are themselves trying to horizontally integrate by doing 360-degree deals.So the battle has been joined. I would expect a major talent agency will try to elbow in on this turf as well — after all, isn’t that what Live Nation is essentially doing?

For artists, it’s good news, as it only adds to the ever-growing number of ways in which they can make a living, whether via the traditional recording labels, live events companies such as Live Nation, or even by going direct, like Radiohead (though I would submit that they’re the exception that proves the rule).

[Raghav “Rags” Gupta is VP of Consumer Services & Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since ‘05, prior to which he was a senior executive at Live365. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com . The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of any Company with which he is or has been affiliated.]

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Music-enabled phones have been around for a few years, but they have been woefully inadequate — little storage capacity (64 MB – 128 MB has been standard for flash cards), disabled side loading, and mobile storefronts with convoluted navigation and over-priced songs. It’s a small wonder that consumers ever used any of these phones for music. According to JupiterResearch almost 30 million US consumers will have music capable phones by the end of 2007, but very few will sideload or purchase music over the air.

The carriers have been largely to blame for shoddy music phones, with their walled garden approach. Though, the labels have also had a hand in the expensive and confusing pricing and licensing schemes. But both are actually starting to see the light. For instance, Sprint recently announced that they will sell songs from their download store for $0.99 instead of the $2.50 they had been charging. I guess their customers didn’t think the convenience was worth paying such a premium.

I’ve been a member of Sprint’s Ambassador program and have tried out a few music-enabled phones and found all of them lacking. To be fair, the latest one, the Samsung Upstage , isn’t bad — good, dual-sided design and the ability to accommodate 2 GB flash memory cards (though it only comes with 70 MB of internal storage and a 64 MB card).

As much as I’d love to carry around one fewer gadget, however, the Upstage isn’t enough of a music or podcast player for me to give up my iPod.

Nokia’s converged N series phones are a bit closer to an iPod experience, with the N91 getting an 8GB (like the iPod Nano). The N95 and the N800 Internet tablet offer Rhapsody subscription music service. And I tested the N95 music service and had an awesome experience.

Maybe the iPhone will be the ultimate device that can cannibalize its sibling. Like the iPod, the iPhone promises to provide a significantly better consumer music experience:

* You’ll be able to easily synch the music on your PC or Mac via iTunes.
* It will have 4 GB or 8 GB of storage – orders of magnitude greater than existing phones.

There are drawbacks to be sure. For instance, it will only be available on AT&T/Cingular, meaning that a large part of the market won’t even consider the iPhone due to being locked into a contract with another carrier (which I think is one reason why Apple announced the phone so far before the ship date — so that consumers with other carriers could let their contracts lapse).

It is also unclear whether podcasts will be supported and synched to the iPhone over-the-air (for instance, when the phone connects to a Wifi network, which I think is an under-appreciated feature). Then there is the price, $499 or $599, which is way more than most consumer-focused phones.

The ultimate success of the iPhone as a music device, and as a hit in general, will depend on a number of factors: how far the price points can come down; whether consumers go for the touch screen; when it will be available on 3G; what sorts of applications will run on it…The prospect of widgets and other apps such as Last.fm, Pandora and iLike being available on iPhone will only make it that much more appealing to consumers. And how quickly will automakers support docking in new cars? That would be powerful indeed.

The launch of the iPhone won’t directly impact artists or labels right away. They will indirectly benefit from more music being purchased via iTunes since it will expand the portable music player market.

If the iPhone will mark a new age of mobile music, it’s one that coincides with a shift in power away from the carriers. As others have observed, the iPhone won’t have links to AT&T’s content deck. AT&T is essentially being relegated to providing the pipes and data delivery instead of taking a piece of everything that happens on their pipes.

This is markedly different than how the carriers have operated to date and could set a precedent for other carriers to open up their walled gardens. That could make the US mobile content market look a lot more like Europe’s where revenue from off-deck content accounts for 80% of the overall market.

At any rate, if the iPhone performs as advertised, the music listening experience will be far better than any existing option, which will force existing handset makers to answer with comparable devices or risk losing significant market share to Apple.

So even if the iPhone is a bomb, it will have raised the bar for the entire industry and we will mark June 29th as the day mobile music took a giant leap forward.

[Raghav “Rags” Gupta is VP of Consumer Services & Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since ‘05, prior to which he was a senior executive at Live365. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com . The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of any Company with which he is or has been affiliated.]

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This is the backdrop against which we are hearing rumblings about the labels trying to get a performance right from radio so that they’d be paid royalties from the use of their music on terrestrial radio, just as the music publishers, songwriters and composers receive a royalty whenever a song gets played.

Business is booming for the latter group, since as I’ve written in the past, more people are consuming music than ever before. Labels and artists should get a chance to reap some of these rewards too.

First some background: Satellite radio pays about 7% of its revenues to the labels and artists, while internet radio webcasters pay anywhere from 12% to many times this rate depending on how you’re counting. What does terrestrial radio pay? Zip. Nada. Through a historical accident, terrestrial radio has paid royalties to songwriters and publishers, typically collected by a society such as ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, but not to the labels and performing artists.

Incidentally, business is booming for these societies from their burgeoning licensing revenue .

The LA Times has a good rundown of this, and mentions how the legal battle may be more in the labels’ favor this time around given the troubles of the record industry and the fact that satellite and internet radio have to pay such royalties (as does most of the rest of the world’s terrestrial radio stations).

The labels have tried to claim this performance right in the past but have found themselves outmatched politically by the powerful broadcasters. Chris Castle has the money quote from the LAT article: “The old saying is the reason broadcasters don’t pay a performance royalty is there’s a radio station in every congressional district and a record company in three.”

But now with powerful groups like the RIAA on their side, the labels may have their day. There will be rhetoric from both sides with the record companies trotting out starving artists to make their case while the broadcasters try to brand this as an extra “performance tax,” which they know will be anathema to many in Congress, and noting how they provide a promotional medium for the labels. (

This makes no sense to me. Call me an apologist for the labels but if you take my product and build a business out of it, I should be able to get paid for it or choose to let you use my product for free in exchange for the promotion I’d get. But that should be my choice. The government shouldn’t determine my business model by not letting me charge you for its use.

What should really happen is for the government to be neutral on this and let the industries determine the price of playing music on terrestrial radio in the free market . It may be that the labels get a windfall from this, or that they decide that the price is ‘zero’ or even that the broadcasters actually demand a per-play royalty going the other way, in which the labels would have to pay for every time a radio station plays one of their songs. It would be a wonderful thing to let the market decide the price of playing music over the air. Now that’s a negotiation I would tune in for.

[Raghav "Rags" Gupta is VP of Consumer Services & Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since '05, prior to which he was a senior executive at Live365. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com . The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of any Company with which he is or has been affiliated.]

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One is to enable people to connect with others and show that they belong to a certain tribe represented by the music and bands they follow. That’s one reason band merchandise is so popular because it allows the wearer to make a statement as to how cool/hip/ironic/grungy/ghetto/sensitive/goth they are.

Live concerts enable people to commune with this tribe and, later, tell others about it. Ringtones are all about this. In the online world, there are many sites that are generic services enabling social networking that incorporate music as one of the activities to network around. MySpace is the poster child of this category along with sites like Hi5, Xanga and iMeem. There are also pure-play sites like uPlayMe that use your taste in music to connect you to like-minded people.

The other broad function is to help you discover new music for your personal enjoyment. Traditionally, this recommendation role has been played by radio stations, record stores and MTV. There are many recommendation services online from Amazon’s rich set of reviews to music blogs and aggregators like Pitchfork and The Hype Machine, to the recommendations that service like Rhapsody and Napster offer, all of which are somewhat social but not really networks per se. Last.fm stands out as being a true music social network that uses the data on what other people have listened to play songs you might like. Other services include iLike, MOG, Finetune, Pandora and Live365 (my former employer, in which I have no financial interest).

These online services face challenges however. A service can either recommend new music but not play it, which makes it less powerful, or it can actually play music, which will require paying some sort of licensing fees. If they opt for the DMCA Webcasting license, the latest proposed rates could make this prohibitively expensive for most to get enough scale to make for a decent business. Services that want to offer on-demand streaming don’t even have it that good. They don’t have a statutory license and have to either rely on the DMCA’s Safe Harbor provisions or, as is increasingly the case, do audio filtering and licensing deals with the labels to enable music sharing and playback on their sites.

This spells opportunity for terrestrial radio. They can use their clout to negotiate on-demand and Webcasting rates to offer these services online and they have the brands, distribution and ad sales resources to be able to optimize the monetization of these services. They should also consider buying some of these music social networking companies and weaving the service into their existing online sites. On the flip side, the labels and music publishers should consider crafting voluntary, standardized licenses for social networks to be able to enable their users to share and listen to music off their profile pages on-demand. After all, they want to get paid for the use of their music and the easier they make this, the more licensees they’ll have.

While music social networks face challenges in becoming standalone businesses, they are services that consumers will use. After all, the basic needs of connecting to others through music and discovering new music haven’t gone away and indeed are becoming more acute. How do I find new music? Call me old fashioned but I still give the nod to sources like Nic Harcourt at KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic. But wouldn’t it be great to also get music recommendations from fellow listeners of the show…

Raghav “Rags” Gupta is VP of Consumer Services & Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since ’05. His personal blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com.

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