GigaOM » entertainmentculture

Labels and Spotify still struggle to convince some artists on stream rates

Robert Andrews, paidContent — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:35:59 +0000

The debate over whether artists get enough money from streaming played out in public last week when EMI and Spotify executives failed to win over two sceptical EMI acts during an industry seminar.

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Bleacher Report launches hyper-specialized YouTube channels

Jeff Roberts, paidContent — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:16:30 +0000

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NBCU taps Google to create cross-platform audience metric for 2012 Olympics

Daniel Frankel, paidContent — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:03:44 +0000

NBCUniversal will once again use its Olympics coverage to search for what it calls the “holy grail” of audience measurement. The media conglomerate has commissioned Google and research company comScore to develop new ways to measure viewership across broadcast, cable, internet and mobile platforms. Read more at paidContent…

Photo courtesy of Flickr user [lilivanili]

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Vimeo debuts Focus Forward, a film series about the big ideas in tech

Colleen Taylor — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:00:08 +0000

There’s no time like the present to be using technology to make something really big. Of course, a lot of people and companies are already doing just that — but unfortunately, they don’t always get the kind of wide exposure they deserve. That may be partly because the media coverage of such big-picture, highly technical projects is not as accessible and absorbing as it could be.

So it’s awesome that video sharing site Vimeo has joined forces with General Electric and video publisher Cinelan to launch “Focus Forward” – a micro documentary series that aims to showcase big, world-changing technology innovations in a compelling way. The project’s website describes its mission thusly:

“In the span of three minutes, these films will encompass everything from medical advances to economically viable ‘green’-powered homes to the development of wireless technologies in Third World countries, not to mention innovations in transportation and healthcare, gene therapy and waste management, or any other sphere of art and knowledge that inspires them.”

In all, it’s a very cool mission. The series launched in January at the Sundance Film Festival, and some of the biggest names in documentary filmmaking — including Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame) Gary Hustwit (who made Helvetica and Objectified) and Jessica Yu (who won an Oscar for Breathing Lessons), among others –are signed up to make Focus Forward films that will premiere online and at film festivals throughout the year.

But to me the most exciting thing is that the project, which is hosted on Vimeo, will also be open to submissions from the general public. People who submit videos to the contest, which is called the “Focus Forward Filmmaking Challenge,” will be up for $200,000 in cash prizes, including a $100,000 grand prize. Submissions will open during the Tribeca Film Festival this April, and the prizes will be handed out next year at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. This is what Focus Forward says it’s looking for:

“We’re looking for professionally produced, three-minute end-to-end stories about people or organizations whose innovative efforts in medicine, computer science, robotics, engineering, green energy, or other fields of applied technical knowledge have had a significant positive impact on humanity. Recent, cutting-edge inventions that are changing how we live today are of special interest.”

With how inexpensive digital SLR cameras with video capabilities have become in recent years, and the huge amount of innovative tech projects out there, there is a lot of opportunity to create awesome films that fall into the Focus Forward mold. It’ll be exciting to see what people come up with.

Here’s a video explaining what the Focus Forward Film Challenge is all about:

Focus Forward – Short Films, Big Ideas: Filmmaker Challenge from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

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YouTube & its content discovery paradox

Ryan Lawler — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:07:21 +0000

For years, YouTube has worked to shake the perception that it is all about amateurish user-generated content. It’s hardly just the home of dogs on skateboards and stupid human tricks anymore, as the amount of professional and semi-professional content being produced and uploaded increases. But now that it’s got the content, it needs to get better about helping viewers find it.

YouTube is betting big on original programming, reportedly spending more than $100 million on 100 channels of professional content. Those channels are mostly being focused on various verticals: action sports, for instance, or food or fashion. But while it’s investing in quality, Kamangar told the audience at the D:Dive Into Media conference this week that it’s still too hard to find the stuff people want to watch.

To fix this, YouTube also redesigned its website to highlight content that is relevant to its users. The idea behind the redesign, according to Kamangar, is that once users have selected channels that interest them, they will be shown the newest videos of interest to them. In the same way that viewers typically pick between a handful of favorite TV stations, allowing users to self-select channels could potentially keep them coming back.

It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not perfect. As I’ve noted before, the biggest issue is one of discovery: Once users have chosen the channels that they’d like to subscribe to, it’s difficult to find new content that might be relevant to their interests. Suggested channels — including its featured new channels — are hidden off to the side and below the fold.

Kamangar admitted Tuesday that discovery is still a problem for YouTube. “Google historically has been a search company, so for us to get the discovery and recommendations right, it’s a big challenge. But it’s the kind of challenge that the engineers at Google absolutely love,” Kamagar said.

YouTube is the second-biggest search engine in the world, behind parent Google. But it’s one thing to serve up the right video when a viewer searches for it. It’s a whole other thing to anticipate what a viewer wants to see and help them find it. That’s something YouTube will need to get better at, especially as it tries to increase the average session time that users are staying online for.

The site has a massive number of users stopping by the site every day, but few of them stick around for very long. That’s something the company has been struggling with since its inception. If it’s going to become a bigger competitive threat to traditional programmers, it’ll need to step beyond the hunt-and-peck process of video search and provide better discovery tools.

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Codecademy launches platform to let anyone create coding lessons

Colleen Taylor — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:54:06 +0000

Codecademy, the startup that makes an interactive and social web application aimed at teaching people how to write computer code, has gone the platform route.

On Monday, the company debuted Course Creator, a platform that allows anyone to make educational courses to teach programming techniques. Up until now, Codecademy, which launched in the summer 2011 class of Y Combinator, has developed all of its programming courses in-house.

Codecademy Course Creator screenshot (click to enlarge)

Codecademy co-founder and CEO Zach Sims tells me that the company has received thousands of requests from users keen to build their own coursework on the site, and views the launch of Course Creator as a major step in the company’s growth. “This is probably the biggest announcement we’ve made yet,” Sims said in an email Monday. “We’re going from being a content company (creating courses) to becoming a platform for others to create courses.”

With the huge amount of user demand that Codecademy has seen since its launch only five months ago — the site has one million users and counting — the shift to become a platform play is a very smart one. Codecademy has just six full-time staff members, so its in-house ability to build courses was naturally limited. Now the company can become a full on ecosystem to facilitate education between its own users.

The financial implications here are interesting, too. Codecademy hasn’t started making any money yet, but down the line, the company has said it could charge for premium courses and services. Now, there’s potential for user-created courses to be part of a future Codecademy premium section. It would be nice to see Codecademy’s Course Creator evolve to become a revenue sharing platform — a place where people can teach others an increasingly important skill, and make some money while doing it.

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Macworld | iWorld 2012 highlights for home theater nuts and audiophiles

Weldon Dodd — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:31:24 +0000

One of the trends I saw on the floor at Macworld | iWorld 2012 is an increasing number of companies producing high-end audio and home theater equipment to use with your Mac and/or iOS devices. Everyone from the casual enthusiast to the demanding audiophile will want to take a look at the following products from both big brand names and small niche manufacturers.

Home theater

If you want to bring your Apple products into the home theater, you might want to start with the new Epson Megaplex projectors with an integrated iPhone/iPad dock. The Epson MG-850HD provides 720p video (and integrated speakers) from a 3LCD system with 2800 lumens: plenty bright to use for business presentations by day and movie screenings by night. You can quickly set up a screening for the kids by playing a movie from the iPad or running an app that allows video output over the 30-pin dock connector. Priced at $800, the Epson Megaplex is perfect for setting up an outdoor movie night for the kids and their friends.

Crestron is well-known for its high-end home theater and automation equipment, and it’s a first-time exhibitor at Macworld, showing off the Crestron Mobile Pro control app for iOS. The app replaces proprietary touchscreen controllers, which can cost thousands of dollars, with a software solution that works just as well on your existing iPad.

Audiophiles

On the music side, we also have consumer and audiophile offerings. SRS Labs is showing off its iWOW 3D accessory to enhance the audio for headphones or the car stereo, as well as a music player app that incorporates the company’s sound processing technology along with some high-end features like 10-band EQ and tempo adjustment.

Audioengine is showing off its DACs (digital to audio converters) for improved sound quality to powered speakers. The D1 ($169) or the wireless D2 ($599/set) DACs work great with the Audioengine 5+ bookshelf speakers the company had on display. At the high end, Peachtree Audio is also showing off its converter offerings, ranging from the small DAC•iT ($449) to the world-class Grand Integrated ($4295). All these DACs are capable of playing high-resolution 24/96 audio files, far better than what you can get from CD.

Speakers and headphones

Monster has its Clarity HD bookshelf speakers ($749) on display. You can also check out the Audioengine 5+ speakers mentioned above. Bang & Olufsen is at the show with its BeoSound 8 iPhone dock boombox and the portable BeoLit 12 AirPlay system.

Accessories

MicW has a nice calibrated cardoid mic for the iPhone and iPad you can use with a sound pressure level meter iOS app to EQ your room or concert hall. Studio Six Digital is showing AudioTools, its acoustical test and measurement app.

Blinq is demonstrating a universal remote app (and IR emitter) to control your whole setup and connect to a social program guide. Another remote is the VooMote Zapper, which combines an app with an IR blaster built into a case, coming soon to an Apple Store near you.

That’s my list of highlights for sound, picture and video fans keen on what’s interesting at Macworld | iWorld this year. Let us know if you spotted anything equally interesting.

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5 music-focused iTunes alternatives for Mac

Alex Layne — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:57:56 +0000

iTunes has become more and more of a processor hog over the years as it has grown to handle more features. While it’s great for syncing your iOS devices or buying songs, it’s not exactly the most nimble music player anymore. Below are five alternatives that focus on the music, without the bloat.

Ecoute

Ecoute (French for “listen”) is aimed at being a minimalistic standalone player that syncs with iTunes. It’s been around the longest of the players listed here, having recently reached version 3.

The best way to describe how Ecoute looks is to imagine what the iPhone’s music app would like if it were ported to OS X. Navigation is done through lists, with album art on the left side to make it easier to distinguish between entries. There’s a breadcrumb navigation bar at the top, so it’s easy to get around.

Ecoute has a lot of nice touches. The Dock icon displays the currently playing album artwork, global keyboard shortcuts allow you to control playback in the background, and the controller (which can be customized with available themes) can display the current album artwork on the desktop. You can also share the current track on Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm.

Ecoute is available in the Mac App Store for $8.

Enqueue

Enqueue’s name comes from one of its main features: a queue in the sidebar that acts as a temporary playlist. You can drag songs and albums into the queue and listen to them in order, making it easier to plan and enjoy long listening sessions. Enqueue also has a mini player view available that just shows the queue alongside controls. Being able to see the queue makes it a lot more useful than iTunes’ mini player.

The rest of Enqueue’s interface is more traditional than the others in this list, but that doesn’t make it less useful. There are four tabs at the top for your library, playlists, history, and preferences. The library tab adopts a staid browser layout, with filter columns at the top and results below. I don’t much care for this configuration, so I was happy to see I could change it in the view menu to display just a list of artists on the left and results on the right.

The history tab displays your most played artists or songs and how they relate to each other using a bar graph, which is unique among the apps in this list. Further features include iTunes sync, Last.fm scrobbing, and configurable global shortcut keys.

Enqueue is available in the Mac App Store for $10.

Sonora

Sonora (Spanish for “sound”) has a straightforward interface with a lot of power buried beneath. The toolbar houses the controls for play, pause, shuffle and the like. The middle of the toolbar is occupied by the queue, an area where you can drag albums or songs from different artists to make a temporary playlist, similar to Enqueue’s. By default, the queue will be populated by songs from the currently playing album, which makes it easy to skip to a different song while browsing music as well. A sidebar along the left lists all artists, and the main browser shows album artwork arranged alphabetically by artist, like iTunes.

The most interesting feature of Sonora is the ability to type anywhere in the app to bring up a search box, which works a little like Alfred. Type the name of an album, hit enter, and it starts playing. It’s slick, but hard to discover initially.

Unlike the other apps listed, Sonora is still in beta, so be warned you might run into a bug or two. It’s available from the developer’s website for free for the time being.

Rdio

Rdio is unique among this group in that it streams music rather than playing downloaded files. This allows for a much broader selection of music, as anything in Rdio’s vast catalogue is available to stream. Instant access to new releases and recommendations is also a plus for Rdio. The downsides, of course, are the requirement of a network connection and the lack of more obscure artists.

The Rdio app itself is basically a wrapper around a web app, though most people wouldn’t notice. The load times are fast; I’ve never had to wait long for a song to buffer, and the UI loads quickly as well.

Rdio also has social features built-in. Other users can follow you and see what you’re listening to, and you can share your activity to Facebook, Last.fm, and Twitter.

Rdio is available for free, with a variable song cap (basically, the more you use the service, the lower the cap becomes). Unlimited desktop and web access is $5 a month, and unlimited web and mobile access costs $10/month.

Note: A competitor to Rdio, Spotify, is also quite popular. The reason I’m not covering it fully is because I think the Rdio app is better, though it still deserves a mention.

Vox

Vox is different from the other apps mentioned. Instead of choosing music from within the app, you choose it from the Finder. This behavior goes back to the early days of music players, when you chose music from the file manager instead of within the app itself.

The UI consists of several palettes rather than one unified window. The palettes can be hidden or shown with simple Cmd-number shortcuts, i.e. Cmd-1 to bring up the player, Cmd-2 to bring up the equalizer. The advantage of this kind of design is that it’s easy to show and hide what’s necessary. Of course, the downside is that it’s a little harder to use.

Vox has a large list of supported file types, including FLAC, OGG Vorbis, and Apple Lossless. There’s also an export feature, which can convert every file type it supports into a good selection of formats, including AAC and WAV. It can even apply effects to the exported version.

There’s also a menu bar entry for Vox, which lets you easily pause, skip, and choose a new song. Vox is available at the developer’s website for free.

Are you sticking to iTunes for listening to music, or have you switched to a different app to fulfill that need? Let us know about your favorite in the comments.

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Facebook data: Thousands of journalists now have a Subscribe button

Colleen Taylor — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:23:43 +0000

NBC anchor Ann Curry's Facebook page

On Wednesday, Facebook published some stats on how the Subscribe feature has been used, particularly by public figures and journalists. The subscribe button, which launched in September 2011, lets people receive public updates from another Facebook user in their News Feeds without adding them as a friend.

According to Facebook, reporters have been especially receptive to the feature. The number of journalists who have enabled the subscribe button since September is now in the thousands, Facebook said in a blog post. The feature has become popular at some of the media industry’s most reputable publications: More than 90 Washington Post journalists have subscribe buttons on Facebook, as do more than 50 New York Times journalists (and GigaOM’s in the game too — you can subscribe to Om Malik’s updates on Facebook here.)

The reason so many journalists have added the subscribe button may be because of the big audience they find there. The average journalist has seen a 320-percent increase in subscribers since Nov. 2011, Facebook says. However, that figure seems a bit fuzzy, as it’s extrapolated from a sample Facebook took of just 25 journalists who enabled subscribe in September. Even though Facebook says the sample included local, national, and international journalists, averages are always tricky to count on, given that just a few big fish can skew the overall figure (NBC Today Show anchor Ann Curry has 348,000 subscribers, for example.)

Regardless of the nitty-gritty details, it seems the subscribe feature has become quite popular overall, especially with the chattering classes — giving Facebook even more weight as a growing media powerhouse.

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Where to watch the 2012 State of the Union Address online

Ryan Lawler — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:04:11 +0000

When President Obama makes his State of the Union address Tuesday evening at 9:00 PM ET/6:00 PT, his speech will be carried on all the major broadcast and cable news networks. And for all those away from the TV, the State of the Union will be available online and on multiple mobile and connected platforms as well.

ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC will all broadcast President Obama’s speech live, as will CNBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Many of those channels will also have live streams of their networks available; for instance, ABC News, CNN and CSPAN will all have make their feeds available online.

For the official online feed of the address, tune into the White House’s live stream at www.whitehouse.gov/sotu. In addition to the stream of President Obama’s speech, the White House feed will include an enhanced version of the broadcast that will include charts, stats and other data that will provide additional backing for how he makes and defends his policy decisions.

There will also be live streams for those on mobile and other devices. The Official White House iPhone app and Android app will broadcast the video live to mobile users. Viewers watching at home who might not have cable can also tune into the State of the Union live through WSJ Live’s connected devices apps, which can be accessed on the Apple iPad and Apple TV, Boxee Box, Roku, Vizio, Panasonic Connected TV, Samsung Smart TV, Sony Internet TV and Yahoo! Connected TV platforms.

Finally, for those looking for the Republican response to President Obama’s address, Speaker John Boehner will stream the rebuttal on his YouTube channel.

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