Rounding Up The Round-Ups

Updated: In the spirit of the metaness of blogging, I present the list of round-up lists…below are look-backs at 2003 and predictions for 2004 in the digital media sphere, as collated by others…(let me know if there are others I can add to this…)

MSN Money: Jubak’s Journal: “Personal manipulation of digital content — or PMDC… Increasingly, consumers want to exercise more control over that content, and that’s where PMDC’s come in.”

– News.com: Year in review: Copy protection goes mainstream

– News.com: Year in review: The sound of Net music

– DRM Watch: 2003 in Review: DRM Technology: “The head bowling pin — the niche market that developed the strongest in 2003 — was online music dominated by Microsoft. Other bowling pins that emerged were e-periodicals, led by the vendors NewsStand and Zinio, and downloadable movies, divided for the moment between Microsoft and RealNetworks, the latter being otherwise practically invisible in the DRM market this past year.”

– DRM Watch: 2003 in Review: Online Content Services

RedHerring.com: Top 10 Trends 2004: Digital immediate gratification.

Michael Gartenberg: Converged devices will remain a niche.

– Dan Gillmor: Predicting 2004

– Robert Cringely: Bob’s Predictions for 2004: “2004 will be a crucial year for streaming media. First, there is the Burst.com case against Microsoft. Burst will win unless Microsoft settles first, which I think will happen. If Microsoft buys Burst or takes an exclusive Burst license, it could mean the end for Real and Apple, both of which also are infringing Burst patents.”

Business 2.0: Predictions for 2004: “I think we’ll see most of the new music sites either shut their doors or consolidate in 2004.”

Mobile Entertainment Opportunity Watch: Trends for 2004: “Entertainment companies will increasingly understand how to create a mobile extension of their service. However, revenues will still be modest and revenue share models with the operators will remain problematic.”

InternetNews: BitTorrent, ‘Gi-Fi,’ and Other Trends in 2004: “The skeptics continue to pour cold water on the micropayments concept but the concept keeps proving itself, in smaller ways, that are adding up, year after year.”

– MediaPost: Agency Makes Bold ’04 Predictions, Says ‘Internet’ Will Disappear: “Ubiquitous, streaming media shall be the order of the day for 2004…”

– John Blossom: Crystal Ball: Key Trends for Professional Content and Technologies in 2004: “If I had to pick a theme for 2004, it would be ‘The Walls Come Tumbling Down‘.”

– NYT: 2 Industries Converge: Media and Technology in 2004

– NYPost: Year of the Dot-Com Comeback: “Survivors Ask Jeeves, CNET, DoubleClick, EdgarOnline, FindWhat.com, InfoSpace, MarketWatch.com and TheStreet.com are all at their healthiest in two years. While not all of these companies will find themselves on the market, a couple could find themselves a new home or even merge with one another.”

– OPA: 2003 Online Media Industry Year-in-Review: A comprehensive round-up of developments in the online advertising and publishing business in the year past…

– E&P Online: Web Site Christmas Wish List: Steve Outing asks online newspaper luminaries, including Len Apcar of NYTimes.com, Bill Grueskin of WSJ.com, and others…

– Wired News: What Gamers Want: Year in Review:”Most of those interviewed were happy to dump on Nokia’s N-Gage as the gaming product flop of the year. While Nokia has not released sales figures, they are believed to have been tepid despite a huge marketing blitz from the Finnish electronics megagiant.”

– WSJ: Technological Lessons From 2003: “We were among the countless pundits who had concluded that the music industry was so blinkered and reactionary that it would be a long, long time before it accepted that the digital revolution was here to stay. It was a fair analysis at the time — it just ignored the fact that online, ‘a long, long time’ can mean “a couple of months.”

– eContent Magazine: The 2004 Models: “The reality of 2004 is that the Web may have changed a lot of things, but it did nothing to revolutionize business models for consumer and business content.”

– eContent Magazine: EContent 100: The Top 100 Digital Content Companies in 2003: Always the best list: eContent Magazine’s annual list of top 100 companies related to digital content: read this one carefully, as it has some good gems sprinkled around…

– CED Magazine: A ‘One Size Does Not Fit All’ Future: “The interactive future needs three important legs: compelling content that the consumer is excited about; an efficient marketing and distribution system to make consumers aware of their options; and an underlying platform that delivers on the promise. And all of these need to come together at a price point that rewards the participants for their contributions, and that the consumer is willing to pay.”

– TheFeature: The Year Ahead in Mobile: 2003 turned out to not be so bad for the mobile industry, and things should carry on in 2004.

– Textually.org: A Round-Up of Year in Mobile Sector: Anything and everything related to mobile lifestyle, in 2003.

– Game Informer: Trends in Online Gaming: “Despite predicted success and a Newsweek cover story, Electronic Arts’ The Sims Online was left struggling for an audience with only
82,000 registered users in its first month. On the flip side,
Microsoft surprised skeptics in March with the announcement that
350,000 gamers had registered for its new Xbox Live service”

– ABCNews.com: Back to the Future: “Online companies, and service providers like AOL, are experimenting with more streaming ad content, but it’s still passive rather than being in the form of interstitials that you have to watch before you can view your content. I don’t expect that to change much in 2004.”

– ZDNet: My 2004 Wish-List for Microsoft: “Microsoft needs to do a better job of educating customers, lawmakers, and the public on what DRM means in the workplace. Redmond also needs to articulate a position on fair rights issues in entertainment and electronic media. What should consumers be able to do with the content they purchase? Microsoft has the opportunity to make things better for consumers or worse, but seems to be doing nothing.”

– Shore Communications: Have Market Data Vendor Fortunes Finally Turned Around?: Flat total revenues in 2003 at US$6.387 billion versus US$6.436 billion in 2002.

– CBS Marketwatch: The Media People to Watch in 2004: Barry Diller and Steve Jobs, among others…

– Newsknife: Newsknife Best News Sites of 2003: Major stories in 2003, top news sites, top war coverage etc…

– OJR: A Look Back at 2003, and What’s on the Horizon for the Online News Universe: Mark Glaser talks to various figureheads on 2003 and what lies ahead for 2004…

– John Battelle: Thoughts on 2004: “Blog ecologies of like-minded folks will garner increasing cultural and social power…think professional verticals of finance, law, medicine, marketing. Folks who you never thought would ever blog will be coming online and claiming power. As a result, more blog ecologies will impose registration and/or subscription (the money kind, not the RSS kind…).”

– Barry Parr: Predictions for 2004: Wishful thinking and common sense, together…”More online content will go behind subscription barriers. However, this will be the beginning of a death spiral for those sites. Eventually (after their current management is fired), they will be reborn as stripped-down, highly-automated free sites.”

– eMarketer: Let the Online Ad Times Roll (Again): “The 2003 bar tells the story of the comeback kid. It evokes the IAB’s Cross Media Optimization Studies offering strong evidence on why advertisers should put 5%, 10%, 15% of their budgets online. Longtime acquaintances who were struggling are now inviting you to their holiday parties. You arrive five minutes early at a seminar on paid search, and it’s standing room only.”

– TV Week: Cable Put VOD, HD, DVR in the 2003 Mix: “VOD made the transition from a visionary technology to a bona fide business; the burst of new HDTV services from cable operators heralded the real beginning of the HD revolution; and DVR began the march into cable set-top boxes and homes.”

– IDC: Predictions for Asia in 2004: Digital media adoption, mobile revolution and online advertising will be big…

– Ringtonia: Best Ringtone Apps in 2003: Why not?

– CED Magazine: CED’s Broadband 50

– Faith Popcorn: From DigiTruth to Identity Terrorism: No, this is no joke…”Pop-democratization, spearheaded by Zagat, made most visible with the vote-by-text-message phenomenon of American Idol, will soon spread throughout the culture to an unprecedented level.”

– Hollywood Reporter: Spears Reigns Again On Internet: And this one, for the kicks…(actually, not really…this is what people really do online.)

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