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Buy Mac Products Just got wind of an interesting new Music/Radio site: Finetune. Check it out!
You can build playlists, and then let others listen to them. Plus, it can build custom radio stations based upon a favorite artist and it’s playlist data.
The design is neat, and once you know it’s a radio site, it’s a great way to start listening with no hassles. And if you want to become a DJ, building your own 45 track (or more) playlist/station is easy.
And it works great with Replay Music too.
Check it out!
Posts Categorized: Media Business
Finetune vs. Pandora
Unbelieveable
I just learned today YouTube posted it’s first video online in December 2005.
Is that amazing or what???
Look for some amazing YouTube recording tricks from us in the near future.
Fair Use Threatened
I received this email from Jake Fisher of iPac today, and I’m taking the liberty of reprinting it in full. It’s an important topic – the Big Media companies are threatening to take away our Fair Use recording rights.
Here’s the letter in full:
Dear IPac supporter,
In June we brought attention to S1RA (The Section 115 Reform Act), which
has the laudable goal of bringing mechanical licensing into the 21st
Century. However, buried deep within the legislation was a provision that
required all incidental copies of a song to have their own separate
license. In other words, a copyright holder could charge you for every
copy that exists in a caching server, your ISP’s own cache, or even the
buffer on your computer. It’s double dipping, redefining fair use, and now
it’s back and worse than ever. S1RA lives on under the title of the
Copyright Modernization Act of 2006. Sounds ominous enough. It still
includes all the terrible provisions of S1RA by taking aim at Internet
radio and satellite radio by gutting the Audio Home Recording Act, which
explicitly allows devices to time-shift radio.
CMA is trying to elbow itself into law by wrapping itself in a good bill:
the Orphan Works Act of 2006. This bill is an important piece of
legislation that removes significant hurdles that artists have to jump to
create their art. Right now, with our over-reaching copyright regime, if a
documentary film makers wants to include an image, film clip, or song in
their work, but no copyright holder can be found, the film maker is out of
luck. OWA allows the artist to include the work, assuming they employed due
diligence to track down the copyright holder, and would severely limit any
damages stemming from an infringement suit if the owner suddenly
reappeared.
However good the Orphan Works Act is, S1RA is worse and negates the
benefits that come from OWA. We cannot sacrifice our technological future
by imposing an innovation tax on internet and satellite radio.
For a FAQ on CMA and to find out how to stop it please see:
http://ipaction.org/campaigns/cma/
Thanks very much for your continued support of IPac.
Sincerely,
Jake Fisher
Executive Director
IPac
To the Zune, Alice!
This article from the EFF highlights a curious feature of the new Microsoft Zune – namely that it won’t play songs purchased using Microsoft’s own Plays For Sure system. And it apears they may be abandoning the technology altogether.
If you were unlucky enough to purchase songs using Plays For Sure, you can at least re-record them for your own personal use.
I guess now that Microsoft is competing against its former partners with their own Media Players it’s time to throw them all under the bus. While Microsoft does use their hardware/software business model effectively in the PC business, burning your hardware partners can’t bode well for future projects. Microsoft PC anyone?
Personally – I’m a big fan of the iPod, and I also welcome a serious challenger to the media player space. I hope the Zune does well, but if this flops, nobody’s going to break Apple’s stranglehold for a long while.
TimeTrax goes belly-up
TimeTrax – the hardware/software combo that let people record XM and Sirius radio – is no longer. If you recall, these are the guys that made XM discontinue the XM PCR because of worries people were recording and splitting songs off of the radio.
It’s not that surprising – the business model was fundamentally flawed – as people weren’t willing to pay $200 for hardware to do this when programs like Replay Music and Replay A/V do a better job for a lot less.
Just how sensitive are they?
The RIAA shows an “abundance of sensitivity.”
I agree with the RIAA
Hell has not frozen over.
The RIAA is behind a compulsory licensing system for mobile phone ring tones, which would make it easier for everyone to adopt the technology. The alternative where royalties are negotiated song-by-song is being pushed by the Songwriters Guild among others.
Radio is another place where compulsory licensing is in effect, and this system was a great catalyst to the nascent radio technology.
Article here in Hollywood Reporter.
Now, if only the music labels would come up with a way to purchase unrestricted MP3s at a reasonable cost… then Hell would really have frozen over!
Google Snags IPTV Executive
This is interesting. From Fierce IPTV:
Back in April the industry got a whiff of Google’s future IPTV plans when the company sent out its feelers for IPTV talent: engineers, programmers and product managers. Now, OpenTV, an IPTV middleware company, has announced that its CTO, Vincent Dureau, has joined Google at a “senior engineering role.” Dureau was responsible for developing OpenTV’s key technologies, global business relationships and, in the early days, building its engineering team from scratch. Most interestingly, Dureau took the lead of OpenTV’s advanced advertising technologies, even penning a white paper that reads: “We believe that addressable advertising, where specific video ads are targeted to specific audiences will become central to advertising on digital television within the next 5 years… advertisers will be ready to pay premium rates to cable operators who can demonstrate increased efficiency of their advertising network through targeting.”
Just last month, two research scientists at Google developed a way for your computer to quickly identify which programs you’re watching on TV and feed you personalized content based on that information. While the scientists harp on the increased personalization aspects of it, you can bet Google has its eye on an advanced advertising platform that repurposes its keyword advertising scheme for TV. Looks like Dureau could be the one spearheading this initiative.
More from the Fierce IPTV blog link.
Engadget weighs in on Sling Encryption
This article is a party-neutral summary of the At-Large Recorder and Slingbox device encryption issue.
It’s always a delight to read well-written articles. Way to go Engadget!
PC Mag Editor not happy about Sling Encryption
From Stu, one of our best customers and sources of information:
Jim Louderback, the editor of PC Mag, made a mention that his favorite add-on no longer works. He was referring to your Slingbox recorder. This was done on his podcast – What’s New Now? (July 21)
Looks like Sling is going to be facing more competition – not just from Sony’s LocationFree, but also new companies called HAVA and AirEpoch. It’s going to be hard to maintain the encryption policy, especially if the competition is open to recording.
I predict that there will be a permanent recording solution for Slingbox devices by January 1, 2007. Or even earlier if they want to HAVA good Christmas season.