Saturday, March 31, 2007

ACM Recommender Systems 2007

I have the honor of participating in the upcoming ACM Recommender Systems 2007 Conference as a member of the Industry Program Committee, which at this point also includes:



To learn more about it, or if you or your company is interested in particpating, you can find more info here.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Rhapsody Raises (?!) Prices

You guys know I am a big fan of many of the new free on-demand streaming offerings that are popping up out there (Streampad being my current fave). Most of these do the hard work of scouring the web for the content, aggregating it, and presenting it to you for easy consumption.

On the back of this trend, Real goes and does exactly the opposite of what most would expect, they are *raising* prices for their Rhapsody streaming service.

mediaor: "For the first time in six years, Real is raising the price of a Rhapsody Unlimited subscription (without portable playback privileges) from $10/month to $13/month, although users who spring for a year-long commitment to the service can lock down the current price, according to an email sent to subscribers last night."



I don't doubt that this will generate more short-term revenue. Most of their current subscribers will stick around, and now Real will get a couple more bucks a month for each. But, I'm not sure maximizing revenue out of a relatively small audience is the best way to go. Maybe this is part of a larger strategy (I'm sure it is). As an upsell "ad free" tier from a free, ad-supported, service could make sense. Maybe they will normalize to a single paid tier and give everyone portable support - generate some sales for a particular device.

Now that I think about it (gotta love stream of consciousness blogging), this could be something they are being forced to do by the labels. The new class of wi-fi connected devices (from Nokia, Sandisk and others) put the traditional pricing tiers into a sort of no-man's land. The labels want more money for portability (hence all the "to go" tiers are an extra $5/month), but we now live in a world where you don't need "sync" licenses for your content. You can stream it directly to your Wi-Fi connected device. This enables the same use case that the labels want a premium for. This was of course a short-sighted distinction of tiers by the record companies. When does a PC become a "mobile" device? What is a UMPC? How about the OQO? What about a phone that runs a heavy OS (e.g. Windows Mobile)? Those lines continue to blur, and now we've reached a point where you can no longer tell them apart.

As I'm writing this, I'm guessing that a formal announcement and launch of the Sansa Connect (powered by Zing). That would be pretty sweet actually, I'd buy that...

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

FoxyTunes Planet launches

For those of you that didn't check out the Foxytunes Planet beta, you should check it out now that it has launched.

FoxyTunes Blog » FoxyTunes Planet launches: "Each page on FoxyTunes Planet aggregates music information and rich media from all around the Web and allows you to instantly access all the great things that are out there – be it artist radio stations, recommendation services, videos, photos, reviews and so on."



For my detailed coverage of Foxytunes, you can find it here:

http://globallistic.blogspot.com/search/label/foxytunes

Monday, March 26, 2007

MediaMaster - Xdrive for Music

MediaMaster looks like a fairly standard remote storage service with a 2.0 tune up. The video says it all.



I was getting errors when trying to upload the assets, although it did a good job of matching the metadata to go and pull the album art. Once you get it up there, you can then embed various playback/playlist widgets into the site of your choice.

My problem with this use case (and most remote storage solutions) is that it is a fairly high-involvement ask of the consumer. You have to manually keep your remote storage in sync with your local drives if you want your latest stuff up there and available. Not a big deal if your your library doesn't change much, but if you download a lot this can quickly turn into an unusable solution. Xdrive doesn't quite have the widgets and singular music focus, but they do have an auto-sync utility that you can set to make the task much easier.

Subdizing Music Subscriptions

This deal would be far more interesting if it meant that AT&T subscribers could stream any Napster content directly to their phone, but subsidized subscription pricing for all-you-can-eat sideloaded content is a good start.


AT&T Teams Up With Napster, Delivers Access To 3 Million Song Tracks Across Multiple Screens, Devices: "Strike up the band. AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Napster (Nasdaq: NAPS) today announced a new offer that gives customers free unlimited access for one year to more than 3 million song tracks through Napster To Go(R) -- a $180 value -- allowing consumers to customize playlists on their PC and seamlessly transfer favorite tunes to compatible wireless phones and music devices. This move further blurs the line between communications and entertainment as well as wireless and wireline services."


This is what the subscription services need to really start getting some traction. Virtually "invisible" billing for their music. Bundled into their bill as just another line item.... caller id, data plan, music, etc.

Ultimately, I think it would be interesting to see new drop-dead-simple pricing tiers to exist.

  1. Stream anything you want for free (ad supported and/or with the premium buried in the wireless carrier's data plans)
  2. Download anything you want (unprotected MP3) for $1/pop for sync/burn/offline access


If you want to get crazy, then offer an ad-free version of the streaming service for a few dollars a month. But, I think if someone could pull off a model they'd really have a value proposition that would really resonate with consumers. It's basically the iTunes model but with full-tracks instead of 30-second samples, that is accessible from a web browser, and works with any/every device. Isn't that everything you could ever ask for?

iRack

Speaking of Apple and Steve Jobs, someone forwarded me this spoof today from MadTV. Enjoy....

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Drinking the Apple Juice (tm)

Steve Jobs has amazing - and frightening - control over American culture and our collective consciousness. Not only can he tell us what they want, and when we want it, his power transcends technology to even influence fashion and color trends.

I remember when the first "berry" colored iMacs came out in the late 90's. At the time, I worked in the video game industry - for an accessory company. We made joysticks, controllers, memory cards and such for (at the time) Nintendo 64, PlayStation and Sega Dreamcast. We had made colored game controllers in the past (no one really cared), then the translucent berry "flavors" of iMacs came out... and suddenly the public, and more importantly the retailers, were screaming for "blueberry" (and every other berry) PlayStation controllers. It was a major pain in the ass to manage the inventory of all the different colors of the same product, but Jobs had convinced the public that their hardware needed some pizazz.

Fast forward years later.... and Jobs makes white the new berry. Everyone follows suit.... every MP3 player manufacturer, every headphone manufacturer, even Microsoft with the Xbox 360. When the device manufacturers out-featured the iPod by adding video playback, Jobs goes on record numerous times saying something to the affect of "who would ever want to watch video on a 2 inch screen?!". Making us feel stupid for even considering the notion that it could be kind of cool in the right situations. That is, until he is ready to launch his own video-capable device and then strolls onto stage and says "look at what we invented, isn't it incredible?!". The public eats it, and million of his devices, up.

His most notorious (in my eyes) injustice perpetrated upon the American public, was the propaganda and distrust he instilled by his repeated positioning of "rented" music versus "owned" music. I've gone on about this dozens of times before, so I'll spare you my thoughts this time. But, as the market data overwhelmingly shows... he did it again. He says what we should believe, and we gladly listen and obey. "Whatever you say oh Mighty One."

I don't want to pick exclusively on Steve, he's not the only one that takes this tact. But, he is the most successful at it, therefore he bears the brunt of my distaste for the practice.

Now of course, the iPhone. As I've said before... I really hope it will be a complete and utter failure. Newton Part 2. Mac Mini the Sequel. Lisa on Broadway. I've seen the same pictures and video of the iPhone as all of you. I've talked to people that have seen it in person. Consensus? It's doesn't suck. Far from it... it looks to be quite an impress piece of silicon, software and plastic. Partly, Jobs gets us to believe by delivering, but some of it is via manipulation.




My buddy Ted has coined a term for this phenomenon where we, the public, blindly believe... he calls it "drinking the Apple Juice". I just wish I could enjoy the (admittedly) tasty products without all the nasty aftertaste.

So says the man that is writing this on his new Powerbook...

Washington Post - Developing Selective Hearing

The public consciousness is quickly coming to the realization that all of us writing (and reading this) have known for some time... there's got to more to digital music than the simple pick & buy model of iTunes. The latest to ponder this question, my local read... The Washington Post.

Mike Musgrove - Developing Selective Hearing - washingtonpost.com

My buddy (and former partner in crime at Music Now) Dave Hall shared his thoughts eloquently...


Dear Mr. Musgrove,

You raise some very valid and interesting points about the state of digital music services. You also make a great case for music services that let you and your friends share music, try before you buy, buy what you like, and take it with you.

The most popular services like iTunes offer a straight forward find-and-download approach that satisfies your needs if you know what you are looking for - like a record store.

Though, as you have discovered with your iPod, owning your music (at 20GB you have about 5,000 songs, or $5,000 worth of music) doesn't necessarily mean you have anything to listen to at the moment.

One of the joys of music is that sounds and styles constantly change. People need variety, freshness, a sense of discovery and new things to listen to. Otherwise, no matter how many songs you have, your collection will grow stale.

As I read your article, I couldn't help but think that you were essentially asking for a service like AOL Music Now. Had you tried it, you would have found one of the most addictive and advanced music services available. Sadly, AOL recently shut down this online subscription music service and sold the subscribers to Napster.

At the heart of Music Now was a concept called "taste networking". Taste Networking is similar to a social network, but rather than finding friends through music, Music Now let you find music through friends. By tracking your listening habits - your just played songs, your top artists, your top songs, your top friends (i.e., friends who's music you lisen to most), etc. - and making this information available on a clean, easy to navigate web site, Music Now made it possible to discover great new music.

It also had a great recommendation engine that generated a 2 hour "Daily Mix" of music, specifically tailored to each user, artist and genre.

Using RSS, Music Now would download any portion or all of these charts or playlists and sync them to my portable media player. Whenever a user or Music Now updated a list, the new songs would automatically show up in a the online, PC and device libraries of friends who asked to be updated.

The subscription music element made this all possible. True, the cost was $14.95/mo, the songs were leased, and the music was only available in Windows Media Audio format, thus not available on the iPod. However, in the two years that I used the service I discovered and loved more music than I had in my entire life.

Though I never purchased any songs, I didn't really need to, because I had my own collection of personal radio stations (i.e, the downloaded charts and lists) with me on my portable wherever I went. I was constantly surprised to hear what my buddies were listening to, and many times added those artists and tracks to my own library.

To me, the joy of music is all about hearing what I want to hear when I want to hear it, and finding that new, rare gem that makes me want to listen over and over. Taste networking, subscription music, and Music Now let me do that. My fingers are crossed that some day I will be able to again.

Dave Hall
[Disclosure: I was an employee of AOL and worked on the AOL Music Now service]

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

It's MYspace, and you will do as I say!

Another day, another story about MySpace blocking 3rd party widgets and content from their site. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like I am watching a car wreck in slow motion. Everyone on the web is embracing openess, portability and interoperability... and MySpace is quickly heading in the other direction and building a closed ecosystem. I'm not sure if they are trying to model themselves after Apple in that regard or what, but in my opinion it is going to quickly backfire on them. They appear to be trying to turn themselves into AOL circa 1990. Meanwhile, AOL is trying to turn into MySpace circa 2005. What a strange time we live in.

So... another prediction (I need to keep trying because most of my others haven't amounted to anything yet). MySpace will become this generations' White Pages. It's not where people live, but a simple directory of where you can find out where they live. You'll go to Tila Tequila's MySpace page and it will just ssay "check me out at www.tilashotspot.com".

After the mass exodus - to places where users can do whatever they hell they want, and post whatever widgets they want - what's left for Fox?

Monday, March 19, 2007

Interview: Jon Potter (DiMA)

Here's an interesting interview between Phil Leigh (Inside Digital Media) and Jon Potter, Executive Director of DiMA (Digital Media Association) on the state of the internet radio industry.




Some good background on the radio industry in general, and the inequities between the rates terrestrial, satellite and internet radio pay.

The Day the Music (Now) Died

Someone forwarded me this post from a passionate Music Now lover this morning. I can certainly empathize with her dismay and disapppointment with the move of shutting down the service and migrating everyone to Napster... albeit for slightly different reasons.



http://anirazarina.vox.com/library/post/the-day-the-music-died.html


I have waxed poetic about how much I absolutely love AOL MusicNOW. It is was a full-service all-you-can-eat music vendor that allowed you to build playlists and manage your music through a web interface. You could also listen to you music online or download it to your PC/music device to listen without being connected to the intarweb (for a small increase in price). It was the only music service that allowed customized playlists and wouldn't try to foist off crappy artists you had never heard of and didn't like onto your playlist. And, the biggest bonus? It used the intarweb ports and proxies, so I could listen behind the firewall at work.



I, myself, haven't had time to mourn yet.... but it will hit me very shortly. As soon as my licenses expire and I am forced to download another client application (Napster and or Rhapsody) to re-download and sync, I'm sure it will be a painful day.

The comments of the post above also bring out another couple Music Now lovers, with one summing up their thoughts with...

I just want MusicNow back :( About six months ago I turned to Scooter and said "I wonder how AOL will f this one up?" Here's our answer!



No comment.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

LastTV Revisited - Your personalized music video channel

A few months ago I talked about LastTV - which is a mashup of Last.fm and YouTube. They've been doing some work lately and cleaned things up a bit (and have a new URL at www.lasttv.net). Just log in with your Last.fm account info and they will create a personalized music video channel based on artists you like (gleamed from your last.fm account).

The don't yet appear to have a way to embed that channel, but you can check out mine (via a pop-up player) here.

What you end up with is a nice mix of music videos, TV appearances (e.g. Ryan Adams performing on Letterman) and concert footage.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

mediaor mobile

By the way, the mediaor feed works great with a mobile feed reader (e.g. http://wap.aol.com/feeds). Check it out.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

mediaor - a music/tech feed aggregator

About a month ago I threw out the idea of establishing a single destination with multiple bloggers that cover this "music 2.0" space... a sort of laser-focused Techcrunch. I had a few people ping me and say they were interested in contributing, but then I got busy and never got around to doing anything about it.

So, in response to my laziness on the topic, I took an easier approach.... a "river of news" style feed aggregator of music/technology focused sites that I regularly read (inclusive of this one).


In my daily routine, I use Pakeflakes as my start page and have all of these feeds (and many more) laid out as modules on the page. The problem is, some people post a lot, and others very little. This "river" allows me to quickly scan the latest and greatest without having to filter through them all individually.

I quickly pulled this together in about an hour with Tumblr (free) and a domain name I scooped up tonight through GoDaddy ($9/year).

Based on the rules of each blogger/publishers feeds, you will notice that some stories will post in full while others only provide a snippet. In either case, attribution and backlinks are always provided. Also, if you want to comment on any post you need to do that at the origin blog.

I'd be interested in what people think. Is this useful? Are there others blogs you want to see "thrown in the river"? Just let me know....

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Who are you calling a Slacker?!

There's been speculation around what Broadband Instruments is (doing), and now we know. Tomorrow Slacker will be officially unveiled, but Billboard has got the details a few hours early.

Top Execs To Launch Slacker Inc.: "Dennis Mudd, former CEO of digital jukebox software company MusicMatch, is chief executive of the new venture, which up to now has been quietly operating under the name Broadband Instruments. Jim Cady, the onetime head of MP3 player manufacturer Rio Digital Audio, is president, and Jonathan Sasse, the ex-CEO of MP3 maker iRiver America, is VP of marketing.

In conjunction with the launch, the company tomorrow is bowing an Internet radio service at slacker.com that allows for the creation of personalized stations.

Later this year, the company will introduce a line of WiFi-enabled handheld portable players that can wirelessly access and sync Slacker radio programming via home networks, PCs, and public hot spots."




There's more information when you follow the link above. I'm not sure, but it sounds like they have cut direct deals with the labels for "interactive radio" (as opposed to being covered by the standard DMCA compulsory license). If that's the case, then it seems that all of they swirl around the new Copyright Royalty Board's new royalty rates probably don't affect them.

This is essentially "radio to go", and is a ad-supported model (with a premium ad-free service). Later in the year they plan on rolling a true on-demand subscription service, as well as dedicated wi-fi enabled hardware.
I'll definitely check it out, although I'm worried they are trying to do too much. On a related note, I saw the Zing-powered Sansa Connect (WiFi portable player) at the Digital Music Forum a couple of weeks ago and it is very slick. It is suppossed to be hitting the market later this month with a "yet-to-be-named" subscription service (safe money is on Rhapsody).

Now I just need to move somewhere with city-wide WiFi.....

Monday, March 12, 2007

Yottamusic - The Best Search Box I've Ever Seen

There are a bunch of Yottamusic fans out there as of late. To over-generalize, Yottamusic is basically an alternative front-end to Rhapsody.com. They are on their way to building out some more interesting community features than Real seems to be interested in pursuing, including a very nice Last.fm integration (everything you listen to from your Rhapsody account is tracked/reported to your Last.fm profile). That alone makes it worth checking out, but the real "wow" (hopefully Microsoft hasn't trademarked that term) comes when you start typing in the search box. Considering they are build on top of Rhapsody's service, they are providing lighting fast as-you-type matching results of over 3 million songs and tens of thousands of artists.



You can also launch their pop-up player and start listening without ever leaving that search box. I think they would greatly benefit from some personalized programming/recommendation - as I often stare blankly at the search box trying to think of what I want to listen to. But, if you know what you are looking for, this is the place to get it.

You can't listen without having a Rhapsody account (in fact Yottamusic's only apparent revenue stream is from affiliate revenue from subscribers they generate) - but anyone can go and type in that search box on their front page and see what I'm talking about.

Major Labels' Digital unStrategy

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Digital Music Forum East conference in New York. There were some very amusing and enjoyable debates (albeit few surprises), with many conversations - if not most - focused on "To DRM or to not DRM" and licensing ("we want more, even if it is of less").

Reuters was obviously covering the same conference as well, and have basically summed it up in this story:


Record labels' digital strategy -- do nothing - Yahoo! News: "So what are labels doing other than licensing their music to digital services that they hope will become successful? According to many service providers and industry analysts, the answer is -- nothing."


One thing that I found very useful in the conference was the use of Mozes. Basically, there was a large screen on stage during all of the keynotes that had an SMS number and code displayed. Attendees could send questions and comments to that number and within a few moments would be displayed on screen.

In some ways it's reminiscent of the PartyStrands service from MyStrands. Although they are focused on bars/nightclubs and giving the crowd a way to interact with each other, influence the DJ and basically create a temporal music micro-community.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Mindmap to the Stars

I am a big fan of Mindmapping software. For those people who do their best thinking standing in front of a whiteboard with marker in one hand, and eraser in the other, these applications make me more productive.

I started with Freemind (freeware), then upgraded to Mindjet (~$600), and not think I have found the next successor.

MindMeister is still in beta but it looks to be very promising. I could write more, but it's probably easier to map:

http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show_public/210681

Note: they are also embeddable via an iframe directly into blog posts, but it was breaking my layout, so I just did the direct link instead.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Noisebox Internet Radio - Internet Radio of the Future?

Delicious satire, or chilling reality? While I think the former is that intent, I wouldn't be surprised to see it become the latter.


NOISEBOX INTERNET RADIO: "Whoever pays the most, gets played the most.

We will charge, for each track streamed to a listener, whatever is the CRB-established royalty rate (with all those extra bonus payments for “ephemeral” copies), plus calculated royalties owed to those other performance rights organization, plus the technical cost-per-stream, plus a nifty markup for our time and energy. The VCs love the business model. What scale. As costs go up, revenues automatically go up. Pure capitalist happy and joy."

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Courtesy of Imeem....

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

IMEEM

I've got to be honest, IMEEM kind of slipped by me. I knew I had heard of them, but didn't think of them as a music-centric service. That is, until I saw this announcement today, which made me go back for another look:

Digital Music Pioneer Ted Cohen Joins IMEEM'S Board of Directors: "IMEEM, an innovative media-centric social network, today announced the addition of Ted Cohen, former Senior Vice President from EMI Music and current Managing Partner of digital media advisory TAG Strategic, to their Board of Directors. Cohen will play a key strategic role in helping IMEEM to further develop an innovative social networking service which enables creative expression, recommendation, and discovery."



I haven't gone really deep with IMEEM yet, but at first glance there is some really nice UI, design, page/profile builder and snaggable player/module. However, it's biggest usability drawback from a music perspective is also it's biggest legal liability.... the fact that the primary way to build playlists is by uploading (one track at a time). Of course, you an also add songs from across the site into your own playlist, but it appears that you have to go to a song-level page to add those (as opposed to being able to add songs from a list view).




There is a lot more there that I'll have to get to at another time.

Radio No! (Part 2)

As you can imagine, the web is buzzing with news and opinion on the future of Internet Radio after last weeks announcement on the new royalty rates. In fact, Om Malik has a quote from Tim Westergren (founder of Pandora) in which he says, "left unchanged, it’s over for us and every other internet radio service, period. Makes it un-viable. We’re staying online because we’re hopeful that sanity will eventually win out. This is a ludicrous ruling.”

If you agree (as I do), then you should check out:

http://www.save-internet-radio.com/2007/03/02/save-internet-radio/


Whether you don’t want to see your favorite internet radio station go off the air, whether you just hate the RIAA, whatever the reason: please, help us get this senseless, greedy policy designed to do nothing but line the pockets of the record industry overturned. Write to, or better yet call, your representative, your senators, and the Copyright Royalty Board. Tell your friends and family, write on your blog, digg this - help get the word out and help to Save Internet Radio!


They also have a nice walkthrough calculation where a small webcaster with 1000 listeners on average could easily rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalty obligations.

Also, David Porter (formerly of Live365) has his own calculation on what that means to the amount of advertising a station would need to have to just break even.

So if we assume an average CPM of $5 for audio ads - probably a bit aggressive, at least at this stage - the webcaster would need to run at least 6 ads per hour in 2010 to cover the required SoundExchange payment. Again, to say nothing of composition royalties, bandwidth, contribution to overhead and profit.


And Rags Gupta (also formerly from Live365) has some thoughts on the implications to the industry.


  • There's greater certainty for Webcasters as they've been waiting to know these rates for a while, which may have had a chilling effect with respect to their getting funded (I've counseled at least a couple of VCs looking at webcasting companies to wait until the rates have been set).
  • It may also impact any M&A activity that may have been swirling (like the Last.fm/Viacom).
  • Some services that allow a greater form of interactivity, like Last.fm or Pandora, may well be subject to higher rates keyed off the statutory ones based on any deals they've negotiated directly with the labels.
  • Webcasters will need to respond by either upping the ad frequency, finding other revenue streams (as some have already done by inserting video ads). Some may have to use webcasting as a loss-leader to acquire users that they monetize via other means.
  • Finally, if these rates do stick and streaming volume stays the same or goes up (ie companies don't fold their webcasting operations), this will mean greater revenue for labels and recording artists, who are looking for additional revenue sources under every stone these days.

There is still some hope in that these rates can be appealed. Let your voices be heard.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2007 Induction - AOL Music

Mark you calendars and watch Spinner's (part of AOL's music network) live/commercial-free webcast of the Rock an Roll Hall of Fame ceremony.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2007 Induction - AOL Music



I'd say it's worth it just to watch Van Halen impolde, but Yahoo is reporting that they may not even attend, and defintely won't be performing (with Velvet Relvover playing/speaking in their stead). When I was a kid back in the early 80's, Van Halen was *it* for me. I bought an electric guitar (a starburst Fender Bullet), plastered my wall with posters of Eddie, only to realize that I didn't have the talent (or drive) to actually fulfill my dream of being the world's greatest rock and roll guitarist. My guitar teacher commenting on the challenges that lay before me and my "unusually small hands" probably didn't help motivate me much either.

Now, 25 years later, my rock idol just comes across as a crotchedly old man that would be about as fun to hang out with as a dentist who is giving you a root canal.

If nothing else, at least R.E.M. will be cool to see....

RIAA Cartoon

Friday, March 02, 2007

Radio No!

In a potentially crushing blow to innovative new music services (many of which I cover on this blog), "the US Copyright Royalty Board has announced new Internet radio royalty rates rejecting the arguments made by webcasters and adopting the per-play rate requested by digital royalty collection agency SoundExchange. Retroactively through the beginning of 2006 the rates are:"

  • 2006 - $.0008 per play
  • 2007 - $.0011 per play
  • 2008 - $.0014 per play
  • 2009 - $.0018 per play
  • 2010 - $.0019 per play

What does this do to all of the innovative radio services that are already losing money? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing the folks at Pandora, Finetune and others aren't too happy right now.

UPDATE:

Kurt Hanson's Radio and Internet Newsletter also does some quick math to illustrate just what royalty payments that high does to Large broadcasters (AOL and Pandora), Medium Size (Radio Paradise) and Small (Live365's community).

Their rough calculation is that, based on the 2006 rates, AOL would be paying upwards of $20 million in royalties for last year. And if listenership metrics stayed flat through 2010, that means the bill would be close to $50 million/year by the end of the decade.

So, you want to create the next killer online radio service and grow it virally to be the "next big thing"? You better raise about $30 million dollars just so you can pay your bill when they come collecting. Oh, that's right.... no one will do that, instead we will see further innovation around how to skirt around royalty liabilites via various legal loopholes and safe harbor.

Congrats to the Copyright Royalty Board, it appears that by 2010 they will have effectively priced many of the legitimate online broadcasters out of business... paving the way for many other technologies and approaches where they most likely won't see a dime.

Where Am I???

I know, I know.... I was doing a really good job at blogging every day, and now it appears I've disappeared (only a couple posts over the last couple weeks). Well, I've got some stuff that I want to talk about. Now I just have to find the time to do so. Look for some fresh thoughts this weekend on the Digital Music Forum East, and probably some notes on Yottamusic as well.