DERTy Link #7 - Radiopaq

We love RadioPaq. It’s a global portal for online radio stations and podcasts. Everything’s here: Slovenian news shows, Guatemalan country stations, the lot…

The free Radiopaq portal has been designed to help you find what you want to hear, when and how you want to hear it. Thousands of radio stations from around the world are available to access now, from huge international to quirky, independent channels; more are being added every day, and these can all be searched by name, genre or region. You can listen to your favourite shows whenever you like thanks to the Radiopaq Podcasts, while Radiopaq Snapshot gives you the latest news and weather information as and when it happens.

This has got to be worth a go.

11.10am - We’re kicking off with Keeping it Kiwi, New Zealand’s Premier Music station apparently. It’s nice enough; think Magic FM if Simon & Garfunkle took over and played nothing but spurious folk tracks and tricky accordion loops.  

11.31am - Sick of Kiwi folk tunes. I’ve shifted to the delights of South Korea’s Andong MBC.

To think, without RadioPaq to get me here I’d never have got past the indecipherable website. I’d've missed out the sort of ‘bangin’ dance choons Berlin ravers were clammering for, circ 1991.  South Korea is HI NRG! terrific.

11.40am - Can’t keep up. I’m brining it closer to home. I’m on to some hard-hitting sounding news from Uzbekistan’s Radio Tashkent.

I’m afraid my Uzbek is not what it was but the report sounds particularly serious. It seems a little at odds with the flamenco guitar in the background.

11.43 - Late night Aussie phone-ins on 2GO FM 107.7 An over familiar woman is discussing her hatred of crows. Another is telling a long story about crying to Adam Sandler films. Dull.  

12.16 -  I’ve spent the past half hour tracking around amongst the various rock, dance, hip-hop and electronica categories. It’s great. It’s like Sky TV for international radio, just keep flicking until you find something you like. You can search in a variety of ways and dig up stuff that really appeals from all corners of the globe.

It’s still in beta at the moment and there are obvious gaps that need filling (poor old Nepal goes wanting, as does Nicaragua and Zambia) but that’s fixable. We likee. see more at radiopaq.com.

Rights & Wrongs 2: Pandora binned

This one’s definitely a ‘Wrong’.

Pandora, the internet radio service from the ‘music gemone project’ has had to call time on its UK service.

Citing irrevocable issues with the license structure, it simply cannot afford to continue. UK legislation states that broadcasters pay for each station they run. Because Pandora effectively streams an individual station to each listener, they would have to pay for a separate license for each and every user.

That’ going to be a difficult bill to foot when you’ve struggled to create a sustainable business model or find sufficient funding.

This is a genuinely sad state of affairs. Pandora’s a hugely satisfying, entertaining and enlightening service. From the outset, they tried to work with copyright holders but it seems it just wasn’t feasible.   

Founder, Tim Westergren, sent the following email earlier today. It continues to operate in the US and we hope that, in time, we’ll see changes to legislation which will allow it to resume in the UK. 

As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.
Based upon the IP address from which you recently visited Pandora, it appears that you are listening from the UK. If you are, in fact, listening from the US, and are denied access from Pandora on or after January 15th please contact Pandora Support: pandora-support@pandora.com.
It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music. I don’t often say such things, but the course being charted by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations is nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent - and by that I mean both well known and indie artists. The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans. As a former working musician myself, I find it very troubling.
We have been told to sign these totally unworkable license rates or switch off, non-negotiable…so that is what we are doing. Streaming illegally is just not in our DNA, and we have to take the threats of legal action seriously. Lest you think this is solely an international problem, you should know that we are also fighting for our survival here in the US, in the face of a crushing increase in web radio royalty rates, which if left unchanged, would mean the end of Pandora.
We know what an epicenter of musical creativity and fan support the UK has always been, which makes the prospect of not being able to launch there and having to block our first listeners all the more upsetting for us.
We know there is a lot of support from listeners and artists in the UK for Pandora and remain hopeful that at some point we’ll get beyond this. We’re going to keep fighting for a fair and workable rate structure that will allow us to bring Pandora back to you. We’ll be sure to let you know if Pandora becomes available in the UK. There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK.
Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.
Again, on behalf of all of us at Pandora, I’m very, very sorry.

Rights & Wrongs 1: Copying CD’s made legal, world keeps turning

Intellectual property minister, Lord Triesman, has presented a proposal to legalize the ripping and re-burning of CDs to a home computer (nice!) 

Acknowledging the currently illegal - but commonplace - practice of ripping CDs, Lord Triesman has recommended the laws be changed to ‘keep up with the times’ (nice spin!)

According the BBC, the changes would apply only to people copying music for personal use - meaning multiple copying and internet file-sharing would still be banned… owners would not be allowed to sell or give away their original discs once they have had made a copy.(riiiiiiight!)

The BPI has supported the move as a means of clarifying the law for consumers but, as ever, warned that the changes should not damage the rights of record companies. (okay)

…

Let’s be clear. This is the adaptation of existing laws which date back 20 years, designed to prevent the misuse of cassette and VHS tapes. The change in the law merely shows that legislation cannot handle current practice - it’s simply folded to consumer demand.

Instead of prosecuting the individuals ripping the CDs, the authorities will now chase those distributing and sharing online - an equally futile task, only marginally more enforceable.

This move will simply fuel the decline of the record labels. With artists everywhere recognising they can survive quite happily without paying their 12.5% to EMI et al. The money’s to be made from touring and merchandise, not CD sales; artists can distribute albums online at a fraction of the cost and cut out the thrid party costs. The move to legalise CD ripping effectively removes the last leg the labels had to stand on. 

Read the rest at the FT, after the jump

Cheat the ‘tube

How to make your YouTube virals as successful as possible.

The Secret Strategies behind many ‘Viral’ videos, by Dan Akerman Greenberg, via TechCrunch

NB. Widely discredited. If you want to run a poorly recognised, dangerously false campaign, read Akerman and get to work. You’ll be kissing goodbye to clients faster than you can say ’breach of trust’.  

More digital music shenanigans

Everyone’s having a bit of a play with the digital distribution toys. Radiohead’s ‘pay what you want‘ ploy got a positive response - paidcontent has noted thirty-eight percent of those who downloaded the title indeed chose to pay something, while 62 percent kept their change in their pocket; Madonna’s recognised the changing climate of the record industry and jumped ship from Warner, and more than ever, Record lables are trying to claw back revenue with digital initiatives.

Now DaftPunk has produced an really interesting marketing widget for thei next launch. From Mashable… 

Daft Punk Promotes New Album With A Widget

October 25, 2007 — 03:06 AM PDT — by Stan Schroeder — Share This

Daft Punk, the French electronic duo known for making music that scares your cat and using robots for live shows, are being hip again. This time, they’ve decided to promote their new live album, Alive, with an embeddable widget, which allows visitors to listen to previews of new tracks, buy the single, read Daft Punk’s biography, read the newsletter, and see a photo gallery of the band.

The widget below is yet another proof that “standard” promotional tools are giving way to web based promotion and social networking. And, since the creation of such a widget costs next to nothing, we expect to see more and more bands take this route and move much of their marketing activities online.

Walking the plank

Not a good week for UK pirates #1. 

OiNK has been pulled down and its owner,  24 yr old Ian Ellis charged by UK and Dutch police.

Ian’s argument from the Telegraph:

The website is very different from how the police are making it out to be. There is no music sold on the site - I am doing nothing wrong.

When I set up the site I didn’t think I was doing anything illegal and I still don’t. There are 180,000 users and there has been an outcry about what has happened to me.

People who download music also buy CDs as well. A lot of people download music on the internet to get a taste of it and then later buy the CD.

But I don’t sell music to people, I just direct them to it. If somebody wants to illegally download music they are going to do it whether my site is there or not.

If this goes to court it is going to set a huge precedent. It will change the internet as we know it.

As far as I am aware no-one in Britain has ever been taken to court for running a website like mine. My site is no different to something like Google.

If Google directed someone to a site they can illegally download music they are doing the same as what I have been accused of. I am not making any Oink users break the law. people don’t pay to use the site.

The other side, from Jeremy Banks, the head of the antipiracy unit at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which helped police with their investigation (CNet)

OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of prerelease music online. This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online.

The most damning evidence surrounds the availability of over 60 albums on the OiNK site weeks before the CD’s were officially released by the record labels.

BBC searches for cash

So. The Beeb has closed 2,500 jobs and binned 1,800 and now faces some particularly irked union bosses. Perhaps lost in the noise, it’s also approved the launch of a commercial dotcom site, supported by advertising.

From Robert Andrews at paidcontent.org…

It may have got lost in news of job cuts but the BBC Trust has approved the proposal to launch BBC.com with advertising support, global news director Richard Sambrook revealed. A first phase in November will see ads added to high-traffic pages, before ads are rolled out more widely later. Here’s the mock-up.

The site, from the commercial overseas wing BBC Worldwide and from Sambrook’s division, will not show ads to UK visitors, who will likely have paid license fees for their BBC content. The existing site currently gets 40 million non-UK users a month. Worldwide will now take on the £4 million per year the international site was getting from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office while the BBC World TV channel will get some payback for contributing its editorial resources.

BBC Worldwide CEO John Smith called it “a key step in delivering our strategy of growing our online revenues to 10% of revenues and building a portfolio of direct to consumer business” (via release). Sambrook: “Advertising seems to be the obvious way for them to contribute to the costs of the site …  BBC World TV news has been a commercial channel since its launch 16 years ago …  We will not be offering highly intrusive advertising and are taking significant steps to manage any potential conflict of interest between advertisers and editorial content.” Sambrook said earlier tests had shown users “did not express a strong objection”. Portions of BBC Worldwide revenue are reinvested in to domestic public service production.

This is how they’re going to look, appara.

 

Lets hope this all makes a bit of cash for them. I’m not looking forward to constant repeats of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Em

The iPod moment for newspapers?

Charles Arthur, inspired by Alan Rusbridger, has posed an interesting theory about the ‘iPod moment’ for newspapers - that single, defining moment of change that fundamentally alters the way we access, consumer and interact with

Logically, there’s a device coming our way which will be able to hold and “play back” (visually of course) huge amounts of text while being portable and convenient. That already exists in the form of paper, but it’s hard to search through paper or create “playlists” of favourite writers from across multiple papers. I have to carry a laptop and read my news feeds; if I wanted to download all the papers for every day, I’d need to set up a lot of fancy scripts to pull in the text of the stories. Feasible, but boring.

Imagine though a light A4-sized product that runs (for ages) off batteries, and has a very readable screen (100+dpi at least; 150 is better for really good-quality small print). And which can store a few gigabytes of data. The latter’s easy - some Flash memory, thank you, sorted. The screen’s much harder, though various people are closing in on it.

Charles goes on to examine the impact it could have on existing daily print media, and it’s not all good news, but the evidence to support this shift is all there…

I like this. Updated in real-time but retaining the core look and feel of the newspaper’s identity, this would be a really cool medium and would certainly signal a sea-change in publishing. Factor in an application like Seadragon as the delivery/interface and you’ve got your newspaper’s ‘iPod Moment’.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s still the coolest thing ever. check out the newspaper rendering during the first stages of Blaise’s presentation…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-DqZ8jAmv0

Google’s Vint Cerf rejects net regulation.

Too right, Vint! Fix the cause, not the effect!

DERTy Link#6: Big Telly

From Future Predictions. A massive telly. an interactive one at that! We’re a big fan of interactive screens here and this one from Panasonic is certainly pretty special.

Clicky for view…