What Every Citizen Should Know About DRM

Here's a LINK to an excellent "plain-spoken" guide to DRM, written by Public Knowledge Legal Director Mike Godwin. While I haven't yet finished reading it because it's rather lengthy at around 35 pages - it seems to be a very valuable find. Thanks Mike!

(You will need a PDF viewer to open it)

New Podcast Survey Results

I recently met Chris MacDonald at the Future of Music policy summit in Washington D.C. and he seemed to be one of the most knowledgeable people with respect to podcasts. He currently runs IndieFeed Podcasts - which delivers permission-based single-serving songs to thousands of listeners via 7 subcategory music genres - and he's also General Counsel of the Association of Music Podcasting. Anyway, about a week ago he launched a small listener survey (200 respondents) and got some pretty interesting results...While the sample is admittedly small and the results could be somewhat biased with double entries made from users on the web, I think it is an excellent start to compile some very useful data. Thanks for sharing Chris! The major insights can be found below.

• 50% of all respondents have made a purchase because our service referred them to the music.
• 86% of all respondents have visited the referred website.
• Listeners are mostly 18-34 years of age, heavily male, technology savvy/gadget freaks, disposable income which is used to make monthly music purchases and occassional concerts.
  
• This demographic hits the elusive gen-Y and tweener categories straight on.
  

NOT ALL MUSIC WORTH LISTENING TO IS RIAA-BASED. (I couldn't agree more...)

The Digital Media Alliance of Florida

Forgive me if I toot my horn a little, but last month, I was invited to help moderate a panel at the Digital Media Alliance of Florida's (DMAF) DiMeNar conference held at FullSail Center for the Recording Arts. The event was entitled, "Digital Music, Audio and Sound Design - what does the future hold?" and was one of several digital media seminars the organization has produced in the last three years. FYI - The DMAF is Florida's non-profit digital media industry association and I highly recommend joining...During my presentation, I focused mostly on the recent Future of Music Conference that I attended recently in Washington, D.C. If you're interested, here's a link to my Powerpoint (the meat and potatoes are in my notes below each slide) and I'm currently editing the video footage, which I hope to release as a vodcast soon...

In addition to myself, the speakers included: Full Sail's Matt Bielejeski, Game Audio Network Guild member and GDC speaker; Brian Young, Audio Post Production Course Director and Digidesign Certified Pro Tools Instructor/Operator; Keith Lay, Music History Course Director and international composer ; and Michael Cochran, classically trained composer using digital tools to create music for TV specials, films, the Super Bowl, Disney and more.

Podcasting Study Due Next Month

Internet radio pioneer Daniel Anstandig, now VP of adult formats at Cleveland-based consultancy McVay Media, revealed some preliminary results of a new podcast study McVay currently has in the field. While he said the final study is not due for another month, Anstandig said the study shows "music is the primary appeal of podcasts, particularly music not readily available on terrestrial stations." In other words, the part that appeals most to people is the part that is not currently legal...That's not surprising really after all the P2P hoopla of late...

Source: Billboard Radio Monitor

What Is SUPERDISTRIBUTION And How Does it Relate To Music?

I wrote a short Superdistribution article about a year ago for my eNewsletter, The Beals Media Update, because it seemed to be a growing buzz word and I wanted to learn more about the concept. Since then, the term has become pretty ubiquitous and I was recently delighted to find out that the article was used as a reference in a formal DRM paper written by Markus Auckenthaler, Lehrstuhl f¨ur Datenverarbeitung - Technische Universit¨at M¨unchen.

I'm assuming the parent 69 page document is a German University research paper on DRM, but I'm not sure since I don't read German :) Anyway, here's a link to my 3 page PDF article in English and here's a link to the Geman one... (It's interesting to note that this was the same newsletter issue that The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School linked to last year...)

Video Podcasting 101...

Here are a few cool links I recently discovered on Pho, which will no doubt be useful for those of us "early adopters" interested in producing video content to sell through iTunes or make freely available for the greater good of mankind...(Just make sure you have permission and the legal rights to do so!!)

• Quicktime 7.0.3 (Pro) has a 'Movie to iPod" export option, but unfortunately, it doesn't let you tweak settings:
  http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/creatingvideo.html
  
• Mark Pilgrim has an excellent "how to" tutorial on Ripping DVDs using free software: http://diveintomark.org/howto/ipod-dvd-ripping-guide/
  
• And lastly, Apple shares just exactly how to make a video podcast at: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/videopodcasts.html

Claiming My Feed

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Apple Unveils The Video iPod

Yesterday, October 12th, 2005, will definitely go down in the digital media history books as Steve Jobs and company officially unveiled a new video-enabled iPod, which can reportedly hold 150 hours of video footage, featuring a broad range of paid video content. The move is significant because Apple has already sold more than 28 million iPods since their introduction in October 2001 and now has a commanding 75 percent marketshare of the portable music player market. A new version of iTunes was also announced (6.0) that offers 2,000 music videos and television programs like “Desperate Housewives” and "Lost", which are conveniently available for download the day after airing. "I think this is really pretty big and I think it's just the beginning," Jobs said in an interview. So, is this the new portable Tivo then that many of us have been waiting for?

The unit features a small 2.5 inch color screen and is available in a black or white casing. The 30GB model is available for $299 and the 60GB model retails for just a hundred dollars more at $399. However, what's really interesting and perhaps monumental is that these new releases will test the appetite for legitimate downloadable music videos (i.e. $1.99 each) and could actually become a brand new market for record labels - a market that only Apple could single-handedly create using its technology trendsetting abilities...That all sounds good on the surface, but how much of that pie does the artist actually get and does the video license and content travel with me if I upgrade and get a new iPod next year??

Related:
- Apple iPod sets sights on video

Bootleg Television's 1st Indie Music Podcast

I posted my first official podcast over the weekend. The 3o minute alternative show is Bootleg Television's Indie Music Podcast from Will's Pub Tribute #1. This is a brand new series from Bootleg Television creator Dave Segal, highlighting some of the best and most innovative Central Florida performers (U.S.A.). The music is pretty eclectic and was recorded live using a mini-dv 3-chip camera. I submitted to 6 Podcast directories including iTunes, so I'm curious to see what the subscription traffic will be in a week or so...

The RSS feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Bootleg_TV/Podcasts

O'Reilly European Open Source Conference

The O'Reilly European Open Source conference (EuroOSCON) is being held in Amsterdam next week. EuroOSCON targets the specific needs of European developers, programmers, strategists, entrepreneurs, and technologists, helping them to deliver the benefits of open source technology to their companies and organizations. Tutorials, sessions, panel discussions, and on-stage conversations focus on all aspects of building applications, services, and systems with an emphasis on practical skills. Sounds like fun, maybe I can go next year!

Time To Jump In

Dear Friends & Colleagues,

Ok, I've officially joined the blogosphere after creating this site almost a year ago. I used to publish a monthly eNewsletter called The Beals Media Update, but I got too busy maintaining Billboard Magazine's Digital Music Blog called Postplay. Well, that Blog is currently on hiatus, so I have more free time to share. Also, since the industry changes so fast, I think a blog (which can be added to daily) makes so much more sense than a twenty-something page newsletter - no matter how good it was!

Feel free to cross-link and comment as much as you'd like. I look forward to many stimulating discussions about the evolution of digital media and the intersection of art, music and technology.

Cheers!