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Key Articles of the Week (December 7th, 2007)
Internet Video Producers: Have a Plan
TVWeek downplays the ability for independent producers to come online and make money with their independent online ventures. That’s understandable. I won’t ascribe to them an unspoken bias against New Media, since only the absolutely most informed Web 2.0 denizen is probably aware of exactly all the monetization opportunities out there. None the less, it is a bit annoying to continue to see the analogy of independent online video producers to “the old Hollywood dream of being discovered.”
Warner Music Group: Going the Way of the Dodo
While piracy groups have been recently taking repeated kicks to the keister, it also seems that the major record labels are also finally learning first hand that they may have missed the boat on this whole “series of tubes” thing.
Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. led the earnings call this morning showcasing the “music-based content company’s” extremely meager profits (profits, by the way, that wouldn’t exist if they hadn’t won a settlement from the old Napster lawsuit). Warner was only able to bring in a profit by a scant $5 million on a total revenue of $869 million. The cause of the gap is obvious: Warner hasn’t adapted well to online music sales.
Key Articles of the Week (November 30th, 2007)
A flight across Europe for $10 is indistinguishable from magic
Is there really such a thing as a free lunch? Actually, there sometimes is. Craigslist really is free. Wikipedia really is free. Nobody is “monetizing your attention”. It’s all thanks to a combination of the falling technology costs of Moore’s Law with the Gift Economy.
Other times, there are strings attached. Advertising clutters your page. You’re pitched upgrades. Limits are imposed. You’re upsold to different products or locked into something very much not free. The difference is this latter category used to be the only category of free. Now it must compete with really free. And the newer category is growing fast.
MTV To Give South Park Episodes For Free
MTV Networks will make every episode of South Park available for free online next year. The important part of this news is the fact that MTV is not doing this to make you happy; they’re doing it to make money.
Key Articles of the Week (November 23rd, 2007)
Everyone at Amazon’s Kindle press conference (which I liveblogged earlier today) received one of the electronic book readers. I played around with mine while I was waiting to interview Jeff Bezos. My initial impressions (…)
(…) The fact that it has a functioning Web browser, though, means that you can follow links in the feeds you subscribe to. More importantly, it opens up the world of linking to book authors. Now books can have links, and not just for citations. Authors who take advantage of the electronic book format will start to include hyperlinks for curious readers to follow, and books could become more tightly interwoven with the culture of the Web in general. Reading a book will no longer need to end with the final chapter. Rather, it could literally open up a whole world of information on the Web, just as blog posts or online news article do today.
Key Articles of the Week (November 17th, 2007)
Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley’s Image (via Digg)
“The writers’ strike, and the studios’ response to the strike, may radically accelerate a structural shift in the media industry — a shift of power from studios and conglomerates towards creators and talent.”
“I believe the entertainment industry is in the early stages of being rebuilt in the image of Silicon Valley.” (more…)
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Manuel Castells' World of Communication
Media Convergence (November 30th, 2007)
Convergence is the buzz word in the global media industry nowadays. But its meaning is unclear, and its use is often misleading.
For most media companies, convergence refers to the technological synergy between various delivery platforms of content. In this view, digitization allows the same audiovisual product to be distributed in different formats via open TV; pay per view, cable or satellite TV; the Internet; dvd and video; mobile phones, radio (in the case of audio); podcasting, videoconsoles, books, magazines, and any support platform that can be formatted to specific versions of a given product. (more…)
Visual MediaCoolHunting
[Detail of Untitled for Apoteket by Stina Persson]
Stina Persson is an illustrator based in Stockholm, Sweden, and a master of watercolor. She uses this technique as we all would like to do: obtaining beautiful illustrations without giving up on what watercolor (more…)