RIAA Changing Its Tactics -- An Economic Decision

It was reported by the Wall Street Journal, AP and other news sources today that the RIAA plans to stops its mass lawsuits against consumers.  Instead, the music-industry group is forging agreements with ISP's that will send notices to heavy uploaders asking them to stop.  If they don't stop, then the ISP's will presumably take action, such as slowing down the abuser's connection or possibly

A Seemingly Successful Experiment in Paid Social Media

This is a really interesting article about a recent social media campaign undertaken by Kmart. In short, Kmart gave a $500 gift card to each of 6 influential bloggers and told them to go shopping at Kmart and then write about their experience. There was no censorship or editing, and the bloggers each disclosed the arrangement in their blog entries.According to independent metrics, the campaign

Satriani v. Coldplay - A Battle Worth Winning

Interesting news on Joe Satriani filing an action against Coldplay for copyright infringement.  He claims that the Coldplay hit single, Viva la Vida, infringes on his 2004 release, If I Could Fly.  I'm no musicologist (although I did graduate from Musicians Institute's guitar program), but I listened to both tracks and I can definitely see his point.  I anticipate there will be a settlement on

Prop 8 - The Musical Shows The Power of New Media

It's been only a day, and Marc Shaiman's creative musical take on Prop 8 (the California anti-gay marriage initiative which was voted into law last month) is today's "next big thing" on the Net.  In less than 24 hours, the 3 minute video featured on funnyordie.com has already been seen almost 1.3 million times.  Those are pretty  impressive numbers when you consider the marketing budget is

Mobile DTV Takes Another Step

A more technical (and very insightful) take from Greg Tarr on the importance of this week's technical developments in the Mobile DTV area:Mobile DTV Takes Another Step: " A seemingly minor yet important item came out of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) this week in regard to the forthcoming Mobile DTV..."

Mobile DTV

This article from Broadcasting and Cable discusses how the technical hurdles have been cleared to allow digital television to be broadcast to mobile devices.  This allows manufacturers to start building the hardware that will put television in everyone's pocket.  This is a significant development for the media industry.It marks another major milestone in giving consumers the content they want

The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same

It's been almost 9 months since my last post. I moved my practice to a larger firm and took a blogging break to sit back and watch. So what's changed in 9 months? In some respects, a lot. But in many respects, not so much.We have a new president from the other party taking office in less than 2 months. The economy continued to get worse and then went into a bit of a free fall. People were nervous

Opportunity In The Current Economic Environment

Well, it's Monday morning and I'm doing my normal review of news and announcements. It's definitely a slower environment. There is a lot of talk about the economic slow down. Obviously, this is a self-perpetuating situation. As people hear more about a slowing economy, they become more cautious (if not downright nervous) and they develop a wait-and-see attitude towards their next strategic

Slow News Days -- Or Perhaps Not...

I look through the news daily, mostly just to keep myself informed. I'm also looking for interesting items to blog on. As you can see, I haven't written a blog entry for almost a couple of weeks. I've been looking, but honestly, I just didn't see anything that caught my eye or sparked any big thoughts. Maybe it was me, or maybe things really slowed down.Clearly, the economy is struggling a

The DVD Is Not Dead...Yet

An article in yesterday's NY Times does an excellent job of covering the point I was making last week. That is, the entire DVD business has a limited lifetime and Sony's Blu-Ray victory is somewhat hollow. The disc business is not a long-term business and it is already showing signs of fading.The article discusses what the various studios are doing in an attempt to bolster the DVD and Blu-Ray

And The Winner Is....Blu-Ray

No surprise here. Warner Bros. put the first nail in HD-DVD's coffin with the announcement at CES that WB hi-def content would thereafter only be published on Blu-Ray. Walmart, Best Buy and Netflix hammered in the final nails over the past week or so. When retail won't sell your product, it makes it very hard to stay in business.To Toshiba's credit, it didn't waste time in seeing that the game

Mobile Media Marches On

Another good article this morning (this time from the BBC) which is indicative of the speed with which mobile media is advancing. The gist of the article is that the sales of smartphones will surpass the sale of laptops within the next 12 to 18 months. Think about that -- 12 to 18 months. That is right around the corner. This means that everyone is quickly heading towards having robust media

The Real Hurdle to Mobile Media

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Thursday, one of the panels was apparently very revealing on the topic of advancing mobile media business models. The Hollywood Reporter has excellent coverage on that story.If you ask most people, they would probably characterize the content providers as reluctant to make their content widely available on mobile devices. Personally, if I had to guess,

Update on Viewer Migration Caused by the Strike

Another article today relevant to what I was talking about on Monday. Video Business confirmed that in December, as new television programming was waning because of the strike, viewers turned to the Web. The article notes a 34% increase in online video consumption -- apparently a lot of it at Youtube. (Check out the table showing market shares of online video traffic -- very interesting.)It's

Mobile Is The Next Frontier, and It's Right Now

The most interesting news on the digital entertainment front comes out of Barcelona, Spain today. That's the site of the Mobile World Congress where there have been two very interesting and related developments. First, Microsoft announced its acquisition of Danger, a mobile phone operating system. The Danger software is especially adept at facilitating social networking through mobile devices.

What the Writers Strike Really Accomplished

It looks like the WGA labor action will be coming to an end in the next couple of days. The show runners are heading back to work today, so that's a pretty good indication that the union anticipates a positive vote from the membership on Tuesday evening. (http://www.variety.com/VR1117980626.html)There is already a lot of talk about what the writers accomplished with their job action. The most

Why Microsoft Wants (Needs?) Yahoo

Clearly the big media business news of this week is Mircrosoft's unsolicited (and unwanted) offer to buy Yahoo for a combination of Microsoft stock and cash. Depending on the price of the MS stock at any particular time, the deal is worth around $42 billion. That represents a steep premium over the pre-offer price of Yahoo.Obviously, the deal is driven somewhat by the current low price of Yahoo

Sony Takes Another Big Step in Digital Distribution

I am excited by a report in yesterday's Variety on Sony's deal with SK Telecom of Korea. The new arrangement further expands Sony' s digital distribution of film content in Korea by adding a mobile element. Under the deal, SK Telecom will reportedly have the right to distribute a limited number of full-length films (including the Spiderman series) and television programs directly to mobile

Live Nation's Sale of Theater Biz Further Sharpens Its Music Focus

This week, Live Nation sold its theater business to Key Brand, a private investment group. (Check out the Variety coverage here.) The deal divests Live Nation of virtually all of its legit theater assets, and launches Key Brand as a solid niche player in that industry. This is a great example of a strong company further focusing its business on the assets that are making money.Live Nation has

Independent Film is a Great Business

I just returned from this year's Sundance Film Festival and I am more enthusiastic than ever about the economic potential of the independent film industry. While the number of film sales at Sundance seemed to be down a bit from some prior years, I am more excited by the people I met and the energy in the air. In the hotel hallways and theater lobbies, there was almost constant chatter of new

Capturing Value in Creative Companies

Buying a creative company is very tricky. Successful creative enterprises can be very attractive targets. The profit margins can be outrageously high. The work can be exciting and high profile. The culture and work environments are often exhilarating.On the other hand, it is really easy to overpay for a creative enterprise -- and I don't mean by just a little bit. Sometimes a buyer can pay

Digg - Buyer or Seller?

I'll get back to the discussion of deal points soon, but I saw an article in Business Week today that I really wanted to comment on. The article addresses the rumour about Digg.com being up for sale this year, as well as the other rumour that Digg might be buying a couple of competitors. Digg CEO, Jay Adelson gave BW a fairly open interview. He essentially denies that Digg is buying or selling