Yahoo Music is shuttering their DRM servers, which means that anyone who purchased music from them will eventually no longer be able to play their songs.
This is a great reason to use Replay Music to create unprotected MP3 files from the songs you purchased.
Posts Categorized: Media Business
People who bought Yahoo Music with DRM are (almost) screwed
Clip & Sling II
A quick correction on my previous post regarding Clip & Sling. I went back to the main Sling booth again and learned the following:
1. You can record up to 2 minutes from any source without a content redistribution contract. However, your clips are only accessible to you.
2. All recorded clips are automatically uploaded to the Sling server. There is no local file storage for your own clips.
The concept of “fair use” is still foreign to these guys. By playing the content owners game, they are digging themselves into a hole for the future.
Clip & Sling – The Ugly Truth
In keeping with my unhealthy obsession with Slingbox, I talked to a representative today here at CES regarding their “recording” feature in the upcoming SlingPlayer 2.0 called Clip & Sling. As we suspected, it’s not pretty.
Turns out Sling has had to reach content redistribution deals with EVERY TV content owner on the planet for this feature. Each content owner must explicitly give Sling permission to record, and then sets the time limit – some may allow 15 seconds, some four minutes, etc. No agreement: no recording.
This is an INSANE amount of work for a feature with dubious value to customers. From our perspective it’s great news, as SlingPlayer 2.0 will NOT have any significant recording options.
At-Large Recorder (and every other Applian product) is all about recording for personal use. You’ve paid for the content already, you can record it. Just don’t redistribute it to others.
Techware Slingbox Hosting Service
In spite of the fact we’ve been dissed by Sling in the past, I continue to be fascinated with the SlingBox, and how it disrupts the media business.
The latest cool service is the Techware Slingbox Hosting Service. These guys will host a Sling Box for you, and let you stream cable TV from Wisconsin to anywhere in the world. It’s not cheap at $45/month, but it appears legit as far as not redistributing cable TV or satellite feeds.
If you’re a Packers fan, for example, this is one great way to catch all the action. Not sure how pleased the NFL is with this arrangement though.
You can read more about it here.
Net Radio Reprieve
Custom radio services like Pandora or last.fm won’t have to shutter – yet. Sound Exchange has agreed to not enforce the new rates right away, most likely trying to head off congressional intervention.
Read the wired magazine article here.
Clear Channel Radio Online
In the past few days, Clear Channel has changed how their online radio stations work. They have made it harder to acquire a static URL that tunes properly to their stations. This is unfortunate, as it interferes with your legal right to automatically schedule recordings for listening later. A lot of online radio directories are similarly hosed.
Fortunately, we’ve come up with a solution in Replay A/V. If you’re looking to record a Clear Channel station, just open Replay A/V and add it from the Media Guide using the Shows menu option. Until Clear Channel changes something, this works great! If your station doesn’t work, just tell us, and we’ll update our radio station database.
Speaking of Clear Channel, poking around on their site uncovers some interesting discoveries. They are trying to compete with XM/Sirius in the content space with their new Format Lab service. And they have some interesting on-demand music and video content too.
Some people say Clear Channel is getting too large, but the innovation they are doing is pretty impressive, and they are poised to do to the online radio space what they’ve done to the terrestrial space. Watch out!
Silent Radio Day
Today is Radio Silence Day, when thousands of online radio music stations go silent to protest the upcoming increase in music fees. This canard promoted by the RIAA basically insures that any internet radio station goes out of business. Not only will fees increase, but they are retroactive to the past 18 months!
Pandora says it best. Read their home page here: http://pandora.com/
Mad yet? Call your congressman!
Google Audio Ads
This is one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in a while: Google is setting up an Adwords-like system to be able to place and track radio ads. It’s called Google Audio Ads.
No, this isn’t online advertising – these are ads placed on terrestrial AM and FM radio stations. Ads are tracked by a callback phone number in the ads itself.
Why would Google undertake something so far outside their core area of expertise? Either it’s incredibly stupid, or really smart.
Perhaps Google thinks it can take over another advertising area, duplicating the success of Adwords and Adsense. Adsense works well for the hosting sites, but in our experience it doesn’t do nearly as well as targeted keyword advertising. Radio ads are usually expensive to run and ineffective unless you have a huge budget.
The other possibility is that they are setting up infrastructure for local advertising of all kinds. Location-based ads are hot in the investment community, and show a lot of promise, so perhaps this is Google’s way of trying to dominate the sector before the other location-based technologies take hold.
Google Audio Ads an interesting development, but don’t be surprised to see it become a total flop.
Save Pandora
Pandora – the awesome music recommendation internet radio site – is likely to shut down if the new rates for Internet Radio broadcasters are upheld. This is an RIAA backed initiative that will essentially kill Internet Radio, or at least force it overseas.
Read Pandora’s letter to learn more.
New Video Technologies from Adobe, Microsoft
Adobe and Microsoft are gearing up for battle in the next wave of internet video delivery technology. This article from Streamingmedia.com gives a great summary of what we have to look forward to.