NAB Takes Low Blow At RIAA
October 4th, 2007 Davis
Normally, I don’t really care for all of the politics that go on in Washington, but even I can appreciate the irony of the NAB taking a swipe at the RIAA. You know things are getting crazy when big media starts to turn to cannibalism.
Apparently, the RIAA wants to start charging radio stations for access to music. I guess without payola going on, there isn’t as much of an incentive to give away content, plus it’s hard to argue that internet stations need to be paying crazy rates, when they are giving away the content to their terrestrial cousins.
Since the NAB would obviously suffer from having to actually pay for their music, they decided to take a cheap shot at the RIAA by going after where they are vulnerable. Instead of making the RIAA defend the price increase, they are instead raising the question of whether or not that money will end up going back to the artists. It obviously won’t because the studios have a well documented history of taking full advantage of the artists that they promote, but it still puts the RIAA on the defensive over the legislative issues that they are proposing. If the NAB is successful, you could even see the RIAA back away from this, before they would be willing to better compensate their artists. I’ve always hated politics, but I can still appreciate an evil stroke of genius when I see it.
Posted in Technology, Music, Media, DRM | No Comments »
Hold On Kenny
September 17th, 2007 Davis
Update - Unfortunately Hold On Kenny was pulled and is no longer available. I looked for other copies, but this may have been a one of a kind video. I thought it was awesome and would be disappointed if it was pulled because someone at Viacom couldn’t see the promotional value in a user generated mashup. Since Hold On Kenny was pulled so quickly, I present C’mon C’mon by the Von Bondies. It’s very cool, even if it’s not Guided by Voices.
Posted in Music, VOD | 3 Comments »
Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Week
July 17th, 2007 Davis
This week’s winner of the site of the week contest was a site that got in early, on the Podcasting craze. Podcast Alley was quick to recognize that people wanted to express themselves via radio and from the start, they built their community around these content creators. Whether it’s been interviewing other podcasters, highlighting some of the best podcasts out there, or creating forums for fans to interact in, they’ve done a great job of creating a positive environment where podcasters can share information and ideas.
One of the things I love about the web 2.0 revolution, has been how multidimensional it’s made media. When the net first started, we saw flashes of what would come, but it was nothing like I expected. There was an occasional audio or video clip, but the quality was substandard and there was no interaction.
Now we have whole social communities that form around content. As the barriers to entry have been lowered, we’ve seen a proliferation of individuals who are eager to contribute in one way or another. I knew that one day, radio and video would make it’s way to the internet, but I didn’t expect a social revolution to drive it. It hasn’t happened overnight, but YouTube is disrupting TV, blogging is taking over the newspapers and podcasts are displacing radio.
People say that content is king, but when you have such a large explosion of information, content quickly becomes commoditized and it’s the businesses that can make sense of it, that become the new king. This gives the aggregators a lot more control, than the professional content creators like to admit.
I don’t normally listen to a lot of podcasts, but I do enjoy the format. Many of them are just as good as talk radio, except instead of mindless banter, I get to hear them talk about things that I’m actually interested in. This weekend, I had an opportunity to listen to Podflix’s review of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead series.
Having recently watched the entire series, I was thrilled to be able to listen in on a bunch of guys, who enjoy talking about zombies eating people’s entrails. I know that not everybody is into horror films, but I love them and that is the beauty of podcating. What other’s consider amateur content, is A level material to someone who is interested. The key is matching up the listener’s interest with the content creators. Podcast Alley does a great job at this.
Congratulations to Podcast Alley for winning this week’s site of the week award. If you would like to nominate a site, feel free to send me an email. The nominations for next week’s contest are listed below. You can make your vote in the sidebar.
Posted in Site Of The Week, Technology, Music, Media, Web 2.0 | 2 Comments »