Entries tagged with “industry” from O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

For the past 13 years, I've traveled to Texas to join the "premier interactive audio think tank," Project Bar-B-Q. There, great minds from Dolby Labs, Karma Labs, Open Labs, Microsoft, Intel, DTS, Dell, and more plot the future of music on computers. Here's our latest report.

Name a wildly popular entertainment technology that suddenly perished because its stewards didn't innovate. Here are your clues: It was introduced in the '70s. It became more popular in the '80s and hugely popular in the '90s. By the turn of the century there were 9,000 titles available.

For anyone immersed in the digital music space, the past couple of weeks have brought some shifts that are reasonably seismic in nature relative to the shifting balance of power from record labels to artists. Here's a summary of some the most recent (and significant) activities to highlight what's going on: Oct 1st -- Radiohead upsets the apple cart by...

At first blush, it may seem odd to learn that National Geographic is making a respectable push into music-related initiatives (as outlined in Digital Music News in early August). With the launch of a new division last summer focused on digital music, National Geographic Music and Radio, the goal is to "engage listeners with great talk and sound, and also...

A sculptor I know likes to say, "Art is a hammer knocking at your eyeballs." Architect Robert Venturi described one of his approaches as "contradiction juxtaposed." Amy X Neuburg, here live at EXIT Theatre, juxtaposes fiery operatic vocals with electronic audio loops. (Photo by Rob Thomas) Much successful art, it seems to me, takes concepts—or symbols of concepts—and squishes them...

In case you hadn't heard, Starbucks launched its own record label about 10 days ago; it will be an extension of their Hear Music brand. The first artist they've announced signing is Paul McCartney (for a one album deal distributed both through Starbucks and through regular retail channels). This move towards creating their own label wasn't particularly a surprise to...

People thought it was pretty cool when I worked at one of the major record labels (EMI America) in the late 80s. And actually I can think of worse jobs to be honest; I did enjoy myself for awhile. But actually, the reason I left was owing to mass label consolidation (at the time there were five big major labels...

Dolby Labs "is unveiling a sound-leveling technology called Dolby Volume today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that its executives say will finally eliminate the jagged audio discrepancies that exist between shows and commercials and even between scenes within the same movie or program." (San Fancisco Chronicle, Jan 8, 2007) Please, God, let it work! And I say...

Brad Fuller's article "Inside Pandora: Web Radio That Listens to You" went behind the scenes of the Internet radio station with the human touch. As Brad explained, Pandora's playlists are shaped by a staff of expert music analysts. Now one of those analysts has launched a podcast that goes inside the music itself. The working title Pandora Podcast is the...

I've been forced to think about my job in a new way since the Reuters image manipulation hullaballo broke. (I work for O'Reilly Media as a book editor in the Digital Media space.) The bulk of my work day is spent helping authors create books on how to use Photoshop and other digital imaging technology to express their creative vision...

For decades the entire royalty system has become increasingly complex, tedious, and difficult for artists and labels to decipher or audit. A long-time colleague of mine, Bob Kohn ( a very successful serial entrepreneur, attorney, & author of the BIBLE of legal issues in the music world -- "Music Licensing"), has launched a new venture called Royalty Share to address...

i used to be a Wang programmer [ok, stop laughing, i know that sounds funny, but you wouldn't be reading this if it weren't for An Wang, inventor of magnetic core memory and founder of Wang computers, which kept me gainfully employed by day in the 80's while i fed my jazz and salsa music habit by night] and i...

Dear Member of the High-Tech Audio Industry: Please. Stop thinking about performance and features for a second: focus on "does it work or does it crash?" If you are under the impression that your testing staff is doing a good job of addressing this problem, then --you are very likely living in blissful ignorance, or --you are in an industry...

Given my history working with established artists, I'm often asked by my clients to seek their participation in various endeavors involving either new technologies or new forms of distribution (or both). However working with artists is in itself an art -- and requires a certain delicacy, diplomacy, and an understanding of how they think & operate (which often as not...

Given your involvement in digital media, you've no doubt heard of The Long Tail http://www.thelongtail.com. This is the notion, made famous by former Wired editor Chris Anderson, that suggests that people value highly cherished entertainment content that's important to them but that they can't find anywhere but online because it's viewed by the major content owners as too obscure to...

In a new-to-me post on his Ventureblog (OK, it as way back in Dec/05), venture capitalist David Hornik explains why the real money in Long Tail businesses goes to the companies that aggregate and/or filter content- and not to the content creators. This is the point I've been exploring in talking about the economics of digital distribution and the Fallacy...

More good news for the record industry - this via Marketwatch: Europe's two largest music recording companies, EMI Group and Universal Music Group, reported increasing revenue on Thursday, underscoring the growing importance for both firms of selling music over the Internet. Label revenues have been falling for years now, suffering from the impacts of file sharing, the use of music...

For over 50 years recording artists have been bound to one primary system for their careers -- involving getting signed to and distributed by a major record label. Since the Internet age kicked into high gear, the playing field has been leveled. With avenues like dedicated band web sites, iTunes, and MySpace, artists are finding more ways to connect directly...

Are we in a new kind of productivity crisis, one in which there is not too little productivity, but too much?

After years working in high tech media I've come to value dumb questions. And the same dumb question keeps occurring to me when I look at the magnatune, weed and other net-based alternatives to record companies: How do you earn rewards without risk?