There has been a lot of talk overnight about YouTube (owned by Google) not being able to come to a royalty deal with the PRS in UK, thus leading to all music videos being removed from YouTube effective immediately. Here are links to the statement about the situation from YouTube and the PRS.
I don’t want to just run through what many other sites and news sources are writing about, I wanted to discuss why a solution didn’t happen and what is going to happen next to both the PRS and YouTube.
YouTube and the PRS couldn’t come to a royalty deal mainly because the PRS were asking for a lot and they were providing no real information in return. The PRS were asking for blanked royalties but weren’t able to specifically say what artists would receive the royalties and what amounts they would receive. YouTube stated the following:
“PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before…we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback. In addition, PRS is unwilling to tell us what songs are included in the license they can provide so that we can identify those works…that’s like asking a consumer to buy an unmarked CD without knowing what musicians are on it.”
It is kind of like the PRS just expected YouTube to meet their demands no matter what they asked. In addition, on the PRS statement for some reason they mentioned Google’s last quarter revenues for 2008 in which have completely no relevance in this case. The PRS still seem to be using old methods to try to force companies into agreements that just simply aren’t realistic in this current economic climate. Remember that Pandora is not in the UK anymore because the PRS couldn’t offer them a decent agreement and forced them to basically close up shop in this country.
This leads me to believe that there is now a potential for YouTube to launch a spinoff site as already reported with all four major labels, which will attract high levels of advertisers and also possibly sidestep old music companies like the PRS.
Ten years ago, who would have thought that most of our work would depend on the internet? The internet allows us to have easy access to our files, anywhere, anytime. We chat face to face with friends, meet clients virtually, process payments in a flash and much more. The internet is huge and you can’t get enough of it. It has no end.
While on the topic of the internet, you can call the current scenario, the Web 2.0 revolution, the next dot com boom. Web apps are torrenting the internet with their numbers and new ones pop-up everyday.
Today, I will talk about the latest additions to the pool, of course; the ones you probably don’t know about.
With the help of Prezi you can create maps of texts, images, videos, PDFs, drawings and present in a nonlinear way. Move beyond the slide, it only takes 5 minutes to learn how to use Prezi.
With Wix, you can create stunning flash websites for free, all from your internet browser! It offers you a simple powerful online platform to make flash websites, MySpace layouts and more. No downloads or programming needed.
NiceTranslator is a fast, easy to use online translator designed with simplicity and functionality in mind. It is ajax powered, so you get the translations on the fly!
Pizap is a fun free photo editor that lets people easily create wacky images with their digital pictures. You get a very easy to use photo editor that lets you add photo effects, custom text or speech bubbles and much more.
WobZip is an online tool which lets you uncompress compressed files online. It supports many formats including the major ones as Zip, RAR, 7Z, Gzip, TAR, ISO etc…
Create an invitation in seconds, add entries from mobile, twitter, email, iCal, gCal or Outlooks. And of course, send them with ease from withing the app.
Fliggo is an out-of-the-box, all-in-one, solution for creating your own video website. It can be a video blog, a YouTube-like community or a private site for your company or family.
SlideRocket is an online, flash based tool for creating slides and presentations. It brings together a complete package of online slide making with features such as an intuitive interface, themes, flickr integration and much more
Ziddu is a new free file hosting solution with features such as unlimited storage space, fast uploads and downloads, file management, a sharing community a referral program and the ability to earn money with your downloads.
YoutubeReloaded creates an embeddable playlist of YouTube videos that can be added to any website. Simply choose a playlist type to create your free youtube playlist.
FriendPaste is a an online tool where you can paste code snippets of many different languages to share with friends. It sports and intuitive interface with support for syntax highlighting.
Survs is a collaborative tool that allows you to build, deploy and analyze online surveys. With a great user interface, Survs is currently in private beta, though a single request fetched us an invitation.
With SendPhotos Mobile, Web and PC you can upload photos, edit them, create photos albums and share them online with whoever you want. Also available for Android, iPhone and BlackBerry.
BackupURL creates instant cached copies of web pages. The content of a web page stays the same while you share the link provided. The cached page can also be used for referencing or even mirroring data. The cached page will always be online (html,css,images) no matter whether the original site is up or down.
CC Betty organizes your message and its contents – photos, addresses, documents, links – and create a mailspace where everyone can track replies, view and add content. You just CC your messages to her!
Make your emails pop with signatures that reflect your personality and change with every email you send! Create signatures with your twitter status, flickr photos, blog entries, youtube stream and much more, all realtime.
Twe2 is a service which sends you your twitter replies, direct messages and custom searches that you specify free to your mobile as SMS. Available in more than 230 countries.
Markkit is a web2.0 text highlighter. Drag’n’Drop the markkit yellow pen into your browser toolbar. Whenever you want to highlight text in a web page, click on the markkit bookmarklet.
So which ones are your favorites? Discuss in the comments, and dont forget to give it a digg
(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Keshav Khera is young geek from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog and makes unsuccessful efforts to avoid twitter.
Over at RouteNote (a free digital music distribution service) they have started to offer some of their artists live session videos via bittorrent sites. RouteNote has partned with Mininova to provide their content on the Mininova platform for all users to download for free.
At RouteNote the belief is that bittorrent clients provide a great access to millions of viewers every month. With major labels currently fighting sites like The Pirate Bay over copyright issues, it is good to see that RouteNote is adopting this technology and trying to find ways for it to help spread the word of their artists and music.
My belief is that bittorrent trackers arent going to go away any time soon, and that the technology has great benefits and sometimes you just have to think outside the box to find revenues streams. Music on the internet is currently quite a complex market and in the future I think that download sales arent going to be a key revenue stream, and more sites will appear that have advertising models such as Spotify and Imeem. The era of CDs and albums are over, artists will have to produce great tracks not albums and then promote these either as paid downloads or for mass adoption which makes money in other forms.
Dell has finally launched their new download store. Dell has partnered with French company Nexway to release the download store which offers music, games and software. The Dell download store allows all worldwide users to purchase games and software, but there currently is a restriction on music because of “publishing and licencing agreements with [Dell's] digital music partners.”
The music files will be available from major labels and will include leading artists, all without digital right managements solutions as MP3 files.
The store currently sells the Brit Awards 2009 for £9.99; both Play.com and Amazon did not have the album available for digital download.
Single tracks are available for 79 pence but the user interface lacks the intuitiveness of other available solutions like 7digital.
With the RIAA already suing teenagers for downloading pirated music, it’s time you move to the safer side and try another alternative. And yes, that ‘other’ alternative can be free and legal.
Tunerec is a web based service, that ‘records’ songs off internet radio streams and then tags them all for your convenience. Since it has to ‘record’ the streams first, it takes some time to save them in your database. But the patience is eventually rewarded. It has an iTunes like interface, where you can search for artists, songs and albums; Make playlists and also share them with friends.
Although I don’t understand why it has to ‘record’ songs for each user, and not just once for all its users, it probably doesn’t take much time as the number of songs i had last week jumped a whopping 100K this week, taking the total, as of now, to 1 Million.
It may not have all the songs you want, and likely demands patience even for those it has, the audio quality is commendable with very less buffering interuptions. As for the ‘legal’ thing you may be wondering about, the site mentions that it is completely legal and RWW also notes that Tunerec “ has worked out an agreement with the Swedish songwriters association STIM and the musicians (or at least the labels) get paid for every every song played on the service. ”
You can also invite your friends to the service and share your playlists with them.
Tunerec is currently in currently in closed beta but i was able to get into the service right away after i signed up. People living in Europe have a better option than Tunerec and that is Spotify. But sadly, Spotify is only available in Europe and will take some time untill it opens up to the U.S and rest of the world. Untill then, you have Tunerec. If you don’t like it, go buy your own CDs
(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Keshav Khera is young geek from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog and makes unsuccessful efforts to avoid twitter.
Accomedion is a new musical instrument application that combines a keyboard harmonica and an accordion.
Sound sources from keyboard harmonica are used, and chord buttons similar to the ones on accordion are attached. The wide range of tunes will be played as accompaniment.
Main functions
- Capable to shift between major chord and minor chord
- Capable to record and replay up to three tunes
- Five demonstration tunes are stored. Capable to play in accordance with the tutorial guide.
- You can play it like a real keyboard harmonica by blowing the microphone. (iPhone only)
You can download this application from the iTunes store here.
Are Live Nation and Ticketmaster planning to merge? According to a Wall Street Journal report emerging Tuesday evening, the answer is yes. The paper noted that the pair are “close to a merger,” citing “people familiar with the matter”. The tie-up would effectively combine the largest live concert conglomerate with the biggest ticketing company, resulting in a massive conglomerate. The deal, expected to be cashless, could be announced in a matter of weeks, according to the report.
Sounds like a big deal, though regulators could hold up the marriage. That is no small consideration, especially in light of the massive delays experienced by recent newlyweds Sirius Satellite and XM Satellite Radio. Those partners required both the approval of the US Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission (FCC), though the Justice approval on its own was quite lengthy.
Other issues are also worth noting. Live Nation just launched a homegrown ticketing service; a merger could effectively nix that attempt. Moreover, it remains unclear which party is actually acquiring, and where the top executives would land.
US music site Jango announced the launch of Jango Music Network (JMN), dubbing it as the world’s largest and most targeted cost-effective ad network for the music vertical.
The current JMN inventory of music sites reach a collective total of 30 million unique monthly visitors in the US alone. JMN also features a unique methodology that maps brand preference to musical taste and uses it to help advertisers target audiences that will be particularly receptive to their brand.
I received a very interesting email today about a new iPhone / iPod Touch application that will be launching in the App store very shortly. Take a look at the video below and let me know what you think about Chordica.
Microsoft has created what is undoubtedly the worst promotional piece for an application in their arsenal. While promoting Songtastic, they somehow find ways to hurt us visually by impersonating an Apple laptop as a PC with stickers, and audibly with the horrible singing done by these less than average performers. Either way it was payday for those actors, but I truly hope Microsoft does some reconsideration before releasing this video on to the masses.
If you can make it through this entire video, you might already be dead. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
In the last week or so we have been really taking a keen focus on music streaming service and even posted a specific review about MixTurtle. Today we have come across yet another music streaming service that might be worth a look. This new streaming service is called Just Hear It. Just Hear It has been created by two college students Nicolae Ivanescu and Cosmin Panait.
Just Hear It is very similar to MixTurtle, Seeqpod and Songza. It lets the user search for tracks that are online and add them to a playlist. Just Hear It claims to be completely legal, following DMCA guidelines, and paying royalties to all of the major performing-rights organizations, like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. In the future, Just Hear It aims to negotiate licenses to share revenue with labels.
After playing around with the site it still seems to have the same issues as Seeqpod and Songza, every now and then you will find the track that you want to listen to, but it simply wont play or the file is corrupted or incomplete. Im not really too sure if there is anything more annoying than setting up your playlist and half the songs playing.
However, because Just Hear It claims to be completely legal, I’m very curious to see how this business develops. They need to have a very strong business model and I’m guessing that will be based on advertising revenues.
A couple of days ago we put together a great list of the Worlds top 10 free music streaming service. We received a comment that post that lead us to another music streaming service that I thought was worth a review, MixTurtle. MixTurtle is a great music streaming search engine very similar to Seeqpod.
MixTurtle lets users search for a song and then it provides instant results. Then users can play the single track or add it to a playlist. I couldn’t work out for a while how to view the playlist correctly, but all you need to do is right click anywhere on the page and it brings up the playlist you have created. I would suggest that MixTurtle work a bit more on this feature and really make it more predominant.
In terms of the overall design and layout of the site, I think it has great potential. I think it will be easy for them to add sponsored search results into the engine which will be a lot better to look at than display advertising. However, if they are going to go down the display route, it would be advisable to add the display add to the top of the site and have it rotate every couple of minutes.
Overall this is a great site with a lot of potential. It would be adviseable to add a business model sooner rather than later, because im sure their server costs are quite high. In terms of the user point of view, this is a great site! Simple, easy to use and give you with the results in seconds, brilliant!
Over at 
In the last week or so we have been really taking a keen focus on music streaming service and even posted a specific review about 
