Week of November 19, 2007

Ad-Supported Music, Two Tales

Friday, November 23, 2007

Ad-supported digital download service Spiralfrog filed its financials, and it's not pretty: The service lost $3.4 million in the third quarter with revenues of $20,400. With only $2.3 million in cash, the service is facing a significant uphill battle.

While the news was poor for Spiralfrog, MySpace certainly sees a future in ad-supported music. Through an agreement with Textango, MySpace will begin allowing downloads of songs paid for with ad support. So far only one band is lined up--Pennywise--but the potential is real.

One interesting aspect is that Textango is powering the downloads in exchange for MySpace promotion via "friends." To download music, you simply have to add Textango as a friend.

U2 Releases song via iLike

Thursday, November 22, 2007

It doesn't hurt to have friends in high places. Music site iLike has released an unreleased U2 track from the eighties entitled "Wave Of Sorrow." The song is going to be released next week as part of the DVD re-release of The Joshua Tree. U2 is connected to iLike through investment (Elevation Partners) and friendship (Bono is friends with one of the iLike staff).

Brightcove Gives Up On Consumer Offerings

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Online video company Brightcove has announced to its brightcove.tv users that it will soon stop accepting uploads via the site. Brightcove originally launched as a service that would combine mass media distribution for major media companies, as well as smaller channels for amateur users, leveraging the "long tail." With the announcement it is clear that Brightcove sees its future as powering major media sites and not aspiring independents.

Leveraging the power of gaming

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

One of the bigger trends for 2008 will be "casual gaming," which are games that you can play in short time segments and are not overwhelming in complexity. Chess and solitaire are good examples of classic games that work as casual games, but there is a whole sector of games blowing up in this space.

One of the real opportunities in 2008 will be combining your brand with casual gaming in creative ways. Online messaging platform meebo recently announced just this kind of success, as their open API has been used to combine their chat rooms/IM service with casual games. Now you can not just play games with people on your buddy list, but you can chat with them and friends at the same time.

When Closed Works

Monday, November 19, 2007

We here at Pollack Media Group see one of the biggest trends for 2008 to be the increasing openness of all media and technology. One exception is when closed systems provide more convenience. This is rare, but there are plenty of powerful precedents, including the most obvious--the iPod and iPhone.

Amazon recently launched Kindle, an ebook reader that works only with Amazon sold titles. This is the exact opposite approach of Sony's elegant ebook reader, which is very nice and open to all ebook formats. However, the Amazon model just might work. Why? Because it is a total copy of the iPod model: Closed system, but combined with easy to access and organize content.

In fact, I'd call Kindle the iPod for ebooks. The question remains, however: Is there even a mass market for ebooks at this point?