Why Radio & Music Industry Sucks Nowadays offers an interesting look at the state of radio, and touches on why podcasting and Internet radio are becoming such important media for young radio listeners.

Business news source Bloomberg reports that, according to sources “with knowledge of the discussions,” streaming video powerhouse Hulu.com, is in talks with record labels to offer music videos on the site. Major music companies Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Group are rumored to be in discussion with the video site.

Hulu, currently best known as a host for offering full episode television shows, could provide fierce competition with Google Inc.’s YouTube for audience attention to music video. YouTube and Universal Music Group are in the process of jointly developing and launching a new music service called Vevo.com, and are asking the other “big three” record companies to join them.

None of the companies involved in either the Hulu/record company or YouTube/Vevo/record company ventures are commenting on the rumored discussions. Sticking points that are (supposedly) bogging down discussions at Hulu include music co ownership stakes in the site (reportedly not gonna happen) and how to divvy up any advertising revenue generated by music video hosted by the site.

As with other traditional media, the music industry is struggling to redefine itself and its business model to take greater advantage of the shift of attention (and advertising and revenue) to online media. Internet advertising revenues reached a record $23 billion last year, as consumers’ music consumption moves from terrestrial radio and television toward online venues. It makes sense for the big record labels to partner with leading video sites to bring their library of music videos to the attention of the music-buying Internet audience.

We’ll certainly keep you posted as the music video story develops.

Audiofile Engineering has released a new application that turns the iPhone and iPod Touch into a professional field recorder.

Called FiRe [iTunes App Store link], short for Field Recorder, the application boasts some serious capabilities for its $5.99 price.

According to Audiofile Engineering, FiRe is the first iPhone (iPod Touch) application to display an accurate audio waveform in real time, and the first to support markers, broadcast WAVE metadata, and the instant downloading of files in multiple file formats.

It is also the first recording application of its kind to offer native Sound Cloud integration. Users can upload audio files directly to the web and “share” them “with the tap of a button.”

Details below. If you’ve tried FiRe, leave a comment with your thoughts!

Amanda Congdon and mobile television company Flo TV have announced a deal to distribute her Sometimes Daily videoblog via Flo TV’s network. The deal will make Congdon’s show available to 150 million cell phones users throughout America.

Sometimes Daily is a four-time-a-week light news video podcast, hosted by videoblogging golden girl Amanda Congdon. Congdon’s best known for her role as the original host of weekday video podcast Rocketboom.

As part of the deal, Congdon will create other video content to be made exclusively available for mobiles on the Flo TV platform.

Peter Althin, the attorney representing Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde, has called for a retrial, Swedish news site The Local revealed today.

Swedish radio channel Sveriges Radio’s P3 news programme reports that the judge in the case was a member of the same copyright protection groups as several of the main entertainment industry representatives, who brought the suit against executives from the file-sharing company.

The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website that indexes and tracks BitTorrent files like music, movies, and television shows. It bills itself as “the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker.” Last week, four company executives were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement, and sentenced to one year in prison and payment of a fine of approx. $3.6 million.

Rickard Falkvinge, Pirate (political) Party chairman, has called for the verdict to be scrapped. “The copyright lobby has really managed to bring corruption to Sweden,” he said in a statement.

The Local explains,

“One of the groups of which [Pirate Bay trial judge] Norström is a member is Svenska föreningen för upphovsrätt (‘the Swedish Copyright Association’), along with Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted, all of whom represented the entertainment industry in the case against The Pirate Bay.

“The judge also sits on the board of Svenska föreningen för industriellt rättsskydd (Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property), a group actively advocating for more stringent copyright laws.”

Defenders of Pirate Bay claim that The Pirate Bay did not host copyrighted content itself, but “merely linked to it – a bit like Google.”

This case, hailed by some as a landmark decision, won’t do much to decisively resolve copyright and file-sharing arguments. Both sides, the entertainment industry people, and the torrent-happy, copyright-eschewing file sharers, don’t have it quite right.

Writers and artists work hard to create unique content, and deserve to be rewarded for what they do. Movie producers spend millions to get the films they back into theaters, and ought to see returns on their investments.

On the other hand, consumers have grown to expect cheap or free online access to entertainment. Advancements in the techology to copy (in high fidelity, in HD) and share content have outpaced legal wrangling over contractual and licensing and distribution matters. So, people freely share content, while court cases and union negotiations drag on, determining the legality and fair compensation for doing so.

Some music-industry people are breaking from the no-sharing pack, however, suggesting that the sharing of their artists’ work helps spur additional sales of albums, concert tickets, and other band memorabilia. Brian Message, Radiohead’s manager, is said to be testifying on behalf of college student Joel Tennenbaum, who is being sued by the RIAA (record industry) for illegal music downloads. Message’s message: filesharing is actuallly beneficial for the music industry.

Interestingly, the very consumers at the heart of the Pirate Bay case may be the entertainment industry’s best (legal) customers. Ars Technica reported earlier this week that “Those who download illegal copies of music over P2P networks are the biggest consumers of legal music options, according to a new study by the BI Norwegian School of Management.”The study of 1900 Internet users over the age of 15 found that “illegal music connoisseurs are significantly more likely to purchase music than the average, non-P2P-loving user.”

Is this because they discover new things they love via illegal file-sharing, and then must go buy the whole album (movie, TV series)? Or is it just that the serious P2P file-sharers consume more content in general, regardless of the content they discover from torrent networks?

Perhaps the best thing about the high-profile Pirate Bay case is that it is sparking more discussion on the topic of file sharing. What’s your perspective on this case, and on the issue at large?

Gannettblog, “the alarmingly independent daily” blog covering the large national newspaper-publishing company, Gannett Co., posted a purported “internal memo” from an editor which bans staff from the use of social networking sites during work hours:

“April 21, 2009

Staff:

It has come to my attention that some staff members are spending a lot of time on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites during work hours. Also, some staff members apparently are spending work time on Fantasy baseball research and other personal recreation activities.

This is not appropriate. It is not part of the job. Occasionally it will be necessary for staff members to visit these sites for work purposes, but please reserve social networking and recreational pursuits for your private time.”

This may be just a silly hoax, but what if it’s for real? It’s easy to be distracted by the Internet, and disappear down the rabbit hole of social networking…. but, really — newspaper reporters in the twenty-first century working without their brains jacked, Matrix-like, into the constant flow of information?

As circulation of dead-tree editions of the paper dwindle, and ad revenues shrink, what are reporters supposed to be doing to gather news? Sit patiently by the news-ticker, pencil and pad in hand?

photo: chicagoeye

In Stories With Alliterative Headlines (see above) this week, podcasting network Blubrry released a new Power Press plugin for their users, which aims to simplify moving podcast content to the Word Press platform from other content management systems:

“While the latest version of PowerPress contains a large number of bug fixes we have a new feature that includes a conversion tool for podcasters using MovableType, Blogger, Drupal, TypePad and other CMS applications.

Moving a blog to WordPress is relatively easy, but moving a blog and all of your podcast as well is much harder. The import tool we have released with this release makes it very simple.

1. Import your old Blog into a New Word Press Site.
2. Install and configure the Blubrry Podcast Plugin PowerPress
3. Choose the Import Function in the Tools Section of PowerPress

What happens is the import tool looks for hyperlinked media in your blog posts. It then presents you a list of all media and the post it has found, you can quickly pick which RSS feed you would like the media imported to.”

It’s nice to see companies like Blubrry continually tweaking and improving their podcast services. While many podcasters are technologically savvy, many others are not, and both nerds and non-nerds benefit from these kind of thoughtful improvements that handle the mind-numbing, time-sucking details like this.

The public television network PBS is taking some of its viewers’ favorite programs and making them available via its newly-launched video portal, PBS.org/video.  Today’s debut of the streaming site marks the first time that programming from a variety of series producers has been available in from one location.

The new video site features a broad range of the network’s programming, including current popular series Frontline and Antiques Roadshow, and classic old cooking shows from the late Julia Child. PBS itself will provide some of the content, and the network’s member stations which produce some of their own series will also stream shows on the site. I am especially excited about things like Sir Ian McKellen as Shakespeare’s King Lear, pictured right.

PBS’ video site is reminiscent of Hulu, which streams a wide variety of current-season commercial-network programming, along with nostalgic old series. There is a snazzy interface for paging through episodes, searching by series or by topic (like today’s “Earth Day” featured collection of environment-themed episodes of different series). Users can also search by most viewed and most e-mailed shows.

Another cool feature that may be utilized more in days to come is the capacity for users to submit their own videos, in response to network content on the site.

The New York Times reports that some content will only be available for limited periods (namely, documentarian Ken Burns’ work) concurrent with terrestrial/cable airing of the programs. Other current and classic programming will not be available through the site at all, depending on PBS syndication and rebroadcast agreements with the individual shows’ producers. It looks as though many of the great old dramatic series fall into this category.

It will be interesting to see how this video portal changes viewership at PBS. Many viewers now want the flexibility to not just time-shift their TV watching (a la TiVO), but also to device- and location-shift their media consumption. One supposes that it will be beneficial for the network, its sponsors/underwriters, and the viewers as well: producers of the ABC network hit “Lost” recently reported that, in March 2009, users viewed over thirty million streams of the show. That’s a lot of viewers who might otherwise have not seen the show, had it not been made available online.

One wonders, though, how and whether the local member stations will benefit from this shift online. When viewers shift their attention away from the terrestrial station (and its on-air fundraising seasons), how does the website profit them? Stations in larger markets (KQED in San Francisco and WGBH in Boston spring to mind) produce and nationally syndicate some fantastic series. But, for example, our Iowa Public Television’s local business/agriculture series have only regional appeal (and minimal fundraising capacity).

How will this shift online affect these stations?

Against the background of story after story of hard times in the newspaper industry, the Wall Street Journal today declared blogging “America’s Newest Profession”:

In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.

Paid bloggers fit just about every definition of a microtrend: Their ranks have grown dramatically over the years, blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults.

The Journal puts the number of people using blogging as their primary source of income at 452,000, more than the total number of computer programmers (394,710) and less than the total number of lawyers (555,770).

These are amazing numbers, for something that few would consider a career option.

Why the sudden growth?

Good bloggers are extremely efficient at getting people’s attention on the Web. According to U.S. News & World Report, bloggers are 50 Times More Efficient Than Newspapers.

How long until companies start recognizing the efficiency of podcasters and video bloggers, too?

Image: minifig

Chris Bulger of web analytics concern Compete has compiled some interesting statistics on most-listened-to stations on Sirius Internet Radio. Compete tracks two million media consumers’ overall Internet behavior; Bulger examined the listening habits of those who listen to the satellite network’s online offerings.

With hundreds of different channels to choose from, I would have thought that there would be a broad distribution of listeners among many stations and genres. I was wrong, though.

Bulger’s (maybe not so surprising) findings: “shock jock” Howard Stern, crowned “king” by Bulger, is far and away the most-listened-to “station” on Sirius’ satellite network. Howard Sterns’ two Sirius channels, Howard 100 and Howard 101, garner 28.4% and 16.1% of unique listeners, respectively. The next runner-up, pop station Sirius Hits 1, garners 10% of unique listeners, and the rest of the Top 20 channels on Bulger’s list score 5.7% of the unique listeners or less.

Stern commands a huge proportion of Sirius’ Internet Radio listeners. One can’t help but wonder, as Bulger does, what will happen next year, when Sterns’ bazillion-dollar contract with Sirius comes to a close? Even with a big-name draw like Stern, Sirius (now merged with former rival XM), is losing money hand over fist (an estimated $245 million fourth-quarter loss on revenue of $644 million).  Can they continue to lose money, *and* bankroll Howard Stern?

Can they afford not to?

Some have said that Stern would be wise to kiss satellite goodbye next year, and perhaps start his own podcast. If he is the primary draw for Sirius subscribers, he can presumably do like he did when he left terrestrial radio — jump to another platform, and take many (most) of his listeners with him.

Another syndicated radio personality, Adam Carolla, launched a podcast earlier this year, and had, within the first few days, a quarter of a million listeners. Carolla did this under less-than-favorable circumstances. What could Stern do with the time and resources for a planned launch?

Or will satellite radio be able to cook up an attractive big-money contract to keep Stern on Sirius?