Music
BUG 11 Videos
This is something I’ve wanted to have and since I couldn’t find it out there I thought I’d do it myself. It’s a collection of the videos shown at the BUG film night at the BFI Southbank, hosted by Adam Buxton. These are the videos I could find from BUG 11 on the 22nd January, with guest director Kim Gehrig. If I’ve omitted any - I think there may be some from the laptop sections - let me know. Enjoy!
Bubblicious from Rex The Dog on Vimeo.
Handfed - Above the Sea from Dan on Vimeo.
Amnesty International You Are Powerful - Funny home videos are a click away
Spotify: Following Best Practice or Just Copying?
I’ve recently started using Spotify thanks to an invite from my friend Julian. Spotify is comes in a desktop client form and streams music a la Last.fm.
It has less social networking elements and doesn’t do recommendations to nearly the same extent. Where it does excel is that it has a great library with great search capabilities and as an experience it feels like you’re listening to your music own collection. At least it would after you’ve sprinkled your music collection with 1 minute ads. Actually the audio ads are not too bad, not being so frequent as to be annoying. There are also banner ads on the client but since that’s minimised most of the time I don’t notice them.
I shared it with Richard, who is an extreme music buff. His comment was this:
Like it so far. I get fed up with so many beta apps cos’ they take time to install and learn how to use them – time which I don’t have. This was easy – up and running in a matter of minutes. I can live with ads. Music is a little limited but still finding some good stuff.
I couldn’t help but wonder at that easiness. A glance at the interface is enough to show why someone familiar with a certain dominant music player might find the client quick to get to grips with (I think Rich was also talking about the end to end experience of signing up also).
What I’m wondering is whether this is a clever play to follow the design of an application that people are familiar with rather than trying to reinvent the music player format. And iTunes is a pretty well designed application at its core, though it’s really starting to bloat. Or is this a convergence of laziness, cutting time and effort in design? Or is it just plain plaigarism?
Sky and Universal Partner for Digital Downlaod Service
Announced to Universal Staff this Morning…
Universal and Sky partner on subscription service
14:00 | Tuesday July 22, 2008
Universal and Sky are throwing their considerable weight behind an innovative subscription plus download music service that will launch later this year.
The new, as-yet-unnamed service will offer consumers in the UK and Ireland unlimited access to streamed music from the Universal catalogue, as well as a fixed number of DRM-free MP3 downloads depending on the level of subscription.
All of Universal’s catalogue will be available at launch and Sky is in discussions with other music companies, both majors and independents, and expects to announce further partners soon.
Universal Music Group chairman and chief executive Lucian Grainge explains that the new service will meet a demand among music fans that is currently unfulfilled. “There is an awful amount of unmet demand in music,” he told reporters at a press conference at Universal’s High Street Kensington headquarters this morning.
“We are convinced there is untapped demand that is why we have come together. This is part of our attack, coupled with our defence. Rather than tell people what they can’t do, we want to remind them what they can do, what the opportunities are, what is sexy and what is good value.”
BSky B chief operating officer Mike Darcey added, “It’s clear that there’s huge demand for online music and companies like Sky and Universal Music are well placed to work together to meet consumers’ needs. We aim to offer an easy and affordable service for all UK music fans, while ensuring that artists are properly rewarded for their creativity.”
However, both men denied that the new service is an attempt to unseat iTunes from its market-leading position in digital music. “It is more about offering flexibility and something for people whose demands aren’t met by the iTunes model,” Darcey said.
“iTunes is not going to go out there and be everything for everybody. There is space for other models.”
The music service will be operated by a new joint venture company, in which Sky will be the majority shareholder.
Further details, including pricing and branding, will be announced at a later date.
It will be interesting to see what the “fixed number” of DRM-free tracks will be. They say they are going to offer flexibility, but if this is still DRM laden, it’s never going to be as flexible as users want it to be. This is especially true for the early adopters who are a key demographic to get on board. The “Short Head” is so hugely dominated by iTunes it’s going to be hard to unseat. Amazon has shown that you can make inroads into that position of power, but offering DRM-free tracks is key to that.