2005

Legal UK Music Downloads Top Ten Million, Up 743%
The UK record industry trade association the BPI has revealed that download sales in 2005 have raced past the ten-million mark – almost twice the amount for the whole of 2004.
Sales are racing ahead of last year’s 5.7 million legal download total, with 5,562,638 single track downloads registered between April-June 2005 compared to just 659,377 for the same period last year – up a thumping great 743.6% for the quarter.
Purring wildly, BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson said: “The record industry has enthusiastically embraced the new legal download services since their emergence in the mainstream little more than a year ago and now we’re beginning to reap the rewards.”
Illegal music downloads remain a thorn in the side of the industry, but the growth in legal downloads now outstrips the growth in dodgy file sharing with Jamieson adding, “The battle against illegal files-haring will continue, but we are delighted to have hit this milestone so soon”.
Big gains in DVD single sales have compensated for the continuing decline in CD single sales (down 23% to 5,721,873) with an overall 52.4% improvement in single sales being recorded (including downloads).
Once again, the death of trusty old vinyl has been exaggerated, with quarterly sales for seven inch vinyl up by 87.3% on last year, although figures are comparatively small (288,780 between April-June 2005 against 154,216 for the same period last year).
Data compiled by the BPI shows annual sales of seven-inch vinyl singles climbing up to 1.4 million units, representing a huge 64% improvement year-on-year – the best 12 months for the format since 1998.
The resurgence of vinyl has been attributed to British indie and rock acts love affair with their near ancient format, with bands like Iron Maiden’s, Libertines, Babyshambles, Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand all releasing songs on vinyl.
BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson added: “Despite the incredible growth in download sales, there is still a huge demand for the collectible physical formats. It would be wrong to write-off physical formats just yet. Record companies are committed to meeting consumer demand in whatever format people want their music”.
BPI report
11 July, 2005
Half Of UK Children Have Shopped Online
New research from UK High Street bank Halifax reveals that over half of children between the ages of seven to sixteen years old have bought something over the Internet.
Boys are particularly keen on Web shopping with over 60% saying that they’ve bought items over the Internet.
The bank’s survey found that some 53% of young people are Internet shoppers (up 10% from 43% in 2004) with Scottish lads and lassies coming out as the keenest Web shoppers, with 80% buying items over the internet.
The East Midlands region came bottom of the Internet shopping league with only 36% of young people in the area shopping online.
Boys continue to buy more goods over the Internet than girls, with this year’s figures – 60% boys compared to just 46% of girls – continuing last year’s trend where the figures were 50% and 37% respectively.
Not surprisingly, age plays a big part in who gets to shop online with less than a third of seven to eleven year olds (29%) clicking and buying compared to almost three quarters of twelve to sixteen year olds (73%).
More than half of all kids interviewed believed that Internet shopping is, like, waaaaaay better to shopping on the high street with 61% finding it easier to buy online rather than in shops for certain items.
Music, DVDs and electronic equipment are the biggest attractions online with kids spending their hard-earned ~~extortion racket earnings~~, ~~petty theft cash~~, pocket money on CDs (45%), computer games/equipment (45%) and DVDs/videos (43%).
Halifax
11 July, 2005
DSC-H1 Quick Review: Sony Cyber-shot 5 Megapixel Camera First Impressions
Barging its way into the crowded 5 megapixel “super zoom” market is Sony’s new Cyber-shot DSC-H1 camera.
Unlike some of its more esoteric, all-swivelling zoom monsters like the F828 and F717, this one looks like a conventional SLR camera, with a flip-up flash on the top, traditional camera lines and a substantial handgrip.
It’s certainly quite a beefy fella compared to its direct competitors like the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5, Konica Minolta Z5 and the Canon PowerShot S2 IS, but is still small and light enough to carry around all day.
The camera is powered by two AA batteries, which should be good for up to 300 shots.
The DSC-H1 sports a fairly small but bright 115,200 pixels electronic viewfinder (EVF) that mirrors the information displayed on the main screen.
The main LCD screen is indeed a whopper, sporting a 2.5″ bright, crisp and lag-free display using Sony’s nifty hybrid technology, which features a reflective screen making it possible to see the screen in bright sunlight
The shutter release is exactly where it should be, with a clickable ‘jog dial’ below allowing mustard-keen photographers to tweak manual exposure, program shift and AE-compensation to their heart’s delight. Very SLR-like.
The main mode dial nearby provides access to a wide selection of preset, auto and manual exposure modes with further adjustments enabled through Sony’s tried and trusted main LCD interface.
Unlike many of Sony’s previous upmarket cameras, there’s no Carl Zeiss branded lens aboard, but the compact zoom covers a very useful 36-432mm range (12x optical) with a reasonably nippy F2.8 to F3.7 maximum aperture.
Shutter speeds range from 30 to 1/1000 second, and the camera comes with optical image stabilisation built in (although Sony likes to call it Super Steady Shot’).
Motion video can be recorded in the MPEG-VX Fine mode, capable of capturing full screen VGA (640 x 480) resolution at 30fps or 16fps with audio.
Sticking firmly to their guns, the camera uses Sony’s Memory Stick as the only expansion option, although there’s 32 meg of internal memory provided.
In our quick hands-on test, the camera seemed responsive and comfortable in the hand, with punchy, crisp images straight out of the camera. Keen photographers may be disappointed by the lack of RAW/TIFF support and the lack of zoom function while in movie mode is irritating.
There’s enough manual controls to ensure that adventurous photographers can stay in control of their exposures, with a wide selection of scene modes covering most eventualities.
With a wealth of features served up in a near idiot-proof package, this is a great camera for both blundering amateurs and keen amateurs looking to capture high quality images with ease. Recommended.
Sony site
DP Review DSC-H1 review
Steve’s Digicams review
8 July, 2005
BBC To Premiere Programmes Over Broadband
The BBC has announced a pilot scheme to premiere some new TV programmes before they are broadcast on over traditional channels.
The trial starts with the new BBC3 comedy series ‘The Mighty Boosh’, which will be made available for web streaming from July 19th, one week before its scheduled TV transmission.
Jana Bennett, The BBC’s Director of Television, said: “The broadband premiere of The Mighty Boosh is a significant step forward in offering our audiences even greater value in a changing television world.
“It is one of a number of pilots that BBC Television will be undertaking over the next few months, exploiting the opportunities that new technologies offer to look at how programmes might be delivered beyond the traditional linear broadcast.”
There’s something of a stampede starting up of companies ready and willing to experiment with video over broadband, with BT announcing that it planned to begin trials of video-on-demand (VoD) via broadband early next year, ready for a full commercial roll out scheduled for summer 2006.
Telewest also recently launched its own web-based TV service, initially offering four channels as part of a trial of 26,000 consumrs in the Cheltenham and Gloucester area.
BBC Broadband
8 July, 2005
Yahoo WAP Mobile Price Check Service Launched
Yahoo! UK and Ireland have launched a handy new mobile search service which allows consumers to check the prices of goods via Yahoo! WAP services when they’re out and about.
The service, accessible on all WAP enabled phones at standard browsing rates, serves up instant price and product information from the Yahoo-owned comparison service Kelkoo.
Yahoo! said it will not charge for the service which promises to cover 3 million product offers and more than 5000 UK retailers.
Mobile users accessing the WAP site at http://wap.yahoo.co.uk, can type in their desired product into the search box and click on the “Products” button.
A result screen then displays images, pricing and product information, providing users with the low down about the cheapest prices around.
Dorothea Arndt, director of search and distribution at Kelkoo enthused: “Mobile price comparison is a major step towards aligning the on and offline shopping experience and brings us significantly closer to achieving our mission of making shopping simple for everyone.”
It all sounds great, but we found the service a little flaky.
At the first two attempts, we got a screen of results serving up nothing more than the price and the name of the shop with no location, address, phone number or Weblink. A fat lot of good, then.
However, if you persevere and click through to the next results page, a ‘compare’ link should magically appear under some products and this will let you access its full details.
Once the service is fully ironed out, shopkeepers around the UK can prepare to brace themselves for a stream of tech-savvy bargain hunters waving their WAP phones around the counter and demanding price matching.
Yahoo!
8 July, 2005
EU Hope Pan-Euro Copyright Will Open Online Music Market
The European Commission announced yesterday that it wants to give a boot up the backside of the European market for online music services by making it easier for new providers to get licences to flog songs over the Internet.
If all goes to plan, it will get rid of pesky restrictions which prevent bargain-hunting Belgium’s and hussling Hungarians from buying cheapo downloads elsewhere due to current laws stopping companies offering EU-wide services.
Clipboard-toting investigators from the EC identified the hassle that companies face in getting licences to offer music across the whole of Europe, as the main obstacle to the growth of legal online music services.
Presently, online music providers have to laboriously apply for licences in each and every one of the 25 member EU states, and then deal individually with collecting societies charged with securing royalties for artists and music firms.
We’ve covered this before back in May and November last year, originally when the EU challenge EU-wide music royalty structure and latterly when the European Music Rights hearings were on.
Internal market commissioner Charlie MacCreevy said: “The absence of pan-European copyright licences made it difficult for the new European-based services to take off. This is why we are proposing the creation of Europe-wide copyright clearance.”
The European Commission’s study argues that entirely new structures for cross-border management of copyrights were needed, concluding that this could be best achieved by letting artists and content providers to choose a collecting society to manage their copyrighted work across the whole of the EU.
With the Commission cheesed off with collecting societies basking in actual or effective monopolies in many EU member states, the new measures would increase earnings for copyright holders by lowering administrative costs and allowing the most efficient societies to compete for artists.
A proposal from the Commission aimed at abolishing the current situation where copyright holders are compelled to register with their national collecting society is expected in the third quarter.
Lucy Cronin, executive director of the European Digital Media Association (EDIMA) was as pleased as Punch with the initiative: “After years of toil, we’re pleased that the Commission has recognised the problem in the online music licensing regime.”
“The current system, based on national licensing and collecting societies, is no longer appropriate for digital services” she added.
Cronin felt that this new legislation could also benefit consumers, with an increase in pan-European licences increasing the amount of downloadable music available, as copyright holders look to exploit larger markets.
With the IT industry arguing that sales have been held back by the lack of a simple, one-stop online licensing system, online music sales in Europe remain miserably small compared to our American cousins – €28m (~£19,1m, $33.3m compared to the whopping great €207m (~£142m, ~$246m) US trade.
European Union
8 July, 2005
London Explosions Lead To Jammed Mobile Phone Networks
Mobile phone networks in London were overwhelmed for several hours following a series of terrorist blasts across central London.
As news of the attack spread, networks were running at near capacity as concerned Londoners reached for their phones to check up on friends and family.
The huge surge in the number of calls caused problems over mobile networks with many people unable to connect the first time, if at all.
Vodafone said it had reserved some network capacity for the emergency service workers dealing with the disaster, with a spokesperson adding, “because all our switches are at capacity, we need to ensure police and emergency services can communicate.
It would be a section of the network across London, so people can still make calls but it will be more difficult to make a call.”
SMS text messages were, however, still getting through due to its simple store-and-forward mechanism.
As with 9/11, many people turned to the Web for news and updates, resulting in major news sites struggling with the enormous surge in traffic.
News sites like the BBC and Sky both suffered slowdowns or brief periods of unavailability.
Bloggers were also quick to report the news, with the blog tracking service Technorati stating that there were more than 1,300 posts about the explosions by 1015 GMT.
When we looked for updates, we found that Technorati’s Web site had also gone down at 1300GMT.
BBC News report
Technorati
NewsNow
7 July, 2005
PocketParty Review: Clip-on iPod speakers
PodGear PockParty
The PocketParty is a speaker unit that plugs onto your iPod (1st generation iPods aren’t supported). It’s a white lump about 3 inches long and 1 inch square with 2 speaker grills at either end. It holds an AA battery and claims to have about 10 hours life per battery (it’s rated at 1W).
Having its own battery should mean (as claimed) it doesn’t use the battery of the iPod, but since it’s driven through the headphone output means there must be some drain on the iPod itself.
There’s a little switch on the side that allows the unit to be turned off which should conserve power when not in use.
PocketParty – a party in your pocket!
The PocketParty is reasonably loud, however it’s not a replacement for a set of external speakers. Using it in your car is going to be a disappointment, engine noise will drown it out.
You’re not going to be able to hold an open-air rave in the middle of a field with it, unless it’s just for a small collection of friends.
Where it can sound fine is in a tent or some other quiet environment not distracted by other noise.
Settings the EQ makes a huge difference, the PocketParty can sound quite flat (the speakers are only an inch square), using in dance mode made it sound fuller.
Is this something to buy? It’s VERY convenient as it’s so small and does easily fit in your pocket (as the name suggests) and it can be heard by a a group of people in the right surroundings.
It’s not going to burst your eardrums, but then that’s probably a good thing.
Star rating: 3/5
PodGear
NOTE: To hear anything the iPod volume had to be set at least half way, to get reasonable volume at least 3/4’s. This was on a European iPod which have their max volume scuppered due to EU regulations. There are “hacks” that can be found to remove the EU limitations and allow the volume to be cranked up to the same levels as the people with bleading ears in the US.
7 July, 2005
Mobile Content Market To Triple to €7.6Bn: LogicaCMG
Consumer demand for mobile downloads is going bonkers, according to research by LogicaCMG.
Downloads are predicted to triple in the next 12 months, creating a €7.6 billion (£5.23bn, $9.12bn) global market for mobile content by this time next year.
Twenty per cent of mobile phone owners worldwide have already busied themselves downloading content to their handsets and this figure is expected to soar to 60 per cent in the next 12 months.
The international survey – covering Europe, Asia Pacific, North and South America – revealed subscribers are currently shelling out €6.32 (£4.35, $7.60) per month on downloads, with more than 40 per cent of respondents expecting their spending to rise.
With over 1.5 billion mobile users worldwide (predicted to rise to 2 billion by the end of 2005) the global market for downloading content looks sure to become a multi-billion euro money-spinner within a year.
Globally, subscribers just lurve downloading ring tones, games and music, with news and sports also gaining a growing audience in Europe.
Video and movie clips also showed promise, with more than 10 per cent of mobile phone users worldwide expecting to download such content within 12 months.
New multimedia phones are fuelling a growth in video and movie downloads, with more than 10 per cent of mobile phone users worldwide expecting to download video content within 12 months (this figure rises to 25 per cent in Asia Pacific, with 10 per cent expecting to be downloading full feature films to their mobiles within 12 months).
With consumers demanding ease of payment and the ability to share content with friends, there’s pressure on the industry to invest in digital rights management and intelligent payments systems.
Paul Gleeson, chief operating officer at LogicaCMG commented: “This survey proves that a substantial market for mobile content exists, with great opportunities for mobile operators worldwide.
Mobile phone users are starting to experiment with their phones’ capabilities but, drawing a parallel with the popular SMS experience, it is clear that the service needs to be simple, safe and intuitive from initial browsing through to payment and download.
To secure a share in this booming industry, mobile operators need to look at the bigger picture, building strong relationships with customers and content partners alike to deliver high-quality services that meet the markets’ needs.”
It’s also worth noting that there’s now nothing to stop individual countries legislating software patents on their own.
LogicaCMG
LogicaCMG report
7 July, 2005
US Wi-Fi ‘Thief’ Man Charged
US police have arrested a Florida man for gaining illegal access on a domestic wireless Internet network.
In one of the first criminal cases involving this practice, Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pre-trial hearing this month after an April arrest on charges of “unauthorised access to a computer network” – a third-degree felony in the States.
Police say Smith ‘fessed up to sneakily logging on to the Wi-Fi signal after he was spotted using a laptop in his SUV outside the house of Richard Dinon.
Although it’s quite a widespread practice, the newness of the crime means that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement doesn’t even keep statistics, according to a report in the St. Petersburg Times.
With the rise of domestic Wi-Fi networks and Wi-Fi enabled PDAs, laptops and smartphones, more and more people are sniffing out unsecured networks and enjoying a free ride on other people’s connections.
There’s not much harm in that, but the newspaper report points out the darker side of Wi-Fi pilfering, with criminals using the unsecured networks to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and even send death threats.
The problem is that few people bother utilising the security protection that comes with their Wi-Fi routers, even though turning on encryption or requiring passwords would make things considerably more difficult for network freeloaders.
If Smith is found guilty of the charges, the outcome could set a dangerous precedent for wireless networking and potentially criminalise tens of thousands of mobile users who regularly log on to any signal they can find.
St. Petersburg Times
7 July, 2005