Content Deals – Page 11 – Digital-Lifestyles

‘Podvertising’ Supports Virgin Radio Daily Podcast

Virgin Radio Starts Sponsored Daily Podcast Virgin Radio is making highlights of its breakfast show available for digital audio players like the iPod, in what it claims is a first for “podcasting”.

The station began making its Pete and Geoff show available to download today, saying it is the first UK station to podcast a daily show.

Podcasting allows audio programmes to be downloaded and later replayed on a computer or popular digital audio players such as iPods, Creative Zens or Walkmans.

Virgin Radio Starts Sponsored Daily Podcast The BBC has already been experimenting with the new audio distribution model, introducing weekly podcasts of Five Live’s weekly sports quiz Fighting Talk after a successful trial using Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ series on Radio 4, downloaded by more than 70,000 users.

Listeners can sign up to the service on Virgin’s Website, with a link encouraging users to download the free iPodder desktop software for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Once subscribed to the service, listeners will get the latest show highlights every time they synchronise their MP3 player with their computer.

The Virgin podcast sidesteps the still-unresolved copyright issues of distributing music via podcasting by simply editing it all out – Virgin will serve up a half-hour edit of its four-hour breakfast show with all the music, news, weather, traffic and travel cut out.

Interestingly, the UK government Central Office of Information and online travel company Expedia are sponsoring the service via what Virgin cringingly describes as “podvertising”.

Virgin Radio sales director Lee Roberts said: “Radio stations have to adapt to the changing market and new platforms in order to create new revenue channels. We’re proud to be the first with podvertising.”

The Virgin sponsorship deal ensures that their podcasts will be relatively ad-free, although some advertisers may be reluctant to invest too heavily in a format where the ‘fast forward’ key only an iPod twitch away.

Pod casting has already taken off in the United States but has been slow to find an audience in Europe.

Virgin Radio Starts Sponsored Daily Podcast Although the format is already creating a few podcasting stars, it has to be said that most of the thousands of personal radio broadcasts currently available to download are home-made, rough-edged, and, frankly, pretty crap.

With increasing sales of MP3 players sales, there’s every possibility that Virgin’s commercial initiative may help push the format into the mainstream.

Virgin Radio Podcasts
Adam Curry Wants to Make You an iPod Radio Star (Wired)
iPodder

eContentplus €149m Digital Content Fund Get EU OK

EU IST eContentplus The European Parliament has voted in favour of a new programme to promote the European digital content market, setting it a budget of €149m (~$194m, ~£103m) for the next three years.

The eContentplus programme aims to tackle the fragmentation of the European digital content market by supporting the development of multi-lingual content for innovative, online services.

“The internet offers a unique opportunity for content companies to outgrow their so far mostly national markets”, said Viviane Reding, the Commissioner responsible for Information Society and Media.
“The eContentplus programme will facilitate the production and distribution of online European content, thus stimulating innovation and creativity. At the same time it will help to preserve and share Europe’s cultural and linguistic identities and give them a more prominent place on the Internet,” Reding added.

The European Parliament voted in favour of the programme with only one amendment, which sets the budget of the programme at €149m for the period 2005-2008. Reding said the new budget was a substantial increase in comparison to the previous programme.

The eContentplus programme will concentrate on the parts of the digital content market where there is clear fragmentation in Europe, and where market forces have not been enough to drive growth.

It targets three areas – spatial or geographical data, educational material and cultural content.

In the case of geographical data such as post codes, planning and land registration details, fragmentation occurs because different member states collect and store data in different ways.

If the programme can reduce this fragmentation, it can open the way for new EU-wide information services using this data in areas such as transportation, navigation, emergency response and environmental management.

The eContentplus programme is part of a set of measures to boost innovation and creativity in the converging content market, including the MEDIAplus programme, and the modernisation of the Television Without Frontiers Directive, due later this year.
eContentplus

Midem Mobile Music Forum Report

Few topics are as hot as mobile music right now, with the Midem Mobile Music Forum the place to be on the subject. Panelists touched upon several important areas, with all attempting to understand the future direction of explosive medium. Once again, Digital Music News was on the ground to capture the chatter.

Just who is buying all of those ringtones and downloads through their phones? A knee-jerk reaction seems to always point to the younger buyer, though many close to the space are seeing activity from the older buyer. During one of the mobile music panels, Martin Peronnet (Content Director, Mobile/i-mode division of French operator Bouygues Telecom) declared that 15% of his customers are in the 35 -40 age bracket. That is a total of one million customers, with many among the most active subscribers. Others revealed similar data, with Universal Mobile Chairman Cédric Ponsot announcing the launch of a series of oldies realtones, based on major hits from the 60s. Clearly, ringtones aren`t just for kids.

With the mobile music space expanding, where do things go from here? Many were convinced that 2005 will be the breakout year for the space, with new services like full song downloads on the horizon. But many attendees urged their peers to remain focused on ringtones, the most lucrative aspect so far. Meanwhile, projections were bandied about, with event chairman Ralph Simon forecasting a $11.2 billion space by 2008 .

But more money can sometimes bring more problems, with operators, publishers, and labels swimming in disagreement. Vodafone Global Marketing Director Guy Laurence gave a clear warning to the music industry when he declated that “the music industry needs to sort out the mess between publishers and labels and figure out who owns what during the next quarter. It is the consumers that matter. The bickering has to stop.” In another panel, Chrysalis Group Chief Executive Richard Huntingford expressed his concern about Vodafone exerting too much control. “What do they know about music?” he asked, calling for the music producers to unite their efforts. Orange Marketing Handset Services & Solutions Director Pascal Thomas called for mutual collaboration, reminding attendees that the CD has been around for 20 years with almost no innovation, while the mobile business is rapidly deploying new products.

Mobile Music Forum

The Sun launch Page 3 Soft Porn to Mobile Phones

News International, the publisher of well known UK tabloid ‘newspaper’, The Sun, has opened the doors on its own mobile content service that it calls Sun Mobile.

It will feature ringtones, java games and … you guessed it … Page 3 wallpapers and screen savers. For our non-UK readers, Page 3 of the Sun is dominated by a photo of a topless (at least) woman.

The service won’t be short of promotion. The Sun website, Sun Online, has around 3m users, with half of its traffic coming from the US and Canada. The printed paper has a circulation of 9 million.

Despite The Sun having a presence on the Vodafone live! and Orange World portals, News International (NI) has set up their own mobile site, developed by Blue Start Mobile. It will be accessible in over 130 countries around the world, thanks to NI’s deal with Bango.

Many mobile content providers are discontented with what they see as unbalanced, operator-biased revenue splits that the mobile phone company are currently offering in the UK. It sounds to us like NI has recognised this, as Simon Ashley the commercial manager dealing with the launch points out, “Sun Mobile gives us direct, interactive relationship with our customers on mobile.”

Sun Mobile (contains nudity)

iBod from PlayBoy = iPorn

PlayBoy iBod It’s not that we’re surprised by this news, but it did send a ripple of laughter around the Digital Lifestyles offices today.

In this world of new words being made up on what feels like an hourly basis, PlayBoy brings us iBod.

Not surprisingly, their newly launched service entails delivering photos of scantily clad women to Apple’s Photo iPod. It’s nothing more than that really.

For years, many have been enthusing about the huge revenues that will come from delivering p0rn to portable devices, based on the one-to-one relationship that people have with them. A few years back, when 3G operators the world over worried about how to make up the huge fees they had paid for the licences, some joked that 3G stood for Girls, Goals and Games.

Playboy already sells to major wireless markets such as Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil. They recently announced that they will now offer the same in the US.

The fantastically-named Randy Nicolau, president of distribution for the Playboy Entertainment Group said “Given the extraordinary success we’ve had with our wireless offerings around the world, we felt the time was right to expand our wireless content to the millions of U.S. subscribers.”

To the best of our knowledge the Photo iPod isn’t waterproof, but the Click Wheel is well known for its single hand operation.

PlayBoy iBod

Blu-Ray gets Disney support

The battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD is heating up. Reuters carries the story of Disney pledging support for Sony’s Blue-ray. Disney will make films available on the release of Blu-ray players, which are first expected in 2006 in North America.

At the end of November Warner, Paramount, Universal and New Line Cinema pledged their support for HD-DVD.

Blu-Ray uses a blue-violet laser with a very fine focus. This enables it to store 25GB of data on a single-layer disk, sufficient for 2 hours of HDTV, or 13 of standard-definition TV. The dual-layer versions of the discs that can hold 50GB. HD-DVD holds 20Gb on a single-layer disk.

“Everyone is looking for the right format … to release their content. That is a combination of consumer adoption of the players and the platform, content protection, and adequate capacity. We think Blu-ray is there,” Murphy told Reuters in a phone interview.

Having said they’re supporting Blu-ray, Disney isn’t saying that they won’t support the rival HD-DVD. At least they’ve has gone one step further than 20th Century Fox, who, despite being founding members, haven’t committed to publish on the format as yet.

There’s been a trickle of announcements over the past months giving support to Blue-ray, from HP on 15 Nov saying they’ll ship computers with drives next year and in their laptops in 2006; Sharp on 11.Nov saying they’ll ship the BD-HD100, a combined HDTV tuner, 160GB hard disk and Blu-ray recorder (25GB) in December this year;

i-mode UK Bound Via mmO2?

There has been some press speculation over the last day or so about mmO2 partnering with DoCoMo to bring their phone and content platform, i-mode, to the UK. Reuters reported that mmO2’s Chief Executive, Peter Erskine, had said last week that the company would decide by year-end on whether to introduce i-mode.

Things appear to have moved on, and this morning the Financial Times is more firm on the story, reporting that O2 will announce the deal next week. They say the service would start next year.

We spoke to mmO2 and their official comment was “the process is ongoing and we are still on schedule to announce before the end of the year”, so no big scoop for us there then. In conversation they did mentioned that the i-mode service has become more attractive over the years, since they last looked at it. Over that time the available range of handsets has increased significantly, it has driven up usage in the markets it has been deployed and the range of content available now for the platform has increased substantially.

[A brief interlude. Why is the company sometimes called mmO2 and other times O2? Let us clear up the confusion. mmO2 is the parent company that operates in a number of countries (UK, Ireland, etc). Its operating units in these countries are called O2. So, parent co=mmO2, local instance=O2.]

i-mode is a huge in Japan, where it has 42m users. Some even credit it with bringing the Internet to the youth of Japan. As home computer ownership previously wasn’t that large, the youth used their phone to get online.

It is already running in four European countries; Germany, France, Italy and Spain, although the take up figures haven’t been what you would call stunning, running at around 4m over the continent. The UK is a big gap in DoCoMo’s European coverage.

For content producers, the most interesting thing about i-mode is its content publishing model. Compared with other mobile platforms in the UK who can take as much as 50-60% of payments made by consumers, i-mode takes significantly less – in the low double digits.

It’s deals like this that are highly likely to draw content to mmO2 – it’s not wholly surprising that content producers will be inclined to get the most income from their wares as possible.

Given the current fashion among 3G watchers is to think that the winners in 3G will be those with the strongest content, a generous share of the income to draw in content owners could be a very smart move by mmO2.

DoCoMo
mm02

CNN News Free to Mobiles, Xerox Sponsored

CNN News to mobiles, Xerox Sponsor CNN has launched a news service over Europe that delivers the top ten CNN headlines to mobile phones without a subscription charge.

The phone owner will receive the 10 top stories of the day as chosen by the CNN.com site editorial team. If the application is kept ‘live’, ie. running on the handset, it will continue to receive news updates. When the GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) is turned off, either by the user or because they drop out of range, the news items remain accessible, as they are stored on the handset.

The process of signing up for the service sounds simple. The phone user sends an SMS requesting the service and a returned WAP link takes the phone to a Java application that is automatically downloaded to the handset. The news is then delivered to it using the data-only GPRS otherwise know as 2.5G.

Consumers will not have to pay a subscription charge for this service, as Xerox will be sponsoring it. In return Xerox will have their logo displayed as the service starts, on the home page and on the individual news pages. Xerox is paying a fixed price for the deal, which doesn’t vary on the number of people who sign up for it. Although users of the service can click through to a page of information about Xerox, which they have editorial control over, the real driver for their involvement is the association with the CNN brand and a leading-edge application of technology.

CNN have been pretty adventurous in distributing their news product to many platforms. CNN mobile currently offers a breaking news service to mobiles via SMS, which it charges Euro 4.75/month. In Austrian, Finland, Italy and the Netherlands, mobile owners are able to watch CNN on their handsets via their GPRS video streaming service.

There will be those in the mobile content world who will find this type of deal a little disturbing. They are currently very pleased that consumers appear to associate mobile content with paying – in stark contrast to Internet based content. If the consumer starts being offered quality content for no money, they might get used to it.

Expect more deals like this from media owners, as Kevin Razvi, head of CNN International ad sales says, “Our expanding portfolio of wireless businesses exposes advertisers directly to a broad consumer base through a highly relevant service for an increasingly mobile and technically-savvy target audience.”

CNN
Xerox

Entertainment Now: UK 3’s Deal with APTN

3, the first 3G network in the UK, are further enhancing their content offering by announcing a deal with Associated Press Television News (APTN). APTN will provide the video show, “Entertainment Now” that will be released twice a week and cover ‘celebrity entertainment’. In their words, it will be “quirky and irreverent, poking fun at the rich and famous, and of course, the infamous.”

3 customers have two ways to pay for the content. At 50p per clip or they can watch as much video as they like by paying £5 per month for the “video value” add-on.

We spoke to Deanna Gullery, APTN’s New Product Marketing Manager about the deal. They currently sell a 24 minute version of Entertainment NOW (is it just us or is the capitalisation unnecessary?) that goes to air with a number of broadcasters in various countries on a weekly basis.

The 3 version will be a cut down version, primarily featuring celebrity interviews, calling on AP’s strong access to the stars. It will be edited in-house down to between 2 and 4 minutes, voiced over and releases on Tuesday and Thursday.

We think the 3 deal is an interesting example of a content creation company making the most of their assets – “Sweating your assets” as we believe the 80’s phrase for was. AP are all over the world (80 bureaux in 67 countries) shooting this type of material for ‘traditional’ media outlets anyway. Why not make the most of it and edit it together in to custom pieces? We’re strong believers in this type of approach.

We don’t think this is the kind of content that will drive people to join the 3 services, it’s more about maximising Average Revenue Per User (ARPU, in trade terms). Their current ARPU taking the first 7 months of this year is £43.22 per customer, per month.

Three
Associated Press Television News

Philips Sells Total Holding In Vivendi Universal

Royal Philips Electronics has sold its total holding of 32,265,561 shares in Paris-based conglomerate Vivendi Universal. The transaction, which closed yesterday, will provide Philips with proceeds of approximately 720 million euros, and will result in a non-taxable gain of approximately 300 million euros in the fourth quarter. Prior to this transaction, Philips’ holding represented approximately 3 per cent of Vivendi Universal’s outstanding shares. Philips’s share prise rose 1.1 per cent after the announcement, while Vivendi shares fell 0.7 per cent.

The initial combination of the companies was believed to lead to the strengthening of all parties involved, including Philips and its shareholders, by creating a global powerhouse in entertainment and services in the new economy. Philips was a set-top box provider for Vivendi, with whom it supplied to Vivendi’s Canal+ division. Philips has not commented further on why it has sold all of its holdings

Vivendi Universal which began as a French civil engineering enterprise, grew to absorb the Universal entertainment conglomerate in the US and then sold or spun off most of its media acquisitions after investors lost patience over rising debts. Restructuring since 2002 has reduced Vivendi to a much smaller, but significant French film, television and telecommunications operator. The company was expected to drop the ‘Universal’ part of its corporate name in 2003 after a deal that transferred its US film, theme park and cable television interests to a joint venture with NBC-owner General Electric.

In 2001, Vivendi Universal and Sony launched ‘Duet’, an alternative to Napster. The service sported monitoring of what’s downloaded and listened to, better sound quality, a subscription service, and pay-per-listen options. ‘We hope to license 50 per cent of the world’s music’, said a company representative. To kick-start the venture, Vivendi Universal purchased MP3.com for about $350 million, a move that followed Napster’s deal with media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Both deals marked a critical moment of détente and an admission that the labels needed the help of their one-time enemies, as they got serious about online distribution. Unfortunately, that dream failed too.

Philips
Vivendi Universal