Music

Napster Live, Music TV Series To Broadcast On UK’s Channel 4
Napster UK has teamed up with Channel 4 to broadcast a short series of live TV music shows, creating the first national terrestrial television programme to be run by a digital music service.
Napster UK has announced the deal to broadcast the predictably titled “Napster Live”, which will take the form of six 11 minute programmes featuring “established and emerging acts”.
Each episode will serve up an exclusive performance of two songs by a featured artist, along with an interview, biography and the all-important competition spot.
The programmes are being put together by independent television production company Blaze TV (who also knock out the weekly music show CD:UK).
Included in Channel 4’s ‘T4 Youth and Music’ programming, the first show will be screened at midnight on Saturday April 16 and feature rock band Garbage.
Other acts so far confirmed for Napster Live on Channel 4 include MOBO-winning UK R&B artist Estelle and UK rockers The Subways.
Napster Live already exists on the Napster digital music service as audio-only recordings, but the TV show will showcase a new format produced exclusively for Napster and Channel 4 by Blaze TV. Music from the TV show will be made available online at a later date on the Napster UK service.
“We’re incredibly excited to be teaming up with Napster on what feels like a truly unique and exciting proposition for 4Music,” frothed Neil McCallum, Commissioning Editor, T4, Youth & Music. “The bands booked are exactly the sorts of artists we’ve been supporting and this allows us to capitalise on bringing even more live music to a wider, up-for-it audience.”
“To extend the Napster experience to television is the logical next step in the UK roll out of the biggest brand in digital music,” purred Leanne Sharman, Napster vice-president and UK general manager.
Building up to a crescendo of mutual backslapping, Sharman added: “Channel 4 has a deserved reputation for groundbreaking and forward-looking programming as well as championing live music, so we’re delighted to make our TV debut on their platform. Napster is also extremely fortunate to have a partner like Blaze TV whose production skills, expertise and contact book have proven invaluable in creating this series.”
Not one to miss out on the quote frenzy, Conor McAnally, Blaze TV director of programmes, offered this insight: “In a world where the production and consumption of music are changing so drastically and so rapidly we are delighted to be involved with the market leader in music digital downloading and to have been given the opportunity to create exciting new programming for Channel 4 whose commitment to music, and especially new music, is unparalleled in the UK”.
Although eleven minute pop music programmes are hardly going to change the face of modern TV, Napster’s move reflects the inevitable convergence between online and terrestrial TV, with download charts already hitting the mainstream.
The series will be broadcast every Saturday night on Channel 4 from April 16, 2005 for six weeks.
Napster UK
Channel 4
4 April, 2005
R.E.M. On-Demand Music Channel Launched By HomeChoice
Video Networks, providers of the HomeChoice entertainment and communications service, has announced the addition of a brand new R.E.M. video-on-demand (VoD) channel to its platform.
HomeChoice customers keen to keep on losing their religion will gain exclusive access to the channel – which has been entirely designed and built in-house – from 31st March 2005.
Earlier this year also saw the re-release of nine of R.E.M.’s most successful albums including Green, Out of Time and Automatic for the People. The launch of the R.E.M. channel ties in with the band’s UK tour.
The V:MX R.E.M. channel is being trumpeted as the first artist specific video-on-demand package in the world and will sit within HomeChoice’s suite of V:MX music channels, which feature a library of over 3,000 music videos.
The R.E.M. channel will offer a R.E.M. videography (a what?!), featuring the nine re-released R.E.M. albums.
Sofa reclining HomeChoice customers will be able to access music videos – and associated live and documentary footage – by selecting the appropriate album cover using their remote control.
The functionality of the HomeChoice service will let customers create their own R.E.M. play list from the music videos on the channel and optionally purchase downloadable tracks by SMS.
While useful, this isn’t quite as slick as it sounds: if a viewer hears a track they want to buy, they have to click on the onscreen information button which will provide a number to text. A code is then sent back to them which they can enter when they log onto the Internet to download the music track. When we spoke to HomeChoice, they told us they were working on a more integrated way of getting pay-for content to their customers.
Naturally, there’s the usual ring tone guff provided for those who like to display their ‘individuality’ with irritating phone noises, with the channel offering 10 R.E.M. true tones of their most popular tracks, purchasable via SMS for £3 (US$5.60 /€4.40) each.
The R.E.M. channel will also include four competitions throughout the life of the channel, with prizes including an MP3 player pre-loaded with R.E.M. tracks, a pair of VIP tickets to R.E.M.’s concert in Hyde Park in July plus several R.E.M. goody bags.
The deal is what ghastly corporate types would call a “synergetic win win situation”, with Video Networks telling us that “no money has changed hands as both parties have brought certain elements to the channel and will then be sharing the revenue from the downloads and ring tones.” This would make sense, Warners/R.E.M. are providing a lot of content, and HomeChoice/Video Networks are providing a lot of design, programming and, of course, bandwidth. Video Networks have 34 people working in their in-house design studio and within the TV product team.
Roger Lynch, Chairman and Chief Executive, Video Networks Ltd said: “The addition of this on-demand channel is not only a true coup for R.E.M. fans but also ensures Video Networks continues to offer the most innovative music content on TV in the world today.”
The R.E.M. music channel will be automatically available to all shiny, happy customers who currently subscribe to the HomeChoice music package.
The negotiations for the deal with Warner Music have been underway since the beginning of 2005, brokered by a Video Networks BizDev person, who joined them from the music business. The service launches on 31st March 2005 and is available for a total of 16 weeks.
Home Choice
Video Networks
R.E.M. official site
4 April, 2005
E680i, E725: Motorola Previews New Music Phones
After the humiliating no-show of their much hyped (and currently in-limbo) iTunes phone at CeBIT earlier this month, Motorola have hit back with two new music phones.
The Motorola E680i is a stylised version of its first Linux-based music phone, retaining the integrated FM tuner and tri-band GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900 MHz coverage with improved Bluetooth support capable of outputting stereo audio courtesy of the AD2P profile.
The handset boasts dual stereo speakers with virtual surround sound and can handle just about any music format you care to lob at it, including MP3 and WMA, AAC, MIDI and WAV.
The E680i comes with a large 65K colour touchscreen with QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) resolution and the same 0.3 MP integrated digital camera as found in the E680.
There’s also the usual basic suite of applications, support for J2ME, handwriting recognition, messaging support (including e-mail), and USB 1.1.
The handset is slated for release in the Asia Pacific in April 2005, but there’s been no pricing or worldwide availability announcements from Motorola yet
Motorola E725
Sporting a ‘slider’ form factor, the E725 is a music player-cum-smartphone featuring a 1.9″ display (176 x 220 pixels resolution) with dedicated music keys, 5-band graphic equaliser and dual stereo speakers with virtual surround sound.
The E725 offers support for CDMA2000 1xEV-DO which – in English – means that it can rapidly download full music tracks over the air directly to the handset. Naturally, users can also sync the handset with their PCs and make use of the memory expansion slot supporting miniSD cards up to 2 GB.
All the rest of the features of the E680i are present and correct: an FM radio, a 0.3 MP camera, a 3.5 mm earphone jack, USB, a memory expansion slot (supporting miniSD cards up to 1 GB) and the same dual stereo speakers with virtual surround sound.
The E725 also sports a set of daft ‘rhythm lights’ for funky disco people who think its waaaaay cool to have a series of LED lights pulsating to the beat of the music currently playing.
The E725 is expected to arrive in North America in the second half of 2005, but, once again, Motorola are being coy about pricing details.
Motorola
29 March, 2005
BPI: UK CD Sales Beat The World
New figures released by the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) confirm that UK music fans are the numero uno, mad-for-it music buyers in the world, with each tune-loving Brit buying on average 3.2 CDs per person per year.
The announcement comes after the UK record industry announced its best ever year for album sales, with British-signed newcomers the Scissor Sisters and Dad-pleasing rocksters Keane topping the album charts in 2004.
The figures confirm that the UK rules the sound waves with each resident buying on average 3.2 units in 2004, followed by the USA (2.8), Germany (2.2), France (2.1) and Japan (2.0).
Incredibly, the UK releases around 26,000 albums per year – second only to the US in the number of releases – with the UK market recording an overall 3.0% increase in volume sales over 2004, helped by a robust albums market.
With a record 174.6 million units sold, the UK CD albums market continued to outperform its international counterparts in 2004, growing by 4.5%.
These latest statistics follow recent BPI research showing 55.4% of the UK population between 12 and 74 shelled out for at least one album last year.
After a massive increase in online and offline unauthorised access in recent years and doomsayers lining up to predict the end of record companies, this represents a significant achievement for the UK recorded music industry.
It also raises questions about recent BPI lawsuits against alleged P2P file-swappers and the promotional role the networks may be playing.
BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson says: “The strength of the UK market in the face of worldwide decline is a testament to the skills and courage of UK record companies who have never stopped taking risks in signing and developing some of the best talent in the world.
Improving prospects for recorded music internationally is also good news for the UK since after the US we remain the world’s biggest exporter of music.”
Jamieson added: “The UK is a nation of music lovers, so it’s not surprising to see the UK at the top of this list. A slew of great new British artists have met UK music fans’ demand for great music.”
The growth in digital sales has played a major part in helping the global music business tackle its five year slump, with 200 million downloads sold in the world’s four leading digital markets (US, UK, France and Germany) last year.
The arrival of high-profile legitimate digital music services such as iTunes helped lift UK single-track sales by 4.0% in 2004 with 5.7 million downloads sold, breathing life into the British singles market.
With album bundles and sales of digital EPs also doing good business in the UK, the Official UK Charts Company estimate that the total UK market for downloads topped 9 million units in 2004.
Peter Jamieson commented: “The main choice today’s music fan now has to make is whether to get music legally or illegally. As these figures show, more and more music fans are now making the right choice and helping make great British music.”
These trend-bucking figures reflect the UK’s huge enthusiasm for music, and although the industry must be chuffed with the growth of legally downloaded music, we wonder what impact the exponential growth of broadband in the UK may have on future sales.
BPI
24 March, 2005
SPH-M4300 LAN: WiFi Music Phone From Samsung
Samsung’s R&D team’s crack-like addiction to creating new products continues apace with the announcement of a new Wireless LAN Music Phone.
Their all-singing, all-dancing SPH-M4300 LAN music phone allows users to watch a variety of television broadcast and Internet contents on the handset, and comes with a built-in ‘powerful sound system’, featuring dual speakers.
Now, when someone says ‘powerful sound system’, we think of an all-night squat party rave with bass bins the size of small continents, but Samsung are talking about how their adoption of SRS technology (a 3D sound technology usually used in MP3 players) will give the SPH-M4300 a sonic edge over their rivals.
Despite boasting more multimedia widgets than an interactive James Bond robot, the handset is a slim (114×59×25mm) slider-style phone, featuring a 2.8-inch LCD, a nippy 520MHz CPU and a 1.3 megapixel camera.
Running on Microsoft’s mobile operating system Pocket PC 2003 Phone Edition, users will be able to run applications like Outlook, Word and Excel, with the latest Windows Media Player on hand for playback of multimedia content like movies and music.
Sadly, there’s no QWERTY keyboard on the handset.
There’s been no announcement about internal storage capacity or expansion card slots, or if the unit supports Bluetooth as yet.
We like the look of this one, and (if it ever makes it out of Korea) the inclusion of wi-fi streaming could give it an edge over the hugely-selling PalmOne Treo 600/650 range.
Samsung
22 March, 2005
Yahoo Buys Flickr
Yahoo has whipped out its wildly wedgified wallet and snapped up the online photo-sharing service Flickr, less than a week after launching a beta test of its new blogging tool.
Flickr lets users upload digital photos from computers, PDAs and camera phones, create their own photo albums, post photos to blogs, and store, sort, search and share your photos online.
Joanna Stevens, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo, confirmed the deal Sunday: “We look forward to working with them for their innovation and product development across the Yahoo Network in the coming months,” she said.
Stevens said Flickr will remain a standalone site for now. The company’s employees, however, will have to up sticks to Sunnyvale later this year.
Yahoo’s existing photos hosting and sharing service, Yahoo Photos, will gain features from Flickr, although the two services will remain separate “for the foreseeable future.”
There will be some early integration, however, with the ability to log into Flickr using a Yahoo ID and password.
According to Caterina Fake, Flickr’s vice president of marketing and community, users of the company’s free and paid-for services will get more space, while prices for professional accounts are expected to fall.
This announcement comes less than a week after Yahoo announced Yahoo 360. This service combines a new blogging tool, along with long-established Yahoo products such as instant messaging, photo storage/sharing and Internet radio.
The service also includes social networking tools for sharing recommendations about places to eat, favourite films, fab music, great clubs (like London’s Offline, for example!) and so on.
The acquisition of Flickr (and parent company Ludicorp Research & Development) and the development of the Yahoo 360 service reflects a growing interest in social networking and blogging services.
Microsoft added a blog product for its MSN Web service in December, called MSN Spaces. Google, meanwhile, owns the hugely successful Web log service Blogger and social networking site Orkut.
Flickr
Yahoo 360
21 March, 2005
Tango.TV: TELE2 Launches Free 3G TV For Phones
European telco AB has announced that it’s launched the first worldwide free TV station available on 3G mobile phones, via its own TV channel Tango.TV (TTV).
Describing themselves as the “leading alternative pan-European telecommunications company” (have they got, like, cray-zee hairstyles and listen to The White Stripes all day?), the TV station is a product of their development centre located in Luxembourg.
The centre is in charge of applying the company’s convergence strategy and has also created an Internet radio, the painfully cheesy-sounding Sunshine Radio, also available on 3G phones.
The streams are available to any customer looking for some full-on AOR action from the new wap portal T.TVMobile.
We gave the channel a listen via the Web and weren’t impressed. The Dad-friendly soft rock was bad enough, but the dire tunes were rendered even more unlistenable by the stream jumping around like a hyperactive flea on amyl nitrate.
We couldn’t work out if this was supposed to be the 3G TV station or not, but after five minutes of looking at a blank screen on our desktop media player, we gave up waiting.
Lars-Johan Jarnheimer, CEO of Tele2 said; “With the launch of this TV over 3G service, Tele2 is showing that it is at the leading edge of mobile technological developments. We look forward to monitoring the development of this service in Luxembourg to learn about customer behaviour, which we can apply later to our other mobile markets”.
There’s no doubt that mobile TV and radio has a strong future, but this venture strikes me as being more of a publicity stunt than anything. And seeing as I’m writing about it, I guess it’s worked too. Doh! Outwitted again!
Tele2
Sunshine Radio
TTV Online
21 March, 2005
Apple iPod Under Pressure From East
Until now, Apple has been pretty safe in its position of master of all digital music players. That’s lead to speculation of their crown slipping. We’re fresh back from the European consumer show CeBIT and saw many, many good looking, highly functioned, portable music players there.
The Far Eastern companies that’ve been building digital music players for the Western companies have learned a few tricks. Not content to just been passivley manufacture, they have discovered design and embraced it. In our view they have what is needed to go toe-to-toe with Apple.
In addition to that, Korean electronics giant Samsung has launched a hefty push into the highly competitive MP3 player market with six brand-spanking-new players.
The half dozen new players should be available in the first half of the year, ranging from a 256 megabyte flash memory type to a 30 gigabyte hard disk drive model capable of holding about 7,500 songs.
The pocket-sized players will sport colour screens and radio tuners, while some will allow users to watch music videos or take digital photographs.
The company has vowed to grab a giant sized slice of the highly lucrative market within in the next two years.
Samsung sold 1.7 million MP3 players last year, and is the market frontrunner in China. Mindful of expanding its presence, the company said it will focus on products that go beyond the basic flash and hard-disk categories and include products that target the premium, fashion and video-enhanced market segments.
In other words, they’re going to try and outflank Apple by stuffing their players full of multifunctional and multimedia gizmos that allow users to play electronic games, watch music videos and movies, and view digital photographs.
We’ve no doubt that these players will be lovely little fellas, but whether they’ll be capable of overcoming the sheer market presence and all-round design quality of Apple – and more recently Sony – is open to question (Sony’s shift to open standards, switching from its proprietary ATRAC music format to MP3 is a highly significant development).
Both Apple and Sony have branched out into music delivery solutions and it remains to be seen whether a hardware-only product will have enough clout, ‘cool’ and interconnectivity to unseat the market leaders.
After all, with zillions of options available to consumers, it’s vital for music device makers to offer shedloads of connectivity with other hardware, along with easy access to the content.
Samsung
18 March, 2005
Ezmax EZMP4200P, VoIP-capable MP3 Player
MP3 playing device includes software for sending and receiving Internet-based phone calls.
Cackling wildly at iSuppli’s recent analysis that consumers don’t like MP3 players stuffed with extra gadgets, Ezmax of South Korea has announced a gizmo-tastic MP3 player that allows users to make and receive telephone calls using VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol).
The South Korean company says that their EZMP4200P player will contain software allowing users to make VoIP calls when the device is linked to a web-connected PC via a USB 2.0 port, using a microphone incorporated in the device’s earphone cord.
Ezmax’s director, Lee Sung Soo, explained that a player plugged into a desktop or notebook PC will appear onscreen as a removable disk icon. Double clicking on that puppy will launch the dialling software, enabling the user to make calls on the MP3 player-cum phone.
Users need to sign up with a VoIP provider before they can start getting chatty on their device. The company is currently talking to providers in South Korea, Germany, and other European countries to ensure compatibility with their networks.
Ezmax demonstrated the device at their stand at CeBIT, plugging the player into a notebook PC and successfully making a call via the VoIP dialling software.
We imagine the gasps from onlookers were either a sign of amazement or an expression of extreme bafflement as they – like us – pondered over the usefulness of an MP3 player that has to be plugged into a laptop to make a call.
Software for the EZMP4200P (doesn’t that just roll off the tongue?) is presently compatible with Windows 2000/XP, with Ezmax claiming that Mac OS X compatible software will be ready sometime in the ‘near future’ so don’t go throwing your iPods away quite yet Mac-fans!
The flash memory-based device is 2.8 inches long, 0.9 inches in diameter, and weighs 0.8 ounces without the AAA-size battery.
As well as MP3 music files, it can playback formats such as WMA (Windows Media Audio), ASF (Advanced Systems Format), and Ogg and comes with a built in FM radio.
In addition, the device is capable of voice recording and sports a two-colour (blue and yellow) 128 pixel by 64 pixel OLED screen.
The EZMP4200P should be launched in May and be available in three models, each with a different storage capacity: 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB.
The added VoIP software adds about US$8 (£4.25, €6) to the price of the company’s non-VoIP capable devices. Prices for the EZMP4200P will be about US$150 (£78, €112) for the 256MB model and about US$220 (£115, €165) for the 1GB model, the company says.
17 March, 2005
MP3 Player Sales Set To Nearly Quadruple By 2009
Shipments of MP3 players soared by an enormous 116% in 2004, as hundreds of wallet-tempting products arrived in response to the phenomenal success of Apple iPod player, according to a survey by Market Intelligence firm, iSuppli.
Propelled by the soaring growth in demand for hard disk drive (HDD)-based products, iSuppli predicts shipments of MP3 players will nearly quadruple from 2004 to 2009.
The company forecasts that total MP3 player shipments will expand to 132 million units in 2009, rising at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.1% from 36.8 million in 2004.
Although growth in 2005 is expected to slow from the frenzied buying levels of 2004, the MP3 market will continue to expand at a rapid rate, with iSuppli predicting unit shipments of MP3s rising to 57.7 million in 2005, up 57% from 36.8 million in 2004.
The super, soaraway success of the iPod echoed the public’s love affair with HDD-based MP3 players, with competitors moving quickly to offer products that aped the iPod’s use of a 1.8-inch HDD.
The iSuppli report also predicts that HDD-based MP3 player shipments will grow by a CAGR of 41.8% from 2004 to 2009, as compared to 22.9% for flash-based players.
Shipments are expected to 56.2 million units in 2009, up from 9.8 million in 2004, with HDD-based products accounting for nearly half of all MP3 shipments, at 42.6% in 2009 (up from only 26.6% in 2004).
The overall small form-factor HDD market had revenues of US$2.2 billion in 2004 and likely will rise to US$5.7 billion in 2008, generating a CAGR of more than 27 % over this period, iSuppli predicts.
The first vendor to ship 1.8-inch HDDs was Toshiba. Hitachi Global Storage Technology also has started shipping these drives and Western Digital Corp. (WDC) is expected to begin shipping them later in the year.
The research group said electronics producers stood to benefit from consumers’ willingness to pay more for “waaaaaay cool” products, something that Apple traditionally excels at and something that Sony clearly has in mind with its funky new line-up of Walkmans.
“Initially, (Apple’s) iPod was quite expensive, but the company reduced prices when the competition arrived. It also has aggressively introduced many generations of products in quick succession over the past four years,” iSuppli said.
But iSuppli warned companies not to try to squeeze too many features into their products: “The so-called ‘Swiss Army Knife’ approach has not succeeded in the MP3 market. Simple, elegant products that perform a few functions with easy-to-use interfaces have sold well in the marketplace, while the do-everything approach has failed.”
So, there goes my idea for a MP3 playing toaster then.
iSuppli
17 March, 2005