Category: Content

Content

Korean Music Industry Demands Poor Quality MP3 Phones

Manufacturers like Samsung and LG are of course resistant to the idea, but the Korean Association of Phonogram Producers (KAPP) and Korean Music Copyright Association (KMCA) are demanding that new phones can only play MP3 music at low-fidelity, radio quality.

This demand is after a compromise – KAPP and KMCA originally required phones to only play MP3 files that had been purchased legally. In a market where 95% of MP3 files are said to be illegal, phone manufacturers felt that this would put consumers off.

The battle has become so embittered that Samsung has decided to delay the launch of their new MP3 Anycall handset.

Amid claims that MP3 players and pirated CDs have halved the value of the Korean music market, phone with music playback are expected to be extremely popular – there will be 150 new phones launched in Korea next year, and half the population already carry a mobile.

Yoon Seong-woo, a director of the Korea Association of Phonogram Producers said in a statement: “Our industry has been in a nose-dive since the release of MP3 players in 2000. At that time, we felt hopeless because Korean people were insensitive to copyright issues and we did not have any unified organization that could cope with the situation. Because the MP3 phone market is big enough to destroy the music industry, we’re struggling to defend it.”

It’s somewhat striking that the music industry should expect handset manufacturers to develop and sell inferior product to save their dwindling sales.

There are no currently legal download music services in Korea – surely giving consumers the option of buying music from an attractive, easy to use, reliable source would be far better? Samsung certainly think so and is looking to partner with a music site to provide a download service for its phones.

The Korea Herald on the story

BBC Live Quiz Show First to Use Java on mobile

Broadcasters have flirted with interactivity in quiz shows for a long time – and there have been a few examples lately using mobile phones to SMS answers. However, the BBC has teamed with Tailor Made Films to develop the next stage – proper interactivity on multiple platforms, including a mobile phone and web-based Java applets. The game can also be played on Freeview and through satellite set-top boxes.

The project has been on the go for about 18 months, and has evolved since its inception. SMS was considered in the early days, but was rejected as it was too restrictive.

Neil Pleasants, Managing Producer at Tailor Made Films told Digital Lifestyles why they favoured Java: ” Java is portable – you can take it to other countries and it’ll work. Digital TV platforms might as well be written in Martian, they don’t transfer — the platforms differ wildly as their capabilities.”

The BBC website explains the format of the quiz: “Come And Have A Go… offers viewers the chance to challenge the studio winners head to head. Playing on interactive TV, Java, or web, teams at home answer the same questions as the studio teams. At the end of the first part of the show a satellite camera is whisked off to join the top scoring home team – wherever they are in the UK. In the second part of the show, the home team competes live against the studio team for the cash prize.” The cameras are on motorbikes distributed around the country.

Neil went onto explain how Java has enabled them to sell the programme into other markets with the minimum of trouble: “We’re taking the programme worldwide. When we went into countries and explained the idea, they loved it. But they didn’t know about the actual technology. We’ve made the technology as simple as possible and that’s the key, because that is so essential everywhere.” Tailor Made films even have an idea for a branded phone.

Their first phase was getting the programme into Western Europe, America, Australia and Scandinavia – the second phase will be Eastern Europe, Middle East, Japan and China.

Java also allowed Tailor Made to build high levels of security into the quiz applet to prevent cheating, including timestamping. This is just as well: the guaranteed minimum prize is UK£30,000 (US$55,000, €45,000) the largest ever weekly prize ever given out on a British television programme.

Neil believes that content is maturing to match the platforms available: “This is as interactive as it gets.”

The official website

Tailor Made Films

Sun’s Java home

International Federation of the Phonographic Industry Takes Action Against 247 Music Swappers

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has begun taking action against 247 alleged illegal music sharers in four counties. They are targeting individuals making a large number of files available on a range of P2P systems including Kazaa, DirectConnect, WinMX, eMule and iMesh.

Although much of the action consists of letters threatening a legal response, individuals in Italy and Canada are already being taken to court.

Jay Berman, Chairman and CEO of IFPI. said: “Today’s announcement should come as no surprise. Over the past year the record industry has been extremely active internationally and locally, educating the public about the huge damage being done by illegal file-sharing, explaining the laws and promoting all the sites where large catalogues of copyrighted music are available for consumers to access legitimately.”

The IFPI is promising legal action against more illegal sharers in coming months – but is keen to stress that this first round of action comes only after an extensive attempt at educating the public. Yet, and independent survey reveals that some 45% of respondents did not know that downloading music from P2P sites like Kazaa is illegal.

The industry is getting tough: Peter Zombik, CEO of IFPI Germany said in a statement: “The unauthorised distribution of music on the web has increased to such an extent over the last few years that it is threatening the livelihood of the German music industry. Whilst we have so far concentrated our legal actions on illegal music offers on websites – in the last two years we were able to close down more than 2000 such websites in Germany – we also carried out an extensive public information campaign in the last year in order to increase the awareness for the legal and technical dangers involved in illegal file swapping. Excuses about being unaware of the legal position are no longer acceptable. ”

IFPI’s press release

Operate Your Video Recorder From Your Mobile Phone

Norwegian software developer Opera, responsible for a couple of the best internet browsers around, have announced the Mobile Interactive Programming Guide (mobileIPG) – which allows users to record TV programmes on their video recorders, even when you’re out and about and have forgotten to set the timer.

Christen Krogh, vice president of engineering at Opera said in a statement: “The mobileIPG means full freedom to see what you want when you want it, it takes just a few seconds to look up the program on the mobileIPG on your handset, and then activate your recorder at home with just a click.”

Opera hope that the new service will attract paying clients from TV operators to mobile phone networks.

Digital Lifestyles have yet to try the product out, but we’re sure they’ve come up with an imaginative was to eject the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 tape we left in the recorder last night and put a blank in.

Get your hands on an Opera browser here

Harvard University and North Carolina: Music Sharing Doesn’t Harm CD Sales

Harvard University and the University of North Carolina have just published what they claim to be the most detailed economic modelling survey using direct data from P2P networks. The report’s authors claim: “We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales. While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing.”

The survey used 17 weeks of logs from a pair of OpenNap servers in 2002, taking a random sample of 500 albums and comparing the sales of these albums in shops.

Record labels have seen sales of CD albums and singles fall dramatically in recent years, and are keen to blame this on P2P sharing and other illegal downloads. Could it be that the real reason is that people just have more things to spend their money on, and are less interested in buying CDs than they once were? DVD and video game sales have rocketed over the past five years – and there’s only a finite amount of cash in disposable incomes – so something has got to give somewhere.

The study seems to lend weight to the argument that downloading actually helps CD sales. “Participants could substitute downloads for legal purchases, thus reducing sales. Alternatively, file sharing allows users to learn about music they would not otherwise be exposed to. In the file sharing community, it is a common practice to browse the files of other users and to discuss music in file server chat rooms. This learning may promote new sales”, says the report.

The RIAA was quick to disagree: “Countless well-respected groups and analysts, including Edison Research, Forrester, and the University of Texas, among others, have all determined that illegal file sharing has adversely impacted the sales of CDs. Our own surveys show that those who are downloading more are buying less,” spokeswoman Amy Weiss said in a statement.

The report

Yahoo! To Acquire Kelkoo for €475 million

Yahoo! have completed a deal to buy internet comparison shopping portal Kelkoo for €475 million (~US$575, ~UK£320), as part of a strategy to expand their services in Europe. Yahoo! will buy up all of the Kelkoo’s share capital for cash, and is expected to keep all 250 Kelkoo staff, making the company a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Kelkoo allows users to search across 2500 internet shops for 3 million products and compare prices for the best deal. The service has been profitable since 2002, and makes its money by charging merchants for referrals. The site was founded in France in 1999 and has merged and acquired similar services across Europe ever since.

“Commerce has emerged as a key component of search, and the combination of Web search, product search and comparison shopping will help further Yahoo!’s goal to create the most comprehensive and best user experience on the Web globally,” said Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive officer, Yahoo! Inc. “Kelkoo will add depth and breadth to Yahoo!’s integrated network of services for consumers, and adds another set of powerful tools for marketers seeking to reach them.”

Kelkoo is currently operational in nine European states, reaches some 10% of internet users there, and claims to be the largest e-commerce service operating out of Europe.

Kelkoo’s press release

Microsoft Unveils Music Service

There are no details on the size of the catalogue available, or what the pricing is going to be like, but Microsoft finally unveiled its forthcoming music service at the South By Southwest music conference in Texas.

Microsoft chose to demonstrate its new music service in a private preview to independent music labels – a smart move. MSN product manager Christine Andrews said “Other companies took a different route and did not engage with the independent labels early in the process. We heard that the independent labels did feel neglected a little bit. But, more importantly, we want to deliver a site that is great for artists both big and small, and great for the consumers too.”

The tracks will initially be available in Microsoft’s own Windows Media format – though it is thought that MS might make other formats available too. What ever they turn out to be, you can bet it won’t be AAC.

Matthew’s opinion at Geek.com

British Music Industry Issues Warning to Music Sharers

The British Phonographic Institute (BPI) has stated in a new report (linked below) that, of the 8 million people downloading music in the UK, 7.4 million of them are doing it illegally. That’s right – 92% of you out there using music services are pirates. They also claim that people who download music spend 32% less of albums and CDs, and 59% less on singles.

To protect artists’ and record labels’ incomes they are prepared to take “serial filesharers” to court.

Backing this up, the BPI also issued a chilling warning to filesharers: stop downloading music illegally, or we’ll send you unwanted instant messages. They are proposing an IM service that warns uploaders that they are breaking the law and advises them to disable their file sharing clients.

BPI Report (Adobe Acrobat PDF)

Fraunhofer Institute Develops “Fair Use” DRM System ***Update***

Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, creators of the phenominally successful MP3 music format, has developed a content protection extension to MP3 – and it could end the controversy over file sharing.

The Light Weight Digital Rights Management (LWDRM) system is based on a principle which has been used in video and audio media for some time – and in fact is already built into Microsoft’s Window Media platform.

Users pay for an audio file and can use it as they wish, but if they want to transfer it to another device or give it away to someone else, they must download a certificate from a certification body. Because the file is signed with your identity, if several thousand copies of an MP3 you once bought are found on the internet, then they know whose door to knock on.

We really think that Fraunhofer are missing a trick here. Rather than just flagging who once owned the file, why not make it so that an unauthorised recipient must download and pay for a license before they can play the media? This is already implemented in various ways in Windows Media, and we’re a but baffled why the technique isn’t employed here.

The system was originally developed for MPEG4, but has adapted it for use with MP3. Fraunhofer say that LWDRM will allow users fair use of the media they have bought whilst protecting the artists’ and record labels’ investments.

To support adoption of the new system, Fraunhofer aim to launch their own online shop, which will be free to small labels.

Fraunhofer on LWDRM

Fraunhofer on the MP3 standard – recommended reading!

3 Announce Videotalk to PC

We have to admit – it’s quite compelling: with 3’s new Videotalk to PC service, subscribers on the 3 network can call any PC with email and a webcam and have a videophone conversation. The service will roll out in Australia shortly.

It’s a great idea – and will help spread the use of 3G video phones because now you have more than just a few other 3G video phones to talk to.

NEC’s 606 and 808 handsets are already compatible – and a software upgrade will allow Motorola A920 users join in. PC users need a webcam and need to register to use the service before they can take calls.

The service is in use in Italy, and about to launch in Hong Kong. Calls are charged at national Videotalk rates.

3G.co.uk on the story