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RadioFreeVirgin
announced
yesterday that their launch of a new "record"
function for their Internet radio service. Users can now
make CD-quality copies of the music they hear on the stations,
but cannot share those files. Those capabilities have created
some controversy among competing webcasters, and from those
who think the record labels won't stand for it.
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From Inside.com: "''Virgin is just asking for trouble,'
says one executive of a competing Internet radio company...
'''The record feature essentially converts the "radio"
into a music-on-demand system,' says a competing
webcast executive. 'It certainly makes it interactive -- the user
effectively has control over the radio stream, and can replay
it at will. This is exactly what the DMCA is supposed to stop...'
"Others see it as more of a borderline issue. John
Schuch, the vice president of label relations for GraceNote, says
that while Virgin's efforts to limit the digital 'taping' of its
streams to personal use might play in its favor, the circumstances
are unusual. 'The question is whether providing the end user with
the ability to record the "broadcast" makes it an interactive
service or not, he says.
"Radio Free Virgin, which has not consulted the record
labels on the implementation of its record feature, is relying
on its service being covered by fair use doctrine, specifically
the so-called time-shifting argument made famous in the Sony Betamax
case."
Read this piece here.
Virgin may not be "an
ideal target" for lawsuit
From ZDNet.com: "When the Webcaster issues the software,
the zone is grayer still. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA), enacted in 1998, says Webcasters
that meet certain conditions are entitled to a license from the
record companies if they pay royalties. One condition is that
the Webcasters take 'no affirmative steps to cause or induce the
making of a phonorecord by the transmission recipient...'
"Fred Von Lohmann, an intellectual property lawyer...noted,
Radio Free Virgin, as an affiliate of a large CD retailer, is
not an ideal target for a lawsuit. 'Record companies tend to choose
the most underfunded and threatening ones to sue first,' he said.
'It sounds like what Radio Free Virgin is doing is not as threatening
as Bitbop [Tuner],' Von Lohmann said."
Read this piece here.
According to the popular "dot-com disaster watch"
site F*ckedCompany.com,
MTVi/Sonicnet, part
of Viacom's
MTV empire, is to dismiss all but one of their employees (here).
Now if this is true, this raises a big question for the
industry when one of the most powerful and recognized name brands
in the music industry comes crashing down.
Last September, Viacom dropped their planned IPO for MTVi,
and cut staff 25%.
Additionally, the site is reporting that ClickRadio
has laid off 30 staffers (here).
The ClickRadio product is based on the idea of circumventing streaming
problems by storing music directly
on the listeners hard drive. From there, the songs are presented
in a radio/jukebox fashion (ie, not "on demand"), and
from time to time the program would reconnect to the Internet
and download fresh music.
A word of caution if you've never visited F*ckedCompany:
as you might imagine from the site's name, decorum and gentle
language are hardly the order of the day. If you're sensitive,
you may want to skip it.
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BY PAUL MALONEY
The new Bitbop Tuner software
from Audio Mill was "born of a firestorm," and has been
buffeted to the top of the digital audio media consciousness by
a little controversy of its own.
Perhaps this is why this product seems to be enjoying much
more attention than a somewhat similar product launched last October
called Songcatcher (reported in RAIN here),
or High Criteria's Total
Recorder and Voquette's Media Manager; all of which record streaming
audio.
With Napster on the ropes from a barrage of copyright infringement
suits brought by the record industry, the Bitbop software was
introduced with the name "Radioactive" last month as
a way for disenfranchised digital music fans to continue to build
their libraries with the specific songs and artists they like
(see RAIN coverage here).
Taking a "VCR" approach to streaming audio, the application
scans Internet radio stations and detects and records specific
songs chosen by the user.
Nearly immediately the controversy began. Jupiter Research
analyst Aram Sinnreich suggested that the software was most likely
in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (here).
Then Radioactive records had a problem with the product's name
and filed an infringement suit (thus, apparently, the change to
the "Bitbop" moniker).
We decided to try Bitbop ourselves. After setting a
few "preferences" parameters, we chose which artists
we wanted the Bitbop to "record."
Then on the "Tuner" screen, we saw Bitbop connect
with a number of streams that were likely to be playing the artists
we chose. As the connection was made, station by station, the
artist and title of the song being streamed at that moment popped
up. Judging by the music we saw come up, it seems fair to say
that the tuner did a good job of choosing streams where it was
reasonable to expect our artists to appear.
Because of this, it seems reasonable that a helpful improvement
to the tuner (and possibly a welcome addition by the Internet
radio community) would be some indication of exactly what streams
the product is monitoring. If someone likes Merle Haggard, and
the tuner indicates it's found a stream playing Johnny Cash and
Willie Nelson, it'd be nice to know where to find that station.
But here's something cool we didn't expect. If you see
a song pop up that you want to hear -- whether it's an artist
you've chosen to record or not -- just double click it, and it
plays (it's at this point when you can sometimes catch the name
of the stream on which the song was found). This
brings up the question (yet again) of whether this can be considered
an "interactive" device, and thus illegal under the
DMCA.
But it's not like traditional radio when you catch your
favorite song after it's already half over. The Bitbop seems to
"cache" everything that it monitors, and then saves
those songs that are by specified artists. So it doesn't matter
if the song just began or if it's almost over, you can just click
it, and you'll hear it from beginning to end. Pretty cool.
This feature
makes it possible to "monitor" several streams that
play the type of music you like, and then click on songs you want
to hear (perhaps not the system's exact intended purpose, but
still pretty cool). Now if the RIAA has problems with Internet
radio stations making it too easy for listeners to quickly get
to the exact music they want, they probably won't like this too
much either.
But the system certainly isn't as menacing as Napster.
These are not CD-quality files. Rather, they're the products of
a faulty and limited delivery method -- streaming audio. The low
quality of lower-bitrate streams, plus any buffering and stuttering,
will be faithfully preserved in your recording. As a matter of
fact, with the system taking up bandwidth and processing time
by monitoring and caching other streams while it records, it's
not hard to imagine that the Bitbop may itself degrade the quality
of the streams.
Moreover, Audio Mill assures that the ".mx3"
files are completely secure, cannot be shared, and cannot be played
anywhere except the computer onto which they were originally recorded.
Even though assertions like this are often answered by someone
proving otherwise really quickly;
given the quality issues above, it's doubtful that doing so would
replace record sales.
But the Bitbop could be really good for the Internet radio
industry, and record sales. Should the tuner make it easier to
discover new streams, users may be encouraged to listen to more
streaming audio (it can be argued that VCRs are good for television
-- viewers are more likely to stay "hooked" on their
favorite shows or channels). And by having somewhat inferior copies
of music they like, listeners might be encouraged to go ahead
and make a record purchase (as it's been suggested that making
imperfect tape recordings from broadcast radio does the same).
From PRNewswire: "Jupiter Media Metrix reports that
the number of home users of standalone media
players -- the software that play digital audio or video, whether
offline or online -- increased 33.2 percent, from 31.3 million
in January 2000 to 41.7 million in January 2001. Meanwhile, the
number of users of media players at work increased 34.9 percent,
from 11.6 million in January 2000 to 15.7 million in January 2001...
"According to Media Metrix audience ratings data,
RealNetworks widened its lead among home users through
its RealPlayer streaming-media player, which enables real-time
access of digital audio and video over the Internet, as well as
its RealJukeBox audio-file player...RealNetworks also has the
largest share of users at work...
"One driver of RealNetworks' growth has been its arrangement
with AOL Time-Warner where RealPlayer is the default, embedded
(not standalone) player within the latest versions of the AOL
proprietary online service (versions 6.0 and Plus)."
Read the entire story here.
From the press release: "
MeasureCast,
Inc. announced that Zenith Media Services, Inc., a leading global
media buying and planning service, is subscribing to the MeasureCast
Streaming Audience Measurement Service...
"Zenith Media provides media planning, buying and coordination
services in traditional media (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines,
cinema and out of home) and non-traditional media (direct response,
sponsorship and syndication, interactive and new media) for a wide
range of advertisers. Clients include Red Lobster, Lexus, Toyota,
Olive Garden, Verizon, Reynolds and General Mills."
Read the press release
here.
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