02.28.05

Labels Want Higher Digital Track Prices

Posted in forum archive at 7:05 pm by

Music Labels are trying to get online music retailers to raise the price of downloads.

Several big labels are in talks with online music retailers to get them to increase prices,according to the FT. The labels are looking to increase the wholesale prices shops pay for tracks. Sites in the US typically sell tracks for 99 cents each. The wholesale price is currently 65 cents per track, according to the FT.

Universal and Sony BMG are less keen to put prices up. EMI and Time Warner refused to comment on the FT story. Some observers are concerned that increasing prices would push people back to peer-to-peer networks and dodgy copies of songs.

The music industry is apparently unhappy with Apple’s increasing share of the market – the firm sells about 65 per cent of songs sold online. The arrival of cheaper iPods is likely to give the firm an even larger share of the market. Apple refused to comment on the FT’s story but Steve Jobs is reportedly deeply unhappy with the attempted price hike.

One suggestion is that labels want to introduce variable pricing – so they can charge more for top selling tracks.

So there are more digital tracks being sold than ever before. Each track sold digitally costs a record label no more to distribute than the original track – it’s just a song copy; there’s no cd’s to make or trucks to hire to haul more albums to the store. And they want a price hike because Apple is doing well? What?

New Alt Reality Game – Perplex City

Posted in forum archive at 11:41 am by

In the vein of ‘I Love Bees’ comes the game Perplex City. There’s some real money behind the clues – ads have been appearing in the New York Times and last I heard that ain’t cheap. But really, who has time for this kind of stuff?

It is the latest well-funded entry in a young medium called “alternate-reality gaming”–an obsession-inspiring genre that blends real-life treasure hunting, interactive storytelling, video games and online community and may, incidentally, be one of the most powerful guerrilla marketing mechanisms ever invented.

These games are intensely complicated series of puzzles involving coded Web sites, real-world clues like the newspaper advertisements, phone calls in the middle of the night from game characters and more. That blend of real-world activities and a dramatic storyline has proven irresistible to many.

State of PlayII Videos Available

Posted in forum archive at 11:33 am by

The State of Play is a yearly conference held jointly between Yale and New York law schools. It’s where a lot of really bright people get together to pontificate about just what all this online game stuff means for culture. They’ve just made video of several of the major players available on their website. From what I’ve heard no major intellectual breakthroughs were reached at this years conference but still might be interesting to read.

Addictive Flash Game

Posted in forum archive at 11:24 am by

Japanese people come up with some crazy stuff. In this case its a little flash game where you set the power and angle in which you hit a anime guy with a bike, trying to bounce him the furthest, while trying to hit certain loitering characters which will either advance or hinder his bouncing….

Maybe its just something you have to see for yourself. Fun.

My record: 738m…
Val’s Record: 1069m

02.27.05

DartMail

Posted in forum archive at 12:27 am by

I’ve decided that every workplace needs a system you simply shoot ‘files’ at your coworkers.

DartMail lets people physically shoot electronic information at others.

The head of the Dart contains an RFID tag. By waving the tag over the reader, the ’shooter’ can attach a handle to any electronic file (located in a shared file system) to the dart. After being shot, the victim can pass the dart over his or her reader (although invariable this is a guy’s thing), and see the file on the screen.

Video is available on the site.

Through a Scanner Darkly

Posted in miscellaneous at 12:07 am by

Came across the incredible trailer for Through a Scanner Darkly tonight. I had to watch it twice because I was so entralled. I’ll probalby go and see this one just because it looks so different than anything else out there (same reason why I enjoyed Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow I suppose). But does anyone know anything about the original sci-fi book of the same name? The one by Phillip K Dick? What’s the story about?

02.26.05

Dukes of Hazard: Experts Wanted

Posted in miscellaneous at 6:49 pm by

The Dukes of Hazard institute is looking for someone to serve as a ‘media expert’ on all things Dukes. Why blog about the random events in your life when you can get paid to blog about Bo and Luke?

The job responsibilities for the Vice President, THE DUKES OF HAZZARD INSTITUTE are:
– watch THE DUKES OF HAZZARD every weeknight on CMT
– know the words to THE DUKES OF HAZZARD theme song, Good Ol’ Boys, written and performed on the series by the legendary Waylon Jennings
– serve as media expert on THE DUKES OF HAZZARD for the CMT DUKES OF HAZZARD INSTITUTE: must be available for TV, radio and newspaper interviews to share his or her expertise and passion for THE DUKES OF HAZZARD on CMT
– write THE DUKES OF HAZZARD INSTITUTE online blog for www.CMT.com
– be passionate about THE DUKES OF HAZZARD on CMT

And then there is a screenshot of the original posting. Oh, and the job comes with a $100,000 salary. Sure, it’s no Knight Rider gig, but $100,000 buys quite a bit of Uncle Jesse’s moonshine. ;)

The Future of Music

Posted in forum archive at 6:40 pm by

There is an excellent book out called “The Future of Music” that serves as an excellent primer for the issues faced by the Music industry. Apparently they’ve put together a fun little game where you can see over-the-top predictions of just how the music-brew-ha-ha will play out:

The US Military retakes control of all Internet nodes at the behest of copyright holders. The move is an effort to provide strict government control in a ‘lawless’ environment.

Worth some clicks.

02.24.05

SD Election Thrown By Bloggers

Posted in forum archive at 11:24 pm by

It’s always good to see South Dakota in the national news – except when its stuff like this: a ring of 9 bloggers, 2 of which were paid $35,000 by the Thune Campaign, relentlessly blogged against the campaign of Tom Daschel. It was not disclosed that these people where working for Thune until after the campaign. Ironically enough, the bloggers were highly influenced by the tactics of Jeff Gannon.

The blogging efforts on behalf of Thune’s Senate campaign didn’t cause greater civic participation or bring in piles of small donations. Instead nine bloggers — two of whom were paid $35,000 by Thune’s campaign — formed an alliance that constantly attacked the election coverage of South Dakota’s principal newspaper, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. More specifically, their postings were not primarily aimed at dissuading the general public from trusting the Argus’ coverage. Rather, the work of these bloggers was focused on getting into the heads of the three journalists at the Argus who were primarily responsible for covering the Daschle/Thune race: chief political reporter David Kranz, state editor Patrick Lalley, and executive editor Randell Beck.

Led by law student Jason van Beek and University of South Dakota history professor Jon Lauck, the Thune bloggers tormented and rattled the Argus staff for the duration of the 2004 election, clearly influencing the Argus’ coverage. They also appear to have been a highly efficient vehicle for injecting classic no-fingerprints-attached opposition research on Daschle — most of it tidbits that perhaps might never have made it into the old print media — directly into the political bloodstream of South Dakota. What they did may turn out to be a “dark side of politics” model for campaign-blogger relations in 2005-06 — made all the more telling by the fact that the Thune bloggers relied heavily on now-discredited Jeff Gannon/James Guckert of Talon News for many of their stories.

For the 3rd time tonight I’m using the upset angry emoticon. Damn. :evil:

Remixing Romance Novels

Posted in miscellaneous at 11:08 pm by

You can remix music – so why not romance novel covers? Good for a laugh – and thank God for Photoshop!

http://www.worldoflongmire.com/features/romance_novels/mcmullet.jpg

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