Week of October 15, 2007

Sony ups distribution of minisodes

Friday, October 19, 2007

Sony Pictures Television's Minisode Network, Sony's online initiative to distribute its shortened TV classics, is substantially increasing its distribution. Instead of just being accessible via MySpace, Sony has announced that it will make the content available through its own user generated site, Crackle, as well as AOL and Joost.

Sponsored by Pepsi, Sony will offer the minisodes of its 18 old TV shows, including Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Jeffersons and others. Each minisode is a condensed version of the original, truncated to 3-5 minute versions of the original.

Short Attention Span Theatre lives on.

Radiohead's First Week

Thursday, October 18, 2007

By almost any measure, Radiohead's name-your-price download gambit has been a huge success. The band garnered unprecedented amounts of coverage for the campaign and each person who downloaded the music is another name that's added to the band's fan database. But how did the album do is its first week? According to various sources, first week sales (legal downloads) of the album totaled somewhere in the vicinity of 1.25 million copies. Wired estimates that the average price paid was in the $5-$8 range. On the other side, Big Champagne estimates that illegal downloads total about 5000,000 and that eventually, illegal downloads will surpass the legal ones.

Apple's iPhone Open to 3rd Party Developers

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Apple finally bowed to its critics and has announced that it will open the iPhone to 3rd party programmers. Steve Jobs announced today that it will release a software developer kit to allow for the development of additional applications.

Apple's decision is both welcome and inevitable. Rumors of a "Google Phone" centered on not a specific device, but a concept, with open source as its heart. But of course this goes well beyond mobile devices. Facebook has opened to 3rd party developers, iTunes is finally selling DRM-free music and most other platforms are finding that open, rather than, closed is the way to build a truly universal brand, community or service.

Led Zeppelin To Sell Tracks Online

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

There are still some major holdouts among major acts that will not allow their music to be sold online (The Beatles, AC/DC, etc.), but one of them has announced that they have changed their mind: Led Zeppelin. Perhaps not coincidentally, the band will allow their songs to be sold digitally in November, the same month as their high-profile charity concert in London.

Project Apollo Test Extended

Monday, October 15, 2007

The test phase for Project Apollo, the joint venture between Arbitron, Nielsen and several major companies, has been extended into the first quarter of 2008. Consumer product giants like Procter & Gamble, SC Johnson, Pfizer, Unilever, Kraft, Pepsi and Wal-Mart are participating in the study. This project involves combining PPM data on media exposure to Nielsen's Homescan technology on consumer habits. With Homescan, consumers have a hand-held scanner that they use to scan all of their purchases. This way, advertisers can compare their media schedules with actual consumer follow-through. The hope is that this will create a brick and mortar equivalent of a click-through ad.