I met up with one of Tribune's portfolio companies yesterday, Pandora. Check them out here:http://www.pandora.com. Tribune was the first investor in Pandora, well formerly Savage Beast, and yesterdays meeting was classic. The Tribune team has a lot of hope and expectations for Pandora and are mightly pleased that it is doing fabulously well in the US. It was recently recognised as one of the top 25 digital websites by US News & World Report - great job guys! All with almost no marketing spend...all viral buzz. Well done, indeed. Pandora is not unique however, and I will mention Last.FM which is backed by my friends over at Atomico Investments. However, I have a personal prejudice for Pandora! I wonder why??
One other start-up to watch. Spiralfrog, I met with them when I was out in NYC and although, they have not launched yet, I have great expectations that they will do very well indeed.
Well, that is it for me today. I am trying to wrap up work pre-Christmas break and trying to figure out where to spend the Christmas holidays. Sometimes, too much choice is a bad thing. Its between the UK, US, The Himalayan mountains (kind of cold there this time of year being the key deterrent), Scotland, Wales and Barbados. I think I am leaning towards staying home in London. Key factor in decision making - I don't want to get on a plane...hmm something to ponder.
o Report: Global Online Video Sales to Reach $1.5 Billion in 2007
Boston - Online sales of TV shows, movies and other pre-recorded video programming are expected to grow from $298 million this year to reach $1.5 billion in 2007, according to a report from market research firm Strategy Analytics. By 2010, the firm predicts, global revenue from online video sales, rentals and subscriptions will surge to $5.9 billion, representing 8% of total home video revenues. "2007 will be remembered as the year in which online sales of prerecorded video finally become a real business," said Strategy Analytics senior analyst Martin Olausson. "Just like with music, online delivery of video content is now emerging as a viable and increasingly important distribution channel for content owners." The firm said major players including Wal-Mart, Time Warner and Netflix are expected to launch services in the near future to compete with Apple's iTunes Store in the online video market. By 2010, rentals and subscription-based services are expected to account for about one-quarter of annual online video sales.
http://tinyurl.com/w34sl
http://www.strategyanalytics.com
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o Google Debuts Patent Search; Wins Patent for Search Results Page Design
Mountain View, Calif. - Google has announced the launch of a beta version of a service that searches the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's database of over 7 million U.S. patents. The company said its search technology will make the public domain government information available from Google Patent Search more easily accessible. The service uses the same technology that powers Google Book Search, and will let users scroll through pages and zoom in on text and illustrations. In related news, Google said it has been awarded a U.S. patent for the design of its search results pages. The patent covers only the ornamental design of Google's search results pages, and not the functions performed by elements on the pages.
http://www.google.com/press/annc/patents.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-you-can-search-for-us-patents.html
http://tinyurl.com/yjgosx (CNET)
http://www.google.com/patents
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o SpiralFrog Licenses BMI Catalog for Ad-Supported Download Service
New York - Performing rights organization Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) announced on Thursday that it has licensed the over 6.5 million musical works it represents for distribution on SpiralFrog, an ad-supported music download service. New York-based SpiralFrog has also licensed tracks from EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music Group and KOCH Records for its service, which is scheduled to launch in the U.S. in early 2007.
http://www.bmi.com/news/200612/20061212a.asp
http://www.spiralfrog.com
o Fashion Site Glam Media Raises $18.5 Million, Adds Hearst Content
New York - Glam Media, an online fashion network that claims 7 million monthly visitors, has raised $18.5 million in its third round of venture capital financing, led by Duff Ackerman & Goodrich Ventures, TechCrunch reported. Existing investors Accel Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, WaldenVC and Information Capital also participated. Glam has also gained CNET chairman Jarl Mohn as an investor and strategic advisor, and forged a partnership with publisher Hearst Magazines to bring fashion magazine editorial content to its Glam.com site. Under the deal, Marie Claire will be the first Heart title to offer content on Glam.com; Hearst also owns Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, CosmoGIRL and Redbook. The company will use the funds to accelerate growth and expand its sales and editorial teams.
http://tinyurl.com/yna2b9 (TechCrunch)
http://www.glam.com
It is that time of year again, when one takes stock and prepares for a whole New Year. This period of time always has so much promise, as if the slate is wiped clean and we are given a chance to begin again. New beginnings require really good and clean endings. Well, that is what I was taught anyway and for the most part it has held true for all matters ranging from business to life itself.
So, on that note - lets take stock of 2006. 2006 will be regarded in retrospect the inflexion point for new-media. It was the year that the consumer became the content producer. No longer is media about the media corporate producing content, and pushing it out to you the consumer. Rather, new media and innovation has redefined these traditional roles. Today, anyone is, can and in some cases does produce content for distribution and immediate delivery to others. Or perhaps, more significantly, as a consumer I have greater power to decide what content I wish to receive and interact with. Media has moved from being a lecture to becoming a conversation.
Thus 2006 became defined by companies that focused on on-line video delivery, think YouTube and those that created the online social networking phenomenon such as MySpace. Placing this into context consider that YouTube has become the most visited site on the web, while over 70% of all US teenagers are on MySpace. Considering that neither of these companies were in existence three, or even two years ago and yet have transformed the media landscape provides a window into the "inflexion point" or "tipping point" that will characterise 2006 for media.
Hand in hand with the acceptance and emergence of these companies was the movement of advertising spend from off-line to on-line. Both the US and the UK have demonstrated that online advertising spend in 2006 doubled from that in 2005, for figures see earlier blogs. Yet, all media experts recognised and agreed that online advertising spend remains an insignificant sum of the total spent off-line. Suggesting the continued erosion of advertising spend to traditional players in the newspaper, television and radio industry. Traditional media players are well aware that they need to evolve quickly in order to retain some resemblence of their current market position. Thus, media has seen extensive M&A activity from the acquisition of MySpace to smaller nice online classified/advertising sites by all the major players. Those that were not able to acquire have established strategic alliances with more nimble players...this was most pronounced in music and television.
One can argue that 2006 has been a period of disruption or perhaps, destruction, to the long held views of how one does business. Historically, one did not co-create content with one's customers/consumers and one did not co-operate and deliver new products and/or services with one's likely competitors. This year has been about traditional media players beginning to emerge from the box that defined who they are and how they worked to form new alliances or ways of working. Difficult - yes, but important for survival. I think there is no analogy that better explains this phenomenon as Darwin's - the fittest to survive.
Consequently, 2006 marks the emergence of a new media landscape and I believe in 2007 - our focus will turn to telecoms and television as TV or IPTV emerges to take its proper place in this the new world order that is emerging. It is a future that we await!
Addendum: For the continued re-positioning of traditional media players. Refer to todays artile in the FT on Trinity Mirror:
Trinity Mirror to sell raft of regional titles, By Emiko Terazono, Media Correspondent, Financial Times
Trinity Mirror will announce on Thursday it will sell a group of its top newspaper titles, including the Racing Post, the Birmingham Post, the Coventry Telegraph and the South London Press.
A decision at a board meeting on Wednesday at the publisher of the Daily Mirror followed the announcement of a strategic review in August in which it said “nothing would be ruled in or out”.
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And just for fun: Digital News Wire from today - reports on all this:
o Report: Apple iTunes Sales Down 65% in First Half of 2006
Cambridge, Mass. - Sales at Apple's iTunes Store fell 65% in the first six months of 2006, according to a survey of U.S. iTunes debit and credit card purchases conducted by Forrester Research. The number of monthly iTunes transactions dropped 58% in the first half of 2006, while the average size of purchase also declined by 17%, the report said. Forrester couched the report's findings by noting that it wasn't clear whether seasonal sales patterns may be a factor. A majority of sales are generally transacted in the second half of the year. Overall, 3% of online households polled by the firm have made an iTunes purchase in the past year, with buyers spending an average of $35 for the year. Half of all transactions cost $3 or less. "Only Apple knows just how much profit there is at the end of the day on a $1.98 credit card transaction for two songs, but with transaction costs, hosting costs, and the wholesale price of the songs, there's not much margin left," Forrester said.
http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=40858
http://tinyurl.com/y6te9t (Reuters)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6175321.stm
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o Report: MySpace Overtakes Yahoo as Most-Visited Site in U.S.
Los Angeles - News Corp.'s websites, which include the MySpace social network, overtook the Yahoo network as the most-visited sites by U.S. users during November, according to audience data from comScore Media Metrix. Total visits to Fox Interactive Media websites in November totaled 39.5 million, up from 38.7 million in October, while Yahoo's page view tally fell from 41.6 million in October to 38.1 million in November. Yahoo told Reuters that a transition to more "Web 2.0" technologies eliminated the need for as many page views, causing the downturn. The company also argued that it still has a larger audience and serves far more ads on its sites than does News Corp. Fox Interactive Media said its rise in page view totals could be attributed to the 200% growth in MySpace traffic over the past year, as well as to users seeking information on new video game consoles from its IGN.com destination.
http://tinyurl.com/y8jond (Reuters)
http://www.comscore.com/metrix
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o Google Launches Transferable Stock Options for Employees
Mountain View, Calif. - Google on Wednesday announced plans to allow its employees to sell their vested stock options earlier than normal, via a relatively unorthodox private auction model that will be managed by Morgan Stanley. The change will increase the cost of providing options for Google, which will launch the transferable stock option program in the second quarter of 2007. Under the plan, financial institutions are expected to purchase the options, then hold them until maturity and settle with Google. "The goal is quite simple. It is to increase the perceived value of the option to the employee," David Rolefson, Google's manager of equity and compensation, told Reuters.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/061212/20061212006229.html?.v=1
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/about-transferable-stock-options.html
http://tinyurl.com/yck5uk (Reuters)
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o AOL Says Job Cuts Nearly Completed
Dulles, Va. - Some four months after first announcing plans to cut about 5,000 jobs -- representing about a quarter of its total workforce -- AOL has now completed the vast majority of the layoffs, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The bulk of the cuts have affected employees in marketing and customer service roles following AOL's decision last summer to stop actively marketing its dial-up service The move was part of AOL's strategy to focus on an advertising-supported model, rather than a subscription model. The company told Reuters that about 2,200 call center employees affected by its latest round of cuts were notified on Wednesday.
http://tinyurl.com/ycgss3 (Reuters)
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o Nintendo Wii Breaks Sales Records in U.K., Europe
London - Nintendo has announced that its next-generation Wii video game console has become the fastest-selling console ever in both Europe and the U.K. During its first two days on sale over the weekend, the company said it sold 325,000 Wii consoles in Europe and 105,000 in the U.K. "After just one weekend on sale, shops across Europe sold out of Wii consoles and daily shipments are now arriving across Europe to replenish stock," the company said. Meanwhile, the company's DS handheld game system also broke European sales records last week. The 515,000 units sold represent both the highest weekly sales since the device's launch last March, and also "the most any console across all formats has ever sold in a week."
http://tinyurl.com/yx5no3
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=14714
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o Digital Retailer eMusic Passes 100 Million Song Downloads
New York - Digital music service eMusic, the second-largest online music seller after iTunes, announced on Wednesday that it has now sold over 100 million digital song downloads. The company launched its current subscription model three years ago, and passed the 50 million download mark about a year ago. To commemorate the milestone, eMusic commissioned the pop group Barenaked Ladies to write and record a song about the 100 millionth downloader, Michael Brennan of Moorsetown, New Jersey. The New York-based company sells a catalog of over 2 million tracks of mainly independent music in the unprotected MP3 format, and claims more than 220,000 subscribers.
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=194200
http://www.emusic.com
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o Former Washington Post Journalists to Launch The Politico in January
Washington - A new political news newspaper and website founded by a pair of former Washington Post journalists will launch on Jan. 23, the date of President Bush's State of the Union address, The New York Times reported. The venture, to be known as The Politico, will feature Time magazine White House correspondent Mike Allen and Roger Simon, the chief political correspondent for Bloomberg News. The Politico, which will focus on Congress and the 2008 presidential campaign, is being backed by Allbritton Communications. John Harris, the Post's former political editor, and Jim VandeHei, a former national political reporter for the paper, will lead the company's editorial efforts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/business/media/13politico.html
http://www.thepolitico.com
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o Nayio Lets Users Hum Tunes to Identify Songs
San Mateo, Calif. - Nayio Media on Wednesday launched its melody-based music search tool, which can identify tunes consumers hum into a computer's microphone. The Web-based service cross-references the hummed tune with Napster's library of more than 3 million songs and delivers a list of potential matches, each accompanied by a direct link to where consumers can listen to the songs for free on Napster. "To date, digital music technology development has focused on compression and sound quality," said Jay Bose, chief operating officer and general manager of Nayio Media. "Our patented muGene technology focuses instead on ascertaining the unique 'genetic' structure of any given piece of music. Napster's enormous collection of music is the perfect platform to allow us to show off this technology." San Mateo, Calif.-based Nayio's humming identification service has been available since 2003 in South Korea for SK Telecom mobile subscribers. In addition to the song identification tool, the company offers Nayio Studio, which compares a user's vocal performance to an actual recording and graphs the melody and pitch to provide a score on accuracy. The feature also lets users create and share their own music videos.
http://tinyurl.com/yyxyg5
http://www.napster.com
http://www.nayio.com
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o BT TV Show Lets Viewers' SMS Votes Determine Action in Real-Time
London - U.K. telco BT has developed an interactive TV technology where viewers can vote via SMS messages to change the course of a show's events in real-time, ZDNet UK reported. A version of the "shape-shifted" TV technology will be utilized on "Accidental Lovers," a romantic comedy set to debut in Finland later this month. Viewers will be able to vote on various courses of action, as well as see their SMS messages appear on-screen. BT told ZDNet UK that it eventually aims to use the technology in such a way that each viewer will see different versions of the program based on their votes, as video is distributed with more versatility through IPTV programs like BT Vision.
http://tinyurl.com/yctwdy (ZDNet UK)
http://www.btvision.bt.com
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o Akamai Acquires Nine Systems Corp.
Cambridge, Mass. - Akamai Technologies, a provider of technology for accelerating online content and business processes, has completed its acquisition of Nine Systems Corp., a privately held, San Diego-based provider of rich media management tools for the production and publishing of online content. Terms of the deal included 3.1 million shares of Akamai common stock and $8 million in cash. "We believe that the addition of Nine Systems' technology broadens our total offering, demonstrates our commitment to the digital media market, and will enable our media customers' businesses to grow even more rapidly," said Paul Sagan, president and CEO of Akamai.
http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2006/press_121306.html
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o Report: 78% of Active U.S. Internet Users Now Have Broadband at Home
New York - More than three-quarters of active Internet users in the U.S. now have broadband access at home, according to a new report from Nielsen/NetRatings. The firm said that 78% of home Internet users connect through broadband hook-ups, primarily either cable or DSL. The figure is up 13% from a year ago. The report also found that broadband users stay online 33% longer than dial-up users, surfing for an average of 34 hours, 50 minutes in November and viewing twice as many web pages.
http://netratings.com/press.jsp
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o Mobile Content Delivery Firm mVisible Raises $2.7 Million
Deerfield Beach, Fla. - mVisible Technologies, a provider of mobile content delivery technology, has raised $2.7 million in it first round of venture capital, led by Enterprise Development Corp., Private Equity Week reported on Wednesday. Deerfield Beach, Fla.-based mVisible develops products designed to simplify the delivery of content to mobile devices. Its current offerings include a Web-based platform from which user-generated content is delivered to mobile devices, and a second service that allows musicians, brands and other rights holders to sell their content as ringtones or wallpaper images directly from their own websites or MySpace pages.
http://www.mvisible.com
http://www.pewnews.com
