Music Ally

Gig webcasts have a chequered history, to say the least. Squinting at a grainy postage-stamp sized video window trying to make out Madonna, in between swearing at buffering delays wasn’t many fans’ ideas of fun.

However, with technology having improved rapidly, there’s a new buzz around webcasts at the moment, thanks to the efforts of livestreaming companies like Ustream. Even YouTube is getting into the game with some high-profile gigcasts.

Ustream has been particularly busy, integrating its platform with Facebook to allow artists to both broadcast live and interact with their fans. Shakira debuted the video for her new music video Give It Up To Me using Ustream, and attracted 95,000 unique viewers during its initial ten-minute broadcast, and half a million more in the 24 hours after.

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50 Cent is the latest artist to sign up with online webcasting firm Ustream, albeit for a premiere of his new movie Before I Self Destruct, rather than a live gig.

However, Fiddy also answered questions live from fans as part of the webcast, which took place late last week. The numbers are in – more than 255,000 fans tuned in for the event, which is some way behind U2’s 10 million gig viewers, but ahead of the 150,000 people who watched Foo Fighters’ recent gigcast.

As Mashable points out, “a combination of bandwidth proliferation and integration with social sites seems to be pushing live video to a tipping point”. It’s the social features that are so powerful for the new breed of webcasts – fans aren’t just squinting at grainy video on their screen alone any more – they can chat to friends and other fans about (hopefully) how un-grainy it is.

The crossover between console games and movies hasn’t been a happy one historically. Well, not unless you like really, really bad movies. However, that isn’t stopping 50 Cent from optioning the rights to THQ’s Saints Row games to turn into a screenplay and ultimately a film.

The deal has sprang from his existing relationship with THQ, which is publishing the 50 Cent: Blood in the Sand game this year. The question is a.) whether anyone would want to see a Saint’s Row movie, b.) whether 50 Cent is the man to ensure it’s not rubbish, and c.) whether any of this matters since many Hollywood options never actually turn into films.

Well, that’s the three questions. But you get our point. Having accidentally caught a TV repeat of the Street Fighter movie the other day, we’re profoundly cynical about the prospects for any game-based movies. Unless someone fancies doing a Dogme 95 version of Horace Goes Skiing…

Eminem – together with pals Dr Dre and 50 Cent – has set a new Nielsen SoundScan record for opening week download sales. 418,000 people have bought the digital version of his Crack A Bottle single, putting the rapper way ahead of previous record-holder T.I’s 335,000 downloads.

However, Eminem’s track is only the third highest weekly download total of all-time (i.e. not first-week) – Flo Rida racked up 467,000 downloads of Low in one week last January, while this January Lady GaGa’s Just Dance totalled 419,000 in a single week.

It seems 50 Cent could be the next megastar to sign a big-bucks 360 deal outside the traditional record labels. MediaTakeOut has suggested that Fiddy may be negotiating a deal worth as much as $300 million with News Corporation, including stock for the rapper, and some kind of tie-in with MySpace Music. Although it’s unclear just how true the rumour is, it does throw up the intriguing possibility of big online players competing with the likes of Live Nation to fling cash at top music artists, even if they’re (arguably) past their sell-by date.