Music Ally

We reported earlier this week on Bono’s op-ed for the New York Times, in which he said that if ISPs can detect and block access to child pornography, they should be able to act on piracy too. UK ISP TalkTalk has slammed the singer for this “outrageous” comparison.

“It is outrageous to equate the need to protect minors from the evils of child pornography with the need to protect copyright owners. As a society we have accepted that it is appropriate and proportionate to intrude on people’s internet use by blocking access to sites that host child abuse images,” says its regulatory boss Andrew Heaney. “To suggest that sharing a music file is every bit as evil as child abuse beggars belief,”

The Register rightly points out that this wasn’t actually what Bono was suggesting in his piece. However, Heaney makes a more valid point: “Bono obviously does not understand how simple it is to access copyright protected content without being detected.”

In the second part of a five-part series on self-service ticketing we speak to Steve Machin, whose extensive experience at companies from Ticketmaster to Tixdaq to Live Nation’s Ultrastar makes him a leading expert in the world of entertainment ticketing.

Steve’s comments can also be found within a feature in last week’s Music Ally PDF Report alongside insights from executives at companies including See Tickets, Clubtickets and Eventbrite. If you’re not yet a Music Ally subscriber you can sign up for a two week trial in a matter of minutes to read the original article as well as stories dating back nearly ten years.

Meanwhile, for the Q&A with Steve Machin, CEO of Stormcrowd, continue reading after the jump.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

How successful was U2’s gigstream on YouTube last weekend? The site has revealed that it notched up more than 10 million streams during the concert – the largest single streaming event in YouTube’s history. What’s more, the 150-minute concert has attracted more than one million views since the weekend, now that it’’s archived on the site. “This was a big win for the YouTube community,” says head of music partnerships Chris Maxcy.

Last night saw YouTube’s live stream of a U2 concert in California, watchable by viewers in 16 countries.

A Twitter widget was built in allowing people to chat about the gig, complete with a dedicated #U2webcast – it’s still one of the top trending topics on Twitter this morning.

The webcast is still accessible on U2’s YouTube channel. However, it wasn’t the only livestreaming show this weekend…

Researchers the Far North Living Lab webcast a performance from the Insomnia festival in Norway, using BitTorrent. It was tied in with the EU-funded P2P-Next project.

“If the scalability is good for live streaming, this can increase the amount of viewers without massive bandwidth bills,” says researcher Njal Borch.

YouTube and BitTorrent – very different beasts, but both looking at better ways to power concert webcasts. It’s a far cry from the early days of grainy, postage-stamp sized webcasts.

More news on YouTube’s move into live events: the site will stream a U2 gig live from Los Angeles this weekend, on the band’s YouTube channel.

It will be watchable from 16 countries, and is the second gig to be webcast on Google’s video site, following the Outside Lands music festival in August. Sections of the show will also be available to stream on the site after the event.

It’s the latest example of YouTube’s move into longform content. Earlier this week it announced plans for an online viewing party for the film Taxi Driver, with live Twitter updates appearing below the viewing window. There’s no news on whether this feature will also be used for the U2 gig.

We’ll let the headline and opening sentence of this article speak for itself: “BlackBerry loves U2. But U2 doesn’t love BlackBerry, nor give a shit about them”.

The piece, on respected mobile tech blog Boy Genius Report, is a review of the first US date on the band’s BlackBerry-sponsored tour.

It goes on: “What’s so unsettling is how disconnected RIM was from the event. Sure, there were a couple banners strewn about Soldier Field, but no one noticed. And the folks that did notice didn’t care. Instead of using this opportunity to push their brand forward, it almost seems like just a second thought to throw some quick marketing dollars to try act like your company is doing something in the consumer and “cool” department.”

It’s one of the first pieces to question the value of RIM’s sponsorship of the U2 tour, although it has been the subject of music biz gossip for a while.

(more…)

We thought it came out weeks ago, but apparently not. U2 has now launched its long-trailed BlackBerry application, which offers photos, videos, news, song lyrics and track samples from the band’s No Line On The Horizon album. It’s free, and available on RIM’s BlackBerry App World.

There are also click-through features to buy the album or individual tracks. BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion is sponsoring the current U2 tour, so it ties into that. There will also be a second phase for the app focused more around social networking features, although no launch date has been announced.

“With today’s announcement, we are reinventing the album experience for the digital age,” says RIM’s VP of global alliances Jeff McDowell. A more accurate summary would be to say that RIM is trying to reinvent the album marketing experience for the digital age – the U2 app would be a lot more interesting if it included the full album with all this extra content, rather than just clips.

However, RIM will be hoping that its U2 collaboration (as well as the app it made with Black Eyed Peas mainman Will.I.Am) will spur more artists to launch promotional apps for BlackBerry. Currently, iPhone is getting much more love from the music industry as far as marketing apps go.

Having splashed out big bucks on sponsoring U2’s latest world tour, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion is hoping to reap the rewards. Starting with something described as “The U2 Mobile album”, for which RIM has launched a teaser website.

It’s light on detail and heavy on slogans (the site, obv, not the album. Although…) So it will let users “show the world what the music means to you” and “experience the tour from all angles”.

Having trumpeted its commitment to music at MidemNet this year, RIM has since flattered to deceive, with many of the music apps on its BlackBerry App World store already available on other handsets. Maybe U2 can help to change that, along with Will.I.Am’s Dipdive app, which is already available.

Research In Motion is ploughing big bucks into its sponsorship of the upcoming U2 tour, so what does it have planned on the content side of things? Canadian DJ Alan Cross has uncovered some hints, after chatting to Bono at a gig and asking him about the RIM deal.

“I’m very excited about this: Research in Motion is going to give us what Apple wouldn’t – access to their labs and their people so we can do something really spectacular,” said the singer. Cross asked if he meant a U2 app that would let fans interact with the band during the tour. “You’re not far off,” replied Bono.

Which is great, although we can’t help thinking it would be significantly more spectacular if fans who didn’t own BlackBerries were allowed to join in too.