ContentSphere - Music & Media in an Online Culture

Recent articles on this blog featured the problems broadcasting services have to face in the days of the internet. Just take a look at my del.icio.us bookmarks on the right to notice that the death of Project Kangaroo has been the opener to Project Canvas.

Today’s informitv newsletter is concluded by a comment by Dr William Cooper, CEO informitv, addressing current issues. It’s a brilliant one. Unfortunately, I can’t find it anywhere on their site (“resource not found”). So here it is, straight from the newsletter…


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On MidemNet Blog, Peter Jenner shares his “Thoughts on the deal between DSPs, Content Industries, and Government for Next Generation Access”. Actually, his thoughts might have their origin in a news flash from last year.

Sorting it out…

The story’s beginning has to be set in March 2008 when Warner Music Group hired business veteran Jim Griffin to develop a new business model to build upon. In early December, the result hit the public. Selected universities were approached to prove if the business model would work: Students would pay a small fee, and in return they were allowed to access and download all music available via internet for free - legally. According to Eliot Van Buskirk on wired.com all major record labels apart from Universal agreed to be involved.

However, in a real world environment (outside the campus) the intention is to establish a (nonprofit) company to collect the fee in cooperation with the ISPs. With Warner’s and Griffin’s business model, this company (‘Choruss’) apparently turns out be registered by Griffin’s OneHouse Digital.

Cure to everything?

Another well-known media strategist, Gerd Leonhard, announced on MidemNet Blog that at Midem 2009 he was about to show “[..] why we urgently need a new blanket license for Internet music (on-demand streaming, and downloading) that is similar to what we already have for radio & broadcasting (i.e. a collective or a compulsory license that is made available to anyone), why all the efforts of controlling music content online have failed to generate relevant future revenue streams for the creators (rather than just the lawyers), and what the alternatives will be.”

Peter Jenner hails this idea as the one solution which fits the situation.

Continue reading "Pay a fee at your ISP, get your music for free..." »