DRM is Dead!

The final nail in the coffin for DRM (Digital Rights Management) came last Friday when Sony BMG announced it was moving to DRM-free music downloads. Sony BMG was the last of "Big 4" studios to defect and joins Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI Music in offering unrestricted copyright-free digital music downloads. The news came just days after Warner Music Group announced that they are adding their DRM-free catalog of music to the Amazon MP3 store. This move will allow consumers to play their music on any portable music device without the restrictions of Apple's FairPlay DRM used for iTunes downloads.

Sorry for the pun, but this is a big bite out of Apple and as David Kravets of Wired writes, it will weaken Apple's hold on it's 80% market share of music downloads. To date Apple has sold an estimated 1 billion music downloads from it's iTunes music store. Back in April 2007, Apple announced that the entire EMI Music digital catalog would be available as higher quality DRM-free music downloads for $1.29/ea. I remember getting an email from the iTunes store asking if I wanted to pay the extra 30 cents per download to upgrade my music purchases to higher quality DRM-free. I just deleted the email. 

Now with Sony BMG defection, it's clear that the music studios want their piece of the pie and all four will now participate in Amazon and Pepsi's 1 billion song giveaway scheduled to launch Superbowl Sunday, February 3rd.

Read these stories for more information:

• Sony BMG Plans to Drop DRM by Catherine Holahan, Business Week
• Death of DRM Could Weaken iTunes, Boost iPod by David Kravets, Wired
• DRM Officially Dead: Last Major Label Sony BMG Plans to Finally Drop DRM - Gizmodo
• That was fast: Sony BMG drops DRM, Podfitness users rejoice - Podfitness

War is Over... and the Winner is Blu-Ray

By now, you may have hard that the ongoing battle between the two competing High Definition DVD formats is over as of yesterday, following Warner Brothers announcement that they will have chosen Sony's Blu-Ray Disc as the exclusive format for Hi-Def DVD distribution.

This is not only significant, but historic, coming on the eve of CES and it effectively delivers a one-two punch to the rival competition Toshiba's HD DVD.

Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO, explained that the move to Blu-Ray is a "strategic decision focused on the long term and the most direct way to give consumers what they want," and that "the window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger." (source EngadgetHD)

The war had been raging for the last two years and heated up as studios aligned behind the competing formats. Check out the post by Christopher Null who spoke with Warner Home Entertainment president Kevin Tsujihara why WB made the decision it did.

Why We Did It: Warner Explains Its Move to Blu-ray (Interview)

Tsujihara explained that they made the decision to help eliminate the confusion and ambivalence consumers had about choosing between the two formats. Most consumers were waiting it out, myself included, and that ultimately affects the overall adoption rate of the Hi-Def DVD format.

In light of the announcement, Toshiba canceled it's CES HD DVD press conference.

More reading:

• Crave - Warner goes Blu-ray exclusively, delivering crushing blow to HD DVD
• Engadget - Warner Goes Blu Ray Exclusive
• Gizmodo - Interview- Why Warner Went Full Throttle With Blu-ray
• Toshiba press release
• Time Warner press release
  

VentureBeat - 14 Ways to Broadcast Yourself… Live

This recent article on VentureBeat is a great round up of current live video streaming and lifecasting services by David Adewumi on:

14 ways to broadcast yourself…live

In this excerpt, he writes, "Live TV is just starting to take off, and below I present a select list of competitors, and why I love ‘em, hate ‘em and sometimes both. I prefer Kyte and Mogulus for being able to create and broadcast an innovative show, while UStream.TV has aligned with big-name personalities like The Plain White T’s that are fun to take a look at. In the Mobile sphere, Qik seems to be the dominant force, allowing users to stream mobile to internet with only a 5-second delay, but FlixWagon will be hot on its tails when it releases a public alpha in January."

Others on the list include AT&T, blog.tv, Comvu, flixwagon, loobs, Justin.tv, operator11, seesmic and Stickam.

Dan Taylor posted a similar round up on his Fabric of Folly blog in August 2007 with many of the same companies at:

Round-up of DIY live video streaming services

Dan's list also included Veodia, YouCams, and MyStreams.tv.

Create and share your Slideshows on Slide.com

I produced this slideshow using Slide.com, another great Web 2.0 tool by one the leading application and widget developers on Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites.

It was pretty simple to use and I easily uploaded the images from my Flickr account and created this simple slideshow. The slide widget creator offers a number of choices on template styles, skins, transitions, backgrounds and even music and videos from their extensive library. Once I created the slideshow I was able to pick Blogger from the many choices available to post it here directly.

The gallery view is really cool too and has a similarity to Flickr's "View as Slideshow" feature and as you can see it has all the tagging capability to comment, subscribe to or embed the slideshow. Overall, I really like Slide and I've added it to my Web 2.0 toolkit.

You can view the gallery view here:
http://www.slide.com/r/oVMCdNNy5j_QQl2UQ1at3g4bT4vMwIqJ

Or view the original Flickr photo set here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21904848@N02/sets/72157603631012977/

These are photos from the Streaming Media West Conference that took place November 2007 in San Jose, California. This set covers the exhibit hall and a few of the conference sessions.

Happy New Year 2008

Ringing in the new year with family and friends on my Kyte channel.