My picks from audio and video trends for 2016:
Smartphone have increased screen sizes and have finally become mobile TVs: Smartphones have overtaken the tablets as the most popular mobile device for viewing videos. The most watched content were targeted at teenagers videos and animation series for children.
Smartphone cameras are great, or at least close enough to great that you don’t notice the difference. We’ve reached the point where you’ve got to work pretty hard to find a phone with a mediocre camera. Compared to a DSLR, smart phone cameras are lousy because they use tiny sensors, but still the camera in your pocket is crazy good considering the limitations manufacturers work under. The vast majority of top-tier smartphones use Sony sensors for their main cameras. The molded plastic lens elements in many cameras have reached the point where they’re essentially perfect. Smart phones are already deployed in many newsrooms for mobile journalism video shooting as it is easier (and cheaper) to learn how to film and edit on your phone than it is to use a big camera.
For new smart phone camera technologies you could see array of lenses to enable Lytro-like refocusing, create 3-D depth maps, and improve image quality in low light. In many cases smart phone cameras and DSLR are complimentary: Although the smartphones have decimated the point-and-shoot segment, sales of DSLR and other high-end rigs remain.
Live streaming video from smart phone becomes mainstream. Periscope was one of the first apps to really make live streaming events simple and easy enough that people wanted to do it. Many other apps are following the trend. Facebook begins testing live video streaming for all users.
Drone videography will ger more popular as drones become more popular. Many people will learn basic and creative aerial filming techniques for drone video cameras.
Whether or not the 2016 International CES holds any big surprises remains to be seen. This year’s CES will focus on how connectivity is proliferating everything from cars to homes, realigning diverse markets. It is quite probable that 4K TV will be big at this years’ CES show due to growing demand and falling prices. 4K becomes mainstream in 2016. CES will also have some 8K sets, though the market for 8K is at least five years away if not more (Tokyo Olympics in 2020 may be broadcast in 8K). Some new display technology is coming. LG has already demoed rollable 55, 66 and 77-inch OLED-based panels. Avegant’s Glyph technology literally beams video content onto your retinas. Analysts Predict CES 2016 Trends article gives you more ideas what to expect.
We can finally declare that 3D image in TV was a flop. Five years ago, it was estimated that the 3D technique can occupy the rapid pace of living cinemas addition. Then slowed different with technologies. But why the technology is virtually failed even though every new TV set has been added to display the 3D image as an option? Analysts said some people lack the ability to stereoscopic vision and for many, the 3D image caused eyestrain or nausea. Stereo image is to be left to various virtual reality applications.
After a year in which the weakness of smart TVs were exploited, Samsung goes on the offensive in 2016. Samsung’s new Tizen-based TVs will have GAIA security with pin lock for credit card and other personal info, data encryption, built-in anti-malware system, more. Samsung’s betting big on the internet of things and wants the TV to sit at the heart of this strategy. Samsung believes that people will want to activate their lights, heating and garage doors all from the comfort of their couch. If smart TVs get a reputation for being easy to hack, then Samsung’s models are hardly likely to be big sellers.
Whole TV industry need to go through a major transition as in most major developed markets, TV growth is slowing and in some cases stagnating. TV will account for 38.4 percent of the $503 billion global ad market in and will drop to 38 percent of the market in 2016. Digital ad spending will overtake TV as biggest category by 2017 or 2018.
Streaming video will be big in 2016. Almost all of the networks are streaming their content and streaming media is going mainstream fast. Third, 15% of American adults report they have become “cord cutters” – meaning they have abandoned paid cable or satellite television service. Many of these cord cutters say that the availability of televised content from the internet and other sources is a factor in their move away from subscription television services.
There seems to be a strong nostalgic audio trend going in. Whether it’s a sweet portable record player, a tabletop wooden radio or a full-size jukebox, the market for vintage-inspired electronics remains strong. Aside from record players, the vintage trend carries over to radios and speakers.
It seems that Americans were willing to spend on vinyl records. Nielsen numbers show that vinyl record sales rose 260 percent between 2009 and 2014, and sales for 2015 are on track to beat 2014’s total vinyl sales of 9.2 million units. Vinyl records generated more revenue in the first half of 2015 than free-to-use streaming services, but that’s not the full story. Despite vinyl sales increase it’s clear that the future of the music industry is digital. Total revenues from the digital music sector is expected to rise while physical sales will drop. Future is filled with streaming music services – both subscription services and free.
On the other end of audio spectrum High resolution audio tries to push to market at CES (again). Hi-Res Audio is the fastest growing category in music. Apple Music is planning to launch new its Hi-Res music streaming in 2016.
W3C group formed in the summer of 2015 a new working group: The Music Notation Community Group consists of representatives from some of the biggest names in the music notation software business who’ve come together to create a standardised way to display western music notation in your browser. It believes are achievable goals that can be met in 2016.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Olivier Laurent / TIME:
Getty Images files EU antitrust complaint against Google for scraping pics from websites, displaying and allowing downloads of hi-res images
Google Accused of Enabling Photography Piracy
http://time.com/4307769/google-getty-images/
Photography company Getty Images is accusing Google of scraping images from third party websites and encouraging piracy, adding a new wrinkle to the Mountain View, Calif.’s ongoing legal battles in Europe.
In its complaint to the European Union’s antitrust commission, Getty says Google Images, which displays full-screen slideshows of high-resolution copyrighted images, has hurt the stock agency’s licensing business as well as content creators worldwide.
The complaint comes less than a week after the European Union’s antitrust commission charged Google with using unfair practices to promote its own services on Android devices.
Miyashita claims Google is siphoning traffic and profits from photographers as a result of its practices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Disney will use Nokia’s virtual reality camera to film behind-the-scenes movie extras
The $60,000 Nokia Ozo camera just got its first major vote of confidence.
http://www.cnet.com/news/disney-will-use-nokias-60k-vr-camera-to-film-behind-the-scenes-movie-extras/
Imagine if you could be on the set of the next Star Wars film. Imagine if you could watch as Star Wars: Episode VIII director Rian Johnson trains Daisy Ridley to (maybe) become a Jedi.
Star Wars owner Disney is now working on the next best thing. Today, Disney announced a deal to use Nokia’s $60,000 (roughly £43,000 or AU$78,000) virtual reality camera to take you behind the scenes of future movies.
The Nokia Ozo is what’s known as a 360-degree camera, one of several recent cameras designed specifically with VR filmmaking in mind. By pointing eight different lenses in eight different directions, the Ozo can stitch together a spherical 3D video where you can turn your head to look in any direction. Put a VR headset on, and you can almost feel like you’re there — wherever “there” might be.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed:
Source: Facebook is offering some content creators around $250K for 20 live video posts per month over a three-month period — As Social Shifts To Video, Content Creators Win Power And Dollars — Photo illustration by Alex Kantrowitz, BuzzFeed News / Thinkstock-Facebook
As Social Shifts To Video, Content Creators Win Power And Dollars
http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/as-social-shifts-to-video-content-creators-win-power-and-dol?utm_term=.bvwLpBRbr
The social platforms are all competing for quality video, but only a select few can deliver it. Which means if platforms want the programming, they’ll have to pay up.
The meeting displayed something new that major social companies are now starting to reckon with: Very few people, relatively speaking, are capable of regularly creating compelling videos that others want to watch. And as social platforms look to saturate their feeds with video — live or otherwise — rather than just pictures and text, they’re essentially competing for the same limited set of good videos. So those who create the quality stuff can demand payment.
In recent weeks, those payments have begun flowing. Twitter and Facebook both started handing out multimillion-dollar wads of cash to bring quality video content to their platforms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Spotify buys photo aggregator CrowdAlbum to build more marketing tools for artists — Spotify has made another acquisition to build out the tools that it provides to artists who use Spotify’s streaming platform to grow their listeners and overall business. It has bought CrowdAlbum …
Spotify buys photo aggregator CrowdAlbum to build more marketing tools for artists
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/27/spotify-buys-photo-aggregator-crowdalbum-to-build-more-marketing-tools-for-artists/
Spotify says that it will be adding CrowdAlbum’s tools to its growing artillery of tools for artists who use Spotify as a marketing platform. It’s made other acquisitions in that vein, specifically buying Cord Project and Soundwave earlier this year. Products Spotify has launched include Spotify Fan Insights and Concerts.
Building more B2B services like this is smart for Spotify both as a way of attracting more musicians to the platform — also to counteract some of the memes around Spotify being a hotbed of lost revenues for artists — but also to compete against other streaming rivals that are also offering tools to artists.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Wants To Eliminate The Headphone Jack And Replace It With USB-C
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/04/28/0029222/intel-wants-to-eliminate-the-headphone-jack-and-replace-it-with-usb-c
With rumors circulating about how Apple may do away with the 3.5 mm headphone jack on its upcoming iPhone 7, Intel has shared a similar desire, citing “industry singling a strong desire to move from analog to digital.” Intel believes USB-C is the future audio jack. They believe USB-C has more potential than the 3.5mm audio jack as it allows users to add additional smart features to headphones in the future. For instance, a future pair of headphones could monitor one’s pulse or inner-ear temperature for fitness tracking, something that could only be possible if the headphones were connected to a smartphone via a USB-C cable.
Intel wants to eliminate 3.5 mm headphone jack like rumored iPhone 7, suggests USB-C as replacement
http://9to5mac.com/2016/04/27/intel-wants-to-eliminate-3-5-mm-headphone-jack-like-rumored-iphone-7-suggests-usb-c-as-replacement/
However, Intel is pushing USB-C as the future of headphone audio cables. Intel believes USB-C will win out over 3.5mm as it has many modern-day benefits including the potential to add additional smart features to headphones in the future, that can pass data down the same USB-C cable.
Accommodating USB-C components is also smaller than the internals needed for a 3.5 mm headphone jack which is a big issue as devices like phones continue to get smaller. Manufacturers have to be careful in current smartphone designs to shield the 3.5mm analog port from interference — a digital cable would not need such affordances.
USB-C already supports analog audio transfer through sideband pins simplifying the engineering steps necessary to swap 3.5mm with USB-C in device designs. Intel is also finalizing a USB-C standard for digital audio transfer, due in the second quarter. The protocol includes features like automatic device discovery and the ability to update headphones via software with new functionality over time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jay Donovan / TechCrunch:
Movidius announces Fathom Neural Compute Stick, a neural network compute accelerator on a USB stick
Plug the Fathom Neural Compute Stick into any USB device to make it smarter
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/28/plug-the-fathom-neural-compute-stick-into-any-usb-device-to-make-it-smarter/
Following on the heels of their announcement a few weeks ago about their FLIR partnership, Movidius is making another pretty significant announcement regarding their Myriad 2 processor. They’ve incorporated it into a new USB device called the Fathom Neural Compute Stick.
You can plug the Fathom into any USB-capable device (computer, camera, GoPro, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc) and that device can become “smarter” in the sense that it can utilize the Myriad 2 processor inside of it to become an input for a neural network (I’ll come back to all this).
Essentially, it means a device with the Fathom plugged into it can react cognitively or intelligently, based on the things it sees with its camera (via computer vision) or data it processes from another source. A device using it can make its own decisions depending on its programming. The key point is it can do this all natively—right on the stick. No call to the cloud is necessary.
In addition to the stick, Movidius has also created a software system they are calling the Fathom Deep Learning Software Framework that lets you optimize and compile learning algorithms into a binary that will run on the Myriad 2 at extremely low power. In a computer vision scenario, Movidius claims it can process 16 images per second using a single watt of power at full-bore/peak performance.
A larger rollout is planned for Q4 that is targeting the sub $100 range for the device.
The Complicated Part: What’s All This Business About Neural Networks And Algorithms?
Say you want to teach a computer system to recognize images or parts of images and react to them very quickly. For example, you want to program a drone camera to be able to recognize landing surfaces that are flat and solid versus those that are unstable.
To do this, you might build a computer system, with many, many GPUs and then use an open source software library like TensorFlow on that system to make the computer a learning system—an Artificial Neural Network. Once you have this system in place, you might begin feeding tens or even hundreds of thousands of images of acceptable landing surfaces into that learning system: flat surfaces, ship decks, driveways, mountaintops…anywhere a drone might need to land.
Over time, this large computer system begins learning and creating an algorithm to where it can begin to anticipate answers on it own, very quickly.
How the Fathom Neural Compute Stick figures into this is that the algorithmic computing power of the learning system can be optimized and output (using the Fathom software framework) into a binary that can run on the Fathom stick itself.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Sources: Snapchat hits 10B daily video views, up from 8B in February; over a third of daily users create Stories — Snapchat User Content Fuels Jump to 10 Billion Daily Video Views — More than a third of daily users said to create snap stories — Daily video views increase from 8 billion in February
Snapchat User `Stories’ Fuel 10 Billion Daily Video Views
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/snapchat-user-content-fuels-jump-to-10-billion-daily-video-views
The majority of people using Snapchat Inc.’s application are making videos, fueling a boom in watching them, the company is telling its investors.
More than a third of Snapchat’s daily users create “Stories,” broadcasting photos and videos from their lives that last 24 hours, according to people familiar with the matter. Now users are watching 10 billion videos a day on the application, up from 8 billion in February. Snapchat on Thursday confirmed the number of video views.
Snapchat is sharing the new stories statistic with investors to help explain that its app is focused on serving people who create and broadcast content, not just consume it. The first screen of the app is a camera, prompting users to share what they’re seeing or doing. Users can decide whether to send their snap directly to friends, where it disappears after it’s watched, or post it to their Snapchat Story, where it can be viewed for 24 hours by a broader audience.
That design gives the company an edge in a market where Facebook Inc. is building a business quickly.
On Snapchat, “conversations are not only including a photo or video, but are being started by them,” Robert Peck, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, said in a report this week. “People’s behavior is changing so that photos are being used as speech instead of a repository for memories.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
In Internet Age, Pirate Radio Arises As Surprising Challenge
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/04/29/0027257/in-internet-age-pirate-radio-arises-as-surprising-challenge
Just as the demise of terrestrial radio has been greatly exaggerated, so has the assumed parallel death of pirate radio. Due to the failure of licensed stations to meet the needs of many niche communities, pirate radio continues to increase in popularity. Helping facilitate this growth is the weakening power of the FCC to stop it, reports the Associated Press.
Rogue stations can cover up to several square miles thanks largely in part to cheaper technology. The appeal? “The DJs sound like you and they talk about things that you’re interested in,”
In Internet age, pirate radio arises as surprising challenge
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_PIRATE_RADIO?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-04-27-13-40-19
In the age of podcasts and streaming services, you might think pirate radio is low on the list of concerns of federal lawmakers and broadcasters. You’d be wrong.
They’re increasingly worried about its presence in some cities as unlicensed broadcasters commandeer frequencies to play anything from Trinidadian dance music to Haitian call-in shows. And they complain the Federal Communications Commission can’t keep up with the pirates, who can block listeners from favorite programs or emergency alerts for missing children and severe weather.
Helped along by cheaper technology, the rogue stations can cover several blocks or several square miles
The New York State Broadcasters Association estimates that 100 pirates operate in the New York City area alone, carrying programs in languages from Hebrew to Gaelic to Spanish. Many also broadcast in and around Miami and Boston
The FCC has been discussing possible solutions, such as penalizing pirate radio advertisers, and last month urged landlords and government officials to look out for rogue broadcasters.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stuart Dredge / Music Ally:
YouTube responds to music industry’s complaints about low artist payments, says it is more like radio than Spotify
YouTube hits back at ‘noise’ around its music payouts
http://musically.com/2016/04/28/youtube-hits-back-at-noise-around-its-music-payouts/
It’s been a bruising month for YouTube as labels, music industry bodies and artists have attacked Google’s video service over its payouts for music streams, and the safe-harbour legislation that they see as protecting it.
YouTube has been responding with statements over the course of the month, but now its head of international music partnerships Christophe Muller has penned a guest column for the Guardian setting out the company’s case.
Key points include a defence of YouTube’s Content ID system: “Only 0.5% of all music claims are issued manually; we handle the remaining 99.5% with 99.7% accuracy. And today, fan-uploaded content accounts for roughly 50% of the music industry’s revenue from YouTube,” wrote Muller.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Our 8 Favorite VR Experiences From the Tribeca Film Festival
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/8-best-vr-films-tribeca-festival/
Virtual reality may be a babe in the woods, but it’s growing up fast. The trajectory of innovation has been steep in the past year, as constant experimentation has also helped videographers break new ground in editing and storytelling techniques within the realm of VR. It’s no longer enough to just stick a 360-degree camera rig in an interesting place and let the novelty of watching it on a facemask do all the work. At this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, several VR projects premiered as part of the “Experiential Storytelling” showcase at the festival.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 10 interrupts a live TV broadcast with an unwanted upgrade
http://betanews.com/2016/04/27/windows-10-interrupts-live-tv-broadcast/
Ever since Microsoft made Windows 10 a recommended update there have been numerous reports of the new operating system installing itself without user consent, and without much warning.
Microsoft has always played down this behavior, but an example of how the OS pushes upgrades on unsuspecting users was earlier today shown live on TV during a weather forecast.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Hulu hopes to launch an online TV service that streams popular broadcast and cable TV channels in Q1 2017 — Hulu Is Developing a Cable-Style Online TV Service — New subscription service would stream feeds of popular broadcast and cable TV channels
Hulu Is Developing a Cable-Style Online TV Service
New subscription service would stream feeds of popular broadcast and cable TV channels
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/hulu-is-developing-a-cable-style-online-tv-service-1462150982-lMyQjAxMTI2MDAzMjAwOTIxWj
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously.
https://blog.vellumatlanta.com/2016/05/04/apple-stole-my-music-no-seriously/
“The software is functioning as intended,” said Amber.
“Wait,” I asked, “so it’s supposed to delete my personal files from my internal hard drive without asking my permission?”
“Yes,” she replied.
I had just explained to Amber that 122 GB of music files were missing from my laptop.
What Amber explained was exactly what I’d feared: through the Apple Music subscription, which I had, Apple now deletes files from its users’ computers. When I signed up for Apple Music, iTunes evaluated my massive collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple’s database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted. If Apple Music saw a file it didn’t recognize—which came up often, since I’m a freelance composer and have many music files that I created myself—it would then download it to Apple’s database, delete it from my hard drive, and serve it back to me when I wanted to listen, just like it would with my other music files it had deleted.
This led to four immediate problems:
1. If Apple serves me my music, that means that when I don’t have wifi access, I can’t listen to it.
2. What Apple considers a “match” often isn’t.
3. Although I could click the little cloud icon next to each song title and “get it back” from Apple, their servers aren’t fast enough to make it an easy task.
4. Should I choose to reclaim my songs via download, the files I would get back would not necessarily be the same as my original files. As a freelance composer, I save WAV files of my own compositions rather than Mp3s.
If you’re wondering why Apple hasn’t been sued yet, it’s because the iTunes Terms of Use vaguely warn of this issue, then later indemnify Apple and preclude any litigation from users who’ve been boned
I recovered my original music files only by using a backup I made weeks earlier. Many people don’t back up as often as they should, though, so this isn’t always an option.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Kafka / Re/code:
Warner’s Q1 music streaming sales up $72M, making it the biggest source of revenue, more than 50% from outside US; downloads down $17M, physical copies down $6M — Streaming music has become Warner Music’s biggest business — Another milestone in the music industry’s shift to streaming …
Streaming music has become Warner Music’s biggest business
http://recode.net/2016/05/06/streaming-warner-music-youtube-google/
Another milestone in the music industry’s shift to streaming: Revenue from the streaming business has become Warner Music Group’s biggest business.
The company announced that money from services like Spotify and Apple Music was the single biggest source of recorded music revenue in the first quarter of the year, surpassing both physical sales and sales of digital downloads. That’s the first time any of the big music labels has hit that inflection point.
It also shouldn’t be a surprise, since Warner announced a year ago that streaming revenue had surpassed download for the first time.
Still, even a music pessimist would have to note that the streaming boom is now bigger than the rest of the industry’s decline. Warner’s streaming music revenue increased $72 million for the quarter — more than half of which came from sales outside the U.S.
Warner’s recorded music sales increased by 10 percent overall, and the company’s total revenue also increased 10 percent.
Warner, like the rest of the music industry, would like more than that. And Warner, like the rest of the music industry, is now hammering Google and YouTube to cough up more money — a campaign that coincides with the big labels’ renegotiations with the world’s biggest video service.
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Callaham / Windows Central:
NVIDIA announces Ansel in-game photography feature letting users take 360-degree screenshots that can later be viewed with VR headset or mobile VR
John Callaham / Windows Central:
NVIDIA announces Ansel in-game photography feature letting users take 360-degree screenshots that can later be viewed with VR headset or mobile VR
NVIDIA’s Ansel will let gamers take incredible in-game screenshots
http://www.windowscentral.com/nvidias-ansel-will-let-gamers-take-incredible-game-photographs
NVIDIA has announced a new in-game camera photography feature called Ansel. Developers can add this feature in their games so players can some incredible looking take in-game photographs.
It will give gamers the freedom to not only take cool looking screenshots, but they can also move the camera around to any part of the map or game world they want. Filters can also be put into the screenshots, similar to apps like Instagram. It even allows screenshots to be taken at massive resolutions of over 61,000 pixels, or over 1,000 times that of a 4K display.
Tomi Engdahl says:
FCC Approves Charter Acquisition of Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks
http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/fcc-approves-charter-acquisition-time-warner-cable-bright-house-networks-1201768268/
Paving the way for the rise of a new No. 2 in the cable TV arena, the FCC has formally approved the acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks by Charter Communications.
The FCC said Friday that the three-way $66 billion merger had been approved with certain conditions on Charter’s activities that were outlined by FCC chairman Tom Wheeler last month.
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Herrman / New York Times:
Apple met with top podcasters as concerns have grown about its commitment to the medium; lack of sharing tools, analytics, paid subs remain industry sore points — Steven P. Jobs put his talent as a master salesman to the test when, in 2005, he introduced new Apple software for downloading digital audio shows.
Podcasts Surge, but Producers Fear Apple Isn’t Listening
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/business/media/podcasts-surge-apple.html?_r=0
Chris Morrow, chief executive of the Loud Speakers Podcast Network, said, “I think everyone who’s seriously involved in this space, they’d at least like to know what the endgame is.”
“It’s sort of like TiVo, for radio, for your iPod,”
He was talking about podcasting — radio-style shows made for the Internet that have, in recent years, exploded in popularity. These days, many amateur podcasters are going professional. Major media organizations, searching for answers and bright spots in a fast-changing and confusing digital world, are releasing new shows every week. Advertisers are starting to follow them, and so are millions of dollars of venture capital.
It is, in other words, an industry now, one that Apple essentially gave life to and still dominates. Yet at this moment of triumph for podcasting, concerns are growing in the community about how much Apple actually cares.
Interviews with over two dozen podcasters and people inside Apple reveal a variety of complaints. The podcasters say that they are relegated to wooing a single Apple employee for the best promotion. That sharing on social media is cumbersome. And that for podcasters to make money, they need more information about their listeners, and Apple is in a unique position to provide it.
“The lack of podcast data is kind of shocking,”
Now Apple is the biggest public company in the world, but podcasts bring Apple virtually nothing in direct revenue.
Promotion within iTunes, which is still one of the only reliable ways to build an audience, particularly for a new show, is decided by a small team that fields pitches and does its own outreach.
“Apple built this village 10 years ago,”
In January, Spotify, the streaming music service, began rolling out an ambitious slate of podcasts. Among the company’s promises to podcasters: hosting, streaming and extensive listening data. Audible, the audiobook service owned by the notoriously aggressive Amazon, is investing heavily in original audio content
Marco Arment / Marco.org:
Despite Apple’s dominant role in podcasting, the medium has remained decentralized and open; individual podcasters would suffer if Apple asserted more control — This New York Times article gets a lot wrong, and both podcast listeners and podcast producers should be clear on Apple’s actual role …
Apple’s actual role in podcasting: be careful what you wish for
https://marco.org/2016/05/07/apple-role-in-podcasting
This New York Times article gets a lot wrong, and both podcast listeners and podcast producers should be clear on Apple’s actual role in podcasting today and what, exactly, big producers are asking for.
Podcasts work nothing like the App Store, and we’re all better off making sure they never head down that road.
Podcasts still work like old-school blogs:
Each podcast can be hosted anywhere and completely owned and controlled by its producer.
Podcast-player apps periodically check each subscribed podcast’s RSS feed, and when a new episode is published, they fetch the audio file directly from the producer’s site or host.
Monetization and analytics are completely up to the podcasters.
Some podcasts have their own custom listening apps that provide their creators with more data and monetization opportunities.
It’s completely decentralized, free, fair, open, and uncontrollable by any single entity, as long as the ecosystem of podcast-player apps remains diverse enough that no app can dictate arbitrary terms to publishers (the way Facebook now effectively controls the web publishing industry)
Apple holds two large roles in podcasting today that should threaten its health, but haven’t yet:
The biggest player app: Apple’s built-in iOS Podcasts app is the biggest podcast player in the world by a wide margin, holding roughly 60–70% marketshare.
The biggest podcast directory: The iTunes Store’s Podcasts directory is the only one that matters, and being listed there is essential for podcasts to be easily found when searching in most apps.
“More data.”
On the web, getting more data was easy: web pages are software, letting their publishers use JavaScript to run their own code right in your “player app” (web browser) to creepily record and analyze every move you made, selling you more effectively to advertisers and letting them algorithmically tailor their content to maximize those pennies at any cost to quality and ethics.
Podcasts are just MP3s. Podcast players are just MP3 players, not platforms to execute arbitrary code from publishers. Publishers can see which IP addresses are downloading the MP3s, which can give them a rough idea of audience size, their approximate locations, and which apps they use. That’s about it.
Big podcasters also apparently want Apple to insert itself as a financial intermediary to allow payment for podcasts within Apple’s app. We’ve seen how that goes. Trust me, podcasters, you don’t want that.
It would not only add rules, restrictions, delays, and big commissions, but it would increase Apple’s dominant role in podcasts, push out diversity, give Apple far more control than before, and potentially destroy one of the web’s last open media ecosystems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Strong Growth Seen For CMOS Image Sensor Market
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329627&
The worldwide CMOS image sensor revenue grew 12 percent in 2015 to $9.9 billion and 2015 was firth consecutive year of record-high annual sales, according to IC Insights. And the growth is expected to continue for another five years albeit at a reduced compound annual growth rate.
IC Insights forecasts the market for CMOS image sensors growing each year through to 2020 and achieving a CAGR of 9.0 percent over the period 2015 to 2020. In the previous five-year period (2010-2015), CMOS image sensor sales increased by a CAGR of 17.0 percent although that was partly influenced positively by recovery from the severe economic recession in 2008-2009.
While much of the past growth is based on the adoption of low-cost CMOS image sensors in smartphones and digital cameras that growth is now spreading as embedded digital imaging to automotive, security and medical applications.
Automotive systems are forecast to be the fastest growing application for CMOS image sensors with worldwide sales rising by a CAGR of 55 percent in the next five years to $2.2 billion in 2020, or about 14 percent of the market’s projected $15.2 billion total value.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Parents Could Be Sued By Their Kids For Posting Pictures of Them On Facebook
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/05/09/1340213/parents-could-be-sued-by-their-kids-for-posting-pictures-of-them-on-facebook
Next time you share pictures of your children on Facebook, you will want to take their permission before doing that. French authorities have warned parents in France of fines of up to $50,000 and a year in prison for publishing intimate photos of their children on social media without permission.
Could children one day sue parents for posting baby pics on Facebook?
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/may/08/children-sue-parents-facebook-post-baby-photos-privacy?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-2
Pictures once kept hidden in family photo albums are now being shared with the world, and children may not appreciate it in the future
That photo of your toddler running around in a nappy or having a temper tantrum? Think before you post it on Facebook. That’s the advice from French authorities, which have warned parents in France they could face fines of up to €45,000 (£35,000) and a year in prison for publishing intimate photos of their children on social media without permission, as part of the country’s strict privacy laws.
It’s a development that could give pause for thought for many parents used to sharing details of their children’s lives across social media. A 2015 study by internet company Nominet found parents in the UK post nearly 200 photos of their under fives online every year, meaning a child will feature in around 1,000 online photos before their fifth birthday.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China bans livestreams of people ‘seductively’ eating bananas
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/05/07/gone-bananas/
In its efforts to further oppress the internet, China has put forward new regulations that will ban women from livestreaming themselves eating bananas in an erotic manner. Well then.
Tomi Engdahl says:
OLED panel permanent amazingly sharp picture 12700 dots per inch.
It has an OLED panel, but obviously not display screens in the traditional sense. Fraunhoverin researchers reached ultraresoluutioon discussion, the pre-encapsulated OLED panel with an electron beam.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4365:oled-paneeliin-pysyva-allistyttavan-tarkka-kuva&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Periscope will make broadcasts permanent by default, introduce search, and integrate with certain DJI drone models in update in coming weeks — It’s been a month now since Facebook rolled-out a dramatically improved design for live video — a design that borrowed liberally from Twitter-owned Periscope.
Periscope makes broadcasts permanent by default and introduces search
Plus a new integration with DJI drones
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/9/11635382/periscope-permanent-broadcasts-search-drone-integration-dji
It’s been a month now since Facebook rolled-out a dramatically improved design for live video — a design that borrowed liberally from Twitter-owned Periscope. Facebook’s enormous audience, combined with its willingness to pay media companies to broadcast there, immediately threatened to derail Twitter’s video ambitions. But today Periscope is announcing features that begin to address some of the product’s shortcomings: permanent broadcasts, search, and an integration with DJI drones.
Starting with an app update in about three weeks, Periscope broadcasts will no longer disappear after 24 hours by default. Instead, broadcasts will be available permanently on a broadcaster’s profile — and inside the tweets where they are often shared. Users can set broadcasts to disappear by default if they like, and can still delete broadcasts whenever they want.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Spotify expands its video offerings, unveils slate of 12 original series which will be available to both free and paid users in US, UK, Germany, and Sweden — Russell Simmons, Tim Robbins to produce programs for Spotify — Videos will help Spotify compete with YouTube, Apple
Spotify Pushes Further Into Video With Original Slate of Shows
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-09/spotify-pushes-further-into-video-with-original-slate-of-shows
Spotify Ltd. is making 12 original series with the likes of actor Tim Robbins and Def Jam Records co-founder Russell Simmons, a dramatic expansion of video offerings from the Swedish music-streaming service.
Spotify will unveil plans for its first slate of original shows Monday, a year after adding clips from the BBC and Comedy Central. Episodes of every program, which range from a few minutes to 15 minutes, will be available to free and paid Spotify users in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Sweden.
Having amassed an audience of 75 million users, Spotify is counting on video to bring in new customers and convince current ones to spend more time on the service, which offers more than 30 million songs on-demand.
Spotify has little experience getting people to watch much of anything. Videos are buried in the current version of the app
YouTube has an edge on every other music service when it comes to video. It attracts more than 1 billion users with its vast library of TV clips, pranks, music and cat videos.
“It will be our job to make this stuff famous,” C
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steven Erlanger / New York Times:
The BBC, with annual income of over $7B, faces intense budget pressure as UK government prepares plans for its new charter — LONDON — The British Broadcasting Corporation is variously seen as a crown jewel of British culture, a producer of refined entertainment and reliable news coverage …
BBC Faces Turning Point in Mission as Pressures Bear Down
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/world/europe/bbc-british-broadcasting-corporation-charter.html?_r=0
The British Broadcasting Corporation is variously seen as a crown jewel of British culture, a producer of refined entertainment and reliable news coverage and as a cumbersome monolith, burdened by scandal and mismanagement.
But there is wide agreement that the BBC is at a critical moment in its nearly 94-year history. Challenged by the same forces that have upended traditional news media organizations elsewhere, including the technology-driven fracturing of its mass audiences, it faces intense budget pressures. Accused of using public funds to distort the market for programming, it is under constant assault by private-sector competitors.
Any institution so central to public life and so huge — it receives 3.72 billion pounds a year, or about $5.4 billion, through the £145.50 license fee nearly all households pay, plus £1.3 billion in commercial and other income — is inevitably going to prompt questions about its scope, size and purpose.
the way the BBC is now governed and overseen has serious design flaws
Tomi Engdahl says:
Holoflex—World’s first holographic flexible smartphone (w/ Video)
http://techxplore.com/news/2016-05-holoflexworld-holographic-flexible-smartphone-video.html
Researchers at the Human Media Lab at Queen’s University have developed the world’s first holographic flexible smartphone. The device, dubbed HoloFlex, is capable of rendering 3D images with motion parallax and stereoscopy to multiple simultaneous users without head tracking or glasses.
“HoloFlex offers a completely new way of interacting with your smartphone. It allows for glasses-free interactions with 3D video and images in a way that does not encumber the user.” says Dr. Vertegaal.
HoloFlex features a 1920×1080 full high-definition Flexible Organic Light Emitting Diode (FOLED) touchscreen display. Images are rendered into 12-pixel wide circular blocks rendering the full view of the 3D object from a particular viewpoint.
Tomi Engdahl says:
YouTube Should Let Musicians Opt Out, Manager Says
http://fortune.com/2016/05/09/taylor-swifts-irving-azoff/
The battle between YouTube and the music industry won’t go away.
Famed musician manager Irving Azoff fired the latest salvo on Monday in an open letter to YouTube, arguing that the company doesn’t give artists enough control over how their music is consumed. In fact, he argues that artists should be allowed to go so far as to opt-out of having their tracks on the streaming service if they wish.
Azoff went on to explain that in order for an artist to have a song removed from YouTube is to use the company’s Content ID tool, which requires artists to identify improper use of their tracks and alert YouTube GOOGL 1.16% . He added that YouTube “continues to hide behind” provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which allows for certain use of copyrighted material as long as it’s not for commercial purposes.
“When it comes to music, YouTube claims it has no control, and can’t keep a song off its platform,”
Azoff is just the latest in a long line of people in the music industry to sound off about YouTube and copyrighted music on its service. Like Azoff, musicians have long argued that users uploading their videos or tracks to YouTube is a violation of copyright law and ultimately hurts their wallets, since they don’t get royalties on that use. They’ve added that YouTube also causes them to lose control over how they communicate with their fans.
“The truth is that YouTube takes copyright management extremely seriously and we work to ensure rights-holders make money no matter who uploads their music,” Christophe Muller, head of YouTube’s International Music Partnerships, wrote in the post. “
But they can’t.
The battle between YouTube and the music industry won’t go away.
Famed musician manager Irving Azoff fired the latest salvo on Monday in an open letter to YouTube, arguing that the company doesn’t give artists enough control over how their music is consumed. In fact, he argues that artists should be allowed to go so far as to opt-out of having their tracks on the streaming service if they wish.
“Taylor Swift should be able to decide which of her songs are available for free, and which are part of a paid subscription service,” he writes. “Or she should be able to opt out of YouTube if you won’t give her this choice. But artists can’t opt out of YouTube.”
Azoff went on to explain that in order for an artist to have a song removed from YouTube is to use the company’s Content ID tool, which requires artists to identify improper use of their tracks and alert YouTube GOOGL 1.16% . He added that YouTube “continues to hide behind” provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which allows for certain use of copyrighted material as long as it’s not for commercial purposes.
“When it comes to music, YouTube claims it has no control, and can’t keep a song off its platform,” he writes. “You exercise control over content when it is good for your business. But the truth is that, from the beginning, free music consumption drove YouTube’s business, and so YouTube chose not to give artists control over how their music reaches their fans.”
Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
Azoff is just the latest in a long line of people in the music industry to sound off about YouTube and copyrighted music on its service. Like Azoff, musicians have long argued that users uploading their videos or tracks to YouTube is a violation of copyright law and ultimately hurts their wallets, since they don’t get royalties on that use. They’ve added that YouTube also causes them to lose control over how they communicate with their fans.
For its part, YouTube has said that it’s actually working in the best interests of artists. In a blog post late last month, YouTube denied claims of “mistreating musicians,” adding that it has paid over $3 billion in royalties to the industry “and that number is growing significantly year-over-year.”
“The truth is that YouTube takes copyright management extremely seriously and we work to ensure rights-holders make money no matter who uploads their music,” Christophe Muller, head of YouTube’s International Music Partnerships, wrote in the post. “No other platform gives as much money back to creators—big and small—across all kinds of content.”
Muller went on to say that just 0.5% of all copyright infringement claims YouTube receives come from the music industry.
Meanwhile, the music industry is in transition. Over the last couple of decades, the business model has changed dramatically from one that focused on album sales to digital sales. Now, the industry is again transitioning with the ever-increasing popularity of music streaming services, like Spotify.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Amazon unveils Amazon Video Direct, open to any video creator, with four ways to earn money: per-hour royalty, add-on subs, digital rent/sale, or ad-supported — Initial partners include Conde Nast, Samuel Goldwyn Films, Machinima, StyleHaul — Amazon, which touts itself as Earth’s biggest store …
Amazon Takes on YouTube and Others, Opening Video Platform to All Creators
http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/amazon-video-direct-youtube-creators-1201770058/
Initial partners include Conde Nast, Samuel Goldwyn Films, Machinima, StyleHaul
Amazon, which touts itself as Earth’s biggest store, has officially launched its bid to be the place to watch any kind of video under the sun.
With the launch of Amazon Video Direct, open to any video creator, the e-commerce giant will compete head-to-head with Google’s YouTube for video-ad dollars and views as well as other big Internet video distributors like Facebook and Vimeo.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Facebook Moments private photo-sharing app launches in EU and Canada without facial recognition, now available in all countries worldwide
Facebook Moments launches in the EU & Canada without facial recognition
http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/10/facebook-moments-launches-in-the-eu-canada-without-facial-recognition/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kevin Draper / Gawker:
As digital sites woo advertisers, they conflate metrics for digital video viewership and traditional TV — We are, right now, in the midst of a digital media upheaval. What was previously conventional wisdom—that a media company with hopes of turning a profit needs, above all, to achieve scale—is being proven false.
Internet Video Views Is A 100 Percent Bullshit Metric
http://gawker.com/internet-video-views-is-a-100-percent-bullshit-metric-1774349561
We are, right now, in the midst of a digital media upheaval. What was previously conventional wisdom—that a media company with hopes of turning a profit needs, above all, to achieve scale—is being proven false. The new conventional wisdom is that video will be digital media’s savior, but it is only a matter of time before this is proven false too.
It’s all about video: “To qualify as a NewFronts presenting company, presenters must create original content in video format that is available online.”
For context, last year CNN averaged 712,000 viewers in primetime. Brands, according to the argument BuzzFeed is implicitly making, should therefore pay something like the same to message and tell stories against BuzzFeed’s next smash hit as they currently pay for commercials during the evening on CNN. Right? Well, no.
At its peak 807,000 people watched that damn watermelon explode, which is actually orders of magnitude fewer than the average of 712,000 people watching primetime CNN last year.
Television ratings are measured by the privately-held Nielsen Corporation, which pays a small amount of money to around 25,000 of the 116.4 million “TV homes” in America to install People Meters. Using special remote controls, these People Meters measure what is being watched, by whom, and for how long.
The TV ratings Nielsen reports aren’t concurrent viewers, but rather “average minute audience,” which is exactly what it sounds like.
If BuzzFeed’s watermelon video had been measured the way a TV show is, its viewership would’ve been closer to zero than the 807,000 it trumpeted to advertisers.
The conflation of digital and traditional viewership metrics has gotten under the skin of TV people, and for good reason. If advertisers can be hoodwinked into believing that a sizable number of people are actually watching things on Facebook Live, they will direct their money online, where the ad rates are much, much lower than they are on TV.
Since it was broadcast live, the watermelon explosion has been watched by 10.7 million people, per Facebook’s count.
Leaving aside digital video’s low viewership when measured like TV, advertisers don’t even look at TV ratings the way everybody else does. They buy ads based mainly upon C7 ratings, which measure how many viewers watched commercials as they aired and up to seven days after.
Nielsen struggles to capture the entire universe of “television” so far as it takes in DVRs, streaming services, mobile devices, and so on.
One day—maybe soon—video viewership will be measured much more accurately than it is now.
It is worth considering, though, whether the availability of more precise metrics is beneficial to media companies. In some ways, the huge disparity between ad rates for print and digital is because online we can better measure exactly how ineffective advertising actually is
But if digital media companies want to command anywhere near the same lucrative ad rates as TV networks, they’ll have to prove their videos consistently get the same audience as television networks. Which they can’t, because they don’t.
Facebook is nobody’s friend, and especially not journalists’. They want to make live video look as attractive as possible to suck news organizations into providing high-quality content that users will engage
I sure as hell don’t know how to fund modern journalism on a broad scale, but I have been around just long enough to understand not only that live video isn’t a silver bullet, but that there is no silver bullet.
It is worth noting that the most successful Facebook Live videos so far have essentially been gimmicks; the type of things more palatably referred to as “content” than “journalism.”
And that, right there, is likely to be the future of digital media, and increasingly its present too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Imagination Inside Innovative Video Analytics Engine
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329655&
With their Elvees Image Semantic Engine (Elise), Russian ASIC expert company Elvees and UK-based chip IP provider Imagination Technologies are about to create an SoC platform for a wide range of video analytics. The first version has been taped out now, opening up the perspective for powerful video processing in a very small form factor.
The Elise SoC from Elvees will introduce an innovative architecture to fulfill the needs of both high-performance mobile computing and video analytics. The devices is based on a high-performance, energy-efficient multimedia/video IP platform from Imagination. Elise combines a wide range of functionality including blocks for pre-processing and post-processing of stereo video at ultra-high resolutions; a range of CPUs for high-, medium- and low-profile tasks; a high-end mobile GPU; and a multicore standard navigation engine.
Companies can use the new Elise chip to develop a new generation of IP cameras with video analysis and a wide range of OEM modules.
Video analytics, the processing and understanding of video streams, is important for many emerging markets including:
Autonomous automobiles—featuring Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)
Internet of Things (IoT) applications where the camera is a key ‘sensor’
Smart cities—based on innovative IP cameras with real-time monitoring
Retail/smarter shops—with augmented reality and next-generation security with safety everywhere
Mobile devices—for a myriad of applications from augmented reality and visual search to simply more feature-rich cameras
Consumer multimedia, home entertainment and enterprise—where existing markets are evolving to embrace the potential of video analytics
Tomi Engdahl says:
Netflix Saves Its Subscribers From 160 Hours of Commercials Per Year
http://cordcutting.com/netflix-saves-its-subscribers-from-160-hours-of-commercials-per-year/
There are a lot of reasons to choose streaming video services over cable: it’s more affordable, content stops and starts when you want it, your entertainment goes wherever your mobile device does, and so on. But one particularly appealing consequence of the cord cutting revolution is the sharp dive in time spent watching commercials. In fact, avoiding commercials has become a major goal of many streamers – which has prompted services like Hulu and YouTube to develop ad-free options.
Netflix, the oldest and best-known of the streaming services, has always been commercial free. Perhaps that’s why its users believe that Netflix can eventually completely replace cable. One thing is for sure: Netflix is saving its subscribers from an awful lot of commercial time.
Netflix cuts out over 6 days of commercials from your life per year, compared to cable TV
http://uk.businessinsider.com/netflix-subscribers-save-160-hours-of-commercials-compared-to-cable-2016-5?r=US&IR=T
Tomi Engdahl says:
Italians rattle little tin for smartmobe mini lenses
Your phone becomes a microscope down at Kickstarter
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/11/blips_smartphone_lenses/
An Italian “microscopy, consumer electronics and micro-optics” outfit is offering smartphone and tablet owners the chance to get up-close and personal with the world via “an ultra portable and very affordable set of 2 mini lenses which turns your smartphone or tablet into a digital microscope”
Working with the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genoa-based SmartMicroOptics (SMO) has cooked up “BLIPS” – a couple of plastic resin lenses of macro (~10x magnification) and micro (up to 100x magnification with digital zoom) capability which attach to your device via a handy, reusable sticky strip.
BLIPS is currently the subject of a comparatively modest, €15,000 target Kickstarter tin-rattle,
SMO can’t currently say exactly what the BLIPS lenses are made of, other than they’re hewn from “a plastic compound”,
BLIPS deals currently available down at Kickstarter include the “Basic Kit” with the two lenses (€20), a Basic Kit plus smartphone stand for €25, and a “Lab Kit”, equalling a Basic Kit plus smartphone/slide housing, light source and five sample slides (€35).
BLIPS:The World’s THINNEST Macro&Micro lenses for smartphone
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blips/blips
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook now lets you upload panoramas along with photos from 360 cameras for viewing as 360 Photos in News Feed and on Gear VR headsets; Gear VR hits 1M users
Facebook will turn panoramas into “360 Photos” for feed and Gear VR’s 1M users
http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/11/facebook-360-photos/
Those panoramas trapped on your phone will finally get a better viewing experience, both on News Feed and the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR. Facebook is also releasing Gear VR usage stats for the first time, saying Gear VR has 1 million monthly users, and those who use it spend 25 minutes per day on the device. That could encourage developers to build for the platform.
Facebook’s upcoming “360 Photos” feature will let people upload flat panoramas like those taken on iPhones, Google Photospheres, or photos from 360 cameras. Facebook will then morph them into 360 Photos for News Feed where users will be able to hold and drag to pan around the photos, or move their heads to look around them on the Gear VR.
360 Photos made from panoramas could democratize VR content creation by allowing people to make it with no special equipment. They’ll just need an iPhone running iOS 6 or later, an Android running v4.2 or later, or one of many 360 photo apps available for download. In fact, many people will have already created this content, which before was tough to view.
Gear VR Hits 1 Million Users
The Samsung Gear VR launched worldwide 6 months ago a $99 mobile virtual reality headset powered by Oculus’ technology. Users slide a recent Samsung Galaxy phone in, which acts as the screen. Now Oculus owner Facebook is providing some stats on its progress.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Amazon unveils Amazon Video Direct, open to any video creator, with four ways to earn money: per-hour royalty, add-on subs, digital rent/sale, or ad-supported
Amazon Takes on YouTube and Others, Opening Video Platform to All Creators
http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/amazon-video-direct-youtube-creators-1201770058/
Initial partners include Conde Nast, Samuel Goldwyn Films, Machinima, StyleHaul
Amazon, which touts itself as Earth’s biggest store, has officially launched its bid to be the place to watch any kind of video under the sun.
With the launch of Amazon Video Direct, open to any video creator, the e-commerce giant will compete head-to-head with Google’s YouTube for video-ad dollars and views as well as other big Internet video distributors like Facebook and Vimeo.
Partners participating in Amazon Video Direct have four distribution options. They can make their content available to Prime Video subscribers and receive a per-hour royalty fee; it can be sold as an add-on subscription through the Streaming Partners Program; it can be offered for digital rental or purchase; or it can be made available to all Amazon customers for free with ads, and creators will receive a 55% share of the ad revenue (the same as YouTube).
Amazon will pay partners 50% of the retail price for digital purchases, rentals and subscription fees. If they choose Prime Video distribution, creators will earn royalties of 15 cents per hour streamed in the U.S. and 6 cents in other territories (capped at $75,000 per year) under the standard terms.
At launch, AVD partners include: Conde Nast Entertainment, HowStuffWorks, Samuel Goldwyn Films, the Guardian, Mashable, Mattel, StyleHaul, Kin Community, Jash, Business Insider, Machinima, TYT Network, Baby Einstein, CJ Entertainment America, Xive TV, Synergetic Distribution, Kino Nation, Journeyman Pictures and Pro Guitar Lessons.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung plans to publish voluminous sized microSD memory card, which holds up a commendable amount of, for example, 4k video.
Samsung EVO Media Plus 256 GB of storage space it is possible to store up to 12 hours of 4K video, 33 hours of video are described in FullHD resolution, 55 200 digital images or, alternatively, for example, 23 to 500 MP3 music files.
The new card is based on the latest Samsung’s V-NAND technology and a read speed of 95 megabytes per second. Write speeds of 90 megabytes per second
Samsung EVO Plus will begin shipping in June.
The selling price will be $ 250.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/samsungin-uusi-microsd-muistikortti-ahmii-hurjan-maaran-tietoa-6549559
More:
Samsung’s new 256GB microSD card can hold 12 hours of 4K video
http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2016/05/11/samsungs-new-256gb-evo-plus-microsd-card-enough-memory-hold-lord-rings-4k/
An if you’re curious how much this card you’ll be lusting after costs, it’s $250; almost one full dollar per gigabyte.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Suicide on Periscope Prompts French Officials to Open Inquiry
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/world/europe/periscope-suicide-france.html?_r=0
In a series of videos on the live-streaming app Periscope, she said that her name was Océane, that she was 19 and that she worked in a retirement home.
At 4:29 p.m. on Tuesday, while recording herself on Periscope, the woman threw herself under a train at the Égly station, about 25 miles south of Paris
The videos are no longer available on Periscope, which is owned by Twitter, but excerpts from the videos were widely circulated on YouTube
The death appeared to be the latest of several recent episodes in which disturbing and violent acts have been transmitted via live-streaming technologies.
Thomas Husson, a Paris-based analyst at the technology research company Forrester Research, said it was inevitable that live-streaming tools would be used to record tragic and even brutal events.
“It’s both the good and bad part of these technologies: They allow people to enter other people’s private lives,” he said in a phone interview.
“It would be very difficult to prevent such events from happening,” he said of the suicide. “We now live in a dictatorship of real time.”
Mr. Husson added: “These technologies enable real-time streaming, which can have a lot of unintended consequences. Internet giants are starting to monitor how people use their technologies in real time, but it’s tricky. It’s almost impossible to control how people use social media.”
Regulators have been trying to get a hold on new social media tools, like Periscope and Snapchat, mostly out of concern about their use by extremist organizations like the Islamic State.
Twitter encourages people to submit a form if they believe that a user is at risk of self-harm.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Tencent-backed music-streaming service China Music Corp. plans US IPO as soon as this year, could raise $300M-$600M
Tencent-Backed Music-Streaming Service Plans U.S. IPO
China Music Corp. could raise $300 million to $600 million
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/tencent-backed-music-streaming-service-plans-u-s-ipo-1462967987-lMyQjAxMTI2MDEzMjQxMTI2Wj
HONG KONG—A music-streaming service backed by Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. is planning an initial public offering in the U.S. that comes as competition heats up to win the ears of Chinese consumers, according to people familiar with the matter.
China Music Corp., which owns Chinese online music services Kugou and Kuwo, has hired Wall Street banks Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley for an IPO that could take place later this year, the people said.
CMC’s plans to go public come as competition intensifies in China’s online music market, where hundreds of millions of smartphone users listen to music with mobile apps. While revenue from online music in China is still small compared with the U.S., Chinese companies such as CMC are trying to secure their positions in a growing market that could become lucrative in the future. CMC’s Kugou and Kuwo are among China’s top mobile music apps. The country’s biggest Internet companies—Tencent, online shopping firm Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and search provider Baidu Inc.–all operate their own music-streaming businesses.
Listing in the U.S. could become more attractive than other venues
Wall Street banks are also more willing to underwrite smaller initial public offerings in the U.S. because New York listings have much higher fees than those in Hong Kong or Shanghai. Companies tend to pay around 7% of the funds raised to banks in U.S. listings, while Hong Kong deals can earn as little as 2% and Shanghai offerings sometimes even less.
Global music streaming revenue grew 45.2% in 2015, accounting for more than 40% of the world’s digital music sales, according to a report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Apple denies report that it will end iTunes music downloads within the next few years
Apple says it isn’t going to stop selling music downloads
http://www.recode.net/2016/5/11/11660982/apple-itunes-music-downloads-not-true
The future of music is streaming, not downloads.
But that doesn’t mean Apple, the company that essentially invented the market for music download sales, is going to stop selling downloads anytime soon.
That’s contrary to a report today that said Apple planned to stop selling downloads in two years — or, alternately, “the next 3-4 years.”
“Not true,” said Apple rep Tom Neumayr.
If he did want to say more, I imagine that he would argue that lots of people continue to buy downloads — and even physical discs.
And yes, download sales are in a steady decline and have been for some time. Download sales in the U.S. dropped from $2.8 billion in 2013 to $2.3 billion last year, according to the RIAA industry trade group.
Still, both Apple and the music labels it works with don’t have any incentive to push downloads off a cliff.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU gives up single digital market for audiovisual content
http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2016/05/12/eu-gives-up-single-digital-market-for-audiovisual-content/
TV broadcasters, platform operator and other providers of audiovisual content can continue to block access to their content for internet users from other EU countries.
The planned abolishment of geoblocking will not be pursued any longer, reports German business newspaper Handelsblatt with reference to an EU regulation draft, adding that the European Commission wants to publish the legal document in two weeks.
The leaked draft does prohibit the blocking of websites and the products they offer for citizens from other EU countries. But article 1 makes it clear that audiovisual services are exempt from the rule, for example movies, TV series and sports coverage.
The European Commission will not take up the geoblocking issue again, the paper quotes sources in Brussels. This would include the planned harmonisation of copyright.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Roll helps you find the best photos on your phone
http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/12/eyeem-the-roll/
Wondering which of the tens of thousands of photos on your phone are worth keeping or sharing may be a thing of the past, thanks to The Roll, a brand new app from EyeEm. The iOS app analyzes your camera roll and uses computer vision to tag your images and rank your photos by how good they are.
“The Roll is there to replace your phone’s camera roll,” said Florian Meissner, EyeEm’s CEO, as he showed me the technology in action on his own phone containing tens of thousands of photographs.
On The Roll, images are tagged and grouped by topics, location and events, with the best shot from each category highlighted. Visually similar photos are stacked, placing the image with the highest aesthetic score on top.
In the detailed view, you’ll see the score, automatically added keywords and camera information relevant to camera buffs, such as aperture, shutter speed and ISO information.
“When you first launch the app,” Meissner explains, “small thumbnails of the images are uploaded to our server. The images are then analyzed and tagged, and the information is downloaded to the app.”
http://theroll.eyeem.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Activision Blizzard to start live streaming eSports on Facebook Live, beginning with June 10 Anaheim Open tournament, building to daily content
Activision Blizzard to Broadcast Live eSports on Facebook
http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/activision-blizzard-facebook-live-esports-1201772632/
Video-game giant Activision Blizzard is teaming up with Facebook to deliver live eSports tournament coverage on the social-media service worldwide.
Activision Blizzard Media Networks, headed by former ESPN CEO Steve Bornstein, will launch its new eSports network and programming during the MLG Anaheim Open, a two-day “Call of Duty: Black Ops III” tournament that kicks off June 10, 2016.
“Esports is an exciting space and continues to be a growing priority for us,” said Dan Reed, Facebook’s head of global sports partnerships. “With over 1.6 billion people on the platform and a growing suite of VOD and live-streaming products that partners can use to increase engagement, Facebook is uniquely positioned to help eSports fans connect around exciting moments and great eSports content.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wall Street Journal:
Some Vine stars migrate to Facebook, others as loops for top 10 accounts fall 29% from May 2015 through March 2016 and ad buyers direct dollars to competitors
Vine Stars Are Leaving for Facebook and Other Platforms
Marketers and ad buyers are also moving away from the Twitter-owned video app
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/video-stars-are-withering-on-the-vine-1463152655-lMyQjAxMTI2MzE5MzUxMzM4Wj
Elton Castee has 1.2 million followers on Vine, the six-second looping video platform that launched the comedian to Internet stardom.
But the top of his profile has a message for fans in capital letters: All of his videos are now on his Facebook page, too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Julia Fioretti / Reuters:
Europe agrees on cross-EU roaming access for Netflix and other video subscription services
EU member states agree roaming for Netflix
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-copyright-idUSKCN0Y41FA
Consumers will be able to access their online subscriptions for services like Netflix (NFLX.O), Sky (SKYB.L) and Canal+ (IPO-CANALFRA.PA) when they travel across the European Union under proposals tentatively agreed by member states on Friday.
The law was presented by the EU executive, the European Commission (EC), last December as part of its efforts to knock down national barriers in online services across the 28-member bloc.
Member state representatives endorsed the proposal on Friday, paving the way for it to be approved by ministers when they meet on May 26.
While Netflix is already available in many European countries, content is tailored to local tastes, so a French user in Belgium, for example, will not have access to the specific French catalog without using workarounds such as virtual private networks.
The proposal got a lukewarm reception from broadcasters and in December, some of whom are concerned producers and film studios could demand more money for making their content portable.
Rights-holders are wary of anything that might be seen to be eroding the principle of territoriality, which they say is key to the financing of films.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Serenity Caldwell / iMore:
Apple acknowledges reports of music files lost while using iTunes, plans update with more safeguards next week — Serenity Caldwell has been writing and talking about and tinkering with Apple products since she was old enough to double-click. Managing editor of iMore …
Apple confirms reports of potential bug in iTunes; safeguard patch expected next week
http://www.imore.com/apple-confirms-reports-potential-bug-itunes-safeguard-patch-expected-next-week
iTunes may play a role in reports that Apple Music was replacing user libraries with DRM-encumbered files.
Apple on Friday confirmed to iMore that a very small number of users have reported seeing issues with iTunes removing their locally-stored music library. The company has yet to be able to reproduce the error, but plans to release an update to iTunes next week in hopes of fixing this issue and reducing customer confusion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matt Brian / Engadget:
BT to stream UEFA Champions League and Europa League finals on YouTube for free in the UK — BT will broadcast coverage of both the UEFA Champions League and Europa League finals for free on YouTube. The company confirmed today that it will show both matches on BT Sport TV channels across Sky …
BT to stream Champions League and Europa League finals on YouTube
EE customers can soon watch BT Sport on the go, too.
http://www.engadget.com/2016/05/12/bt-champions-league-europa-league-final-youtube/
In its press release, BT also confirmed that EE “will launch a new BT Sport offer to millions of its customers” in the coming months.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Acer partners with Starbreeze on StarVR headset with 210-degree field of view for arcades and theme parks — Acer is joining forces with the game studio Starbreeze to develop a high-end virtual reality headset designed for arcades and theme parks. Starbreeze has already been showcasing the headset …
Acer joins work on high-end VR headset for theme parks
StarVR is meant to be more immersive than other headsets
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/15/11677870/starvr-starbreeze-acer-join-forces
Acer is joining forces with the game studio Starbreeze to develop a high-end virtual reality headset designed for arcades and theme parks. Starbreeze has already been showcasing the headset, called StarVR, for the past year; going forward, development of StarVR will be a collaboration between the two companies.
StarVR’s standout feature is its wide field of vision, which is supposed to more closely mimic what a person can see in real life, down to their peripheral vision. Starbreeze designed its headset to have a 210-degree field of view — far wider than the 110-degree field of view on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Virtual-reality theme parks are already becoming a reality; and Acer and Starbreeze seemingly hope to tap into that market by offering a far more immersive VR experience than what you’d find at home.
Virtual reality theme park The Void opening its first outpost in Times Square
The space will host an experience based around the new Ghostbusters film
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/9/11603622/the-void-virtual-reality-ghost-busters-times-square
The most talked about experience in technology over the last six months has to be The Void, an immersive virtual reality theme park based in Utah that transports users to another world they can see, feel, and interact with. It uses a VR headset powered by a supercomputer backpack to allow for untethered walking.
articipants wear a haptic suit that tracks their movement and provides a sensory experience. Moving podiums, fog machines, and heat lamps give the VR world a physically convincing atmosphere. The sales pitch is that this is not just virtual reality, it’s hyper reality, and all the reviews so far have testified to an experience that lives up to this moniker.
The company’s business plan is to create entertainment centers around the world, small-scale versions of what it built in Utah powered by the same tech. The Void will create its own content, but it will also serve as an immersive version of major films and video games. If you go to see Star Wars in theaters and you love it, you can pay an additional $10 or $20 to spend 15 minutes actually walking around in the universe interacting with its characters and environment
Tomi Engdahl says:
BBC set to launch Britflix rival to Netflix after John Whittingdale approves subscription streaming
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/15/bbc-set-to-launch-britflix-rival-to-netflix-after-john-whittingd/
The BBC is to push ahead with plans to launch a British rival to Netflix, after getting the go-ahead from the government to develop a new subscription streaming service.
The project – which is understood to have the working title, Britflix – is believed to be a collaboration between the corporation and ITV, its main commercial rival, and is still in the early stages of development.
A White Paper on the future of the BBC, unveiled on Thursday, called on the corporation to develop “some form of additional subscription services” over the coming years, which ministers suggested could pave the way to the corporation adopting a mixed model of both licence fee funding, as well as additional, paid-for services.
It is understood that the broadcaster is working on a new online service, delivered over the iPlayer, which would serve as a British rival to Netflix and Amazon, the American web giants.
“There may come a moment in the future where all television is delivered online”John Whittingdale
BBC Charter renewal: What you need to know about the Government’s white paper changes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/12/bbc-charter-renewal-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-governments/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teens allegedly live-stream sex acts on Facebook
http://www.cnet.com/news/teens-allegedly-live-stream-sex-acts-on-facebook/
Technically Incorrect: In Milwaukee, police are attempting to secure data from Facebook after three teens allegedly filmed their hookup and broadcast it to classmates.
The social-media era has been one in which everyone has learned how to broadcast.
It’s perhaps inevitable, then, that some may choose to broadcast things that might disturb others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The 50 Millimeter Lens Is The Only One You Need
http://www.wired.com/2016/05/best-dslr-lens/
If he were alive today, legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson would marvel at all the choices a modern shooter must make before arriving at “the decisive moment.” The roadblocks to creativity we place before ourselves are more prevalent than ever. Camera makers update their lenses, sensors, and formats with overwhelming frequency. We can read hundreds of expert (and not-so-expert) opinions on every new piece of gear before we even begin to think about where to point the thing and when to press the shutter.
While we all search for the one camera system that will somehow allow us to elevate our technique, a humble and ingenious solution has been here the whole time, ready for us to embrace or rediscover its beautiful simplicity: the 50-mm lens.
This unassuming and ubiquitous piece of glass is beloved by pros and serious hobbyists alike. Maybe it’s the lens our parents had on the family camera or the lens we peered through in our high school photo class
To this day, when paired with a full-frame DSLR, the 50-mm has the same effect. That is to say, it has no real effect. The lens isn’t there to wow us. The canvas is set, and it’s our job to make a picture appear within it. We zoom with our feet, physically engaging with the composition, getting in close to pack the frame with information or backing off to let the scene play through. These technical limits liberate our brains from interference. The 50-mm won’t save us from taking a bad picture, but it won’t get in our way either.
For sure, there are many good reasons to use all the other lenses in one’s arsenal. Each photographer’s approach is as wonderfully unique and personal as it is varied
Tomi Engdahl says:
4 Reasons Why Addressable TV Advertising Is Growing Rapidly Minimizing waste and improving efficiency By Stuart Feil
http://www.adweek.com/brandshare/4-reasons-why-addressable-tv-advertising-growing-rapidly-171215#!/
A new generation of targeting technologies is bringing the data-driven, real-time models of digital to TV, making it possible to reach specific audiences and improve the efficiency and impact of brands’ ad spending.
1. There’s a lot of frustration over TV’s current targeting abilities
According to our survey, 8 out of 10 marketers and media buyers say they’re unable to target their TV buys as precisely as they’d like.
2. There’s a strong desire to try addressable TV
Nearly 60 percent of advertisers are either using or plan to use addressable TV in the next year, and nearly 70 percent plan to use programmatic TV,
3. The focus is on ROI, not CPMs
Nearly three-fourths of marketers and media buyers are willing to pay higher CPMs to target more effectively.
4. There’s interest in extending addressable targeting across screens
More than two-thirds of survey respondents would like to extend addressable TV targeting across different devices and platforms.