Variety reports that YouTube will update it site as early as next week to integrate advertising with its vast library of videos. Content creators who upload their videos to the site will be offered the option of having short ads shown at the beginning or end, with the resulting revenues split 50-50.

In order to do this, though, YouTube will have to provide publishers a way of controlling their videos. If you publish a video to the site, you probably won’t want someone else republishing it and collecting your ad revenue.

The desire for publishers to be able to control their content led Viacom to sue Google for 1 billion dollars. To deal with this issue, Google plans to introduce a new tool, Claim Your Content, that will help copyright holders ban unauthorized versions of their videos from the site.

Local TV broadcasters are worried about the rise of Internet television. They’re seeing popular prime-time content like Fox’s 24 go online, and wonder if the rise of Internet TV will put them out of business.

While Internet television is creating new opportunities for content providers, local affiliates think that the Web may give networks more clout than ever. Last month, NBC Universal and News Corp., parent company of Fox Broadcasting, established a new Internet video network that will distribute full-length movies and TV shows. CBS announced its own video network last week.

“Plenty of people are worried,” said Richard Jones, general manager of Bay City Television in San Diego. “It’s still so new nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen. But there is some real concern about shows that have been seen a lot of times on the Web and whether it will affect ratings.”

Jones got to see the future of television in person on a recent flight, when he noticed the man next to him was watching Fox’s hit show, 24.
“He told me he missed the show during the week so he downloaded the episode on his iPod,” Jones said. “He wanted to get caught up by the time Monday’s new episode aired. That’s what we’re dealing with.”

via CNET

According to Will Friedwald, he has the largest iTunes collection in the world, with more than a terabyte of music managed through iTunes.

Friedwald is a music writer, and has been described as “The Poet Laureate of vintage pop music.” Friedwald spends much of his day in front of a Power Mac G5 using his his mammoth 200,000 track iTunes library.

Here, Friedwald describes his iTunes library:

I just re-compiled the main library (something that takes about six hours – I only do it a few times a year!). Here are the new stats:

• 849 GB | 172,150 tracks | 809.2 days
• 2,935 artists | 11,561 albums
• iTunes library database file – 282 MB
• iTunes library XML file – 259 MB

For reasons I will get into later, I also have several sub-libraries; theoretically, all my music will eventually go into the main library. I also have a separate “annex” of about 200-300 GB of stuff that I am gradually adding in to the main library. If I were to put everything together, which I am slowly doing, it will be around 1200 GB.

Anyone got a bigger iTunes collection?

via Glenn Wolsey

Podcast Hotel, the latest in a series of West Coast podcast events, is slated for April 20-21 in San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall.

Billed as “two days of discussion around the intersection of technology, indie music and indie film,” Podcast Hotel features lectures, concerts and discussions on digital media issues such as distribution, artists rights, the state of the Vlogosphere, women breaking through in the entertainment industry, and Net Neutrality.

Alex Williams, organizer of the event (pictured above right), tells PodcastingNews: “Copyright issues, politics and the age of the Internet rock star are the big topics for Podcast Hotel San Francisco. Andew Baron of Rocketboom, Robert Scoble and a number of artists, indie label managers, music attorneys and podcasters will be there in abundance. Plus, we have two great bands, [indie electro funksters] Dat’r and [experimental soul popsters] Honeycut, playing an invite-only party at a hot new club in downtown San Francisco. Should be a gig.”

Other podcasting luminaries speaking at the conference include Indiefeed’s Chris MacDonald, Podcast Legal Guide author and attorney Colette Vogele (in picture at right), Gnomedex founder Chris Pirillo, recently freed vlogger Josh Wolf, Justin.TV, and many others.

Tickets are available online and at the door. A single-day pass is $50, the concert is $20, and an all-access ticket costs $120.

YouTube plans to start banning videos posted to the site that may contain copyrighted content, according to CEO Eric Schmidt.

The new system, which Schmidt called Claim Your Content, will automatically identify copyright material so that it can be removed, Schmidt said. Schmidt made his comments at the National Association of Broadcasters conference.

“We are very close to turning this on,” Schmidt said.

The system was promised to copyright holders last year after Google acquired YouTube for $1.6 billion. Network executives have accused Google of stalling so YouTube could reap the big traffic that professionally-created shows generate. Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google in March, accusing Google of massive copyright infringement.

via CNET

Dan Gillmor has published an interesting article at the Center for Citizen Media blog, reflecting on How Media Are Evolving. Gillmor notes that the day is coming when we’ll be watching tragedies like the Virginia Tech killings in real time:

The killings Monday at Virginia Tech brought to the forefront the remarkable evolution in media over the past few years. And as we move into a time in which we will be saturated with data, we need to be clear on some of the implications of democratized media.

The scope of the media shift was clearer again on Monday. Some of the most widely viewed images came from a mobile phone camera aimed at the police response by a student, Jamal Albaughouti. His video made its way to CNN and other media, and was seen by millions.

I didn’t turn on my TV yesterday except in the evening, to watch a national network’s news report. I wanted to see a summary of what a serious journalism organization had to say about what it knew so far.

The changes that are coming in citizen media are clear – but it often seems that our culture’s ability to deal with these changes lags behind the technology.

Are we ready to see these sort of tragic events unfold in real-time?

Comedian Will Ferrell and partner Adam McKay have launched a new site that’s trying to be the YouTube of comedy, FunnyorDie.com.

Like other video sites, users can upload comedy videos to be voted on by other viewers. Videos can also be embedded into blog posts and other sites (see sample below).

Votes determine whether the videos stay on the main site, where they are may actually get seen, or whether they get banished to “The Crypt.”

“Its just us,” said McKay. “Thats the fun this isnt brought to you by GE or Viacom or whoever.”

Ferrell and McKay have helped kicked the site off by publishing their own DIY video, The Landlord….

Internet radio broadcasters that include traditionally-licensed music in their shows were dealt a setback Monday when a panel of copyright judges threw out a request to reconsider a recent hike in royalty rates they must pay to record companies and artists.

A broad group of public and private broadcasters, including radio stations, small startup companies, National Public Radio and major online sites like Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, had objected to the new royalties, saying they would kill net radio.

The Copyright Royalty Board judges denied all motions for rehearing and also declined to postpone a May 15 deadline by which the new royalties will have to be collected.

According to N. Mark Lam, the CEO of Live365 Inc., under the new royalty rules, “there is no industry.”

SoundExchange, an industry group that collects online royalties from webcasters and distributes them to record labels and artists, hailed the ruling in a statement and said it looked forward to working with Internet radio companies in order to ensure that the industry succeeds.

Podcasting network Wizzard Media announced today that they have hired Jim Else, a 30-year advertising sales veteran previously with Time, Inc., as Vice President of Sales. Mr. Else will lead the advertising sales team with the goal of monetizing podcasts and creating new opportunities for content creators and advertisers.

Else spent 20-years as an advertising executive for Time, where he most recently acted as the Senior Vice President for Time4 Media, a multimedia company encompassing magazines, Web sites, television and radio programming, feature films, and events and exhibitions.

“With Jim on board offering the unique advertising formula we have created around podcasting, we believe we can provide large national advertisers with a safe, effective and measurable platform for advertising through new web media,” said Chris Spencer, CEO Wizzard Media. “With 60 million plus podcast shows being broadcasted per month to millions of consumers, and the content creators eager to monetize their work, our full efforts are going towards making this happen.”

EPOIA Interactive Studios today launched its PodshowCreator ContentPay service in association with Amazon.com’s Associates program.

PodshowCreator is a web-based podcast software and hosting service offered by EPOIA. ContentPay is a new PodshowCreator service that lets podcasters earn revenue with a customizable storefront that showcases Amazon.com products relevant to the content of the podcast. Each time a purchase is made through a podcaster’s ContentPay-based storefront, the podcaster earns a portion of the revenue that is generated by the purchases.

“ContentPay is a very simple and cost-effective way for businesses, organizations and individuals to generate new revenue while providing a great resource for their audiences, who can now purchase relevant quality products offered by Amazon.com when accessing their podcasts,” said Jerry Gorman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of EPOIA Interactive Studios, developer of PodshowCreator. “Podcasters can build unique Amazon.com product lists to associate with their content in a matter of minutes.”