It’s 31 Days of Free Music month at Podcasting News – all month we’re highlighting free music podcasts, and exploring the range of ways that people are using podcasts to share music.

We’ve looked some fairly traditional radio-style shows, like KEXP’s live performances podcast, and some podcasts that explore using podcasting as a new way to distribute music, like the Daily Ambience project.

Today’s featured podcast is Cinema Du Lyon, a podcast project of Funksters and UK Podcaster Association founders Dean Whitbread and Mark Crook. The podcast is a free music podcast that is interesting not just because of the music, but because the music might not exist if not for the podcast.

The Cinema Du Lyon project features experimental ambient soundscapes in podcast and video podcast form. While Cinema Du Lyon creates music that may have a limited audience, by sharing it as a podcast, its creators are finding an audience around the world.

Here’s their description:

Cinema du Lyon are not from Lyon … they are from your head, the way films and TV effect our lives all the time. Playback from scenes witnessed on the screen. The dialogue leeches into our living narratives, taking it over at times. The found scraps of speech resemble toast crumbs upon an audio duvet, the harshness and the irritability, the sweetness and the sadism.

You can preview their latest podcast below, or subscribe to the podcast using this feed URL:
http://funk.co.uk/pod/cinema.xml

Pioneering video podcast Rocketboom is considering charging for it content, because it doesn’t have the size of audiences that large advertisers are looking for.

“It’s frustrating that we haven’t worked it out by now,” said Rocketboom creator, Andrew Baron. “Even though we have a relatively large audience, advertisers are just not happy to do ‘small deals’.”

Baron is faced with an issue that traditional content publishers have always had to deal with: trying to meet the sometimes conflicting needs of advertisers and audience.

While the idea of charging for Rocketboom may seem appealing, very few shows have successfully made the switch to paid subscription models. Those that have switched have seen their circulation plummet.

While Baron is frustrated with the challenges of getting ad deals for Rocketboom, he says the show has led to other opportunities.

“We get consulting opportunities, conferences give honorariums,” explains Baron. “For us, there are many off-shoots.”

NBC Universal and the News Corporation have announced that they will debut what is being described as the largest Internet video distribution network ever assembled, with comprehensive content from television and film.

The site will debut this summer with thousands of hours of full-length programming, movies and clips, representing premium content from at least a dozen networks and two major film studios.

Peter Chernin, President and Chief Operating Officer of News Corporation remarked, “This is a game changer for Internet video. We’ll have access to just about the entire U.S. Internet audience at launch. And for the first time, consumers will get what they want — professionally produced video delivered on the sites where they live. We’re excited about the potential for this alliance and we’re looking forward to working with any content provider or distributor who wants to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity.”

Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC Universal added, “Anyone who believes in the value of ubiquitous distribution will find this announcement incredibly exciting. This venture supercharges our distribution of protected, quality content to fans everywhere. Consumers get a hugely attractive aggregation of a wide range of content, and marketers get a novel way to connect with a large and highly engaged audience.”

Content at launch is expected to include full episodes from:

• Heroes
• 24
• House
• My Name Is Earl
• Saturday Night Live
• Friday Night Lights
• The Riches
• 30 Rock
• The Simpsons
• The Tonight Show
• Prison Break
• Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader
• Top Chef

In addition, the site will feature content from the studios’ vast television libraries. The programming lineup will include films like Borat, Little Miss Sunshine, Devil Wears Prada, The Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy, with bonus materials and movie trailers.

The Internet video service will ad-supported.

In the future, you won’t purchase music from iTunes and other music stores.

Instead, you’ll rent it or get it as part of your mobile service, according to analysts at Pyramid Research.

While music rental services have failed to make much of a dent in booming digital music market, the idea of buying music may soon seem antiquated. Pyramid’s analysts argue that the devaluation of music ownership means that models offering access to vast digital libraries on a rental basis are more compelling than just having access to content that is purchased.

“A cultural shift is forming in this generation‚Äôs consumers, from owning to renting” comments Nick Holland, Senior Analyst at Pyramid and author of the report. “Consumers are becoming conditioned to accept that virtual digital content is the norm and therefore physical ownership is no longer seen as necessary.”

Holland suggests that music bundling may succeed where all-you-can-eat music plans have failed.

“As today‚Äôs children inevitably come to own mobile handsets, the delivery of music and any other form of digital content will be over a broadband connection rather than via physical media,” continues Holland. “For these consumers, the difference between owning and MP3 and renting an MP3 will have little meaning.”

The National Music Publishers’ Association, which represents music publishers, is suing XM Satellite Radio.¬† Their suit, filed in federal court in New York last Thursday, claims that XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. violates copyright laws by providing a service which lets users store and replay music on certain devices.

The music publishers argue that this constitutes an unlawful music download service that isn’t covered by the royalties XM pays to music publishers for broadcast rights.

The suit focuses on an XM service called “XM (plus) MP3,” which allows XM subscribers to store songs on portable players and play them back later. The songs remain on the device as long as the customer subscribes to XM.

“Filing a lawsuit was our last resort, but we felt that we had no choice,” said David Israelite, NMPA President and CEO. “We want new technologies to succeed, but it can’t be at the expense of the creators of music. All that we ask is that music publishers and songwriters be fairly compensated for their efforts.”

The music publishers’ lawsuit is similar to another filed against XM last year by a group representing major record label companies, the Recording Industry Association of America. That case is still pending.

March 23: It’s 31 Days of Free Music month at Podcasting News. Every day in March, we’re going to do our best to hook you up a great free music podcast.

We’re still on our way back from the Corporate Podcast Summit. We’re spending some unplanned time in Detroit, thanks to Northwest Airlines cancelling our flight back home.

While we were in London, though, we had a chance to talk with Indiefeed’s Chris MacDonald about his podcast, his two-terabyte Mac mini media center and a deal that he’s working on that may offer indie artists some high-profile exposure.

Chris’s podcast, IndieFeed, is a great example of how people are using podcasting to do new things, not just radio shows for the Internet. Each IndieFeed podcast episode features one song from an indie musician. There are podcast feeds for several different categories, like Electronica, Hip-Hop and Indie-Pop, so that you can subscribe and just get the types of music that you’re interested in.

While it’s not a traditional radio-style “show”, it’s a great example of how you can use podcasting to do new things, and it’s a great way to find about new music.

You can preview an example of an IndieFeed “episode” below, or subscribe to the podcast using one of the feeds at the IndieFeed site.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is fighting to protect the free speech rights of MoveOn.org Civic Action and Brave New Films after their parody of The Colbert Report was removed from YouTube because of a copyright complaint from media giant Viacom.

Viacom recently asked YouTube to remove 100,000 video clips from Viacom-owned properties, including MTV Networks and BET. Since February, EFF has been looking for examples of videos that were removed from YouTube in error, so that it could sue Viacom.

It found an ideal test case in this video, Stop the Falsiness, created by created by MoveOn and Brave New Films. The video is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on Colbert’s portrayal of the right-wing media and also parodies MoveOn’s own reputation for earnest political activism:

The film, uploaded to YouTube in August 2006, includes clips from “The Colbert Report” as well as humorous original interviews about show host Stephen Colbert. In March of this year, Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central, demanded that YouTube take “Stop the Falsiness” down, claiming the video infringed its copyrights.

“Our clients’ video is an act of free speech and a fair use of Colbert Report clips,” said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. “Viacom knows this — it’s the same kind of fair use that ‘The Colbert Report’ and ‘The Daily Show’ rely upon every night as they parody other channels’ news coverage.”

Microsoft is locking down its video-sharing site, Soapbox, limiting membership so it can create better safeguards against pirated content. After Viacom announced its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube, Microsoft appears to have decided its video sharing site offered too juicy a target.

Here’s Microsoft’s statement on the changes:

Dear Soapbox users,

Thanks for helping us test the Soapbox on MSN Video beta ‚Äì we‚Äôve really appreciated the feedback we‚Äôve gotten from our user community about the service. In order to grow and implement some important new features , Soapbox temporarily requires you to login using your Windows Live ID before you can watch or upload videos. If you don’t have a Soapbox account, we’ll be opening the doors again very soon with some cool new stuff to try. Thanks for your patience as we continue to build the best place to ‚Äúmake your statement‚Äù on the web.

The Soapbox on MSN Video Team

Viacom’s suit against YouTube, while called frivolous by some analysts, is forcing video sharing sites to adopt policies to deal more effectively with the sharing of copyrighted content.

via ZDNet

March 22: We‚Äôre on our way back from the Corporate Podcasting Summit, and we’re stuck in Detroit for a couple of days. There’s nothing like travelling 24 hours, to be almost home and then to find out your flight has been cancelled. We’re a little behind as a result, but we expect to get caught up within a couple of days.

Northwest Airlines is currently on our #$%@ list. When we got off of our flight from London, we found that our flight home was listed as cancelled. Northwest made us wait around for five hours, though, in a waiting area with insufficient seating, no Internet and no convenient power outlets before they told us that we’d have to wait two days before they could get us home. They gave us $5 vouchers for a dinner at the airport (5 dollars? For airport food? @#$!!).

And everytime we talked to NWA’s staff, they were complaining about how hard it was dealing with frustrated customers.

But, we’ve been trying not to get too stressed out by the situation. The $5 bought a bad airport margarita, which was better than no margarita at all. And we had our iPods full of good free music to listen to.

When it comes to chilling out, it’s hard to beat good ambient/space music. One of the best labels for this type of music is Spotted Peccary.

Spotted Peccary is not a well-known label, and it focuses on a relatively narrow niche of music. The label is doing something very smart, though. It offers the Spotted Peccary Music Podcast, aka Music is Art, which lets you hear samples of the label’s music, along with interviews and commentary from the label’s artists.

It’s a great way for listeners to find out more about the music. It’s also a great example of using podcasting to introduced people to new music that other labels would do well to follow.

You can preview the Spotted Peccary podcast below, or subscribe to it by adding this feed URL to your podcast client:
http://www.spottedpeccary.com/podcasts/sppodcastfeed.xml

According to new research from comScore, primetime for Internet video is 5-8 pm weekdays.

In January, nearly 123 million people in the U.S. (70 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience) viewed 7.2 billion videos online. The average video streamer viewed 59 streams during the course of the month — nearly two videos per day — and viewed an average of 151 minutes of video online during the month, with the average viewing time per video registering 2.6 minutes.

U.S. Internet Audience Highlights:

• Unique Streamers & Downloaders (000) 122,872
• Reach (% of Total U.S. Internet Audience) 70.0%
• Streams & Downloads Initiated (MM) 7,239
• Streams Per Streamer 58.9
• Total Minutes (MM) 18,559
• Minutes Per Streamer 151.0
• Minutes Per Video Stream 2.6

* Note: “Streams” (which includes both streaming and progressive download video) are attributed to the property that provides the stream, including embedded videos viewed on another site.

Google Sites was the top streaming video property in January, as measured by total unique streamers (54.7 million) and total video streams initiated (1.167 billion). The lion’s share of video streaming activity at the property occurred via YouTube.com, which accounted for 992 million video streams initiated.