CES Update: MusicIP introduced MyDJ, technology which is designed to make it easier to create music playlists. With one button, users can scan their music collections, select a song that fits their mood, and create dynamic playlists directly on a device. The company is hoping to licensing the technology to portable media player manufacturers.
“Increased storage capacity combined with a limited user interface creates a dilemma where consumers simply do not have satisfying playlists to match their moods,” said Dr. Matthew Dunn, CEO of MusicIP. “Our patented technology makes your music more accessible by making your device musically intuitive, much like a personal DJ. Let MyDJ know what you want to hear, and it will instantly find related songs in your music collection and build the right playlist.”

MusicIP licenses MyDJ technology to consumer electronics manufacturers of all kinds, including portable, home, auto and mobile device enterprises. Disney Consumer Products was one of the first companies to bring this intuitive technology to market for the 2006 holiday season in their line of Mix Stick and Mix Max players for kids.

The embedded functionality uses a variety of processor cores such as ARM, DSP, x86, and PowerPC. Libraries are available for ARM and DSP architectures such as NXP, SigmaTel, Symbian and Telechips. The MyDJ functions are code- and data-efficient, with the base configuration consuming less than 25K of code space and requiring no onboard database.

Source: MusicIP

The HD-DVD has been apparently been cracked, and high definition content is now being distributed freely over BitTorrent. The first HD-DVD to be uploaded to BitTorrent is Serenity, the Firefly movie.

According to HDTV Blogger, the torrent is “a 19.6GB file in native EVO format that should play on PowerDVD and WinDVD with HD DVD playback.” Apparently, he got a “very, very nasty email” after posting about the first HD-DVD torrent. It seems the anonymous mailer was upset at the fact that he was bringing unnecessary attention to the P2P community. Looks like his plan just backfired.

via TorrentFreak

The New York Times today has an article that looks at the debate in Hollywood over what its response should be to the growing popularity of video sharing sites like YouTube.

As YouTube, with the backing of Google, becomes a powerful force in the media world, Hollywood studios and other entertainment companies are trying to figure out if it is friend or foe. After all, YouTube distributes unauthorized clips of the movies that the studios spend an average of $96 million to make. But it can also help them build tremendous buzz, and that is driving Hollywood to try to work with it instead of against it.

Hoping to avoid some of the problems in the music industry that arose from illegal downloading of songs, all of the major studios — including NBC Universal, Warner Brothers Entertainment, which is owned by Time Warner, and the News Corporation’s 20th Century Fox, are in negotiations with YouTube seeking licensing agreements that would make their content legally available on the site.

In the meantime, they are also pressing YouTube to adopt filtering mechanisms more quickly to keep unlawful material from even showing up. And several media companies are in talks to create their own YouTube-like site, a move some in the industry suggest is a form of posturing to help push the licensing negotiations forward.

“I think studios will sue if they don’t get a licensing deal they like,” said Jessica Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. “My guess is if I were a movie studio, getting a cut of the money is more profitable than shutting it down. But it’s complicated, very complicated, and it’s only going to get worse.”

Google also has a lot resting on how these copyright issues are resolved, because investors are eager to see whether the $1.65 billion it paid for YouTube was well-spent.

It’s clear that Hollywood will have to deal with sites like YouTube, one way or another, because of their massive popularity.

What’s not clear is how companies will be able to turn their vast stores of content into something that can legally and profitably shared online.

The Smithsonian has introduced the Folkways Collection Podcast, a series of 24 one-hour programs that explore the collection of music, spoken word, and sound recordings that make up the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

The music of modern day giants like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Ani Difranco is interwoven with original Folkways recordings to demonstrate the lasting legacy that Folkways Records has on popular music.

Recent and archival interviews with Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Mickey Hart, Studs Terkel and others to help reveal the remarkable human stories behind this equally remarkable collection.

Ars Technica has an good overview of a new bill introduced in the US Senate this week that would force satellite, digital, and Internet radio providers to implement measures designed to restrict the ability of listeners to record audio from the services. Called the “Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act” (PERFORM), the bill is sponsored by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Joseph Biden (D-DE), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Corporate content creators want to control how their work is distributed, and the fact that devices that allow time-shifting are proliferating means that its becoming more and more difficult to control distribution. In particular, the RIAA doesn’t want people to digitally record things like satellite radio, because then you could have a perfect digital copy of songs that you probably wouldn’t go out and buy.

While protecting the rights of copyright holders is important, limiting technology to protect copyrights risks crippling technological innovation.

The new legislation would require content protection on all satellite radio broadcasts along with cable and Internet broadcasts. Broadcasters would be required to “use reasonably available and economically reasonable technology to prevent music theft.”

The popularity of podcasting shows that there growing interest in using technology to time-shift and place-shift media so that users can listen or watch the shows that they are interested in. As more and more people adopt podcasting, companies that try to lock up their content may find themselves handicapped competing against those that create freely distributable podcasts.

Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA), the interactive children’s book series, is now offering iPod versions of its stories. Choose Your Own Adventure #1 – The Abominable Snowman audiobook download is designed for use with all varieties of Apple iPod.
The CYOA download goes in countless directions as “you” in the role of main character click on links to select the story’s direction. The video screen lets the user view full color illustrations.

“iPod is one of many ways to reach kids,” says R. A. Montgomery, CYOA author and founder. “This is an exciting new way to help reading and decision-making skills.”

Until January 25, 2007 download the audiobook for free at the Choose Your Own Adventure store.

The number of broadband-enabled TVs – those capable of directly or indirectly receiving broadband video content – is expected to exceed 162 million households globally by 2011, according to Broadband Video: Redefining the Television Experience, The Diffusion Group‘s latest report on IP media.

“It is fair to say that the democratization of video delivery is officially underway,” noted Colin Dixon, senior analyst and author of the report. “As the Internet finds its way to the primary home TV – and it will – incumbent PayTV operators and established broadcasters will gradually lose control over the types of video consumers can watch. In the next few years, a growing number of consumers will look to the Internet as means of expanding the variety of content to which they have access, much of which will be available on-demand and specifically suited to their tastes.”

Dixon mentions five factors which in combination are creating a ‘tipping point’ for broadband TV including:

• The widespread adoption of broadband Internet service;
• The expanding variety of video content available on the Internet;
• The introduction and push of solutions intended to enable Internet video viewing on the TV (such as Microsoft’s Xbox/IPTV platform and Apple’s pending iTV adapter);
• The entry of top-tier content producers into the Internet marketplace, many of which are now pushing high-value franchise content onto the web; and
• The move from short-form ‘snack’ Internet video content to full-length TV programming and movies.

“While the subject of Internet video is on everyone’s tongue, very few have a full understanding of how Internet-based video will impact the traditional TV business,” adds Dixon.

According to recently published research from Telephia, there are now 23.5 million mobile subscribers in the U.S. who have phones with integrated music players, but only a tiny portion of these users are downloading music over the air.

The low adoption rate of over the air (OTA) music services could be an opportunity for Apple. Its newly introduced iPhone takes an alternative approach to loading music. It is designed to easily sync music with a computer.
The number of consumers with music-enabled phones is up five times from the same period in 2005 and nearly 20 percent of the new phones purchased in Q3 2006 were music capable. Many of these subscribers report loading music on to their phones via their PC, but only a small number have actually downloaded music over the air (OTA) from a wireless carrier music store.

In Q3 2006, a little over two million subscribers, about 8.5 percent of those with capable phones, reported any purchases of music via OTA downloads (see Table 1).

“It is still early days in the market for OTA music purchasing and carriers are experimenting with pricing models and working to improve the user experience,” said Kevin Burden, Senior Manager — Mobile Devices, Telephia.

The Skullcandy MacGyver MP3 Watch not only has possibly the coolest name ever for a watch, it puts up to 1 Gig of memory for podcasts and music on your wrist.

The Skullcandy MacGyver MP3 watch features a selectable 5-mode audio equalizer, 3-D stereo sound, music shuffle play feature, a built-in voice recorder and an integrated USB cable. The watch lets you listen to podcasts and music in MP3 and WMA formats, plus use the watch as a thumb drive to store and transfer other types of data files.

The watch comes pre-loaded with Podcast Ready’s myPodder software, which lets you find, manage and listen to podcasts. Plug your Skullcandy MacGyver into an Internet-connected computer and you can access myPodder to update, subscribe to and manage your podcasts.

BBC NEWS has an interesting article about broadcasters joining the world’s airwaves using Campcaster, open-source software which lets people run a radio station from a single computer for free.

Campcaster takes a regular PC and turns it into a tool for managing every aspect of a radio station broadcast. The software is the idea of the non-profit Media Development Loan Fund, which aims to support independent news media in emerging democracies.

According to developer Douglas Arellanes, as well as playing files, which can be done from any media player, Campcaster adds features specifically for radio broadcasting and uses it for all aspects of a radio station, such as the ability to stored and schedule music, line up news clips and interviews, and preview listen to a record before it is played on air.

“You can now pretty much run your radio station off a notebook computer,” he said.