Tag Archive for 'iTunes'

Dear NBC, …really?

Published
by
corey
on 12 October 2007
in art and culture, current events and life
. 4 Comments

Okay, so I’m stealing a bit from an oft used bit on SNL, but really? So since I missed the last two episodes of the greatest show on television (#2 behind The Fall Guy), I can’t just go onto iTunes like I’ve done in the past, spend my less-than-two-bucks, and watch in peace. Now I have to go to your site, select the show by way of a semi-clunky flash interface, then go to episodes. Once I’ve done that, I have to choose which chapter of the episode I’d like to see. “Chapters”? Really? Any chance you might assume that folks would want to see the whole show? Once I’ve chosen the chapter(s) I’d like to see, I have to sit through 30+ seconds of commercials for each chapter. This was one of the reasons that iTunes worked for me. One-click, no commercials. I spend some money, you make some money, everybody wins. But you had to go and screw it up.

Remember when we had that great relationship? Remember when every college dorm in America filled up on Thursdays to see if Ross and Rachael were gonna finally hook up? Yeah? Well that’s done. I still love the greatest show on television, but it’s a reluctant love. As if the greatest child alive was born by accident from two parents that suck.

NBC Dumps iTunes

Published
by
michael lee
on 31 August 2007
in The Intra-Web-O-Sphere!, art and culture and technology
. 9 Comments

Booooo! Boooooooooo!

NBC has decided that their new strategy for making money off of their content will be to remove it from the most popular, low-operational-cost, and globally effective distribution network ever built. Yup, according to the New York Times, NBC is pulling its content from the iTunes music store.

NBC on iTunes
This is just an awful idea. I think I’m a pretty typical customer of iTunes content - I’ll buy maybe one or two albums a month, and a few TV episodes a month. Check out the photo I’ve linked to the iTunes NBC page - it lists their 4 most popular shows. Here are the ways iTunes has enhanced my consumer relationship with NBC, and why NBC’s choice to pull their content is an awful idea.

The Office

Discovered it on the BBC, love the NBC version even more, but I’m not home to watch it when it’s regularly scheduled. Instead, I grab episodes online. I only follow one or two shows this way, so it’s cheaper than getting a TIVO.

Heroes

I followed this show on TV, but would occasionally miss an episode. How to get them? iTunes, of course! I jumped online and downloaded the episode the day after it aired.

Scrubs

I liked this show when it first came out, and then it got … what’s the word … stupid. I don’t follow the show at all anymore, but I wanted to watch some of the early episodes again. Rather than waiting for them to roll around on the syndication schedule, I jumped online and got them from iTunes.

30 Rock

This is the real tragedy of NBC’s choice. This show is probably the best new show they’ve developed in the last, let’s say, 39 years. How did I discover this show? They gave away an episode as a free download on iTunes. I downloaded it, loved it, am now a fan. Now, when I happen to be flipping channels and see it on TV, I stop flipping and watch the show. They earned a viewer for their broadcast network because of their use of alternate distribution channels.

Bad Business

The NYTimes article gives one real reason for the decision. Allow me to interpret:

The decision by NBC Universal highlights the escalating tension between Apple and media companies, which are unhappy that Apple will not give them more control over the pricing of songs and videos that are sold on iTunes.

NBC … wants Apple to allow it to bundle videos to increase revenue, the person familiar with the matter said.

means

Remember back when we made you buy an entire CD, with one great song and 12 filler pieces of crap? Oh man, we made so much money with that. Wasn’t that awesome? We think Apple should let us do the same thing with videos! Less consumer choice means more freedom for everyone! And by freedom, I mean money! And by everyone, I mean us!

Apple has shown, by virtue of their success in promoting music, that increasing the choices for consumers is a stronger model for building a distribution channel. People return to points of commerce where they feel empowered and valued. iTunes does that with it’s pricing and non-bundled policies. NBC, apparently, can’t understand that.

The Real Threat

I’m having a really hard time believing that the NBC executives are taking such a short-term view of their relationship with iTunes. The article states that they are limiting their distribution with iTunes out of concern for piracy. They should be concerned about piracy, but not for the reasons they give.

What they seem to not realize is that iTunes is not in competition with Hulu.com, or any other silo solution. The only real competition for iTunes media content is illegal downloads.

This is the brilliance of the iTunes price point, and the reason it has seen such explosive growth: $1.99 per show is exactly the point at which it becomes an easier choice to buy a show from iTunes than to go through the hassle of finding a torrent, loading it into a bit torrent client, waiting for it to download, hoping it’s high quality, and then sitting huddled in the dark hoping the RIAA doesn’t drop a lawsuit on your butt.

If NBC takes away the $1.99 iTunes option, people will not flock back to broadcast TV, they will not go hunt down the show at hulu.com, they will simply download it illegally, for free.

Check out how much of my value as a consumer NBC loses by ending their relationship with iTunes:

  1. The Office: This isn’t a time-sensitive show, so if I can’t get it through iTunes, I’ll wait and download the entire season at The Pirate Bay.
  2. Heroes: If I miss a single episode, I can pop over to isohunt and track it down. Again, the competition for the $1.99 iTunes Media Store is the Free Illegal Downloads Store.
  3. Scrubs: This was always a whim. If I don’t have easy access to previous episodes, I just won’t bother. The alternative to NBC selling me a show for $1.99 is … me doing nothing. Easy.
  4. 30 Rock: if NBC severs ties with iTunes, I don’t even find this show. I never watch a single episode. When it comes on broadcast TV and I’m flipping channels, I flip right past. NBC loses both an online purchaser and a broadcast viewer.

This is an awful, awful business move for NBC. They are alienating themselves from a whole population of potential consumers.

UPDATED: Nov. 25th
Welcome to everyone who has been dropping by from StumbleUpon. Please take a second to check out what we’re doing with Operation Christmas Goat. Turn your holiday shopping into real change for needy families in developing countries.

So, I’m #1 on iTunes

Published
by
Chad
on 14 August 2007
in art and culture, current events, laugh! and life
. 15 Comments

I’m kind of a big deal, you know. I’m a sort-of #1.

I have a little piece of #1.

I’m like #.00432 on iTunes right now.

Today, the soundtrack for High School Musical 2 was released, oh… I don’t know… intergalactically. In recent weeks, I have greatly enjoyed the ramp up to this day. A poster here, an article there. The frenzy builds.

Last January or so I wrote two posts about this cool gig I landed. After some consideration, and a good look at the confidentiality agreement and digitally watermarked demo CD, I had Mike pull them down. I don’t know how to repost them. Hopefully the blog fairy will flutter by and fix it, and also leave cookies and a sarcastic barb or seven.

The short version is this: Last December I got a call from this guy named Randy who wrote songs with another guy named Kevin who got my name from this other guy named Scott who does jingles. (This is how all good stories in L.A. begin, FYI.) Randy needs a tenor vocalist to demo up a song. Randy is paying a fair hourly demo session rate, and we book the gig.

I play it cool, I don’t ask too many questions, I sing the tune. Randy loosens up and tells me we’re working on a demo for High School Musical 2. Jackpot! Oh, and he and his partner had a cut on High School Musical… uh… Episode 1. Google confirms! He’s legit! Jackpot, with a bonus round.

The song gets revised, I re-sing it. Revised again, I sing it again. Eventually, it becomes this. Randy’s happy because Disney has just basically bought him a pool, and decides to spread the love. He recommends me to Disney for the ensemble for the whole she-bang. So, I got the gig. :)

So, as of today, the soundtrack that sits at #1 on iTunes, and will sit atop of the Billboard 100 next week, and has a good shot at being the #1 selling record of 2007, features yours truly on 6 of it’s 11 songs. Anytime you hear large ensemble vocals, as you memorize the dance steps in the next two months (Corey and Beth) you’re hearing 4-6 passes of The Chadster. Gotta love stacks.

Oh, and some of my demo vocals made it through to the final mix of Work This Out. The BGV stacks on every chorus is me. Hey… those stabs in the bridge and crazy vocal into the keychange sure sound familiar. Wow… I’m actually listening to it for the first time right now (I wonder how much of the $.99 goes back in my pocket? $.0000000023 is a safe bet.) and I am quite pleased with how much of the original vocal is still there! Yay!

Sorry.

It’s not curing cancer, but it sure feels nifty.

Demo-lition Derby

Published
by
michael lee
on 6 January 2007
in art and culture, audio and university
. 10 Comments

I need a little help from my friends. Remember this class that I’m teaching?

It’s the one where the students produce a short album over the course of a semester.

Well, I’m meeting with the students for the first time on Monday night, to talk through the details of the class, and to get them headed in the right direction on the project. I’m going to hand them a sample packet of what a final project should look like, to give them something to shoot for, and I decided to use a song from The Dailies’ record as the model (totally violating the sanctity of Chad and Erica’s intellectual property of course. Suck it up. It’s for the children). I’ll put together a microphone input list, a budget, a timeline, a recording schedule, everything they need to do for the course, around that one song. The cool thing about this is that I have actual demos tracking the progress of all of these songs from The Dailies record, so the students will get to hear everything from first demos all the way through to final masters.

So, here’s what I need from you - which song should I use? Picture yourself as a 21-year-old music student. Then, go here and listen to the 30-second clips (or better yet, buy the album!). Then, tell me which song you think would most capture the interest and creative attention of the students in the class.

One Thousand Sets of Ears, Pt. 2

Published
by
michael lee
on 4 January 2007
in faith and theology and technology
. 4 Comments

Yesterday was story time. Today is the technical study. I thought it might be cool to look at some of the things that helped propel The Bible Podcast forward, presented in no particular order, as a guide to anyone else who might think about launching a podcast.

The Title

This has got to be the single biggest factor in moving the site up through search engine rankings. The name of the site is the name of the podcast is the 3-word description of exactly what it’s all about. If you launch a podcast about how awesome bunny slippers are, and title it “The Mr. T Show”, and host it at www.crazy4u.net/mrtpodshow, people have no idea what it is you’re doing. There are packs of raving bunny slipper fans out there searching Google for a podcast that meets their needs, but all they can tell from your page hit is that you’re a confused, possible psychopathic teenage girl. This doesn’t work to your advantage.

Promote One Distribution Channels

Since the very beginning, The Bible Podcast committed to iTunes as its primary distribution channel. I started with the assumption that most of my listeners wouldn’t be podcast people - they would be people venturing out into the world looking for this specific sort of thing (in the same way that most Addison Road readers aren’t really blog people, they’re people who come to this one specific blog). I assumed that most of our listeners would find our blog either through a Google search, or by flipping open iTunes and using the podcast directory search function. The iTunes search results are weighted in favor of popularity (number of subscribers).

podcast openingArmed with this knowledge, I push iTunes as the sole distribution channel for the podcast. If you look at the first page of the site, you’ll see what I mean. I stole this idea from Scribe Music Show (thanks, Trevor), and about 40% of the first-time visitors go directly to iTunes without ever having to visit the site itself. If they do click through to the website, they’ll see a link to iTunes prominently displayed, should they decide to subscribe. If they poke around the site a bit, they’ll find a “How do I listen?” page which, again, directs them to use iTunes to subscribe.

There are many, many good podcast aggregators out there, like Odeo.com, and the podcast is listen in most of these, but these sites are still, by and large, only used by the Nerd Herd. If you walk up to 100 people on the street and ask them about podcasting, they’ll beat you up and take your iPod away. This is LA, after all. But if you were to do it in someplace nice, like Boise, most people, if they knew anything at all about it, would say, “Oh yeah, that’s the button on my iTunes where I can listen to shows people do.”

By committing early to a distribution channel that would be most popular with my average listener, I made my popularity within iTunes artificially high. Instead of a few hundred subscribers scattered across dozens of distribution channels, I had a few hundred subscribers all listening through iTunes. Within the first 6 months, The Bible Podcast was in the top 4 results for the search term “Bible”, which in iTunes means getting banner placement on the search results page.

OurMedia.org

So, you’ve signed up for a fancy new hosting plan with Jim’s Big House of Web Hosting, and you’ve started to do the math. You realize pretty quickly that by the time you hit 100 daily subscribers, at 20 MB per podcast episode, you’re going to rip through your bandwidth in about 8 seconds. What do you do? Well, don’t host the files! OurMedia.org will host your audio and video files for free, and you can directly link them into your site. In other words, your listeners don’t have to click through to Our Media to listen, the files can be embedded directly into your site. There are two advantages to hosting your files off-site. The first is that you don’t have to pay for as much bandwidth. The second, you will pick up some drive-by traffic from people searching through the Our Media site looking for the things your podcast is about. I get about 20 hits a day from people who searched Our Media for the title of a specific book of the bible, and then following the links over to the podcast site.

I should mention that the Our Media servers have been pretty bloaty since the very beginning, and if an episode hasn’t been downloaded in a while, it seems to take forever for the server to actually find it. I eventually switched back over to hosting the audio files myself, instead of using Our Media. Still, I think they were an important part of getting up off the ground.

Content

So, those are some of the early choices that I made with the podcast, that I think contributed to it getting up off the ground. I don’t think they were the biggest factor in the podcast’s success, though. The inescapable truth is that “Content is King”. People come because they want the content. They want to hear the bible read by someone with a clear speaking voice, recorded with good equipment. Everything else is just lipstick, pointing people in the right direction.

I’m curious - anybody else out there in The Roadhouse running a podcast, or thinking of starting one? I’d love to hear your experiences.