The ArtLab

We are encouraged by this new effort by the record companies to focus on creative, positive and collaborative approaches to promote safe and legal ways for artists and their fans to use the Internet to share music. Consumers' enthusiastic response to the growing number of Web sites and other online sources that provide legal access to original, high-quality video and music shows that creators, technologists and consumers can all thrive in the Internet ecosystem.

Collaborative approaches, such as these, give consumers the opportunity to access music in a safe and legal way while providing fair compensation for the artists who create it. Experience has shown that most consumers will respond positively and switch to legal alternatives for future content downloads when they are informed that their downloading activities are inappropriate and that other easy-to-use, legal sources are widely available.

Before video became the big thing in online content, there was music. And music was pirated far and wide by users of the original Napster and its successors. Defenders of piracy often claimed (and still claim) that this activity allowed new and independent artists to get exposure, skipping traditional distribution.

And while some artists may have been lucky enough to get exposure this way, it doesn't seem to have lead to an explosion in the profitability of the "Long Tail" (our previous thoughts on the Long Tail are here) or the number of indie artists jumping into the "Short Head." Indie artists need something more.

Today we're witnessing the next generation of attempts at marketing independent artists - making their music accessible, flexible and profitable. One of the more valiant efforts is indie911.

It starts out pretty straightforward: artists can register at the site, create a custom page for themselves, and start uploading their music and video to stream through the site's player. In a day or two, if the artist desires, the content is approved for sale, starting at the industry-standard rate of 99 cents for music tracks, $1.99 for video.

But one way indie911 sets itself apart is with the "hoooka" player, which is a high-functioning widget. Each artist or fan can create his own hoooka, complete with customizable skins and colors, which will showcase the music (accompanied by photo slideshows, if they like) and video they've identified as their favorites, as well as other media they've been checking out lately.

The widget operates not only at the indie911 site but anywhere: on your website, your blog, your social networks (like MySpace), or anywhere embedding is allowed. Interestingly, fans looking at that hoooka on those different websites can all chat with each other in real time and post comments about what they're watching and hearing.

And while artists can put up their content for free--and indie911 will help promote that content online--the site offers many avenues for monetizing content. The most straightforward is that if the artist has chosen to put his content up for sale, then when fans see or hear it, they can buy the non-restricted digital file in two clicks--every hoooka is a "digital store-front".

When other people view the hoooka you've set up, and they decide to buy content through it, you get a cut: 70% goes to the artist, 10% goes to the hoooka creator, and 20% goes to indie911. So if the music is purchased through the artist's own hoooka, the artist gets a full 80%.

For the artist, these are among the best rates in the business either way, but now fans have an extra incentive to try out independent works, find the good stuff and, in effect, do some of the retail groundwork to promote the artist.

indie911's current members are doing just that, although finding the artists that appeal to them is somewhat hampered by the lack of a solid search or auto-recommendation function.  While you can browse manually by genre, your best bet is to look for artists who cite influence by mainstream artists you already like.

In addition to retail through the hoooka, indie911 offers free opt-in digital distribution to outlets like iTunes, amazon.com, Rhapsody and yes, the new aboveboard Napster. And artists get 95% of all income indie911 receives from their songs that way. Also available for free through indie911 are opportunities for licensing songs for use in other media like movies, TV and video games, which can bring in licensing fees and royalties.

Now, artists can only post three tracks for sale under the free package, so if they want to put more songs out there, they pay a fairly low rate ($29.99/year, which can be recouped in just 38 direct downloads) to sell an unlimited number of songs.

And all of this is non-exclusive: artists can post their work at indie911 and retain all rights to their work, and go on selling their work anywhere else they please. It's hard to see why any indie artist wouldn't want to opt in, at very least to the free package: it's all upside.

If an artist really wants to take their career to the next level, indie911 offers a set of more expensive promotional options like radio distribution and marketing. So indie911 really does offer a full range of means for independent artists to promote themselves and make a bit of money along the way.

Whether or not any given indie artist will make it, indie911 won't fail for lack of trying; and according to the site, they've succeeded so far at attracting more than 140,000 music and video titles from 30,000-plus artists and labels, and they've given everyone else a reason to participate. It would be nice to see that Long Tail come to something, so check it out and spread the word.

Last week, a number of organizations who often find themselves on opposites sides of some policy debates - including Public Knowledge, Free Press, Google, and some members of Arts+Labs - announced their participation in a Call to Action, a broad policy framework for a national broadband strategy. The statement doesn't get too involved in the nitty gritty details of implementing the goals, but there is definitely some indication that people are coming together on some of the underlying realities and setting aside some former dogmas to create a smart, forward-looking, consensus-driven approach.

Among the items in the "Goals" section of the document are these two important principles...

• Access to the Internet should, to the maximum feasible extent, be open to all users, service providers, content providers, and application providers.
• Network operators must have the right to manage their networks responsibly, pursuant to clear and workable guidelines and standards.

Our friends in the Call to Action coalition deserve our praise and appreciation for this important first step toward resolving disputes and moving forward.

We look forward to working together with them to create a better Internet for all of us - an Internet that is safe, legal and everywhere.

Yesterday I had a piece published online at Real Clear Politics about, well, online publishing. More broadly, the piece was about the future of the newspaper industry in the age of digital delivery. Pretty good timing actually, as it coincides with two pretty big shakeups yesterday in the journalism world: the Tribune Company's bankruptcy announcement and the Pulitzer Prize Board's decision to allow entrants for prizes in journalism from online-only media outlets. From my RCP article...

The future of online publishing is clearly in trouble, but the experience of the entertainment industry makes it seem likely that news outlets will be able to find ways to profitably deliver their content the way consumers want it (usually for free). Consider things like Hulu, imeem, and (increasingly) YouTube, all examples that rely on what Rubin calls the Three Cs: copyright, competition, and collaboration. I add a fourth C to that idea: content.

With collaborative solutions between content providers and content platforms, quality improves, and the need for users to traffic in infringing content is greatly diminished.

High quality content is critical in the realm of journalism, and as the Pulitzer Board's decision shows, much of that quality content is now online. Once the traditional news industry leaders embrace the Four Cs and look beyond site-based revenue streams and the traditional business models, the quality and availability of online content will be even better. As the Trib undergoes its reorganization -- and other papers look to improve their financial operations -- these collaborative solutions are something we need to be thinking about.

Fancast wants to be your online one-stop shop for everything from the silver screen to the small screen. It has tens of thousands of free videos, but there's even more under the surface, holding it together and making it even more useful.

The first thing Fancast invites you to do as you enter the site is to watch some of their many free videos, including (as you can see) full TV episodes, movies and trailers. This alone is a pretty impressive library: full episodes of 460 programs from 52 TV networks, and just as many full-length movies.

If a film or show of interest is going to be on TV sometime soon, or is available on-demand through your cable service, Fancast keeps up-to-date TV listings and will tell you where and when you can catch it.

For movies and TV shows that aren't available for free - or to download content rather than rely on streaming video - there's the Fancast Store. There you can download-to-rent or own a variety of videos, with discounts for purchasing whole seasons of shows (including "season passes" for currently running seasons).

And if you come across a movie or show that you'd like to rent but prefer not to download, Fancast will direct you to Netflix and Blockbuster so you can put it in your mail-rental queue. If you'd rather buy the DVD or Blu-ray outright, the site offers the Amazon link to the product.

For movies that are currently in the theaters, Fancast will direct you to Fandango for local showtimes and tickets.

Think about all that: this one site offers you a flexible array of options to access safe, legal content, whether you want to catch it as it airs, get it delivered on-demand, download it to your computer, or receive it in the mail. You can rent or own. And for lots of the video you're looking for, you can watch it streaming right at the site, for free.

So no matter what you're looking for, Fancast is a portal to help you access it. But that's not apparent when you first visit the site. When you first arrive at the front page, there's scant evidence that Fancast has a vast, searchable, fairly easy-to-navigate database of information about the content, cast, crew, and even music of TV shows and movies. But Fancast does.

And if you register a profile at Fancast, then when you browse through shows, movies, cast and crew, you can start rating them and identifying your favorites. Using that information about your preferences--the more you provide, the better--the site makes recommendations for what you should be watching now on live TV, on-demand (including the free videos on Fancast), and in theaters. If you need a reminder when something is going to be on TV, you can just click the "Notify Me" button on its page and you'll get an email ahead of time.

The only content that isn't integrated with the rest of the site is Fancast's set of several blogs about the news and stars of TV and cinema; they're more of a front-page bonus to round out a site about video entertainment.

What Fancast delivers is a ton of content, tied together with an underlying database that helps you find and access the content you want, safely, legally, wherever it may be . . . and often free.

There's money to be made in getting people what they want: Fancast has managed to combine several different business models in one site, with the occasional ad, paid downloads, and tie-ins with other services all contributing. If that's what it takes to support a one-stop shop for viewers to browse, search for and access what they like, we're all for it.

The New York Times recently noted the consumer shift towards online consumption of content. "It's ridiculous", said one person, "to pay for this service I rarely use when I can get the same stuff online and save a lot of money." But then the Times made an accusation that doesn't seem to match up with the reality we're seeing...

Does an economy in tatters slow down or speed up the shift to watching TV shows and movies on the Web and mobile devices? The entertainment industry doesn't like the answer that is rapidly becoming clear: A global economic crisis almost certainly means a sharp acceleration in the move to new ways of consuming content, setting the stage for a new clash between consumers and studios. [...]

Moreover, consumers now have cheaper ways to see movies and TV shows. Hulu. Vudu. YouTube. Netflix. Amazon Video on Demand. iTunes. Crackle. FunLittleMovies.com. Movielink. CinemaNow. The list goes on. As a result, movie and television studios seem more intent than ever on protecting their established businesses from cannibalization by new media, which are growing rapidly but still generating very little revenue comparatively.

It's difficult to understand why the New York Times would claim movie and television studios are "more intent than ever on protecting their established businesses from cannibalization by new media" right after pointing out 10 places (and "the list goes on") where movie and television studios are busy rolling out their content online.

These "cheaper ways to see movies and TV shows" that the Times says consumers now have, exist precisely because movie and television studios are working so hard to eliminate a "clash between consumers and studios." Perhaps people have gotten so used to thinking in terms of a conflict between creative rights and digital distribution that it's hard to see what is happening right now, but the "clash" is being eliminated by great new ideas, technology and progressive collaborations.

That's something the New York Times ought to cover.

The guys from Monty Python have posted a video on YouTube to announce the creation of the Monty Python YouTube channel.  Do I even need to mention that it's funny?  It's Monty Python. Of course it's funny.

Vuze, previously known as Azureus, is yet another great example of how a technology that has commonly been used for negative purposes can be harnessed and made safe for the benefit of content creators, distributors and consumers alike.

Recently we've discussed how peer-to-peer (P2P) technology has allowed some legitimate websites to lower distribution costs for digital media. Vuze uses a special kind of P2P protocol with which you may or may not already be fam

iliar, called BitTorrent, which allows users to download scattered pieces of a file from many fellow users at once.  While you do have to download the entire file before you can play it, this kind of distribution can be very fast and quite robust.

This alternative to streaming allows Vuze to specialize in high-quality, even high-definition (HD) content. Almost 15% of the tens of thousands of available videos are HD, and Vuze sets a fairly high standard of quality for the other 85% as well.

Because of the security and speed of this platform, Vuze doesn't just offer video: music and even computer games are also available for download.

To take advantage of this technology, you do have to download Vuze's own desktop application, which is both a downloader and media player. In addition, it can be used to browse Vuze's searchable directory of media, which is also available at the website.

Unlike many sites using this technology, Vuze controls which content makes it onto the network, which minimizes piracy and unsafe activity. Because the site is secure and isn't crowded with low-quality content, Vuze has been able to sign on 150 content partners, including a number of major studios and networks.

But it's not all left to them. If you own good, quality content, you can publish it for free through Vuze, and while you can always make it available to others at no cost, there's also the option (for video and games) to monetize your content so that users either view advertising or pay directly (at whatever price you set) to gain access. Either way, you get half of the revenue that Vuze collects (well, net revenue for the advertising option). It's quite a simple process.

It's simple: Vuze is all about quality. Consumers who have become accustomed to streaming video of dubious quality may not know what they're missing; Vuze can show them.

Lots of TV networks have some online presence, and many of those have taken steps toward putting an appreciable amount of their regular video on their sites. Some have tried to develop complementary content so as to offer something special to keep viewers' attention.

But in terms of the breadth and sheer amount of content, and the evident attention paid to creating a tight online operation, there aren't many that match the ambition of MTV.com.

It's startling. For those of us who are old enough to remember, but young enough to have been paying attention, MTV gradually transformed from Music Television to Reality TV. MTV.com brings them both together, and adds a bunch on for good measure.

MTV didn't skimp on the "M." They advertise that they currently have more than 16,000 music videos--real, official videos--in their easily searchable database, which puts them in a league of their own. But that's just the flashy part; even a casual perusal of their pages shows an uncommon attention to detail. It all links together: music videos linking to lyrics, artist pages linking to photos and news about the artist, live performances, discography, and the link to the artist's website. You can even see what other videos the director has done.

That's saying nothing of the several dozen MTV Radio online stations, set up through a Rhapsody player. Rhapsody also invites users to buy songs from their MP3 store: if you like what you're hearing anywhere on the site, you can click the omnipresent Rhapsody link on the page and it will take you to search for what that artist has to offer.

They pull you in with free content, and if you want it "To Go," it's available for a small price. That, the MTV Shop, and the occasional ad are the only really visible ways that MTV is capitalizing on all that quality content.

MTV isn't just about the professionally produced content, either: it allows users to upload their own videos of live shows, as well as photos and text. And if the material is good, it might end up on the blog for the uploads section of the site (You R Here) or even on TV.

And that's only one of the five music-specific blogs run by MTV. They also have a newsroom blog as well as a blog for movies, another for comic book movies specifically (really), and one for video games. And the blogs aren't just tokens; they're all very frequently updated and they get the first shot at content from time to time (like newly released movie posters, or exclusive interviews).

Of course, that rule especially applies to the blog they run for their own (reality) TV shows. And MTV has individual pages and video for an obscene number of shows and specials. They have a page dedicated just to music from their TV shows. And they have mobile content for some of their most popular shows.

Then, MTV takes it a step further and holds it all together with a social network (as of this writing, the MTV community has over 570,000 people). Users can set up a simple profile which serves them on different parts of the site in different ways, like uploading content or joining a community.

All of this, along with a bunch of other content I can't possibly cover in a blog post, shows impressive attention to detail and a commitment to the online space as an integral part of their overall strategy and business model. It's a bold foray onto the web for an established content provider/creator. We're fans.

The internet is having a profound political impact - both on voters and campaigns, as Mark McKinnon has explained at Internet Evolution. But the New York Times says the media is also aggressively responding to the new culture of the internet, embracing new approaches to content distribution...

Shortly after 9 a.m. on Oct. 19, Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president during the taping of "Meet the Press" on NBC. Within minutes, the video was on the Web. The 2008 race has blurred online and offline media. But the clip was not rushed onto YouTube; it was MSNBC.com, the network's sister entity online, that showed the video hours before television viewers on the West Coast could watch the interview for themselves. [...] But as NBC's decision to release the Powell clip early shows, the networks and their newspaper counterparts have not simply waited to be overtaken. Instead, they have made specific efforts to engage audiences with interactive features, allowing their content to be used in unanticipated ways, and in many efforts, breaking out of the boundaries of the morning paper and the evening newscast.

In the past, there has been a conflict of incentives for creators between "allowing their content to be used in unanticipated ways" and protecting the content they spend a great deal of money to produce. While virtually everybody acknowledges that creators should own, and benefit from, the fruit of their labor, many also acknowledge that people should be able to excerpt content in order to report - or, yes, remix - the original content in non-commercial ways. But where is the line between protecting the rights of creators and giving consumers more access to, and freedom to use, content?

It's an extraordinarily difficult question, and many have wrestled with how and where to draw the line.

However, that knot may finally be untangling and in some rather unexpected ways. Instead of having to choose between the rights of creators and more open content distribution, creators are embracing technology to allow both goals to be achieved. The New York Times describes how NBC is embracing internet distribution, but they're far from alone.

• Viacom, another Arts+Labs member, is also exploring ways to accomplish both goals with MTV.com, "embrac[ing] the consumer-led digital revolution".
• Google, the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers are creating a Registry for authors and expand access to books "in ways Google never could have done alone."
• WashingtonPost.com's most popular video programming recently has been its live coverage of this year's political conventions and election night, and The Wall Street Journal is aggressively rolling out new bite-sized video documentaries accompanying their news articles.

These are all entirely new initiatives, new models of distribution and in many cases are blurring the lines between what we've traditionally thought of as separate and distinct industries. Who would have thought for instance that yesterday's newsprint would graduate to online print, video documentaries and live video coverage.

The bottom line is that surprising and positive effects are emerging out of the laboratories of these new distribution models. Creators are developing better content, better methods of content delivery, and engaging internet consumers in entirely new and unique ways.