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.

"Piracy reduction programs" generally conjure up images of 1) naval ships and eyepatches or 2) RIAA-style "sue-'em-all-and-damn-the-PR!" courtroom battles. But when it comes to digital content, few people truly want to fly the Jolly Roger (The Pirate Bay admins excepted, of course); they want access to content on-demand, in good quality, and at a fair price. Piracy is simply the means.

Meeting the demands of these digital whippersnappers sounds more like an idea from the bottom of a bong than anything resembling a business plan, but 2008 was the year in which companies showed just how well the model could work. [...]

Proving the naysayers wrong, signing up new high-profile content from Viacom and indie outlets (in addition to corporate backers Fox and NBC), and pulling in higher CPMs than anything on YouTube must be quite satisfying for the Hulu team. Offering all that content on demand, for free, and without apparent backend problems turned out to be satisfying for consumers as well, who are flocking to the service by the millions. And all this without even going international yet.

For those willing to drop a bit of dosh, Netflix offers its own on-demand streaming service for subscribers. Everyone who pays $6.99 a month and up gets unlimited on-demand access to more than 10,000 movies and TV shows. The company's expansion onto the Mac and into Xbox 360s--in high-def, no less--makes streaming a compelling adjunct to the base DVD-by-mail model.

We've been using both services around the Orbiting HQ extensively this year, and everyone on staff agrees: this is what a powerful antipiracy program looks like.

For people who remember the days of traveling around the world to meet with clients, colleagues, or business partners, this is really mind-blowing technology. But like a lot of the great new services and applications that are made possible by high-speed broadband Internet connections, fully realizing the benefits of something like Telepresence--or even a lower-budget alternative like a PC webcam and microphone--will depend on the ability to manage network traffic to avoid things like latency, jitter, and delays in data transmission.

It's one thing to experience a delay in a video stream when you're sharing a home movie of your cat doing something cute on YouTube. But when you're bringing together business associates in locations around the world for a negotiation, a meeting, or a training seminar--or more importantly, if you're a doctor monitoring a patient in a remote location--you definitely want a stable, reliable transmission. And that takes a reasonable degree of network management.

It's easy to argue against prioritizing some content over others, and for a lot of applications, best effort delivery makes sense--e-mails, Web pages, and non-streaming downloads, for example. But for streaming high definition content--whether it's for a Telepresence meeting, a remote surgery, a VoIP call, or even just a high-def stream of the Muppet Movie to your television--"best effort" just isn't always good enough.

UPDATE

Wall Street and Tech points out that Wachovia spent $1.5 million on Telepresence, but they say they've already made their money back in less than two years.

The firm has set up five telepresence studios -- conference rooms tricked out with Cisco equipment such as cameras, microphones and a large flat-screen, wall-mounted monitor -- two in Charlotte and one each in Richmond, St. Louis and San Antonio. Each cost slightly less than $300,000 to set up, but the audio and video quality, which I observed first-hand in an interview via telepresence last night, is excellent.  ...

Just by having executives use telepresence instead of traveling to certain meetings, Wachovia is saving $70,000 per month in travel expenses. The firm is starting to use telepresence for staff meetings across locations, particularly since the firm's latest studio is a CTS 3200 model, a larger room that seats up to 18 people in front of three 65-inch high-definition plasma displays.

...not to mention the reduced environmental impact.