Digital DNA

I love Pandora. I know I can’t get it out here in the UK anymore, but I still love it (and when there’s a will, there’s a way – like using a service like Hotspot Shield). So, I was buoyed by the news that webcasters, artists and the record labels have reached an agreement on royalties for online radio (see the post on Pandora’s blog if you want to grasp how important this was to the company).

My understanding is that the level of royalties finally agreed is still higher than traditional radio, however, they will enable companies like Pandora to exist. They have said that they will have to start charging $0.99 for users who listen to more than 40 hours per month – a small price to pay for one of the best online radio services available.

This news has come off the back of changes in the PRS rates for interactive radio in the UK. So, big question is will we see Pandora back in the UK market any time soon? The gap that Pandora left here was significant – just look at the traction that We7 and Spotify have had in the UK in the last 12 months.

I sit here tonight on my sofa watching the telly. My PVR is polluted with stuff that the kids and my wife have recorded, so I am really left with channel surfing to quench my thirst for entertainment.

So, BBC1… Holby City (poor man’s ER)
BBC2… Coast (about the UK’s coastal cities)
ITV… Ladette to Lady (surely, this is the lowest of the low?)
Channel 4… Big Brother (I was wrong, this is the lowest common denominator stuff)

Ok, not any original or interesting content on right now on the main 4 channels. But, I have Sky, so I will be saved by the plethora of high quality digital channels on offer, won’t I?

Click… Road Wars

Click… Diary of a Mail Order Bride

Click… Britain’s Next Top Model

Click… 10 Years Younger USA

Ok, I give up. I reckon it’ll be easier and quicker for me to find some good stuff on the web. I am now on YouTube and within 2 seconds I find this… an Evian viral ad. It’s an advert and it is more engaging and entertaining than anything I found on the REAL telly tonight. Next time I am sitting here looking for tv entertainment, I will not reach for the remote, but pick up my laptop instead.

[Youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQcVllWpwGs"]

Michael Jackson is surely the first mega star to die in the digital age. Many people predicted that he would top the charts and the level of his domination in record stores was probably not a big surprise – we’ve seen that before. What has gripped me is how the internet absorbed our reaction and became an incredibly powerful social barometer.

I know that this is not the first event that has unfolded before our computer and mobile screens – but I cannot think of any other event dominating the news feeds, Twitter AND also triggering unprecedented digital revenues (see MJ’s near total domination of the iTunes charts across the world, as well as the matter of the 2.6 million downloads of his music in just one week).

And it doesn’t stop there; Mashable reported yesterday that Jacko’s fan page on Facebook went from 80,000 fans (before his death) to 6.7 million… eclipsing even previous ‘king of Facebook’ Barack Obama, and there was the online lottery to ‘win’ tickets to today’s memorial service.

This surge of Michael Jackson fever will undoubtedly slow down in the next few days, but I do think that we have witnessed a digital phenomenon like we have never seen before… and may never see again?

And one more thing – this moon walk video was viewed 14.5m times in the last few weeks on YouTube. Wow!

It’s been, what, 6 months? Followed a link on Twitter, and ended up at NewTeeVee (part of the GigaOM collection of blogs). And within minutes I was hooked – I signed up to the daily email alerts and I visit every day.

NewTeeVee brands itself as the place to go to “follow the video revolution”. If you work in any form of video/TV or are simply passionate about the way TV and video is changing, then this is one to add to your feeds. I manage to keep on top of the main news stories in video just by scanning through the daily email. For my job, it is an essential source of information.

But NewTeeVee is not just about video related news – it’s also about the content. They have their own station that highlights and showcases the best web video out there. The team review webTV series and content, and visitors can rate the content. In effect, through their editors and community they do what all the big video portals fail to do – they filter out all the crap so that we are left with some great content to chose from. Lovely.

They cover a wide range of content type from great viral vids posted on YouTube all the way to fully crafted webTV content. Recent examples of great content highlighted by NewTeeVee includes the Filipino Prisoners tribute to Michael Jackson…

And Imaginary Bitches first series on YouTube.

It has been a VERY long time since I blogged on the DNA of digital media. Now is the time to rectify that.

18 months ago I was offered the chance to become CEO of The Filter (one of Peter Gabriel’s tech companies) – and since I said yes and took over the reigns, I haven’t had the chance to stop and breath.

But now, The Filter is in good shape. It is showing some very positive momentum in providing big media companies with recommendation and relevance services. It is making money. Yay! Working on The Filter with companies like NBC, We7 and Daily Motion has further fueled my passion for digital entertainment – how we watch/listen/play/interact with it and how the landscape and business models are changing. So, I thought it was a good time to get back to posting on DigitalDNA and make something of it.

This time, there is a difference. I don’t think my views are enough – we need to broaden out the debate. So, I am teaming up with some great contributors to add different angles and expertise to the Blog:

Matt Woods, from Thomas Jerome Newton, has 10+ years of experience as a senior marketing chap within the entertainment industry – he oversaw the launch of BT Vision as Marketing Director amongst many other things.

Tim Tucker is an expert consultant in usability and user experience. Prior to that he was Group Senior Editor at Future where he oversaw the web-isation of Future’s magazines and journalists and was responsible for developing a number of Future’s digital launches.

Here goes. The new DigitalDNA is here.