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New Media News Every Morning

Amazon Pushes Kindle TV Ads

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Call it coincidence or a a deliberate attempt at possibly spoiling the intensifying excitement over the release of the iPad. But Amazon’s recent airing of two TV ads for Kindle is a sign that the company is not just going to let the iPad steal the Kindle’s existing dominance on the e-book market.

The two TV ads features are short snappy and trendy clips showing the theme “books in 60 seconds.” Meaning, that’s how fast you can get hold of a full edition of a published book in your Amazon Kindle, through its 3G wiresless connectivity or via the Internet. The Kindle TV Ads are pretty well done, colorful and able to send the message that the Kindle can bring “colors” to what you read.

Interestingly, Amazon has commissioned airing of the two commercials into prime time on major channels. Makes us think that Amazon has really spent a lot to push their campaign. And of course, it shows how serious they are in staying competitive against the iPad.

Here’s the other Amazon Kindle TV commercial.

Universal Music Group and FreeAllMusic Offer Free Music Downloads

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Universal Music Group (UMG) has teamed up with ad-sponsored digital music download service FreeAllMusic to provide a facility for music fans to download freely and legally music tracks from UMG’s stable of artists. The deal will give users up to 20 free music downloads per month, five per week starting every New Music Tuesday.

In case you’re not aware, FreeAllMusic is a fairly new music service offering downloadable, high-quality, iPod-compatible MP3s of popular songs that are advertiser-paid, free, legal and DRM-free. The catch? You have to watch a short video commercial before you can download an MP3. You have to do that to let FreeAllMusic continue providing the service. It is after all what’s paying their bills to keep the site running.

The good thing is, after watching the video commercial and downloading the MP3, you can now enjoy it anytime, anywhere minus the ads. Fair enough, right? Ok, before you folks jump for joy, let me just tell you that FreeAllMusic is a for US-only site. So bad luck for all of us non-US citizens of the world. But of course there are other alternatives to this service, if  you know what I’m referring to.

If you’re from the U.S., you need to register at FreeAllMusic.com and then simply select a participating brand, then watch the short video commercial. After which you can start downloading the mp3. You can also share your downloads to friends but they have to download it for themselves. And they should also watch the video commercial. Or post your music download to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter so that others may know about FreeAllMusic.com’s service and be compelled to watch video commercials in exchange for free music.

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Vodafone offers “big four” DRM-free music catalogue in Europe

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vodafone_logoIt’s been a busy time for Vodafone. Earlier this week the mobile giant announced a deal with Warner Music that now sees the company become the first global mobile network operator to offer its customers over-the-air access to a DRM-free music catalogue spanning the big four companies: Universal, Sony, EMI and Warner.

Though the days of criminalising music sharing are nearly over, it is good to see more companies just getting on with offering music in formats not crippled with proprietary formats or copy-protection schemes — which generally hurt and confuse the average consumer more than those hellbent on copying and distributing music on a large scale. [Read more…]

Boycott the Associated Press!

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Ban APAssociated Press stories have long been banned from my personal blog because of their copyright-trolling ways, but now they’ve hit a new low. Now they’re implementing DRM wrappers around their content and cracking down on anyone who so much as quotes a headline and links to an article without paying a fee.

AP CEO Tom Curley clearly does not grasp the referral economy of the Web. Hey, if he doesn’t want link love, then I sure as Hell won’t give him any. I have better things to do than give him my Google juice and get sued for it.

So do you. Don’t ever link to these copyright trolls. Don’t direct your audience’s hard-earned attention to people who will only charge you for it. If you really must talk about an AP story, Google up some alternative coverage from their many more clued-in competitors. Boycott the Associated Press.

Rhapsody launches ‘Music Without Limits’

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Digital music service Rhapsody announced the launch of its “Music Without Limits” initiative. This strategy is designed to turbocharge the digital music industry in three ways, by:

• Accelerating the move away from proprietary Digital Rights Formats by making music from all major labels available in the DRM-free and interoperable MP3 format;

• Empowering music fans to conveniently stream full-length songs, and buy MP3s, anywhere they want including the most popular music sites and social networks on the web;

• Integrating digital music directly with mobile phones through a deep partnership between Rhapsody and Verizon Wireless.

Beginning today, consumers can purchase MP3 music from Rhapsody and its partners that is free of the digital rights management (DRM) software that restricts how and where people can play their music.

The Rhapsody MP3 catalogue will include more than 5 million songs from all four major music labels – Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI – and an extensive number of independent labels. Most albums will sell for $9.99 and tracks for $.99.