Can Amazon push Netflix out of limelight?
During the early part of the Internet Age, Amazon shipped CDs and DVDs to customers who ordered them via the Web and CEO Jeff Bezos' company became synonymous with Web music and movies. Then Apple's iTunes, and Netflix, laid waste to physical discs by delivering digital downloads and streaming video, and Amazon quietly drifted to the back of the pack. But today Amazon flexed some muscle of its own by announcing it would stream movies for free to people who subscribe to the e-tailer's Prime service. Amazon Prime subscribers will be able to log on to the Web from Internet-connected devices to instantly access a pool of 5,000 films and TV shows. The way Amazon Prime works is that members pay $79 a year to receive unlimited free two-day shipping without being required to meet any minimum-purchase requirements. Plenty of commentators in the blogosphere are noting that Amazon's video service isn't a Netflix killer, and they're right--but this is just the merchant's first volley as it prepares to take on Netflix, Apple, and others in the growing streaming media sector.Amazon versus NetflixIs Amazon's new video-streaming feature enough to steal Netflix's crown?The imagination runs wild when one considers what Amazon could do if the Web store throws its considerable retailing and financial girth into marketing a streaming-video service. Amazon can advertise the service to the 65 million online shoppers that visit the company's site each month. The company could promote and bundle the video service with all kinds of other product offerings. Dan Rayburn, an analyst covering Web video for consulting firm Frost and Sullivan, said Amazon could conceivably sweeten its offer by selling deeply discounted set-top boxes that enable Prime subscribers to watch streaming video on their living-room TV sets. Heck, Amazon's deep pockets might allow the company to give those boxes away. Consider that Amazon is picking up the bill for the rights to offer the streaming video, but so what? Amazon is loaded. The retailer reported $3.7 billion of cash and cash equivalents for the 12 months ended December 31, 2010. With a snap of their fingers, the Amazonians now offer an unbeatable subscription price. Another advantage Amazon has over Netflix is that the company has the horsepower to stream video to Prime members without having to pay a third party. Netflix can't say this. On the contrary, the company overseeing that chore for Netflix is Amazon's Web Services (AWS). That's right, Netflix is dependent on a rival for some back-end operations. But as full of potential intrigue as that sounds, it's doubtful Amazon would ever undermine AWS' reputation by torpedoing Netflix that way. Wall Street apparently believes Amazon could cause Netflix some hurt.Netflix's stock tumbled more than $13, or 5 percent, in afternoon trading. Netflix shares have skyrocketed the past year, posting an all-time high last week when it topped $247."A growing market attracts competitors," said Netflix representative Steve Swasey.Investors should take into account that Amazon is unlikely to unseat Netflix anytime soon. Netflix has more than 20 million subscribers, a far larger selection of films and TV shows than Amazon, and has already shown that it can outmaneuver larger players. Experts once thought Blockbuster, the brick-and-mortar video-rental chain, would smash Netflix. The opposite happened. While Blockbuster was still charging late fees and inspiring consumer bitterness, Netflix was delivering videos to customers' doors via the U.S. Postal Service--creating an entirely new delivery model--and telling users to hang on to the DVDs as long as they liked without charge.Amazon also has several businesses to distract management's attention. Netflix thinks exclusively about delivering movies and TV shows. The company has posted a team of dealmakers in Hollywood to build ties with the studios. Netflix has deals with such content suppliers as Warner Bros. Pictures, Relativity, Starz, and Epix, and just today it added TV shows from CBS, parent company of CNET. And consumers are already streaming video from Netflix via more than 200 different kinds of Internet-connected devices, such as video-game consoles and Web-enabled TVs, which are compatible with the service. Even if Amazon did offer a Roku-like box for free, it would likely take the company a while to cut enough of similar deals to make itself as widely available as Netflix. The real loser could be Hulu, the joint venture operated by Disney, NBC Universal, and News Corp. that has recently suffered from internal strife. Hulu offers some content for free but the service requires users to pay $7.99 to access a growing number of shows. In addition, Hulu's pay service also forces viewers to watch ads. Amazon's new video service is ad free.Regardless of which company takes over, with all the price cutting and scrambling to add programming, the real winner--for the time being at least--will be consumers.
Radiohead declares it's done with recording albums
Radiohead declares it's done with recording albums
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has declared, in an interview with The Believer, that the band has no plans to record another full-length album, preferring instead to focus on singles.A one-off from a band that can afford to call the shots, or a sign of things to come in entertainment, not to mention software?Yorke cites the creative burden of recording an album, but I have to think the decision is as much about marketing an album as it is recording it.As Yorke relates:None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. Not straight off.I mean, it's just become a real drag. It worked with "In Rainbows" because we had a real fixed idea about where we were going. But we've all said that we can't possibly dive into that again. It'll kill us."In Rainbows" worked on two or three different levels. The first level is just sort of getting a point across that we wanted to get across about music being valuable. It also worked as a way of using the Internet to promote your record, without having to use iTunes or Google or whatever...and it also worked financially.To make it work, however, Radiohead went to great lengths to market the album, far less than it had to invest in distributing its latest gem, "Harry Patch."Regardless, while some music arguably makes more creative sense as part of an album, many songs stand alone and better fit the way music is being defined, distributed, and monetized.This is perhaps best exemplified by comments, cited in a Wall Street Journal story, from singers Robert Earl Keen and Perry Farrell in the wake of the Lollapalooza festival:"The music business is upside down," said alt-country singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen. "You don't tour to support your record. You put out a record to support a tour.""Do you see people going record shopping? No," said Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction. "Downloading free music. Yes. Going out for live music. Yes. I love recorded music, but the best bang for my buck is the night I go out."If you can accomplish this with singles, rather than the burden of an album, why not go that route?This is particularly intriguing given the continued pace of piracy, as a new study finds, because it requires a band to invest less in album creation and more time in monetizing the music through concerts and other "services."Ditto for software.Google has already showed one way to get beyond the "album mentality" by providing its code on a perpetual beta basis.There is no big, once-and-for-all unveiling of Google's software, but rather a steady release of updates.Open source is the same.Customers subscribe to a series of improvements and services around the software, rather than buying into a big licensing event.The emphasis is on what comes after the initial adoption of the software, not a bunch of marketing and hype to get people to use the software in the first place.The software largely sells itself.In music and in software, we're moving to a services-based economy that relies less on DRM (digital rights management) and more on service-based connections between consumer and creator.The two blend ever more frequently in this digital age through the collaborative interplay between producer and audience.For my part, I hope that Radiohead will release new singles early and often, with an emphasis on getting them out quickly to test their appeal, then fine-tuning them over time.The same holds true for software.My only question is if at some point in the future we'll see Linus Torvalds and Thom Yorke jamming together on stage.Now that would rock.Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has declared, in an interview with The Believer, that the band has no plans to record another full-length album, preferring instead to focus on singles.A one-off from a band that can afford to call the shots, or a sign of things to come in entertainment, not to mention software?Yorke cites the creative burden of recording an album, but I have to think the decision is as much about marketing an album as it is recording it.As Yorke relates:None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. Not straight off.I mean, it's just become a real drag. It worked with "In Rainbows" because we had a real fixed idea about where we were going. But we've all said that we can't possibly dive into that again. It'll kill us."In Rainbows" worked on two or three different levels. The first level is just sort of getting a point across that we wanted to get across about music being valuable. It also worked as a way of using the Internet to promote your record, without having to use iTunes or Google or whatever...and it also worked financially.To make it work, however, Radiohead went to great lengths to market the album, far less than it had to invest in distributing its latest gem, "Harry Patch."Regardless, while some music arguably makes more creative sense as part of an album, many songs stand alone and better fit the way music is being defined, distributed, and monetized.This is perhaps best exemplified by comments, cited in a Wall Street Journal story, from singers Robert Earl Keen and Perry Farrell in the wake of the Lollapalooza festival:"The music business is upside down," said alt-country singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen. "You don't tour to support your record. You put out a record to support a tour.""Do you see people going record shopping? No," said Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction. "Downloading free music. Yes. Going out for live music. Yes. I love recorded music, but the best bang for my buck is the night I go out."If you can accomplish this with singles, rather than the burden of an album, why not go that route?This is particularly intriguing given the continued pace of piracy, as a new study finds, because it requires a band to invest less in album creation and more time in monetizing the music through concerts and other "services."Ditto for software.Google has already showed one way to get beyond the "album mentality" by providing its code on a perpetual beta basis.There is no big, once-and-for-all unveiling of Google's software, but rather a steady release of updates.Open source is the same.Customers subscribe to a series of improvements and services around the software, rather than buying into a big licensing event.The emphasis is on what comes after the initial adoption of the software, not a bunch of marketing and hype to get people to use the software in the first place.The software largely sells itself.In music and in software, we're moving to a services-based economy that relies less on DRM (digital rights management) and more on service-based connections between consumer and creator.The two blend ever more frequently in this digital age through the collaborative interplay between producer and audience.For my part, I hope that Radiohead will release new singles early and often, with an emphasis on getting them out quickly to test their appeal, then fine-tuning them over time.The same holds true for software.My only question is if at some point in the future we'll see Linus Torvalds and Thom Yorke jamming together on stage.Now that would rock.Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
eMusic's makeover
eMusic's makeover
Internet music retailer eMusic is undertaking an ambitious site redesign that infuses music discovery and social networking features. Beginning July 22, eMusic is rolling out new album pages for their collection of more than 3.5 million songs--an update that includes both cosmetic and practical design upgrades. Visually, the new eMusic album page design has a much cleaner and bolder feel than the somewhat dated look the site had been holding on to. The new album page layout is wider, and puts more emphasis on album artwork and user ratings. In a move that should delight those of you who get a kick from printing out CD covers, eMusic now offers high-resolution 1400x1400-pixel album art.The new eMusic album page integrates artist videos, images, and biographic information from popular sources such as YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia.eMusicThe most intriguing new feature on eMusic's new album page is the inclusion of content from partners such as YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia. For instance, a look at the album page for Radiohead's In Rainbows offers the usual track listing, cover image, editorial blurb, and user comments, but as you scroll down further you'll notice a selection of Radiohead YouTube music videos, as well as a handful of live concert photos hosted by Flickr, and an excerpt of the band's entry on Wikipedia. Aggregating dynamic content such as this from around the Web may not seem revolutionary in today's age of Facebook applications and Wordpress plug-ins, but compared with the hermetically sealed environments of iTunes and Amazon MP3, eMusic's move is a relatively gutsy break from tradition. One of the eMusic album page's less obvious new features is a drop-down menu with 18 different social networking links, including Facebook, Digg, Twitter, and Stumbleupon. Each link lets you post clips from the album page on whatever social networking site you prefer. While eMusic's social networking link feature is well-executed, they're off to a late start in a medium where users are already consuming full song streams from services such as iLike, Rhapsody, and Seeqpod.Upgrades to other eMusic page types are soon to follow, including new layouts for artist pages, improved search functionality, and a new "visual bread-crumb" feature that keeps better track of your browsing history. Despite eMusic's face-lift and infusion of Web 2.0, some users will still be turned off by the company's unique monthly pricing plan and lack of major label recordings, however, indie-loving music fans should definitely give eMusic's revamped site a look.
Internet music retailer eMusic is undertaking an ambitious site redesign that infuses music discovery and social networking features. Beginning July 22, eMusic is rolling out new album pages for their collection of more than 3.5 million songs--an update that includes both cosmetic and practical design upgrades. Visually, the new eMusic album page design has a much cleaner and bolder feel than the somewhat dated look the site had been holding on to. The new album page layout is wider, and puts more emphasis on album artwork and user ratings. In a move that should delight those of you who get a kick from printing out CD covers, eMusic now offers high-resolution 1400x1400-pixel album art.The new eMusic album page integrates artist videos, images, and biographic information from popular sources such as YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia.eMusicThe most intriguing new feature on eMusic's new album page is the inclusion of content from partners such as YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia. For instance, a look at the album page for Radiohead's In Rainbows offers the usual track listing, cover image, editorial blurb, and user comments, but as you scroll down further you'll notice a selection of Radiohead YouTube music videos, as well as a handful of live concert photos hosted by Flickr, and an excerpt of the band's entry on Wikipedia. Aggregating dynamic content such as this from around the Web may not seem revolutionary in today's age of Facebook applications and Wordpress plug-ins, but compared with the hermetically sealed environments of iTunes and Amazon MP3, eMusic's move is a relatively gutsy break from tradition. One of the eMusic album page's less obvious new features is a drop-down menu with 18 different social networking links, including Facebook, Digg, Twitter, and Stumbleupon. Each link lets you post clips from the album page on whatever social networking site you prefer. While eMusic's social networking link feature is well-executed, they're off to a late start in a medium where users are already consuming full song streams from services such as iLike, Rhapsody, and Seeqpod.Upgrades to other eMusic page types are soon to follow, including new layouts for artist pages, improved search functionality, and a new "visual bread-crumb" feature that keeps better track of your browsing history. Despite eMusic's face-lift and infusion of Web 2.0, some users will still be turned off by the company's unique monthly pricing plan and lack of major label recordings, however, indie-loving music fans should definitely give eMusic's revamped site a look.
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