hypebot

ASCAP Wants $'s For Embedded YouTube Videos

ASCAP sent a collection letter to Jason Calacanis  seeking payment for YouTube videos embedded on his Mahalo site. Based on what the group told Valleywag, many music bloggers should also be concerned:

"ASCAP does not offer licenses to – or require licenses from – those who simply make their personal blogs available on purely noncommercial Web sites. Mahalo.com is a larger venture than simply a personal blog, and therefore ASCAP is engaged in discussions with Mr. Calacanis concerning the use of ASCAP members' music on the site."

It's not the first time that ASCAP has sent such letters.  So far YouTube has told recipients to refer the group back to them. But recently a judge ruled Google owed ASCAP $1.6 million and a court battle coninues. But how long will Google continue to defend bloggers who post thousands of videos woith music daily?

United Airlines Destroys A Guitar And Gets A Viral Country Hit In Return

Halifax musician Dave Carroll went viral to protest the behavior of United Airlines and its treatment of his Taylor guitar. "United Breaks Guitars," which was posted on YouTube Monday has already exceeded 600,000 views. Carroll was flying with his band, saw a United crew member tossing their guitars while loading them into the plane and then spent a year fighting the airline to get them to replace his $3,500 broken beauty.

First Music Video Shot On An iPhone

Impressive video results from an iPhone from small Ohio production house for Showdown "Play" by BJSR.   More @ Wired

Internet Holds Up Under Jackson Onslaught

(UPDATED) Some complained of choppy streams as they watched Michael Jackson's memorial service online yesterday, but for the most part the internet the internet held up well during one of its busiest days ever.

Web analytics firm Akamai measured a peak of 3 million simultaneous video streams as of 3PM EST. That's three times the normal traffic, but less than the 7 million streams during the Obama inauguration. Facebook said that 30 minutes after the start of the service, 800k status updates had flowed through their system. CNN delivered 8.9 million live streams during the event, according to TechCrunch, and  Ustream delivered 4.6 million.

More: The Trouble With MySpace Is Michael Jackson

Probably The Best Collaborative Music Video Ever

Watch and learn a bit about creative fan engagement. This music video for the song “Hibi no Neiro (Tone of Everyday)” by the Japanese band Sour is a selection of their fans from around the world filming themselves on webcams. (Hinutech via Daily Swarm)

All Amanda Palmer All The Time

You may be sick of hearing about Amanda Palmer, but I'm not...at least not yet.  Her $19,000 in 10 hours Twitter stunt may be more about social networking than music; but let's face it, it's time that we all paid attention to both.

Hypebot has a few really interesting Palmer related tidbits up our sleeve for the coming days, but in the meantime here's a video interview with Palmer via Out.com.

Video: Michael Jackson Comeback Promoter AEG Discusses Cancellation

When The Artist & Fan Relationship Goes Bad

I write a lot about the importance of the artist/fan relationship on Hypebot. But sometimes that realtionship goes sour with violent and strangely amusing results. My personal favorite of Fans vs. Faith No More is above. See 9 more at Revivl via Daily Swarm.

Band Shoots Free Video With Surveillance Cameras

Unsigned Manchester UK band The Get Out Clause performed in front of a number of surveillance cameras on buses and streets and other public places around the country. They then used The Data Protection Act (the UK's version of US' Freedom Of Information Act) to get copies of the tapes and edited them into a video that's become a viral hit.

Garagespin suggests that it's the patriotic thing for US artists to follow suit this 4th of July and have the federal government help produce their next video.

Pirate Bay Readies Launch Of The Video Bay

Those tiring of the growing restrictions put by rightsholders on video on You Tube and elsewhere may eventually find a home at The Video Bay.  Currently in "beta extreme", the site is the latest brainchild of the folks behind the Pirate Bay; and if their mounting problems in Swedish courts weren't already enough, this is sure to add to their legal bills.

"Both Live And Drunk Coding"

"Don't expect anything to work at all". reads the simple front page, and a test drive shows that almost nothing does. But the plans are ambitious.

Video Interview: Amanda Palmer On Making $19K In 10 Hours On Twitter

Amanda Palmer: Friday Night Freaks.

Just in case you missed the story of Amanda Palmer earning $19K in 10 hours via Twitter, here she explains how it all came together. You can also read more here.

YouTube Reports 1700% Jump In Mobile Video

YouTube is reporting that in the last six month uploads from mobile phones have jump 1700%; and since the iPhone 3GS with video came out last Friday uploads have increased by 400% every day.

YouTube reports that the growth is being driven by three overlapping developments:

• new video-enabled phones
• improvements in upload flow when posting from a phone
• a new feature that allows videos to be easily shared on social networks.

YouTube Upgrades Channels But Fix Yours Before They Fix It For You

If you don't have a channel on YouTube for your band or label you should. It's a great way to gather your videos in a single place. (Here's a basic channel Kyle Bylin is building for us at Skyline Music.)

Now YouTube is upgrading Channels with some strong customization and search features.  The only hitch is that if you don't go online and upgrade your channel now, they will do it for you between now and July 15th and some of the customization and features you added to your old design mey not automatically transfer over.  Watch the video above for details.

Video Interview: Bill Wilson, NARM's Dr. Of Biz Dev. & Digital Strategy

Virgil Dickerson speaks to Bill Wilson, Director Digital Strategy and Business Development for National Association Of Recording Merchandisers (NARM).

MORE EXLCUSIVE VIDEO INTERVIEWS:  Virgil's interviews from NARM include Duncan Hutchinson of Rights Flow and Blackheart Records, Kevin Arnold of digital distributor IODA , Tim Hinsley of SuperD Distribution and NARM President Jim Doneo, Sandy Bitman of indie retailer Park Avenue, ex-Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford and Eric LeMasters of Koch/E1.

YouTube Rolls Out 6 Incremental Improvments

Rather then a big splashy make-over, YouTube has been rolling out an ongoing series of changes and improvements that marketers and uses should pay attention to.

• Download MP4 Files of Your Own Videos: You no longer have to panic when your computer crashes and you lose the original files of videos. Find the video you want in YouTube's "My Videos" and hit the "Download MP4" button to save the MP4 file of the video back to your new computer. 
• A More TV-Like Experience:  One new feature hides the player control bar when viewers are in full screen for a more TV-like experience. You can also "pop out" any video by clicking on a button and it will open in a new window, without any of the surrounding features or videos. This feature won't work when embedding has been disabled.

The Dares Do A Digital Age Houdini

The Guinness World Records has recognized jive act The Dares for the first concert to take place simultaneously in two places at the same time. Earlier this month during the video gaming confab E3, the the band performed the theme song for virtual world Free Realms, as well as songs from their debut album. In sync with the live set, The Dares performed on stage in the 3D Free Realms virtual world, which was then in turn projected behind them on stage at E3. Does that make it three worlds at once? I'm confused...

Video: Twitter & The Death Of Rock Criticism

THIS IS A MUST WATCH: At the 140 Characters Conference, Rolling Stone and Idolator critic Christopher R. Weingarten shared a witty and all too true overview of how music blogs, album leaks and Twitter are changing the role of the music critic. "Crowdsourcing killed indie rock...because people have awful taste...". Watch it, chuckle and weep,  then check out his fabulous Twitter min-album review project 100TimesYes.

Share YouTube Videos Automatically On Facebook, Twitter & Google Reader

From the YouTube blog: As we learned in kindergarten, sharing is good. We want you to be able to do more of it with your videos. With a simple one-time log-in on the upload page, you can now have your YouTube account automatically update your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and Google Reader shared items when you upload a video.

If you change your mind, you can shut it off at any time. And of course, for those videos that you'd rather not share, mark them as private and they won't be sent to any other site.

Video Interview: Sandy Bitman Of Park Ave CD's

Interview by Virgil Dickerson for Hypebot. Virgil sits down with Sandy Bitman, owner of Park Avenue CDs and Records. Park Avenue is a great store that is part of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores. He has lots of great ideas and has managed to keep his indie store running when others are closing.

Other Virgil NARM interviews include  Kevin Arnold of digital distributor IODA , Tim Hinsley of SuperD Distribution and NARM President Jim Doneo. Watch more video interviews next week.

Video: Interview With Kevin Arnold Of IODA

Suburban Home Records head Virgil Dickerson was Hypebot's man at NARM this. Here he interviews Kevin Arnold, the head of one of the top digital distributors IODA.  Watch more video interviews all next week.

U.S Online Video Views Jump 16% To 16.8 Billion

April 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix showed that U.S. net users viewed 16.8 billion online videos during the month, a 16% increase over March. A significant increase at YouTube contributed to the gains.

YouTube Accounts for 40%
In April, Google sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with 6.8 billion videos viewed (40.7% market share), a 15% increase over March. YouTube accounted for more than 99% of all Google videos. Fox Interactive ranked a distant second with 513 million videos (3.1%), followed by Hulu with 397 million (2.4%) and Yahoo! Sites with 355 million (2.1%).

Sony Joins Universal's VEVO Video Service

Sony Music Entertainment (SME) has signed on to VEVO, the Universal Music Group (UMG) led and YouTube powered premium music video and entertainment service. The announcement was made today by Doug Morris, Chairman & CEO of UMG, and Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, SEO of SME. Terms were not disclosed.

VEVO is designed, in part, to give partner labels more control and revenue than YouTube does currently. Content will be available on YouTube through a newly created VEVO channel, on VEVO.com and through a VEVO embedded player. The service will also serve as a syndication platform for other sites.

In addition to SME and UMG, VEVO is exploring additional strategic participation by third-party investors to join this innovative entertainment platform as equity partners.

Video: Interview With Spotify CEO Daniel Ek

The Music Void - Daniel Ek on MUZU.

Part 1 of a 2 part interview with Daniel EK, CEO of Spotify by Steve Knopper of Rolling Stone Magazine at the UK's recent Great Escape conference.

Video: Irving Azoff On Ticketing, Live Nation & The State Of Record Business

Video from the recent All Things Digital D7 Conference of super- manager and new Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff on the the future of recorded music, ticketing, the proposed merger with Live Nation and more.

Zune Adds HD Radio & Video, Xbox Compatibility

Microsoft announced that it will open its Zune video service to the Xbox LIVE this Fall. Microsoft also unvieled its newest portable media player, the Zune HD. Designed to compete with the popular iPod Touch, the Zune HD combines built-in an mp3 and video players, an HD radio receiver, HD video output, an OLED touch screen, Wi-Fi and an internet browser.

More details:

Becuase You're Not Really In The Mood Work Today: Video Of Top On Stage Assaults Of All Time

#1  Keith Richards Uses His Guitar To Stop A Fan


#2 -19 @ Glamour News via The Daily Swarm

No Joke: NBC's Brian Williams Launches BriTunes

  

I doubt that my father ever got his music recommendations from Walter Cronkite, but that's exactly what NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams hopes to provide with BriTunes, a new web only feature which he announced recently on the TV broadcast.

"Okay, so I didn't name this thing, but I did come up with the idea," says Williams. "I have always loved identifying good music and good groups - discovering them early (bar bands are best) and following them...

Learn About Your Fans Using YouTube Insight

Who are all those people watching your videos?
Why do they seem to love one video and not another?
 

YouTube Insight launched a year ago offering useful analytics. Whether you want to know how old your audience is, how many times your most viewed video was rated last week, or which minute of your clip is most engaging, YouTube Insight provides the answer.It's reached via a small link on your YouTube Account page and from there the interface is very intuitive.  A feature launched this week enables export of your data.

Where to start? Try comparing the view count for different videos side by side, mapping out where your viewers are coming from over time, or comparing discovery sources by country. Watch a video overview after the jump.

Video: Last Vinyl Press Plant In Detroit

via Daily Swarm

Video: Growth & Monetization At Spotify

Q&A with Jon Mitchell, UK Head of Spotify from George Nimeh on Vimeo.