Hargreaves report: industry responds on IP recommendations
The long-awaited recommendations on the future of intellectual property were delivered last week by Professor Ian Hargreaves, chair of digital economy at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies and Cardiff Business School. His 123-page report - Digital Opportunity, A Review of Intellectual Property And Growth - was drawn up after considering evidence from executives and companies across the music and other creative industries. What were the key recommendations of the report? The recommendations with most significance for music were: * the creation of a Digital Copyright Exchange
Marketing & Advertising > Market Research & Analysis from AllBusiness
While there are many ways to perform market research, most businesses use one or more of five basic methods: surveys, focus groups, personal interviews, observation, and field trials. The type of data you need and how much money you’re willing to spend will determine which techniques you choose for your business. 1. Surveys. With concise and straightforward questionnaires, you can analyze a sample group that represents your target market. The larger the sample, the more reliable your results will be.
Why the Ivor Novello awards are an industry favourite
At the Ivor Novello awards yesterday, Plan B thanked his "alcoholic godfather" for introducing him to soul music, because hearing Smokey Robinson taught him how to structure songs. Villagers' Conor O'Brien said songwriting was self-rewarding, and saw his prize for best song musically and Lyrically as a bonus. Celebrated composer Michael Nyman gave an acceptance speech detailing all the coincidences that had led him to where he is today – a speech so long that it prompted host Paul Gambaccini to exclaim: "I've forgotten why I'm here now."
Broadband Forum Takes on Growing Digital Home Challenges
As we’ve discussed before, the growing digital footprint within consumer’s homes creates tremendous opportunities for broadband carriers. But with opportunities, come challenges as well and the Broadband Forum’s latest release, BroadbandSuite™ 4.1, aims to address some of them. “This release looks at the ever expanding ecosystem of the Connected Home and addresses for the first time service requirements of triple play and beyond to include machine-to-machine applications including metering, monitoring as well as teleworking support,” states the Broadband Forum, a broadband industry trade group, in a news release explaining the digital home initiative. With more of a focus on DSL, considering 60% of the world’s broadband connections are DSL according to the Broadband Forum, BroadbandSuite™ 4.1 provides a group of specifications referred to as the DSL Quality Management (DQM) Suite.
Lady Gaga's Born This Way Album On Sale For $0.99 on Amazon
Monday just got a little less murky for all those Lady Gaga fans out there anxiously awaiting the arrival of her new album, Born This Way, as the disc is available for digital download on Amazon today for a mere $0.99. Amazon has offered deep discounts like this before, but $0.99 is exceptionally cheap — especially for such a hotly anticipated album. In February, “Born This Way” was dubbed the fastest-selling single ever to grace Apple’s iTunes store worldwide. Fans who drop $0.99 on Gaga's disc will also score 20 GB of Cloud Drive storage from Amazon, a clear attempt on Amazon's part to draw more people into the Cloud Player fold and a possible challenge to Google, which offers users more space on its cloud-based music offering, Google Music Beta, but no digital download store.
Zoologger: The only primate that eats its dinner twice - life - 30 March 2011
Video: Proboscis monkeys chew their food twice Zoologger is our weekly column highlighting extraordinary animals – and occasionally other organisms – from around the world Species: Nasalis larvatus Habitat: swamps, mangroves and forests of Borneo, sticking their noses into each other's business Pinocchio has nothing on the proboscis monkey.
Augmented reality toys that change pants and personality
London design firm Berg and the London office of the Japanese ad agency Dentsu have announced a line of augmented reality toys called Suwappu. The little figurines have swappable heads and bodies; depending on how they're configured, they interact differently and draw different environments for themselves in the augmented reality world. Suwappu is a group of characters that can take lots of different forms. Primarily (or initially), the toys seen in the film - a set of collectible and swappable figures, readable by connected devices, opening up a layer of content. The Suwappu's head signifies his personality, and his pants signify his environment - the app produces content according to its reading of each half. Beyond these toys, we think Suwappu is a new kind of content platform, with various exciting social, creative and commercial possibilities.
Why the Music Industry Must Change Its Strategy to Reach Digital Natives
Mark Mulligan is vice president and research director at Forrester Research, serving consumer product strategy professionals. He is a leading expert on music and digital media. The music industry's fortunes (or lack thereof) are familiar to most. The CD is suffering one of the longest death rattles in consumer product history, and it is becoming painfully clear that digital downloads are no knight in shining armor about to whisk up the fallen music business and ride off into the revenue growth sunset. So how did we get here?
'Moby-Duck': When 28,800 Bath Toys Are Lost At Sea
Moby-DuckBy Donovan HohnHardcover, 416 pagesViking AdultList Price: $27.95 At the outset, I felt no need to acquaint myself with the six degrees of freedom. I'd never heard of the Great North Pacific Garbage Patch. I liked my job and loved my wife and was inclined to agree with Emerson that travel is a fool's paradise. I just wanted to learn what had really happened, where the toys had drifted and why. I loved the part about containers falling off a ship, the part about the oceanographers tracking the castaways with the help of far-flung beachcombers.
inspire Create and Share
The dreamlike has always been a powerful engine for photography. And synthesis images of Aaron Nace come to testify it. The photographer from Charlotte (U.S) take us in his dreams with great shot and photoshop retouching. A little heart-crush on those animals fed with junk-food, top of disordered eating. More infos on his website
Do Musicians Have Better Brains?
(Photo: Lifesize) A new study (abstract here; summary here) argues that musicians have more highly developed brains than the rest of us. The research relates the concept of high mind development to the potential to become really good at something: New research shows that musicians’ brains are highly developed in a way that makes the musicians alert, interested in learning, disposed to see the whole picture, calm, and playful. The same traits have previously been found among world-class athletes, top-level managers, and individuals who practice transcendental meditation. Using EEG‘s to measure brain activity, researchers concluded the following about the brains of musicians:
Santa Claus
Santa Claus is the primary figure of worship for Christians until the age of ten. He is best known for his annual trip around the world in which he breaks into homes to leave toys built by slaves.&&(na
