(* Source: Taly Weiss *) 

"Online Media is the mass media" great quote and report by Taly showing how Coke has experimented with all these new media platforms and I can only suspect they have a better understanding than most other FMCG brands on what i think is only the start of "conversational marketing".  Read on...

Taly says...

We all follow the growing success of Users Generated Content (UGC) sites. As the top websites still struggle to allow marketers inside, users keep rejecting those efforts and are strongly organizing not to allow marketing campaigns on their behalves.
While marketers realize its time to transfer their focus online, let us follow the top brands activity in the hubs global users spend their time in.

case study: Coca-Cola (no. 4 brand according to BrandZ, no. 1 brand according to Interbrand).

Coca-Cola on Youtube:
Starring on YouTube, the closest to resemble the TV online, Coca-Cola’s biggest success was due to the known series of Diet Coke experiments with Mentos (nostalgia: not too long ago, marketers were carefully picking other brands only if their values found to match- well see how Coke and Mentos nicely match today!). The most viewed from these take offs brought about 8 million views (Comments: 12,500, Favorited: 9704 times), while other videos with this concept brought few million more.
Coca-Cola’s original video (GTA Coke, Coca-Cola video game) brought together about 5 million views (aggregated results: Comments: 5,140, Favorited: 18,575 times), when Coca-Cola presented a car theft video performed by second world avatars.

Coca-Cola on MySpace:
Many MySpace groups were established in connection with Coca-Cola, but all hold very small number of members.
The largest group I could find was Coca-Cola’s Fan club – with 6319 friends.

Coca-Cola on Facebook:
Coca-Cola fans on Facebook count no more than 625.
Coca Cola’s events using Facebook application (Coca-Cola my summer application) involves no more than 17 daily active users.
Largest Facebook’s group for Coca-Cola - counts about 13,000 members (calls to bring the old Xmas advert).

Coca-Cola on Second worlds:
After few innovative experiments – Coca-Cola leaves Second Life to try another second world platform.

Coca-Cola on blogs, forums, Coca-Cola website:
While Coca-Cola generates higher volume in blogs and forums than its direct competitor (Pepsi), it can hardly confront other leading brands on the top brands list (having technology or online advantage).

According to US traffic data provided by Compete, over the last year Coca-Cola lost more than 40% of its visitors (currently = 290k uniques). Alexa, on the other hand presents an opposite trend of world wide traffic (is it that Coca-Cola is losing its power in the USA?)

Results:
Over the top social networking sites - Coca-Cola fails to create fans, members and friends.
The YouTube findings, can serve as the best model for Coca-Cola. The most successful Coca- Cola related activity observed, was due to users experimenting in splashing Diet Coke on the ground…

********************************************************

Conclusions:

1. Coca Cola – needs to step aside, contribute underground innovative concepts for users to create their own Coke experience. Coca-Cola must understand that “Coke jokes” might be the best brand experience it can empower.

2. If the name of the game is online presence – Coca-Cola as a global leading brand needs to re-think its business assets. For years Coca-Cola met its audiences through mass media, constantly engaging with its targets. Today, when online media is the mass media – Coca-Cola must improve the channels needed to make an optimal reach over. If Coca-Cola wishes to stay on the top brands list – side by side with technology monsters – it should create its own “technology” solution.

Posted by brian tiong at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *) 

We haven’t seen Nike get too heavily involved with online virtual “avatar hubs”, but its latest campaign gets pretty wrapped up in Zwinky, taking a few star athletes along for the ride. A new challenge launched by IAC’s Zwinky and Nike invites users to engage in the site in order to get their chance to meet a star athlete, a la Zwinky avatar.

The Field Reporter challenge requires the user to know a thing or two about a particular star athlete, which includes Maria Sharpova, Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, LeBron James and Abbey Wambach. If you pass the first round of questions, then you’ll still need to solve the clues that will lead you to your star athlete. Find them, and then cart them off to a virtual press release in your stretch Hummer, where you’ll also get the opportunity to ask them a question. It looks like you only get one shot to ask something of your star athlete, so make it good. You’ll also get some Nike gear to take home.

Seeing virtual events or brand marketing inside virtual worlds is nothing new–the trend grew quite rampant earlier this year with th sudden growth of Second Life. What often differs in these smaller, temporary campaigns, is the level of integration for the users. Depending on the brand, the type of campaign, and the long-term goals for that brand, we’ll see different levels of integration into the virtual world. The Nike campaign doesn’t seem to be looking for a virtual way to market its products for long-term use on Zwinky, though this wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Wired *)

Jenna Wortham says :

Posted by brian tiong at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Walstreet Journal *)

A feel-good film about a girl from the Chinese countryside who moves to the big city to discover love, blogging and Starbucks will premier this month in an unusual venue: Shanghai's subway.

"A Sunny Day," is scheduled to play exclusively on thousands of high-tech flat screen monitors on Shanghai's subway cars and station platforms.

Girl meets boy and Starbucks in 'A Sunny Day,' to be shown in installments

Tailored for an audience of 2.2 million who cram onto China's biggest underground railway each day, the full-length feature film will be shown in daily segments of a few minutes each over 40 weekdays, soap-opera style. Subtitles in Chinese will help commuters follow the dialogue over the subway noise, and multiple daily rebroadcasts and tie-ins on the Internet are designed to ensure no one misses any of the cliffhangers.

Instead of an ordinary film, the so-called "subopera" is a blend of drama and advertising. A venture between Starbucks Coffee Co. and PepsiCo Inc. financed and helped produce the drama as part of a campaign that kicks off today in Shanghai to introduce bottled frappuccino drinks to the Chinese market.

"It's quite unique and demonstrates a departure from conventional marketing," says Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman. The coffee company hasn't traditionally advertised, Mr. Schultz says, adding that a soap opera can be effective since it creates "real entertainment for our customers and along the way there is a complementary message." PepsiCo, which will bottle and distribute the Starbucks-branded drinks, referred questions to Starbucks

The film has a clear commercial bent. In some shots, the mermaid from the Starbucks logo gets as much face-time as the movie's big turnstile draw, Huang Xiao Ming, a 29-year-old pop star who is so well known he is sometimes called China's Justin Timberlake.

Still, "A Sunny Day" is no infomercial. Mr. Huang's character "CC" is a struggling musician who strums his guitar for coins in the subway, and falls for big-hearted Sunny, who is trying to get over the death of a boyfriend and fit into a new job.

During the shooting on a recent Sunday, as a gaggle of teenage women sneaked onto the set, Mr. Huang described the subway a "fashionable, very modern" venue that will appeal to a trendy audience.

Subways around the world have long featured visual distractions. A century ago, platforms were showcases for art, like the swank metro stations in Paris. In the 1970s, spray paint enlivened the dank and dangerous New York subway, and in the 1980s, the late Keith Haring helped make graffiti a respected art form with projects like "Studio in the Subway."

This year, the Berlin subway's 1.5 million daily passengers were the judges in a weeklong festival of 90-second, silent films called "Going Underground."

Advertisers are also pressing beneath the streets. Sidetrack Technologies Inc. of Winnipeg and New York-based Submedia LLC place light-board advertising in subway tunnels in several cities around the world, giving riders the motion-picture like effect of seeing a flipbook.

China's $20 billion advertising industry is increasingly adopting the global trend toward marketing disguised as entertainment. In addition to Hollywood-style product placements in TV shows and movies, a rapidly expanding segment is directed at an emerging middle class during the workday hours with slickly crafted TV-style ads in taxis, airplanes and even elevators.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 04:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : NextGreatThing *)

Allison says :

Artists and labels have been exploring different ways to market and monetize their music beyond MySpace. We just heard that Sony BMG is going to be selling J Lo’s latest album, Brave, on a fancy wooden flash drive (for $70!!) Meanwhile, artists are dropping their labels like bad habits. AmieStreet, MOG, Pure Volume, Indistr, Sellaband, Navio, Roadsound, iFanz, RCRDLBL, iMeem, Popfolio… These are just a few sites out of hundreds they can use to do promotion, distribution, and sales. In addition to the bands we mentioned last week, even the Oldies are going new media; the Eagles, Joni Mitchell and now Aretha Franklin have all dropped their labels to try the digital model.

The next frontier is the handset. Mozes has taken a step there by enabling bands to text fans updates and messages. The real application, though, will be mobile social networking sites, like the newly launched KylieKonnect for Australian singer Kylie Minogue. The dot mobi site (www.kyliekonnect.com redirects to ourtribe.mobi) lets fans blog, communicate with other users and upload images and video all via mobile phone. There is a Kylie’s own blog, a newsfeed and place to buy Monogued-up wallpapers and ringtones. The site, set up by New Visions Mobile, will allow Kylie’s fans to establish a closer connection with her (or the illusion of one), and she will likely profit off it through site sales. Unfortunately for fans, Mashable reports that you seem to need a European-based mobile number to register, just going to show that this sort of technology not as widely embraced (and developed) in the U.S. as it is in Europe, Australia, and Asia.

Posted by brian tiong at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Kristen Nicole *)

Radiohead blew us away with the “donated” sales revenue from its last album “In Rainbows.” The band offered the music for free, and let fans choose how much they’d pay, almost as a tip for the album. What comScore found was that 62% of global users chose not to pay for the album at all.

What’s equally as interesting is the fact that international fans were less likely to pay than US fans. You’d have to do a fairly extensive study to figure out why this may be the case, considering variables such as the native country of the band, the amount of disposable income per capita in various countries around the world, the musical preferences of countries’ citizens, the prevalence of P2P networks as legal options in other countries, etc. So there’s really not much to say in regards to these stats for Radiohead’s album at this particular point.

But what is another topic of conversation is something we’ve touched on in previous coverage of Radiohead’s flip of the script: is this an anomaly and how can regular musicians replicate such success? I’ve said my two cents on the matter–it’s currently rather difficult to make a killing on album sales in the same manner that Radiohead has done, if you don’t already have the fan base. The music industry knows this and may use it to its full advantage.

Radiohead used to be part of the music industry’s machine. Having now cut out the middle man, the band offers content direct to the fans. So with the music industry now looking for ways in which to continually make the same amount of money it raked in during its peak years, I wouldn’t be surprised if Radiohead gets sued.

It was that industry machine that enabled Radiohead to garner such a large fan base, right? So now that the band has kicked the middle man to the curb, the middle man may still want a cut of current sales. While the music industry is still boo-hooing about the decline of sales and the slower adoption of current legal trends, it still has a machine to run. In order to close that gap between previous power and current influence, it will have to find better, more cost-efficient ways in which to advertise artists, and market them across the web.

We’ve seen some pretty under-handed effects arise from this kind of pressure (that means you, Marie Digby), but the evolution will go on, and balance out at some point. As we all know, advertising isn’t going anywhere. The music industry will just need to continue to shift its approach. So will we still have artists able to gain major traction without the music industry’s machine? We won’t have to. The machine will just be better operated.

Posted by brian tiong at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Tameka Kee *)

THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE United States (HSUS) has partnered with Makena Technologies to launch an interactive campaign at There.com. HSUS will use branded virtual and real world merchandise, as well as live events to raise awareness and funds in the fight against animal cruelty.

The effort is a departure from HSUS' typical marketing campaigns, which are geared toward the 50+ demographic. By establishing a presence in There.com, the organization is aiming squarely at the 20- to-30-year-old market.

There.com members can purchase HSUS merchandise for their avatars--and even acquire the corresponding real-life version at the HSUS storefront, connecting real merchandise to virtual sales.

"We are always looking for new ways to celebrate animals and confront cruelty; and working with There.com to take animal protection into the virtual world reaches a new audience with a message of compassion," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States.

Posted by brian tiong at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Kristen Nicole *)

PanRaven has teamed up with Universal Mowtown Records to create a promotional story for Nelly, who’s getting ready to release his first album in 3 years, “Brass Knuckles.” You may remember that PanRaven is an online tool for creating stories, similar to scrap-booking services like ScrapBlog.

With this particular partnership, a story of Nelly’s filming of the video for his most recent Single “Wadsyaname” is being published on PanRaven’s website, as well as Nelly’s website and MySpace profile. PanRaven is also promoting the story through its Facebook application. The story contains exclusive, behind the scenes footage from the filming of a music video.

And in an effort to encourage users to virally spread this promotion, PanRaven and Universal are holding a contest. The person that spreads the promotion the furthest and widest across the web will win a trip to a future filming session of a Nelly video. The runner-up gets some autograhped merchandise. Not too shabby, as far as prizes go. Kanye West, 50 Cent and Bruce Springsteen have all held similar promotions on MySpace in recent weeks.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Mashable *)

Kristen Nicole says :

MyItThings, which is a user-generated lifestyle magazine of sorts, will soon be offering a widget for your Wish List and Virtual Closet, which can be placed on other websites, blogs and social networking profiles, like MySpace and Facebook. A few of these widgets are holiday-themed, so MyItThings is taking advantage of the holiday season and letting you spread some Christmas cheer (i.e. your gift list).

The new widget is powered by Clearspring,so you know there are easy sharing options, including embed code for a variety of social networks and blogging platforms. Wishpot and Glimpse have similar wishlists and widget-sharing options as well.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Dennis Bouchand *)

Posted by brian tiong at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Nick Gonzales *)

However, free doesn’t seem cheap enough. Despite the potentially free download, over 240,000 users got the album from peer to peer BitTorrent networks on the first day of release, according to Forbes. Since then, the album was downloaded about 100,000 more times each day, totaling more than 500,000. By comparison, Radiohead pushed 1.2 million sales of the album through their site, including pre-orders. File sharing networks are expected to surpass legal downloads in the coming days.

While the numbers may seem drastic, it’s really more a tale of how late to the game the music industry has been. Piracy networks have been growing over the past couple of years, despite the industry’s declared “war” on illegal file sharing. The networks have grown into easy-to-use distribution methods for digital music — even easier than what Radiohead offered. Users could easily grab “In Rainbows” while downloading music from other artists. Radiohead couldn’t be as compelling by only offering their own music and requiring users to take the time to set up an account.

But Radiohead doesn’t have that much to be sad about. The band gets to keep all the proceeds of their digital experiment and has distributed about six times more albums than their last release, which sold 300,000. That seemed to be enough to get EMI thinking harder about changing. Forbes obtained a email form EMI’s chairman saying “The industry, rather than embracing digitalization and the opportunities it brings for promotion of product and distribution through multiple channels, has stuck its head in the sand. Radiohead’s actions are a wake-up call which we should all welcome and respond to with creativity and energy.” So it seems there’s still hope yet that those legal war chests will be put to use on some innovations.

Posted by brian tiong at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Karl Greensberg *)

The 10-week site allows users to play a variety of online games and view film content. The site dangles a chance to win prizes, including a new Mercedes-Benz filled with treasure, with winners to be announced on "Entertainment Tonight" before the film opens.

Mercedes' C-Class sedan is also featured in a chase scene in the film.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : NYTimes *)

Louise Story says :

Rob Bennett for The New York Times

Joggers in the Nike Running Club in Manhattan last month. Nike is spending more of its advertising dollars on services for consumers like workout advice, online communities and races.

Since April, Mr. Saenz, 53, has been running with a Nike+, a small sensor in his running shoes that tracks his progress on an Apple iPod he carries. After each run near his home in Louisville, Ky., he docks the iPod into his computer and posts details of his run on the Nike+ Web site. There, he has made friends with other runners around the world who post running routes, meet up in the real world and encourage one another on the site.

Nike’s famous swoosh is there all along. For Nike, this is advertising.

“It’s a very different way to connect with consumers,” says Trevor Edwards, Nike’s corporate vice president for global brand and category management. “People are coming into it on average three times a week. So we’re not having to go to them.”

The success of Nike+ is bad news for the traditional media companies that have long made money from Nike’s television commercials and glossy magazine ads.

Last year, Nike spent just 33 percent of its $678 million United States advertising budget on ads with television networks and other traditional media companies. That’s down from 55 percent 10 years ago, according to the trade publication Advertising Age.

“We’re not in the business of keeping the media companies alive,” Mr. Edwards says he tells many media executives. “We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.”

Mr. Edwards may be more blunt than most. But many large marketers are taking huge chunks of money out of their budgets for traditional media and using the funds to develop new, more direct interactions with consumers — not only on the Internet, but also through in-person events.

Adventurous companies like Nike have been experimenting with these alternatives since the 1990s. But now, even the most conventional marketers are making these alternatives a permanent — and ever bigger — part of their advertising budgets.

Last year, Johnson & Johnson decided to boycott the so-called upfronts, an annual event when advertisers get together with television executives to negotiate for commercial time. In August, General Motors said that 2008 would be the last year for its longtime sponsorship of the Olympics. In May, A. G. Lafley, the chief executive of Procter & Gamble, told financial analysts that the company would spend less on traditional media and more on its Web site, in-store advertising and promotional events.

“If you step back and look at our mix across most of the major brands,” Mr. Lafley said, “it is clearly shifting.”

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Rachel Konrad *)

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Your favorite pants are fraying? You may soon be able to order replacements directly from the factory where they were made, according to the chief scientist of an ambitious Chinese Internet project.

China's government is building a vast virtual world dubbed Beijing Cyber Recreation District, which founders say will help the manufacturing superpower evolve into an e-commerce juggernaut.

Some supply-chain experts say the project is impossibly grandiose in its goal to provide direct links between tens of thousands of Chinese manufacturers and millions of individual customers around the world. But every "Made in China" label eventually could include a Web site where customers could order more — and Chinese factories would produce custom-made goods and send them directly to consumers' homes, mused Chi Tau Robert Lai, chief scientist of the virtual world.

The 3D world is supposed to be the online counterpart to the China Recreation District, a theme park, mall and playground being built in a former steel plant in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.

Some Chinese-language Web sites of the CRD are already up, but most of it — including the first direct links to manufacturers — won't come until the second half of next year at the earliest, Lai said.

In addition to connecting factories with people outside China, the project will allow businesses outside China to tap the nation's burgeoning middle class, he said.

"This makes you have to think of China in a different way," Lai said Thursday evening at the Virtual Worlds Conference & Expo in San Jose. "We are stepping back and trying to blend the human and the computer to touch everything associated with people's lives."

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Reuters *)

David Ward says :

Reuters Photo: Anthony Zuiker

SAN JOSE, California (Hollywood Reporter) - "CSI" creator Anthony Zuiker dropped some clues to an upcoming Second Life integration with his CBS series in his address here Wednesday at the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo.

Zuiker was part of a Hollywood contingent at the event, signaling the mainstream entertainment business' growing investments in the space.

In his keynote speech, he declared that the future of television "will be TV, online, mobile and games."

Zuiker appeared more than willing to be a pioneer in bringing Hollywood to virtual worlds, announcing that a two-part "CSI: NY" -- the first installment airing October 24 and the second February 6 -- will have Gary Sinise's character go into Second Life to chase a killer's avatar.

"And here's the great thing," he added. "CBS is willing to commit to two 30-second spots that night to tell 16 million people that we're having a 'CSI: NY' virtual world . . . that will be up forever."

Zuiker stressed that the "CSI: NY" virtual world in Second Life will be geared for the "CSI" fan rather than the early adopter, with shorter download times and an avatar of Zuiker to walk visitors through the virtual Manhattan.

In addition to casual games for beginners like "Facial Reconstruction," there also will be content for advanced visitors, including the blog game "Murder by Zuiker," where Zuiker will evaluate entries by people trying to solve a crime based on the evidence found in a crime scene in Second Life.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

Posted by brian tiong at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Techcrunch *)

Duncan Riley says :

Since reporting Monday that Nine Inch Nails had dumped its record label and was to offer future albums direct to the public, Oasis and Jamiroquai have also joined the move away from the record industry, but the biggest announcement of all is news today that Madonna has dumped the record industry.

According to reports, Madonna has signed a $120million deal with L.A. based concert promotion firm Live Nation to distribute three studio albums, promote concert tours, sell merchandise and license Madonna’s name.

Whilst the deal differs from Nine Inch Nails in that Madonna is not offering direct-to-public albums, Live Nation isn’t a record company. The deal shows that even for a world famous act, a record company is no longer required in the days of digital downloads and P2P music sharing.

The only real question now is how fast will the music industry model come tumbling down. When Radiohead led the way in offering their music directly to fans many predicted that the move was the beginning of the end; Madonna may well be the tipping point from where we will now see a flood of recording artists dumping record labels and where todays model will shortly become a footnote in Wikipedia.

Posted by brian tiong at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Kristen Nicole *)

There.com has partnered with CosmoGIRL to bring its brand into the virtual world. This will be a “physical” virtual location where users can come to a dance party, fashion shows, spa makeovers, play in photo booths, shop for clothing and accessories, and visit live events held by CosmoGIRL. The extension of branding in this way is a good format for the publication to use, considering the growing popularity of web-based virtual worlds and the niche audience of teen girls that are found on There.com.

This could prove to be a better alternative for branding than Second Life, which has a broader user base. It could also prove to be a good distribution channel for other brands looking to market to teen girls in a virtual manner, as they can offer digital goods to be doled out via CosmoGIRL without the necessity of launching a full-fledged virtual marketing effort on their own. It will be interesting to see if a virtual venue of this nature could do better than an online network like Flip, which hasn’t met company expectations for growth. CosmoGIRL’s virtual playland opens up at There.com on November 20, 2007.

In other virtual world news, SceneCaster has recently signed on Turbo Squid for the provision of 3D objects to be used in its graphic creations, and Multiverse has signed a similar deal with Google 3D Warehouse.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Kristen Nicole *)

Bands Jamiroquai and Oasis may be following Radiohead’s lead to let fans download new music from the band’s latest album for free, if they visit the site for the radio station XFM. With no contracts to labels, Jamiroquai and Oasis could be considering this move, which often gains a good amount of traction from the fans and spurs the viral growth of their content.

The success of Radiohead’s promotion is cited as the cause for people to pre-order the band’s box set, which costs about $80 and includes vinyl records, a CD and artwork. The hope is to make money on the peripherals, which still come at a premium. That means Radiohead is looking to make money from concert ticket sales, and other merchandise. We’ve already seen Throwdown’s opinion on the matter. And while the concept of giving away something for free isn’t new, it does look to be gaining steam.

[via the telegraph]

Posted by brian tiong at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Release *)

Jemima Kiss says :

Them again: Last.fm's latest project to support new music is a site called nowformaband.last.fm, which shows unsigned bands how to use free web tools to produce and distribute their music.

Inspired by the 1976 punk-zine Sideburns, the initiative is part-inspired by Last.fm's hype chart, which picks out bands and trends from users' listening habits before they hit the mainstream.

The site introduces users to Luna Free, which offers a free digital audio workshop tool, the distributon service Tunecore and - of course - Last.fm, as a promotional tool.

Co-founder Martin Stiksel said the company wants to help new music find a wider audience (as well as encouraging take-up of its own site, of course): "There's a lot of talk about all these things in the media but not much action in the real world - so we're going to show new bands how".

Posted by brian tiong at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(*Source : Emarketer *)

Paul Verna says :

Since the beginning of the digital music revolution, artists have taken the lead on innovative ways to deliver music directly to their fans.

Some, like Prince, have given away front-line product free. Others, like Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette, have offered up Web-only exclusives, also free.

Then there have been the famous holdouts: Metallica, which joined the fight to shut down Napster, and the Beatles, who, despite years of rumors to the contrary, are still conspicuously absent from iTunes and the rest of the legal Web.

Now comes Radiohead with potentially the most ground-breaking move of all: putting its new album, "In Rainbows," out there for fans to pay what they want.

This museum model of a "suggested donation" is entirely untested, and the industry will be watching closely to see how the experiment plays out.

That said, it is important to keep in mind that this is a niche play from a band that already has a huge, loyal audience, not to mention ownership of its own masters. Whether fans pay for this album will have little bearing on the decisions of rank-and-file artists who don't have Radiohead's clout.

Nor is this move likely to affect the labels' digital strategies. Even if the gambit is wildly successful, it will not change the fact that the industry is staring down the barrel of free-falling CD sales and insufficient digital volume to make up the slack.

Still, it will be interesting to see what happens with "In Rainbows." Some of Radiohead's legions may actually pony up some serious dough, if nothing else to reward the band for not treating its fans as if they were criminals.

While most fans will probably help themselves to the album gratis, inevitably there will be a few crackpots who will pay obscene sums for it, maybe for the attention, or maybe just because they have money to burn and can't help themselves.

It will take only a few of those to give Radiohead a much bigger and more immediate payday than it would have ever gotten from Capitol, its former label.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Billboard.com *)

Michael Paoletta says : 

Missy Elliott

Missy Elliott is adding flair to a new ad campaign for Doritos Collisions, Billboard has learned. In a TV spot that debuts Sept. 17, Elliott is seen working on a new track and then pausing to snack on Doritos Collisions chips. Inspired by the two different-tasting chips in the same bag, Elliott has an epiphany: her song needs two different musical styles. So, she immediately injects her hip-hop track with a little bit of country twang.

The multi-platform campaign was created by the Goodby, Silverstein & Partners agency. According to Rudy Wilson, brand manager of Doritos, the campaign's multi-million dollar media buy is the brand's biggest advertising spend of the year, outside of its Super Bowl ad buy.

Elliott's manager, Mona Scott of Violator Management, says the campaign offered her client the perfect creative outlet. "The whole idea of the mash-up is so prevalent and popular in music today," Scott says. "It's so Missy. And the fact that the campaign takes place in a studio means that Missy remains in her element, which makes the whole thing authentic."

But Scott acknowledges there was another important element that helped cinch the deal: "The TV portion is fine," she explains, "but the Internet element provides us with a great back-end." A link takes fans to Elliott's Web site, where they learn more about the artist and her forthcoming, new album (tentatively titled "The Countdown"), due in December from The Gold Mind/Atlantic Records. "We see this as a great way to further maximize Missy the artist and the new album," Scott adds.

Wilson calls the online experience "a bold, intensive experience for our consumers." Visitors logging on to snackstrongproductions.com will be encouraged to create their own mash-ups (or "collisions"), using Elliott's track as the foundation. Completed mixes can be posted and shared in a "gallery" on the site. Five winners -- with prizes still to be determined -- will be selected.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : New York Times *)

David Itzkoff says :

Visitors to the Sundance Channel area of the Web site Second Life can watch full-length feature films in a virtual screening room

IF you can find him, Vincent Tibbett is precisely the sort of well-connected cultural liaison any emerging filmmaker should want to know. An employee of the Sundance Channel, he is as easily recognizable for his shaggy haircut and assertively casual attire as he is for the crowds of aspiring artists who follow him around, hoping to chat him up about cinematic trends, get him to evaluate their movies or simply score his e-mail address.

But if Mr. Tibbett seems a bit harder to pin down for a lunch date than the average in-demand tastemaker, that’s because he doesn’t exist on our plane of reality. He is an electronic avatar found only in Second Life, the popular online virtual community.

Just six months old, Mr. Tibbett is one experiment in the Sundance Channel’s larger exploration of Internet-based virtual reality, a sort of canary down the mine shaft of a new technology that may or may not take hold among mainstream audiences.

And he is not alone. In the last year broadcast networks, cable channels and television content providers have all set up camp in virtual communities, where they hope that viewers who have forsaken television for computer screens might rediscover their programming online. Some outlets, like Showtime and Sundance, are establishing themselves in existing worlds; others, like MTV, are creating their own. Either way, if the wildest dreams of some very excited technology developers come true, virtual reality might finally be the medium that unites the passive experience of watching television with the interactive potential of the Web.

If that happens, the television industry — which has not been particularly speedy in adapting to the Internet revolution — sees an opportunity not only to recover lost ground from online competitors but also to take a lead, and in so doing create an entirely new environment in which to influence and sell to its audience.

“You want to be in this because you know, as a content provider, that this is where the future is going,” said Quincy Smith, the president of CBS Interactive. “I don’t look at it as science fiction. I look at it as the future of communication.”

For decades ambitious programmers and designers have sought to establish virtual worlds like the one put forth in Neal Stephenson’s influential 1992 novel, “Snow Crash,” which imagines computer users interacting in a simulated three-dimensional world called the Metaverse. But only in recent years, as graphics-accelerator cards and broadband Internet connections have grown more affordable and ubiquitous, has it become possible even to approximate such an experience.

IN Second Life (secondlife.com), visitors to the Sundance Channel area can watch full-length feature films in a three-dimensional screening room or take part in an environmental forum; fans of Showtime’s drama “The L Word” can meet the avatars of the show’s stars and design their own floats for a virtual gay pride parade. In MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach (at vmtv.com) inhabitants can shop at digital versions of Emporio Optic and Laguna Surf and Sport or, at the click of a mouse, arrive in a virtual version of “The Hills,” where they can then join the party at an electronic replica of the Los Angeles nightclub Area.

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Posted by brian tiong at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : THe Guardian *)

Owen Gibson says :

• Band bypass record labels to get release out quickly

• Internet experiment lets fans put a price on art

Their music has long been praised for blurring boundaries and breaking moulds. Now Radiohead are hoping to establish a new model for the struggling record industry by inviting music buyers to decide how much they want to pay for their new album.

To their biggest fans, eagerly awaiting their first studio album for four years, it is near priceless. Those who believe Radiohead long ago descended into self-indulgence may only risk pennies. But thanks to this ground-breaking experiment, the band will bypass record labels altogether and will be able to put a fiscal value on the public's appreciation of their art.

 The release was announced with a short message from guitarist Jonny Greenwood on the band's website, revealing that the new album, In Rainbows, would be available to download from October 10. Orders started rolling in yesterday, with customers able decide how much to pay - from nothing (plus a 45p administration charge) upwards.

Radiohead's "honesty box" experiment will be closely watched by other artists, their record labels and management companies.

In Rainbows is the most high-profile attempt yet to restructure the economics of a music industry struggling with the effects of digital piracy. Despite a booming live scene, CD sales are less profitable than ever thanks to increased competition and piracy.

With the role of the internet in helping new acts from Arctic Monkeys to Enter Shikari rise to prominence already well documented, more established artists are attempting to revolutionise the way music is sold.

Prince caused uproar among music retailers by giving his latest album away with the Mail on Sunday and yesterday the Charlatans said they would give their new single and album away for nothing through the radio station Xfm.

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Posted by brian tiong at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Leigh Alexander *)

eopets Announces Massive Retail Toy Initiative

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(* Source : Reuters *)

Starbucks on Monday said it will give away millions of songs via downloads starting next month, as it launches a wireless music service with Apple. From October 2 to November 7 at more than 10,000 U.S. Starbucks locations, customers can receive "Song of the Day" cards redeemable on Apple's iTunes store for a complimentary song hand-selected by Starbucks Entertainment, the company said.

Starbucks said it will give away 1.5 million downloads per day for a total of more than 50 million free songs. Customers will have until the end of the year to redeem the song on iTunes. Earlier this month, Apple and Starbucks said they had reached a deal to allow people to buy songs wirelessly from Apple's iTunes music store in Starbucks coffee shops without paying Wi-Fi connection fees. The service is to debut at more than 600 Starbucks stores in New York and Seattle on October 2, and will be expanded to other major U.S. cities later this year and next.

Posted by brian tiong at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Reuters *)

Michele Gershberg says :

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Young girls waiting to grow into full-time fashionistas will get a chance to experiment with couture as designer Donna Karan and cosmetics chain Sephora open shop in the virtual play-dress world of Stardoll.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Nextgreatthing.com*)

Sherrie Hui says :