QuickLinks - Market

recent items

Issue no. 230 - 7 April 2002

• Bertelsmann makes bid for control of Napster (FT)
  Thomas Middelhoff, chief executive of Bertelsmann, the German media group, has offered between $15m and $20m to take control of Napster, the internet music file-sharing service paralysed by billion-dollar lawsuits and feuding minority investors. see also Shareholder Infighting Stymies Napster Buyout Bid (Newsbytes).

• IBM beefs up digital rights software (CNET News.com)
  IBM will announce new digital rights management (DRM) software that allows companies to protect everything from music files to videos.

• Service changes baffle Yahoo customers (CNET News.com)
  A flurry of changes in Yahoo's Web-based services has customers spinning in confusion over the status of their accounts and preferences.

• Websites are watching what visitors do very closely (BBC)
  Websites are using increasingly sophisticated methods to watch what surfers are doing and to make e-commerce pay.

Issue no. 228 - 17 March 2002

• Korea - Internet companies accelerate real-name subscriptions to introduce paid services (Korea Herald)
  Korean portals and content providers require new subscribers to offer their real personal information. Once subscribers put their ID number and other data, service providers implement an authentication process through financial credit ratings agencies before sending final confirmation to applicants.

• Morpheus auditions for new music role (CNET News.com)
  StreamCast Networks, the creator of the popular Morpheus file-trading software, unveiled a plan that it hopes will help it become a more legitimate means of music distribution. The company is adding digital rights management, or anti-copying technology, to its set of software and services. It's calling for independent artists to distribute their work through the Morpheus file-trading network.

• UK - BBC digital stars 'paid too much' (Observer)
  A string of Britain's best rewarded TV presenters are working for a digital BBC channel which cannot be watched by more than half the BBC's licence payers. The disclosure, from a survey of productivity across the TV industry, has sparked calls for the BBC to review how much it pays stars.

Issue no. 227 - 10 March 2002

• Morpheus' downfall: Bills weren't paid (CNET News.com)
  StreamCast Networks' delinquent licensing bills were to blame for the blackout of the hugely popular Morpheus file-swapping network last week, according to Dutch company Kazaa BV. see also StreamCast Suggests Competitors Torpedoed Morpheus (Newsbytes) and Morpheus woes lift rival from obscurity (CNET News.com) L'après-Napster tourne à la foire (Libération).

Issue no. 226 - 3 March 2002

• EU - Commission holds workshop on Digital Rights Management (RAPID)
  The promotion of open, flexible and interoperable Digital Rights Management Systems (DRMS) is the subject of a workshop organised by the European Commission in Brussels on 28th February. See also Towards a consensus on Digital Rights Management Systems Mr Erkki Liikanen, Member of the European Commission, responsible for Enterprise and the Information Society,

• Germany - Broadcasters demand to be included in net rating system (Europemedia)
  Two German public broadcasters are complaining about being excluded from the country’s web audience rating system because they don’t put advertisements on their websites.

• Why sex still leads the net (Guardian)
  Porn websites are making millions. Now mainstream dot.coms are asking them for advice.

Issue no. 225 - 24 February 2002

• Microsoft and the Great Game (Economist)
  The world’s biggest software firm is pushing into the mobile telephone and computer-games businesses. These are no interesting diversions, but a desperate attempt to stop new consumer products from stealing large parts of Microsoft’s market over the coming years. The software giant's alliance with the world’s biggest chip maker, Intel, to set a new standard for the next generation of mobile telephones and the launch in Japan of Microsoft’s new computer-games console, the Xbox may seem unrelated, but they are not. It is all part of the Great Game.

Issue no. 224 - 16 February 2002

• France - Fournisseurs d´accès: à vos poches! (transfert)
  L´association des Webproducteurs propose de mettre en place un système de redistribution d´une part des revenus des fournisseurs d´accès à Internet pour soutenir la production de contenus sur le Net. voir aussi Les FAI ne veulent pas payer pour les contenus Web Pour l'association qui représente les FAI, pas question d'augmenter les tarifs, il faut d'abord démocratiser l'accès au Net, le contenu suivra.

Issue no. 221 - 26 January 2002

• Music industry chiefs seek to call the tune () (FT)
  The world's record executives will confront two burning questions at the annual Midem conference in Cannes. How can the industry persuade the millions who now enjoy free music online through illegal file-sharing and CD-burning (copying) to pay for legitimate subscription services, and what are the consumers prepared to pay?

• Online game makers seek key to profits (CNET News.com)
  The challenge for companies focused on Web-based games is to find a middle ground: people who don't play as much as hard-core gamers but are still willing to pay for a service.

Issue no. 220 - 19 January 2002

• Europeans Will Pay For Mobile Phone-Based Content - Study (Newsbytes)
  Revenues from paid-for content on mobile phones are already higher than revenues for paid content on the Internet in Europe.

• IAB Sets Online Ad Measurement Standards (Newsbytes)
  The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) unveiled new guidelines to sharpen the accuracy of audience measurement in hopes of propping up the struggling online ad market.

• Subscription Service Heads Find Lots Of Common Ground (Newsbytes)
  There is a lot of unanimity among operators of nascent online music subscription services about what they do, how they do it, and how to work with the music and retail industries to make it happen. In fact, if one is to judge from a teleconference held today, one of the few areas of disagreement seems to be what to do about music piracy.

Issue no. 219 - 13 January 2002

• Technology switches sides (FT)
  If the industry has its way, this will be the year when we begin purchasing music in forms that cannot be stolen. Compact discs will begin to include technology that prevents them being copied. And online, music will be sold through subscription services that stop unauthorised reproduction. 2002 could become the year when copyright fights back.

Issue no. 218 - 6 January 2002

• «L'exception culturelle française est morte» (Libération)
  Jean-Marie Messier a annoncé la création d'une nouvelle «major» américaine du cinéma et de la télévision.

• L'ogre Bertelsmann avale RTL Group (Libération)
  Le groupe allemand de communication Bertelsmann a racheté les 22 % du groupe britannique Pearson dans RTL Group pour 1,5 milliard d'euros.

• Microsoft hopes 'Corona' highlights digital media (Reuters)
  Microsoft took the wraps off "Corona," a new package of digital media products it hopes will help let the Internet deliver theater-quality entertainment to consumers and big profits to content providers.

• Public money, private code (Salon)
  The drive to license academic research for profit is stifling the spread of software that could be of universal benefit.

• USA - Deal Creates Cable Giant (Washington Post)
  Comcast and AT&T agreed to merge their cable operations in a $72 billion deal, creating the nation's largest provider of pay television and high-speed Internet service. The new company will be known as AT&T Comcast Corp.

• Vivendi Universal Expands MP3.com In Europe (Newsbytes)
  Online music site MP3.com launched country-specific sites in Europe as part of an expansion driven by parent company Vivendi Universal with localized music sites in the U.K., France, Germany and Spain and plans for more country sites to be established next year.

• Vivendi’s Christmas shopping (Economist)
  Jean-Marie Messier has transformed Vivendi from a French utility to an America-centred entertainment giant. Despite his insistence that he did not need to own American distribution channels too, his acquisition of stakes in EchoStar, a satellite group, and two cable networks achieves just that. But will it work?

Issue no. 217 - 16 December 2001

• Online gaming to follow Xbox by 6 months (Reuters)
  Microsoft plans to proceed with online gaming services for its newly launched Xbox video game console within six months of the machines' first hitting shelves in the United States and Japan.

• Portals find porn lucrative in Europe (Wall Street Journal)
  Net gateways shun pornography in U.S., embrace it overseas. During the day, the home page of MSN.fr offers French Web surfers the usual array of news, sports, search engines and stock quotes. But between midnight and 3 a.m. France time, the French version of Microsoft’s MSN network provides a gateway to pornography on the Internet.

Issue no. 216 - 8 December 2001

• AOL's Problems Go Beyond Even Harry Potter's Magic (New York Times)
  The long-term success or failure of the AOL Time Warner merger will rest on whether it can find ways to profit from its unrivaled combination of print and television content with cable and online distribution.

• Broadband Britain lacks sex drive (vnunet)
  Broadband isn't taking off in the UK because broadband content providers are unwilling to recognise that adult content is needed to drive adoption, leading telecoms executives have been told. An audience of 300 UK telecoms chiefs heard that they should consider partnering with providers of adult entertainment to drive broadband adoption.

• Broadband Set To Squeeze Portals In Europe (Newsbytes)
  A new report predicts tough times ahead for Europe's Web portals, as broadband users start to get picky about which sites they use. The Forrester Research study says that, as the broadband industry evolves, the current crop of portals will face heavy competition from a new generation of content providers. The study concludes that adult content sites will secure around 79 percent of paid broadband content in Europe this year. By 2005, however, the report predicts that adult content sites' share of the paid-for broadband market will drop to just 17 percent as streaming services take off.

• Excite@Home to shut down; AT&T drops bid (CNET News.com)
  Beleagured high-speed Internet service provider Excite@Home will cease operations in February, after suitor AT&T withdrew its $307 million bid for its cable assets.

• Gates: Broadband woes hobble Net advertising (Reuters)
  Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said that the Internet's role as an important mass medium for advertisers was hobbled by the slow rollout of high-speed broadband service and was still years away.

• How the music industry blew it (Salon)
  How the music industry blew it. John Alderman's "Sonic Boom" recounts the history of Napster - and the unstoppable rise of file trading.

• RealNetworks First To Connect Consumers To MusicNet (Newsbytes)
  After much anticipation, major record labels are about to find out if consumers are willing to pay $9.95 a month to buy music they can't keep. RealNetworks made good on its promise to launch the first subscription-music service to deliver tunes made available by the MusicNet platform it created and which is now backed by some of the world's largest record companies. RealNetworks said its RealOne service - launched just one week later than originally anticipated - connects subscribers with some 75,000 songs from such MusiNet co-owners as AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, EMI, and independent record company Zomb

• VeriSign to play domain-name watchdog (CNET News.com)
  VeriSign is to start selling a suite of services to domain-name customers that includes guarding a company's brand name in cyberspace and protecting it from intellectual-property thieves.

Issue no. 215 - 2 December 2001

• Airlines Won't Fund Boeing's In-Flight Internet Service (Newsbytes)
  Citing deep financial trouble spawned by the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, American, United and Delta have pulled out of a planned joint venture with Boeing to develop an in-flight Internet service.

• Free Music Service Is Expected to Surpass Napster (New York Times0)
  Several Internet music ventures backed by the record industry are poised to start next week, with others to follow in the next two months. But the long-awaited subscription services will enter an online world where the free music swapping they are meant to counteract is at record levels.

• Gator, Ad Industry Call Truce Over 'Pop-Over' Ads (Newsbytes)
  Gator, the controversial Internet marketer known for pop-up promotions that can cover other banner advertising, has agreed to temporary truce with the rest of the online advertising industry, with both sides saying they will "work together" on a new approach to Gator's technology.

Issue no. 213 - 11 November 2001

• European award for BBC News Online (BBC)
  BBC News Online has been named the best European news site on the internet. The award - described as Europe's most prestigious - was made in Zurich at an internet content conference.

• Genie set for move into mobile porn (NMA To Go)
  BT's mobile Internet service Genie has become the first of its peers to launch a pornography channel. The service initially launched in Germany and offers a range of pornographic content on both its online and wireless platforms. The timetable for rolling out pornographic content in the UK is being determined as part of the company's content strategy for Genie's rebrand.

• Napster relaunch delayed by content difficulties (FT)
  Difficulties in obtaining record label content have caused Napster, the embattled online music service, to delay the launch of its new secure subscription-based service until next year.

• RIAA's Hilary Rosen Offers An Olive Branch (Newsbytes)
  In what apparently is the first olive branch publicly proffered by the music industry to the peer-to-peer (P2P) technology community, Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, told network developers and entrepreneurs that it is time, finally, to begin working together.

• Yahoo set to charge for streamed content (CNET News.com)
  Yahoo has added more free video programming to its site, but the Web portal said it would start charging consumers for some streamed content by the end of the year.

Issue no. 212 - 27 October 2001

• AOL TW gains entry into Chinese cable market (FTY)
  AOL Time Warner, the US media giant, on Monday said it had become the first foreign company to win the right to distribute a Chinese language cable TV channel in China, signalling a new age of openness in the mainland cable TV market.

• Hutchison 3G may offer online pornography (FT)
  Hutchison 3G, Britain's newest mobile phone operator, has appointed an executive to develop ways of offering soft-core pornography over third generation handsets.

Issue no. 211 - 20 October 2001

• Audiogalaxy filters music files (Gnutella News)
  Audiogalaxy is filtering 95% of all music files on their network. Searching for files has now become a laboriously tedious if not insurmountable task. And don’t expect to misspell the artist’s name or retitle the song because that won’t work now either. They’ve covered most of it.

• Webseiten für Kinder - Wer soll das bezahlen? (Heise)
  Kinderportale auf der Suche nach einem geeigneten Finanzierungsmodell. 4Kidz.de und Kindercampus.de sind vor zirka einem Jahr mit einem so genannten Kinderportal ans Netz gegangen. Beide erheben den Anspruch, die Spreu vom Weizen zu trennen und die verschiedenen Formen der multimedialen Darstellung pädagogisch sinnvoll aufzubereiten.

Issue no. 210 - 14 October 2001

• 160,000 artists make web music available (vnunet.com)
  The music industry reached a breakthrough agreement concerning the licensing of musical works for subscription-based online services. The National Music Publishers' Association, musical copyrighting body the Harry Fox Agency and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) agreed that online subscription services will have immediate access to every musical work authorised to be licensed by the Harry Fox Agency. Effectively, this means access to 27,000 music publishers, representing more than 160,000 artists.

• Creating multi-platform killer content (Europemedia)
  As the Big Brother phenomenon continues to capture viewers across the world, the media is beginning to question the recipe for creating killer content.

more items

QuickLinks consists of

• a free newsletter appearing approximately once a week. The newsletter is distributed by electronic mail through an "announcement only" mailing list. To be included on the mailing list, send a blank email to quicklinkshtml-subscribe@yahoogroups.com (HTML) or quicklinks-subscribe@yahoogroups.com (Text)
• a Web site with frequent updates, an events page, news items organised by category as well as chronologically by issue and full text search.