Archives

Competition Pushes Aussie Music Download Price to $0.67

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 5, 2004 - 7:50am.
Sydney -- Competition among online digital music retailers in Australia has resulted in the world's lowest prices for a digital song, with rival providers Telstra and Destra now offering downloads for $0.75 and $0.67, respectively. Both companies are offering the price points during April as promotions, but both also plan to offer at least part of their catalogs for $0.75 when the promotions end. By comparison, only Wal-Mart in the U.S. offers a cheaper download price ($0.88) than the current industry standard of $0.99 used by Apple's iTunes Store, Napster and others.
tags: Music | Deal | Aussie | Competition |

Survey: U.S. Males Spend Increasing Share of Media Time on Games

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 5, 2004 - 7:45am.
Menlo Park, Calif. -- U.S. males aged 18-34 now report spending a larger share of the time they spend each day with media playing video games (6%) than they do reading newspapers (3%), while U.S. male teenagers devote an even larger percentage of their media day playing video games (15%), according to a consumer survey conducted by Knowledge Networks/SRI's MultiMedia Mentor. Watching television still commands the lion's share of daily media use among 18-34 males (42%) and teenagers (45%), followed in each demographic by radio and the Internet. However, the survey only takes into account console video game usage, and does not include other gaming platforms such as the PC, Internet or cell phones. The new research also shows that, during evening hours (6PM to midnight), a growing number (5%) of men 18 to 34 say they play videogames while watching little or no television.
tags: Games | U.S. | Survey | Medias |

Google, Yahoo to Halt Online Casino Ads Amid Murky Legal Status

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 5, 2004 - 7:39am.
New York -- Online search giants Google and Yahoo have announced that they will no longer accept advertisements from foreign online casinos, in response to a murky legal environment for online gambling in the U.S. that includes a crackdown on those seen as "aiding and abetting" the casinos, The New York Times reported. Last year, the U.S. government launched a grand jury investigation into online gambling, issuing subpoenas to U.S. companies that place ads for online casinos. "There's been a general message sent to publishers from various agencies in the government that the legality of this advertising is unclear," Dakota Sullivan, vice president for marketing at search engine LookSmart, told The Times. While neither Google nor Yahoo would confirm to The Times that they had been subpoenaed, Jennifer Stephens, a spokeswoman for Yahoo subsidiary Overture, said that the decision to decline ads for online casinos comes from a "lack of clarity" in current U.S. law. In addition to Google and Yahoo, other sites where gambling ads will no longer appear include Microsoft's MSN and Lycos.
tags: Yahoo | Google | Deal | Casino |

Interactive Marketing Firm Advertising.com Files for $100 Million IPO

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 5, 2004 - 7:36am.
Baltimore -- On the heels of turning its first annual profit, Advertising.com, a Baltimore-based provider of interactive marketing services, said on Monday that it has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering (IPO). The company has yet to set such details as the date of the offering or price per share, but has registered to trade its shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol "ADCM." Goldman Sachs will serve as lead underwriter. Launched in 1998 by brothers Scott and John Ferber, Advertising.com turned its first profit, $18.7 million, in 2003. The company has developed software that uses complex mathematical algorithms to determine the optimal advertisement to place on available space. It's ad-serving software, which the company's also licenses to web site publishers, in March alone delivered more than 14 billion ads for clients.
tags: IPO | Marketing | Advertising | Deal |

Time Warner, Microsoft Buy Stakes in DRM Firm ContentGuard

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 5, 2004 - 7:33am.
Bethesda, Md. -- Time Warner and Microsoft separately announced on Monday that they have made significant investments in Maryland-based ContentGuard, a privately held provider of digital rights management (DRM) technology. Terms of the deals of were not disclosed. As a result of the deal, Time Warner becomes a co-investor with Microsoft in ContentGuard, which licenses technologies that cover broad elements of digital rights management and distributed authorization. ContentGuard's technology originated at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.
tags: Microsoft | DRM | Time Warner | ContentGuard |

Music Choice to Offer Free Broadband 'Net Radio for Cable TV Partners

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 5, 2004 - 7:28am.

New York -- Music Choice, provider of a digital radio service offered by cable TV systems, announced on Monday that this month it will launch a free companion online music service for its cable TV partners' broadband Internet subscribers. The service will offer the 45 streaming music channels subscribers have access to on their cable TV systems, in addition to seven online-only channels, exclusive video and audio artist interviews, and the opportunity to download or purchase music. "The new broadband music service expands the reach of Music Choice beyond its existing television audience of 34 million homes, providing us with the opportunity to reach a much larger, more diverse audience," said Music Choice president and CEO David Del Beccaro.
http://www.musicchoice.com
tags: Music | Broadband | Cable TV | Net Radio |