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Source:Mashable!

Choosing a radio station was once a right of passage for the American adolescence. It was what bound you to your friends, disassociated you from your parents and attracted to you whatever partner had the misfortune to have you. Regional in range, determined by frequency, traditional radio was completely national in scope, cities to suburbs, Natick to Nashville. And then, like with the overnight successes the medium helped popularize, everything seemed to decline.

Traditional radio has been in a steady fall for nearly a decade. While it still remains a 21 billion dollar industry, the time spent listening to radio has fallen somewhere to the tune of 8 percent since 2000, according to Arbitron, a firm that measure radio audiences. This steady drop in listenership has forced terrestrial radio stations to program music that can appeal to the broadest of audiences, disenfranchising both music fans and emerging artists, and helping to foster the growth of satellite and Internet radio.

“Internet radio has redrawn the whole radio landscape,” said Tim Westergren, a founder of Pandora, a leading Internet radio company. “It provides a more fulfilling radio experience and a mass promotion for artists being shut out of terrestrial radio.”

The metrics are in agreement with Westergren, Internet radio captures 33 million listeners per week, according to Arbitron, and nearly 15 % of 18 to 49 year olds tune in to Internet radio on a weekly basis. Internet radio companies, such as Pandora, Last.fm and Slacker offer a personalized radio experience which gives its listeners access to a greater variety of music and enhanced control over the music being delivered to them. The listening experience is now being offered portably, with Slacker’s offering a for-sale portable player and Pandora delivering an iPhone application.

Internet radio might be an even greater bonanza for the working artist. “For bands that have no shot at traditional radio”, says radio expert Kurt Hanson, “it is one way they can expose their music to fans.” Pandora is home to 60,000 artists, 70% of which aren’t affiliated with a major label. “While some bands are still holding out for that elusive deal,” says Joanna Ifrah, a former artist and repertoire scout for Columbia and Sony records, “Many more emerging bands are working their audience, working their Myspace pages, betting on themselves and getting paid.”

Artists are working comfortably and profitably outside of major labels, getting airtime through Internet and satellite radio, building audiences through social networks, and further being able to monetize themselves through sites such as Los Angeles based startup True Anthem. However, major labels are pushing back by influencing Soundexchange to refuse to renegotiate royalty rates agreed upon last year that could potentially bankrupt the Internet radio industry.

While the numbers can be complicated, it comes down to simple metrics; a now profitable Internet radio site will pay royalty rates that exceed total revenue if the current rates negotiated by Soundexchange are upheld. A company like Pandora, which is paying $750,000 per month to Soundexchange under the current rates, would go out of business under the new rates which increase per year retroactively going back to 2006. (Satellites and cable radio settled for 7.5 percent of revenue with Soundexchange). The idea that Internet radio has to pay any royalty rates, while fair to the artists, legally speaking, is laughable.

Traditional radio doesn’t pay a dime in royalty rates because it is considered promotional. Has there been a greater promotional tool for an artist since the invention of the barker than the Internet? Even with the 50% cut that the artist receive from Soundexchange, for the working musician, according to Hanson, Internet radio is for more valuable developing a fan base than the “single digit cut they get from royalties.” If these rates are enforced and companies like Pandora go out of business, bands that don’t fit in the broad world of terrestrial radio will have a far more difficult time building a fan base and will lose the revenue stream that is Internet radio.

While the negotiations between Internet radio and Soundexchange look grim, companies like Pandora aren’t ready to lower the antennae on Internet radio just yet.

“We are going to plow ahead until we reach a reasonable settlement,” said Westergren.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:eMusic Launches 10 Internet Radio MashupsAnother Court Loss for Internet Radio BroadcastersSaveNetRadio Applauds New BillInternet Radio Broadcasters Call for Day of Silence on June 26CBS Radio Rolling Out More Internet InitiativesLatest Offer from SoundExchange Turned Down by WebcastersRadio Webcasters Lose Court Battle - What Now for Last.fm and Pandora?

Source:Mashable!

Talk about bravado. Four days after launching the .me domain extension and inciting a virtual riot among customers, GoDaddy is toting the success of what it calls “the most successful new domain launch in GoDaddy’s history.” The basis for that claim? More than 20,000 .Me domain names were registered in the first 24 hours of availability, according to the company.

As we reported last week, the .Me launch was riddled with technical problems, including as many of 8 or 9 people claiming to hold receipts for the domain name Aweso.me. To its credit, GoDaddy responded quickly to the problems, issuing refunds to effected customers and making personal phone calls to many of them (a voicemail from a GoDaddy rep left with Andy Beal can be heard here). But that has done little to qualm the anger of many of those that thought they were the new owner of potentially lucrative .Me names.

In a press release this morning, the company acknowledges the technical issues they encountered upon launch, but actually uses the “it’s a nice problem to have” cliché, with CEO Bob Parsons stating “In spite of a few early difficulties - GoDaddy.com successfully processed a huge, record-setting level of registrations. To the best of our knowledge, there have never been more registrations handled in one day during the ordinary course of businesses by any registrar in history.”

Realistically, I don’t think there is that much GoDaddy could have done to prevent the issues it encountered as domain speculators raced to buy up premium .Me domains upon launch. However, given the frustration and confusion caused on launch day, I think the celebration dance would’ve best been kept internal.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:GoDaddy Integrating Google Webmaster ToolsThe Daily Poll: What Do You Think of GoDaddy?GoDaddy Offers .Me Domain Names. It’s a Big .Fail So Far.GoDaddy Pulls the Plug on RateMyCopWho Sucks More - GoDaddy or MySpace?RackSpace Censorship: The RateMyCop Saga ContinuesGoDaddy: You Don’t Like Them. Can They Redeem Themselves?

Source:Mashable!

In 1939, Bob Kane created “The Bat-Man” for issue #27 of Detective Comics, and as they say, the rest is history. This past weekend the highly anticipated film The Dark Knight was released in theaters, setting a record for biggest three-day take with $155.3M in tickets sold. To celebrate we’ve rounded up 25 sites where you can learn more about the Batman series and its characters.

Below you can find showtimes and buy tickets to the film, read about how the movie was made, explore close to 70 years of Batman’s history, and more.

Fan Sites

Batman-Dark-Knight.MovieChronicles.com - An unofficial site following all the news related to the hot film’s release.

Batman-on-Film.com - For ten years, Batman-on-Film has covered all Batman film related projects as well as reviews of the comics.

BatmanFanFilms.com - A large collection of fan films based on the Caped Crusader with some being of amazingly high quality.

BatmanYTB.com - Batman Yesterday, Today & Beyond gives you a history of Batman as well as information on collectibles, television shows, films and more.

ComicVine.com - ComicVine has a very detailed history of Batman comics, movies, television appearances and even touches on the 1950’s book, Seduction of the Innocent, which caused many to question Batman’s sexuality.

DCDatabaseProject.com - Part of the Wikia network, this wiki aims to index all of the DC Universe, but has lots of information on Batman.

GoldenAgeBatman.com - A site dedicated to the Batman comics of the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s.

Legions Of Gotham - A large message forum dedicated to discussing every aspect of the Batman universe.

News

AintItCool.com - Well known site for film gossip of all kinds.

Chud.com - Short for “Cinematic Happenings Under Development”, CHUD is also the name of a 1980’s horror film, but this site is all about movie rumors and news.

DarkHorizons.com - Though based out of Australia, Dark Horizons is well known for being right on top of all the major film gossip.

LatinoReview.com - Well known for their early script reviews, has lots of news that led up to the new film.

SuperHeroHype.com - A site dedicated to news of the ever increasing number of super hero films being produced, and they have a good recap of everything that led up to The Dark Knight.

Official Sites

AdamWest.com - Love or hate the 1960’s television series, it is still a part of Bat-history, and Adam West certainly figures into that.

DC Comics - The publishing company behind Batman since he first appeared in Detective Comics in 1939.

IBelieveInHarveyDent.com - Started off as a campaign website for the character of Harvey Dent running for district attorney, was later “hacked” by the Joker.

RorysDeathKiss.com - Part of the viral campaign that led up to the film, this site had the Joker asking people to dress up as him and submit pictures of themselves in interesting locations.

TheDarkKnight.com - Official site promoting the second film in the new series.

WeAreTheAnswer.org - A site launched by the character of Harvey Dent to help get rid of police corruption in Gotham City, later hacked by the Joker.

WhySoSerious.com - The Joker’s main site in the viral campaign where he made most of his communications with the citizens of Gotham City.

Tickets

Fandango.com - Besides buying tickets for both normal showings and IMAX screenings, also have a list of the 10 best & worst comic book films of all time.

Moviefone.com - Get movie news and trailers as well as buy your tickets for the film.

Movies.Yahoo.com - Yahoo’s movie site has ticket sales as well as numerous exclusive trailer premieres.

MovieTickets.com - Read or listen to a synopsis of the film before you make that final decision to go see it.

NYC.com movies - A portion of the NYC site that helps you navigate the theaters in all the various neighborhoods of New York City.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Free Passes to Early Screening of “The Dark Knight”Knight Resigns as Wesabe CEO to be with Family; Hedlund takes the ReinsFallen Star Wars Clip on YouTube Has Been RestoredViacom: It’s Not Copyright Infringement When We Do it to YouWeb 2.0 Marketplace Listings for April 8th, 2008Web 2.0 Marketplace Listings for April 14th, 2008Massify Teams with After Dark Films for Crowdsourcing Horror Flick

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