TechAddress

HOW TO: Convert Videos for Your iPhone (or Any Mobile Device)

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:32:40 +0000

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Source:Mashable!

Video on devices like the iPod, iTouch and iPhone look great because of their MPEG-4 H.264 format. The good news is that there are tons of videos that you can purchase from the iTunes store, but the bad news is that you’ll go broke in a hurry downloading everything you want. Sure, some of the videos aren’t much ($1.99 each), but the numbers add up really quickly.

Thankfully, there are a slew of sites and software packages that will allow you to convert just about any video format to the H.264 mp4 format that Apple devices require. Here are the best solutions for converting videos online as well as off. Some will convert any video you have on your local computer while others will only convert videos that you find online. In any case, you will wind up with a video file in the correct format for your Apple or other mobile device.

Sites & Software

ConvertTube is a free service that converts online videos to several formats including the MP4 format that you need for Apple devices. Simply paste the video URL from sites like YouTube, Google video, MetaCafe, etc. and select the desired output format.

While the service is extremely simple to use, it must be mentioned that it can take an eternity sometimes for this service to convert even the smallest video. Sometimes it just times out or fails without any explanations. Still, most of the time it will do the trick if you want to do a quick conversion or two. For more than a handful, you’ll be better off with another solution that handles batch processing.

VideoDownloader is similar to ConvertTube except it doesn’t provide you with any output options. What you see is what you get when you download the video from the services they support: YouTube, Google, BlipTV, DailyMotion and a few others. So, if you can’t download the video .mp4 format, you’ll have to convert it with another separate utility which isn’t a big deal or expense.

Movavi Online Convert is another online video converter that provides the unique ability to download and convert up to five different online videos as one video. You can add all of the URLs and the service will send you an email with a link to download when it’s done. It could take a long time, so it’s not good if you’re in a hurry.

Videora offers an impressive suite of tools for converting and editing videos for free. The video files can be avi, divx, xvid, flv, x264, vob, mpeg, DVDs, YouTube, etc. Any of these videos can be converted into the proper video formats (MPEG-4, H.264) that play on the iPhone 3G.

Here’s Videora’s Video Converter for the 3G iPhone, which does an excellent job changing existing formats of videos you own into the MPEG-4 H.264 format. Their other converters will do the same trick for other devices such as the iPod, nano, Tivo, Sony Playstation Portable (PSP), Xbox360 and more.

There are many options when you’re converting your videos for your iPhone. Obviously, the better the quality, the larger the file size. Ultimately it’s a personal decision everyone has to make on what’s more important: space on your iPhone or audio/video quality. Personally, I prefer to stick with the highest quality video and audio because the experience is so worth it. You just have to pick and choose which videos you want to keep on your iPhone. If you have the 8 GB then perhaps you should compromise a little and choose medium or high levels of quality for video and audio. Play around and see which results you like best.

Note: All of the converters are free and appear to be spyware free without any problems. They do offer a Videora 2.0 software and service package for a fee but that isn’t required for any of these converters.

Free Studio Manager offers a staggering 20 free audio/video tools. You can choose to download all 20 utilities as one package or pick and choose those you need.

There are a few that focus on converting videos for the iPhone. For example, there’s the YouTube to iPhone converter that downloads YouTube videos and automatically converts them to the appropriate iPhone MPeg-4 H.264 format for you. Keep in mind that many of the videos on YouTube are now in the .MP4 format, so the conversion process will skip that part once it’s downloaded and determines what format the video is in. There’s a handy batch mode feature which allows you to download several YouTube videos at one time, making this process more efficient.

Here’s the Video to iPhone Converter which lets you convert any video file that you already possess without needing to download any videos from YouTube or elsewhere. The important thing to point out about this utility is that it provides the highest quality video output in this roundup, whereas Videora can generate a standard quality MPEG-4 H.264 file (24 fps, 480×320 ACC 128Kbits). Free Studio’s converter can generate a High Quality MPEG-4 H/264 file at 30 fps, 480×320 ACC 192Kbits. It might not be that big a deal to most people, but it will make a huge difference to many of you.

Any Video Converter is another free converter for windows that will convert a boatload of formats to iPhone friendly format: DivX, XviD, MOV, rm, rmvb, MPEG, VOB, DVD, WMV, AVI, etc.

Replay Converter is a media converter from Applian Technologies which is well-known for its Replay Capture Suite that includes the converter and several other products. Their most popular product is the Replay Capture tool that allows you to record any streaming audio or video much like a Tivo for the Internet.

Video for Other Platforms

Okay, okay, we won’t ignore you CrackBerry heads. Here’s AVS Video for Blackberry that’ll help you convert videos for Blackberry devices.

All of the software packages referenced above were for the Windows OS, so MAC OS users won’t be able to use them. There was a free video conversion tool for the Mac OS from iSquint.org, but they’ve stopped supporting their product. However, it’s become open source on SourceForge, so others might continue the development for this tool for the Mac OS.

How to Copy Videos to Your iTunes and iPhone

After converting all your videos to the appropriate video format for your iPhone, you’ll need to store them on your computer in the right place so that iTunes can do its job and copy the videos to your device. The best thing to do is create a new folder on your system called, for example, iPhone Videos, and copy the newly converted videos to that folder. You can also get into the habit of converting new videos straight to that folder to save steps and time later on.

Once you have your videos in one place, simply launch iTunes, click on the Movies icon and click the File menu. Select Add Folder to Library, then select the new iPhone Videos folder that you created. iTunes will then suck in all of the videos that it finds in that folder.

Click on your iPhone under DEVICES and select the Video Tab. Then Enable the Sync Movies option, and select all of the videos that you want to copy to your iPhone. You can pick and choose which ones you want at any time.

The next time you sync, all of the videos you selected will be copied to your iPhone. You can view them by launching the iPod app on your iPhone and selecting the video option.

Must-Have Video Player

Every system comes with a video player but these standard players don’t support that many formats. For example, Microsoft’s Windows Media Player does not support the Flash (.FLV) video format, which means you can’t download and play most of the videos you find online these days.

VLC Media Player is an open source media player that supports a plethora of video and audio formats. It loads quicker than most of the bloated media players and can handle most of the formats you’ll ever run into. Here’s a feature list.

Conclusion

This was just a sampling of the many cool tools out there that can help you download and convert videos into a format that you can use on your iPhone or any other device. In most cases, you can do so for free. However, some of the premium packages and services appear to be well worth their nominal fees when you consider everything they provide. In any case, you can now enjoy any of your favorite videos on your iPhone or other mobile device.

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How to Get Incompatible Videos to Your Apple TV Without Lifting a Finger

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:32:50 +0000

Source:Mashable!

If you own an Apple TV, you’re probably frustrated by the fact that most videos you download from various parts of the Web aren’t compatible with it. If they were, it would be a mere matter of seconds between the time you finished the download and sat down to watch the video in your lounge room.

There is a way around the hassle of constantly converting videos, though, with a bit of software and trickery. We take you through the steps to automating the conversion process and show you how to fix video metadata in iTunes, which is infamous for not allowing you to change the video kind from movie to TV show or music video if you acquired the media from anywhere but the iTunes Store.

Here’s what we’ll do:

- Define a download folder for your videos.

- Monitor this folder for new videos and convert them to an Apple TV-friendly format as soon as OS X sees new files in the folder.

- Automate the process of adding the file to iTunes.

- Make sure the original files are thrown out to prevent wasting disk space.

- Change the video type, show name, and add season and episode numbers and titles.

Thanks to Automator, this becomes a really nice and easy process. Automator is probably one of OS X’s most underrated applications.

1. Get the QuickTime Compression Library for Automator

When I first discovered Automator after switching to the Mac a few years ago, I was (shamefully) giddy with excitement, which I suppose isn’t totally unexpected. I went on a downloading splurge over at Apple’s Automator Actions download section and discovered the QuickTime Compression Actions file that would serve me well several years later. You can get it here, and poke around the other files in the section while you’re at it.

Install the files so the actions are ready for use.

2. Create a New Automator File

Open Automator and start a blank workflow. Save it somewhere you’ll remember.

If you’re not familiar with Automator, you should take some time to get to know it so you don’t get tripped up during the tutorial by a lack of familiarity. I don’t think I’ve missed anything that’ll make it hard for a beginner to follow along, but I always recommend fiddling with the software for a bit just in case!

3. Get Selected Finder Items

Since we’ll be saving this as a folder action, the first step needs to be Get Selected Finder Items. You can find this under the Files & Folders menu in the Library pane to the left.

4. Get Folder Contents

The next step is to tell the workflow to grab the contents of the folder (the folder being the selected finder item in the first step). You can find this action under the same Files & Folders menu.

5. Filter Finder Items

Now, we’ll need to filter out files that are already in a friendly format. No need to waste time converting files that are already good to go! Under the Files & Folders menu, insert the Filter Finder Items action.

The “Whose:” section specifies the filter. Select “Name Extension” and “Contains” under the first two menus, and then time m4v in the empty text area.

Now click on the “+” button next to the text field, and repeat those last steps, but add mp4 instead of m4v.

6. Compress With QuickTime

Under the Movies menu in the Library pane, select “Compress QuickTime Using Most Recent Settings” and, under “Choose directory for converted files,” select a location for the Apple TV compatible movies.

7. Get Specified Finder Items

Now, from the Files & Folders action menu, insert Get Specified Finder Items into your workflow. In the action pane, click the “Add” button and find the folder you’ve specified for the converted movies.

Now go and grab Get Folder Contents, the same as in step four, and place it after the Get Specified Finder Items action.

8. Add Any File to iTunes

Under the Movies library menu, add the Add Any File to iTunes action. This will take the contents of the specified folder—your converted files—and throw them into your iTunes Library. You’ll need to ensure that iTunes is set up to copy files when they are added to your library so this folder can be safely emptied into the trash later.

9. Create the Drop Box Folder

Create the Drop Box folder you intend to use to put raw, unconverted movies in—if you want you can always add an alias on the desktop or in the dock to make it easy to drop things in.

10. Send the Redundant Files to the Trash

This is obviously optional if you want to keep the videos in their original format for some reason, or keep the converted files that were created before iTunes made copies in its own folders, but I recommend it as a nice and easy way to prevent your hard drive from filling up too quickly.

Add the Get Specified Finder Items and, using the “Add” button, find both your original drop box folder and the converted files folder.

Then add the Get Folder Contents action, just like we did earlier, and finally, throw in Move Finder Items to Trash which is in the Files & Folder menu as well.

11. Save as plug-in

Go to the File menu and select “Save as plug-in.” Give the action a name, and under “Plug-in for,” select Folder Actions. Under Attached to Folder, select your drop box.

12. Set Up QuickTime Conversion Parameters

Since the workflow grabs the last used conversion parameters from QuickTime, before you run this you’ll need to go and convert a test file with your desired settings. There is an Apple TV conversion preset, so if you don’t want to customize anything to your personal tastes I suggest using this one. If you do convert anything else via QuickTime for other reasons, remember that you’ll have to run a test file using Apple TV parameters before converting videos again.

This works fine for me because I only ever convert videos so they can be viewed from the Apple TV, but it may not be very convenient if you work with video from QuickTime frequently.

13. Set Metadata Correctly

So now you have some cleanly converted files in your iTunes library. My biggest pet peeve is seeing these appear under the “Movies” section; I like them to be found under TV Shows, correctly organized by season and episode number, with the correct episode name.

Grab Set Video Kind of Selected from Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes, and install it as per the provided instructions. Now, head to iTunes and select a video. If you’ve imported several episodes of a television show and all episodes are in order and in the same season (say you have episodes 1 through 5 from season 3), you can select them all so that you don’t have to set the details one by one.

Now go to the AppleScript menu in iTunes and choose Set Video Kind of Selected. Specify the video as a TV Show under Video Kind, and add the show’s name. If you have selected just one video, set its season number and episode number. If you’ve got multiple episodes, set the season number, then under episode number, type in the number of the first episode in the selection (episode 1 using our example). The script will automatically add the rest of the episode numbers.

Flick down to the TV Shows section of iTunes. Go into the series listing, and right click the first episode, click Get Info and flick over to the Video tab. Here you can add the Episode ID—the name of the episode. The other details should be filled in. If you’re really anal about metadata, you can add the episode description as well, which will show up on your Apple TV. Now, you can simply rinse and repeat for the rest of the videos you added.

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Blip.tv Figures Out How To Serve Ads In iTunes Videos

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:30:06 +0000

Source:TechCrunch

For most people, watching Web video is predominantly a streamed experience on your computer. But an important and substantial portion of Web video is still downloaded to be watched later, or transferred to a different screen (usually an iPod, but sometimes a flat-screen TV). The problem with downloads is that they don’t fit neatly into the advertising model that rules most other Web video.

Earlier today at the Beet.TV Online Video Summit (which I co-moderated with Cnet’s Dan Farber and Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser), blip.tv CEO Mike Hudack revealed that his company has found a way to dynamically insert ads from DoubleClick into video downloads on iTunes and elsewhere.

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Lala’s New Business Model May Be Good, But I Don’t Like It

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:35:01 +0000

Source:Mashable!

BrightStorm has launched a new online learning network for teenagers with video-based courses lead by experienced instructors. The concept is rather clever as they use the tools that teens use everyday such as online videos to deliver training and instructional materials in a very familiar format. This makes otherwise dull and tedious learning sessions more fun and enjoyable for the teen students which means they will be inclined to view more courses and take more classes.

The courses are presented in short entertaining ways with young attractive teachers (usually). This is another brilliant move because teens today have the attention span of a gibbon. This means that BrightStorm needs to present their material in a brisk and entertaining manner. They also infuse their videos with some levels of levity and humor which makes their material feel even less scholastic than they actually are.

The teachers are an integral part of the site, of course. Sure, some of them are young and highly photogenic, but don’t be fooled. There are plenty of good old-fashioned instructors on the site as well. While they understand that their videos have to be a little more hip and cool than what a traditional school would produce, they know they still need professional teachers that know how to teach whether it’s in a classroom or online via video.

BrightStorm has a Challenges section which allows teens to compete in fun contests every week and actually win prizes. It also allows them to see the work of their fellow online classmates and if nothing else lets them express themselves in these multimedia projects. For example, in one challenge called “Music to My Eyes”, they are asked to create a music based slide.com presentation.

In the shows area, there are many more viral like videos that also provide some level of information or educational material in an enjoyable format. For example, here’s “One Minute Hamlet” which shows a Shakespearean troupe rapping Hamlet in sixty seconds.

BrightStorm does a good job presenting course materials in a format that most teens will find pleasant and possibly enjoyable. More importantly, they can actually learn from these video courses which is obviously the primary goal of the service. One thing is certain, BrightStorm clearly demonstrates that educational videos can also be entertaining.

Source:Mashable!

I asked the question back in August, and I ask it again now: Why do we need a national CTO? BusinessWeek asks the question today, and everyone and their brother is rushing to weigh in on the answer. Even though pundits back in August erroneously attributed the idea of the creation of a national CTO to both candidates, it is only Senator Obama who’s called for the creation of a national CTO.

According to BusinessWeek, it appears to be mostly for the purposes of the creation of a nationalized broadband establishment, or at least that’s how they paint it. I’m uncertain if that’s simply the spin that BusinessWeek is putting on the story, or if that’s the actual intention of Obama’s promised cabinet appointment.

Assuming that it’s not for broadband, for a moment, I repeat my original query as to why we’d need a CTO in the first place, since even the best qualified individuals for defining the position can’t seem to do so:

Wikipedia, surprisingly, does have an amusing anecdote about the CTO title involving Bill Gates and his CTO. Bill and Nathan Myhrvold sat down and tried to come up a definition. Myhrvold answered, when asked:

Hell if I know. You know, when Bill [Gates] and I were discussing my taking this job, at one point he said, ‘Okay, what are the great examples of successful CTOs?’ After about five minutes we decided that, well, there must be some, but we didn’t have on the tip of our tongues exactly who was a great CTO, because many of the people who actually were great CTOs didn’t have that title, and at least some of the people who have that title arguably aren’t great at it. My job at Microsoft is to worry about technology in the future. If you want to have a great future you have to start thinking about it in the present, because when the future’s here you won’t have the time.

So we’re starting out with a nebulous position, and we’re putting it in charge of interpreting the nations’ technology issues, and hoping that the government won’t abuse the advice to expand their own power and use it to drum up votes.

But Let’s Pretend For a Moment It Is All About Broadband

For years, already, the major telecommunications firms have been receiving major subsidies to wire up the world. In some instances where the telcos have performed as they have promised, it’s proven to be a boon to the economy. In most of the cases, though, the major telcos have taken the governmental subsidies and done very little to complete the work they were contracted for.

The first example that springs to mind is the case of AT&T and how the, as Slashdot put it, “Pillaged South Africa’s Economy.”

“For 8 years, SBC and Telekom Malaysia controlled South Africa’s only telecommunications company, Telkom. Telkom had a government granted monopoly in order for it to connect the large parts of South Africa that had been neglected under apartheid. Instead of helping, SBC abused their position and raised Telkom’s prices to be among the highest in the world. The billions they made here ultimately went to fund their AT&T merger. From the article: ‘SBC, described as “congenitally litigious”, is said to have played a major role in the failure of South Africa’s telecoms policy to develop a competitive telephone service. Under SBC’s control Telkom not only failed to meet its roll-out obligations but behaved “as a tax on industry and a drag on economic growth.”‘”

Rather than act as evangelists for free market economics, they masqueraded as such elsewhere in the world while lobbying for maintained corporatist restrictions on pricing and competition in South Africa. Sure, it ended up being a net positive for AT&T, but in a short-sighted sense since it nigh-killed the broadband market for the entire country.

We don’t have to look to the other side of the world to see how badly things go awry for citizens when their government meddles on a national level with the broadband providers.

If you have a land-line still, or at least a DSL connection to the Internet, go check out one of your bills. Chances are, you’ve got something called the “Universal Service Fund” listed in your miscellaneous taxes section (or it could be abbreviated to USF). The USF is a tax created by the FCC in 1997 to meet the mandates of “Universal Service” as determined in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That act says that all ISPs and telecoms must contribute to the fund so that all schools, classrooms, health care providers, and libraries should have “advanced phone services.”

Guess who ends up footing the bill, though? You do, since the telecoms couldn’t be bothered to pay out of their own pocket, and decided to give you the privilege of paying.

So how much, exactly, got collected into the Universal Service Fund, and what did we get for that? An excellent question; one that Jeff Pulver’s guest blogger Daniel Berninger asked in the summer of 2006. You can read the whole answer over there, but the short version is not much (single digit increases in basic service penetration, and overall double-digit per customer increases in consumer costs).

Bringing this back around to the whole CTO thing…

This is what we want a CTO for? So that he or she can empower the major telcos to take and squander more of our money? This is the definition of intelligent change and hope?

Call me a partisan, but I have to say that the smart money is on ending government subsidies for telcos. They’ve got a multi-decade track record of habitually taking money from the US government and then squandering it on lobbying efforts, astoturfing and golden parachutes.

Government subsidies have yet to yield positive results for citizens looking to get access to essential services, let alone broadband. Natural economics will eventually yield results for us in terms of that, as long as the government stops dangling the carrot of dollars in front of their noses. More and more, the money is being made in what’s in the bandwidth, not by the bandwidth itself.

Even through the economic rough spots, Google continues to excel, and CEO Eric Schmidt himself (who ironically seems to be vying for the CTO slot) has said that access fees should be subsidized by carriers for mobile access. If that statement is him being less than flippant, he is speaking to a future he’s best qualified to envision, which is where mobile ad providers take such a large share of the pie that it’s in their best interests to get the whole of the citizenry online so more ads can be sold against the inventory they’d create.

I’m not in a position to definitively comment on how realistic that is, but based on what we’ve tried as a nation in the past and the bang up job the government does when they try technology stuff, I’m much more willing to bank on that future than one that includes the government running our Internet access.

Source:Mashable!

Lala started out as a CD-swapping service, which didn’t really work all that well. Now, they’ve switched to a completely new business model, which can best be described as a cross between Pandora and iTunes. You can buy albums, that’s the standard part of any online music shop. You can also stream all of the songs from Lala’s library once. But, this is the catch: if you purchase a song for mere 10 cents, you can listen to it indefinitely on Lala’s web radio. At the same time, they have no advertising on the site whatsoever.

I’ve read most of the coverage of Lala’s new approach to selling music and most of it is very positive. And, while I do agree that it’s intelligent, when I think about the big picture, it wakes the Richard Stallman in me.

10 cents for a song is not expensive, true. But you need to consider what exactly you’re buying here. You’re buying the rights to listen one song of dubious sound quality on one online service. I know every company’s dream is to lock you inside its own magic circle and create a service so good (read: iTunes) that people willingly accept a little less freedom when it comes to what exactly they can do with what they’ve purchased. But from my perspective, it sucks.

I like to have cover art, beautiful packaging, fantastic sound and the freedom to do whatever I want with the music I’ve purchased. I want to be able to listen to it on my computer, my MP3 player (notice that I’m not using the word iPod), my Hi-Fi stereo system.

Plus, the internet might (and probably will) be a vastly different landscape 5, 10, and 15 years from now. Why should I pay for something that might turn out to be useless or obsolete in a few years time? People used to buy DRM’d music; what can they do with that music now (without resorting to hacking it DRM-free)?

Here’s an example. Cnet complains about not being online all the time; you cannot access Lala from a plane or an underground train. A minor complaint, if you ask me; and Cnet’s Greg Sandoval immediately counters it himself, quoting Lala’s coufounder, Bill Nguyen: “Will you ever (in the future) use an electronic device if it’s not connected or doesn’t have a browser,” he asks. He has a point. But, connecting to the net from your mobile device carries an additional price tag. Currently, it’s not cheap at all; in fact, for any ardent music listener who’s on the move a lot, listening to Lala from a mobile device would be a very expensive affair. It might get better in the future, but one has to consider exactly how many times he/she’s going to pay for the same thing.

Lala’s idea might be good, and I might be an old grudge, but I still think that any business model that somehow restricts your rights to do whatever you want with the music you’ve legally purchased is, well, too restrictive.

*Update: write this down as another restriction: I’ve forgotten to mention that Lala is currently available only to people in the US. So much for being able to play music “anywhere on the web.”

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iLike and TuneCore Monetization Music to Artists’ Ears

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:31:03 +0000

Source:Mashable!

…if you have a Nokia N800 or N810, that is. That’s right, the mobile version of Firefox (which would have had a far greater impact had it come before the advent of mobile Safari) is now available as an early developer alpha (v.1.0a1), works (well) only on the aforementioned Nokias, and goes by the name of Fennec. If you’re the curious kind, there are versions for Linux, Max OS X and Windows, so you can test out those too; installation instructions and release notes are available over at the official site.

What’s there to see? Some of the interesting features included in this alpha are bookmarking and tagging, the inclusion of Firefox’ awesome bar (its awesomeness still being the subject of discussion), tabbed browsing, easy search, zooming, password management, popup blocking, and an easy way to clear private data. It doesn’t sound bad at all; still, it’s an early alpha version; I recommend you save yourself the trouble of installation and check out the presentation in the video below.

Fennec Alpha Walkthrough from Madhava Enros on Vimeo.

Source:Mashable!

iLike and TuneCore may be a bit late to the monetizing music party, following sites like Grooveshark, but they have now arrived in full force. Today TuneCore and iLike announce that indie artists will be able to earn money from people listening to and sharing their music via iLike.

iLike is poised for great leaps in success right now. They are rumored to be the favorite music application for FaceBook to endorse as its preferred app for a FaceBook music integration. Not only that, just this past summer iLike made several improvements by offering free streaming of full tracks and integrating an ad platform into their service, showing a keen eye for monetization and long term growth.

Why partner with TuneCore? iLike is more of a social discovery service for music, and TuneCore is a music distribution service. Together they have the ability to help artists make money off of the songs that they write and sing when people listen to them.

More and more services are going to this new digital revenue model in the music industry. Instead of waiting to be picked up by a label, going to the studio, going to press, advertising and going on tour, this new model allows artists to make money in real time, simultaneously with a tour, merchandise sales, CD pressing and more. No more waiting for big business to catch up. It also offers a bit of real time feedback - if you aren’t going to be popular, your level of digital revenue will reflect that immediately instead of waiting to release a CD that might fail.

What does the this proliferation of turnkey music monetization services mean for musicians? It allows them to basically be their own label. Artists submit their music via TuneCore and then it is played via iLike, and everywhere iLike is found. This includes FaceBook, embedded playlists on blogs, and more. TuneCore also gives artists access to iLike’s entire network, including hi5, Bebo, Orkut and more. TuneCore also serves music to sites like Rhapsody, Yahoo, MTV and Amazon. Artists then keep 100% of the money they make via the service.

Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike, said “As the music industry continues to reinvent itself, we believe it’s critical to offer independent musicians equal opportunity alongside major-label artists.” And he’s right - this online network created for artists by combining the reach of iLike and TuneCore enables a band or artist’s music to be heard in as many places as it would be it released by a major label. That’s a huge advantage for an artist to make money doing something they love, and isn’t that every musician’s dream? To get paid to do what they love?

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Apple Gets ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC into iTunes HD; Pushes 1M Shows in 1 Month

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:32:36 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Apple claims to have sold 200 million TV episodes to date, including one million sold in HD format since the option became available in September. And in customary fashion, the company is looking to expand on those figures with three primary pursuits: more selection, more selection, and more selection still.

Following a summer season chock-full of game-show and reality programming, this fall Apple is making an effort to provide as many dramas and comedies and the like from as many networks as possible for iTunes shoppers. The company now names ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC as HD-friendly within the pages of its storefront.

Everything from CBS’s long-time hit show “CSI: Miami” and its New York-based variant to FOX’s “Prison Break” to NBC’s “The Office” to ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” and “Dirty Sexy Money” is available either at a per-episode price of $2.99 or a season pass running anywhere between $40 and $70. Of course, all shows are available in standard definition, too, for 1/3 less cost per episode.

Ever since Apple introduced the TV option for iTunes consumers, it has had to service increasing demand for increasing amounts of programming titles and studios. And because it has had to contend with the extended removal of NBC programming for much of the last year, its sales have presumably not been as superb as they might have otherwise been. Thus, now that Apple has officially brought the majors on board as both SD- and HD-level participants, consumers are naturally bound to enjoy the comprehensive supply much more so than the gap-ridden experience that came before. Will this boost sales? Very probably.

While it’s not yet certain that HD programming will induce many sales other than the trickle of free, promotional downloads made available on a weekly, if not daily basis, the choice of HD itself is no doubt important to note. On-demand television is still in a stage of relative infancy, so pricing can only be expected to come down as time progresses.

Competition with iTunes will continue to be strong with players like Netflix, but very few distributors - iTunes and Amazon Video on Demand being the most prominent of all - can offer consumers the option to retain episodes and even full seasons of content ahead of their equivalent DVD or Blu-Ray release. This convenience is certainly advantageous to a good number of entertainment seekers who might ordinarily invest in physical media. (It should be said that Netflix’s streaming option will almost definitely have current programming to choose from in the none-too-distant future.)

All told, the iTunes TV store is still very much at a budding stage, and whether it is on the cusp of a boom, it’s difficult to say. But it is clear that Apple and its visual media partners are wasting little time in capitalizing on fresh programming. So it may not be very long before Apple can tout five to ten million HD shows sold. Or, alternatively, one billion TV episodes altogether. Looking at Apple’s release of June figures listing over 5 billion songs sold since the iTunes Store’s inception, that would be a video statistic none too small.

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