As has been widely
reported, today,
May 1, Netflix is letting
thousands of titles expire
(link down due to heavy traffic) mostly licensed from Warner Bros, Universal, and MGM. Some will possibly to move to the new
streaming service offered by Warner Bros itself. (
Warner Archive denies that they are "taking" content from Netflix.) Less widely reported is the fact that Netflix has also
let their deal with Viacom expire this month, removing large swaths of children's favorites (including Dora, Thomas, Bob the Builder, and Backyardigans) from the service. Despite
forecasts that this could be the end for Netflix (
again)
The company maintains that they are headed
in the direction they
want to go.
posted by anastasiav
on May 1, 2013 -
151 comments
The Verge has a nice article looking at streaming as a business model (or not, of course...) "Do you think it's good or bad for the value of music if the only people who sell it don't care if they're making money on it?" David Pakman asks. "What you really want is an ecosystem with lots of financially healthy companies selling your product."
[more inside]
posted by lucullus
on Mar 12, 2013 -
41 comments
"The "Tugboat" 7" single, Galaxie 500's very first release, cost us $980.22 for 1,000 copies-- including shipping! (Naomi kept the receipts)-- or 98 cents each. I no longer remember what we sold them for, but obviously it was easy to turn at least a couple bucks' profit on each. Which means we earned more from every one of those 7"s we sold than from the song's recent 13,760 plays on Pandora and Spotify. Here's yet another way to look at it: Pressing 1,000 singles in 1988 gave us the earning potential of more than 13 million streams in 2012."
Making Cents: Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500 and
Damon & Naomi breaks down the meager royalties currently being paid out to bands by streaming services and explains what the music business' headlong quest for capital means for artists today.
[more inside]
posted by anazgnos
on Nov 15, 2012 -
85 comments
Suppose I could offer you a choice of two technologies for watching TV online. Behind Door Number One sits a free-to-watch service that uses off-the-shelf technology and that buffers just enough of each show to put the live stream on the Internet. Behind Door Number Two lies a subscription service that requires custom-designed hardware and makes dozens of copies of each show. Which sounds easier to build—and to use? More importantly, which is more likely to be legal?
If you went with Door Number One, then you are a sane person, untainted by the depravity of modern copyright law. But you are also wrong. The company behind Door Number One, iCraveTV, was enjoined out of existence a decade ago. The company behind Door Number Two, Aereo, just survived its first round in court and is still going strong.
Why Johnny can't stream: How video copyright went insane by MeFi's own
James Grimmelmann.
posted by Horace Rumpole
on Aug 30, 2012 -
18 comments
Aereo is a new venture that is about to start streaming live, over-the-air TV signals in NYC to your computer, tablet or smart phone for $12 per month. How, you might ask, can they do this legally??? They have developed a ultra small TV antenna and they'll be deploying many thousands of them around NYC.
Each subscriber then get's their own personal antenna, and they are therefore -- at least in theory -- protected by the 2008 ruling allowing Cablevision to offer DVR services from their head end.
It's good they have Barry Diller behind them to cover their legal bills!
Here's another article about this in today's NYT.
posted by Dean358
on Feb 14, 2012 -
34 comments
"Two years after first announcing it,
Spotify is finally coming to the US. The service will be launched later today, at 8 in the morning EST. The company has signed a deal with the fourth and final music label just hours before launch and the service will be virtually identical to the European one, except for the pricing which, while keeping the numbers, is switching pounds for dollars. "
[more inside]
posted by incandissonance
on Jul 14, 2011 -
125 comments
The Illuminated Mixtapes — a running series of playlists for streaming, with hand illustrated covers for each one. Some nice background music while enjoying your MeFi.
posted by netbros
on Jul 8, 2011 -
14 comments
Walking Home: stories from the desert to the Great Lakes. Laura Milkins is walking home. Home is Grand Rapids, Michigan. Laura lives in Tucson, Arizona. That's 2,000 miles (3,219 km), or about 4,473,976 steps. Right now she's in the shoulder of the road somewhere around Holbrook, Arizona. She has a pack on her back, a
webcam streaming 24 hours strapped to a sun visor on her head, and hopefully, a place to stay tonight. You can follow her every step of the way, by watching live video broadcast from her hat.
Or
walk with her.
[more inside]
posted by Tufa
on May 25, 2011 -
26 comments
The details are hazy, but somewhere outside of Toronto in the winter of 2004, on a stretch of highway near the U.S. border, a computer onboard a large bus spontaneously combusted. Some point the finger at the driver, others blame a faulty battery. Whatever the cause, Themselves and the Notwist were stranded. Gigs were cancelled. Meals were skipped. Shady motels were booked in below-freezing weather. It was the fifth breakdown of the tour, and despite those frustrations, a minor language barrier and the unfamiliar terrain, a cross-continental brotherhood was forged. Seven years later, the megagroup
13 & God have two albums, a live CD and and an EP as proof of that fateful tour. Join
Doseone for
a track-by-track commentary of their new album, and listen to the album,
streaming on Soundcloud.
posted by filthy light thief
on May 23, 2011 -
12 comments
KeygenJukebox is ready to serve up a nice stream of chiptunes pulled from serial key generators, program crackers, trainers and so on. A large part of their library comes from the formidable collection at
Keygenmusic, which carries the music in its original format and is organized by cracking group. Get nostalgic! Energize the workplace!
Please note that no actual key generators or cracking information of any kind can be found on these sites.
posted by Monster_Zero
on Feb 1, 2011 -
19 comments
Out of the blue, Sufjan Stevens, most famous for his epic indie symphony
Illinois (which can be streamed from this link), released an "EP" called
All Delighted People. It's 60 minutes long, you can play it all online for free, and the title track is a deliriously gorgeous 12-minute epic. He's also announced an upcoming new album, scheduled for release this October, called
The Age of Adz. You can stream its first single,
I Walked.
[more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich
on Aug 30, 2010 -
52 comments
Popular internet streaming service, Hulu has
announced its long-anticipated premium offering, which will allow users to stream shows to their TVs and iOS devices. The catch? You still have to watch the ads.
posted by schmod
on Jun 29, 2010 -
102 comments
1. Create a record label named "Unknown."
2. Form a band named "Various Artists."
3. (step 3 not required)
4. PROFIT!
No, really: Please take your royalty check
Royalties are piling up from digital music streams, and a nonprofit has to track down artists who don't know. Then it has to convince them it's not a scam.
posted by planetkyoto
on Mar 12, 2010 -
20 comments
FreeBaseballRadio.com is a site that was created to help find internet broadcasts of live baseball games. Specifically those that are available for free.
posted by acro
on Aug 6, 2009 -
18 comments
Audio archive from
Small's Jazz Club, searchable by instrument, then performer, then date, starting with September 27, 2007.
Hours and hours and hours and hours of the some of the best jazz from New York's downtown scene. Stream and snap your fingers, man.
posted by klangklangston
on Jul 15, 2009 -
19 comments
Boxee is a free media-center program (currently only for Mac and Linux), that, in addition to playing most multimedia formats, provides a
portal for many popular internet streaming channels. Its interface enabled folks who used Apple Tv, or who had connected their computer to their television, to browse and watch this content much like they would a regular television broadcast. But yesterday, NBC's popular
(in the US) Hulu
announced that it would be pulling its programs from Boxee at the request of its content providers. While the move
puzzled and angered many Boxee users, who pointed out that they still saw the same advertisements that they would see on Hulu's site,
some speculate that the large media companies saw Boxee as a threat to the cable delivery system. In other words, Hulu is for laptops, not for televisions, an auxiliary instead of an alternative to traditional tv.
posted by bibliowench
on Feb 19, 2009 -
77 comments
Blip.fm has been described as a
Twitter for Music. The site allows users to create streaming playlists by searching for music hosted elsewhere online. You can make a playlist for your own listening pleasure, immediately find and hear a song that's been running through your brain, follow the blips of users (or "djs" in their parlance), and give and receive affirmations of musical taste ("props"). If you want
more of the world to know exactly what you've listened to at any particular moment, you can integrate your account with last.fm, friendfeed, twitter, and the like. Unlike the late, lamented Muxtape, there are no copyright-violating uploads (that blip.fm hosts, at any rate).
Surely the RIAA will have no problem with
this site. Right?
posted by bibliowench
on Dec 10, 2008 -
44 comments
WFMU's Free Music Archive, "an online digital library of music that will allow music fans, webcasters and podcasters to listen, download, and stream for free, with no restrictions, registration or fees. And it will all be legal." Still pre-launch, but there's already
quite a bit of music available on the site, including a
sampler CD.
posted by cog_nate
on Jul 15, 2008 -
18 comments
Storm chase from your desk. This link will not be interesting after a bit, but the technology is impressive. Storm chasers can now stream video of their chases, LIVE. This could be a good show between now and sundown.
[more inside]
posted by spock
on Apr 7, 2008 -
19 comments
Fancast is a new site currently in beta, that tries to combine TV listings, IMDB type information, and aggregate full length episodes of TV shows from places like
CBS and
Hulu. It is also designed to allow you to connect you with shows and movies from iTunes, Netflix, and more. It is owned by
Comcast but anyone can use it.
via
posted by bove
on Feb 14, 2008 -
32 comments
