A 15-year-old programming whiz from Iowa and his father have created the world's first YouTube music player, mining the site's extensive library of music videos free of charge.
David Nelson and his father, Mark, spent a year developing Muziic Player, a free downloadable player that allows users to organise, search, stream and create playlists from YouTube's catalogue of music clips. Since its worldwide launch last month, the player has been downloaded more than a million times, forcing them to add another server to handle the incoming requests for the player.
"My dad had the idea for creating a YouTube music site, but I said it should be done in a media player format," David said. "I imagined how great it would be to open up your desktop media player and have a library of millions of music videos."
After giving it some thought, David realised its implementation was a definite possibility. "YouTube has a massive collection of user-generated music content, and holds contracts with the world's largest record labels that are compensated for the playback of supported media. It has undeniably the most extensive media library on the Internet."
Muziic Player looks and works like iTunes, taking advantage of the content ID software built into YouTube to detect video submissions not supported by YouTube's contracts for removal. This also allows for compensation of artists and record labels that do hold contracts with YouTube. Unfortunately for UK users, YouTube's withdrawal of music videos from the UK site after a failure to reach a new licensing agreement with the Performing Right Society also applies to the Muziic Player, meaning users from the UK may be unable to view certain content with the player.
But David believes his software has the ability to redefine the problems facing digital music. "Muziic fills a demand by streamlining this process and making it a whole lot easier to discover new artists and songs by using YouTube. It reinforces the idea that when done right, free, ad-supported music sharing websites and applications can provide artists and labels with full compensation and prove to be a profitable business for those streaming the content as well."
But is the Muziic Player a profitable business? Although YouTube's API does not serve advertisements through the YouTube embeddable player used by Muziic, the player makes money through ads on the Muziic.com website.
It is probably too late for the established news media, but somewhere in the cloud could be salvation.
If there is a tech buzzword in the blighted economy right now, it has to be “cloud.”
The cloud — a.k.a., cloud computing — is the rapidly growing suite of software applications accessible by the Internet and residing in massive data centers around the country.
The cloud offers the possibility of shifting much if not all of a business’s computing needs — from hardware to software, email to databases — away from bricks and mortar and IT departments onto the shoulders of Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, IBM, and a dozen other big players.
Cloud cover growing
The trend is unmistakable. Vast and power-hungry data centers already slurp up 1.5 percent of the energy consumed in the US. Such is their growth that within two years the EPA predicts their power usage could double.
They are more and more popular because as companies struggle to shed costs in the midst of a devastating recession outsourcing business infrastructure is an appealing option.
IBM’s metamorphosis into a cloud computing company is perhaps the most interesting to watch right now. Remember that the “M” in IBM stands for “machines.” IBM made its bones in the last century by selling hardware. In recent years, it has de-emphasized metal and plastic and microchips for industrial strength software. And now it is shifting once more.
“What you are seeing are the beginnings of the whole IBM company moving toward cloud computing,” IBM vice president Sean Poulley said on Wednesday.
Clouds from both sides
Here’s another sign that the cloud is the next new thing: It’s April 1st and Amazon decided its hoax today would be about cloud computing, because “in today’s post-capitalist world” companies need “locational flexibility, the ability to literally instantiate a cloud where they need it, when they need it.”
Amazon’s tongue-in-cheek solution: cloud blimps.
OK, it’s not an April Fool’s belly laugh for everybody. But at least you can see that the cloud idea is a hot enough topic enough that it can become a joke for propeller-heads.
The cloud is the message
Now imagine you are the CEO of a struggling media company. The story line is well known: Secular disruption caused by the Internet compounded by the worst economy since the Great Depression equals more and more red ink.
Revenue is collapsing. Proposed solutions like micro-payments and premium content don’t yet seem substantial enough to make up for the loss of print advertising dollars.
What’s left is cost cutting. And that’s tough. Media companies already know how important it is to shed their industrial costs — ink, paper, presses, delivery. Another big cost is people. But people are the core asset of media companies: independent eyes and ears that watch the world and tell the stories.
The cloud could be the answer. It could allow media companies someday to avoid going down the path of making significant capital investments in online tools such as content management systems and video hosting.
Like most proposals for helping the struggling news business, the cloud’s potential for cost-shfiting probably won’t kick in until after much more pain is experienced, more bankruptcies are declared, and more newsrooms shrink.
But the potential is there. To quote Google on the subject: “We have teams of people working with hundreds of publishers to find new and creative ways to earn money from engaging online content. AdSense, DoubleClick, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Earth, Google News and many other products are a part of our significant investments to innovate in this space.”
Who will be the first to build the newspaper on a cloud?
Usability guru, Jakob Nielsen shares an interesting finding that goes against the wishes of content portals:
Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave. Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention..many are "hot potato" driven and just want to get a specific task completed. [source]
He cites couple of reasons for this -
The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment
Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly.
Interesting stats
In 2004, about 40% of people visited a homepage and then
drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60% use a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25% of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there.
What does this mean?
Search engines rule the world. Content portals, no matter how hard they try will have a difficulty in retaining the users (and monetizing).
Success metrics need to be revisited - it should not be pageviews anymore (and am not talking about AJAX and PV issue). UUs and Returning frequency is what really matters. At the same time, content portals should rethink their push-approach (for e.g. rss feeds) and make that as part of the content strategy.
Jakob makes another interesting point - widgets are not adding value to sites, they actually are affecting the load time badly.
Vodafone is readying the HTC Magic phone, the second model based on Google's Android platform to reach the UK market, for next month. In a brief statement to Pocket-lint, Vodafone said that the short delay (the phone was originally due to be launched in April) was caused by a last minute hardware change. Mobiletoday says that the new phone, named HTC Magic Pioneer, will be available for as little as £25 on monthly contracts. This compares well with T-Mobile's £31.50 contract but a quick look at Vodafone's tariff list shows that £25 does not provide with unlimited internet. Vodafone Users have to spend £35 per month to get unlimited mobile internet and email. Mobiletoday also reports that T-mobile is in talks with HTC to release a third Android smartphone. Talkandroid however says that Vodafone UK has already confirmed that the Magic can be pre-ordered as from the 17th of April for £30 per month. The package is expected to include 600 minutes, unlimited SMS, Internet and email. On the other hand, T-Mobile offers 700 minutes rather than 600 minutes for £35.
A 15-year-old programming whiz from Iowa and his father have created the world's first YouTube music player, mining the site's extensive library of music videos free of charge.
