The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘downloadable’

For all of its stupidity, the music industry should be commended for relaxing its DRM requirements. Every single song on iTunes is DRM-free, as are the songs on Amazon MP3 and electronic music specialist Beatport

Read more here: 
What’s it going to take for PC game publishers to drop DRM altogether?

How did we miss this, a nine-page article in the New York Times about The Beatles: Rock Band ?

See original here:
1 to 10, how excited are you about The Beatles: Rock Band?

It’s sad to see a company that we were all so excited about fade further into oblivion. Today Joost, one of the most anticipated startups in 2006/2007, is just an also ran in a sea of big online video sites like YouTube and Hulu. Today CEO Mike Volpi stepped down, the company is laying off most of staff, and refocusing the business to “white label online video platforms for media companies.”

Om has a good monday morning quarterback overview of why they failed, but to me it comes down to just a few things. They over funded ($45 million before they even launched) and they ignored the fact that users were quite willing to sacrifice quality in online video for the convenience of Flash in the browser. Joost waited until late last year to go all Flash - until then users had to use the downloadable Joost software and allow P2P streaming of shows. In the meantime there was no linking to Joost videos. YouTube and Hulu got all that social media and SEO juice that could have gone to Joost.

Founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who founded Skype and Kazaa, see the world in terms of P2P and downloadable clients. The joke about how everything looks like a nail if you’re a hammer is very true with Joost. But what worked with Kazaa and Skype a decade ago doesn’t work with online video in today’s world, obviously.

And this new business focus for Joost - white label video platforms - is a very tough market. Yahoo just bailed on it entirely after investing $160 million or so in an acquisition of Maven Networks last year. And competitors like Brightcove and Ooyala aren’t just going to roll over and let Joost take market share in this space.

Here’s what I learned from Joost’s failure - celebrity founders, celebrity CEOs and tons and tons of cash can be a recipe for disaster. Applying yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems isn’t an interesting business. And finally, knowing when to throw in the towel and just return what’s left of capital to investors is an important skill as well. That way everyone can move on and focus on real value add opportunities. There’s no room for Joost in the consumer online video space, and there’s almost certainly no room for them in white label video, either. Time to call it a learning experience and move on.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

YouTube is trying to find more ways to monetize the popular web service, and recently started a test project with selected partners who were invited to start offering video downloads to interested viewers (they subsequently killed our own download tool, presumably because they want to minimize the risk of losing money on unauthorized download apps). Now it seems the Google-owned online video community site is ready to expand the program to other interested partners based in the U.S. (see screenshot below).

As we noted earlier when we first caught wind of the download service, selected YouTube partners can offer their video downloads for free or for a fee (determined by the partner), paid through Google Checkout. Most videos in the test charge about $1 each. The partner can also decide how the downloadable video will be licensed to the user - whether it will be restricted to a private non-commercial use video, or whether it can be used under Creative Commons.

It’s not entirely clear if Google / YouTube is currently taking a cut on the for-fee downloads during the test period, but it will most likely do that at some point if it isn’t already.

Recently, Crédit Suisse analyst Spencer Wang estimated that the video site will lose approximately $470 million this year alone (although we should note that another analyst, Youssef Squali from Jefferies & Co., predicted YouTube revenues to amount up $500 million in 2009).

Either way, in this economy, YouTube needs to be monetized as much and as soon as possible, and the video download option is just another way the company hopes to generate income from the popular site. Other steps it has taken up until now include YouTubevertorials, selling search results, and ad revenues from big content partners.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.