Posted 12/08/09 at 07:04:46 AM by Paul Lilly

The major music labels hope Vevo will do for music videos what Hulu has done for movies and TV shows. In other words, become wildly popular.

Vevo will be a website for music videos and has the backing of co-owners Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment (Abu Dhabi Media Company also owns a stake). On Monday, Vevo announced it had signed up EMI as a video provider, which leaves Warner Music as the only holdout among the four biggest music labels.

"It will be a higher-quality experience around music and videos than anything else that's currently out there," Rio Caraeff, Vevo's chief executive, said in an interview.

Caraeff went on to say that Vevo would host 30,000 music videos by the end of the year, which will include original programs by artists for their fans.

On the technical side, videos will be hosted and streamed by YouTube. Vevo also plans to syndicate videos to a bunch of other sites, a la Hulu.

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Posted 11/11/09 at 12:00:00 PM by David Murphy

Everyone wants a piece of the direct-download pie. With apologies to our gaming columnist for inching onto his beat just a tad, I think that some intrepid gamer - or, better, an intrepid gamer-businessman - needs to put his finger in the swelling dike of direct download services before it bursts all over the Web and ruins us all.

Dramatic? Perhaps. The description is no less dramatic than my growing frustration at the inability to manage my downloads, multiplayer experience, and cash across the many platforms that exist on the modern-day "Gamer's Internet." In a perfect world, the various game publishers would band together and come up with a common solution-a universal iTunes, if you will-by which all could contribute core content, extras, add-ons, and share the costs of bandwidth, UI development, and communal matchmaking.

As you might expect, that's hardly the case.

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Posted 06/16/09 at 10:00:06 AM by Paul Lilly

Through a partnership with Universal, Virgin Media said it plans to launch an unlimited music download subscription service. The well timed announcement comes just one day before a British report hits the public eye detailing how the creative and telecom industries should go about bumping up digital sales to cope with lost revenue due to online piracy.

"We listened to our customers, our fans, and our artists and we think that this is an opportunity to bring music to a wider audience," said Lucian Grainge, Universal Music chairman and CEO.

According to Reuters, people familiar with the service said it would cost around $16 to $24 per month. Both sides are describing the service as a world first, which would allow Virgin Media broadband customers to both listen to streaming tracks and download however many tracks and albums they want.

Unlike other unlimited subscription services, the downloadable MP3s won't come with any DRM shackles, which means the tracks can be transferred to and played from any MP3-capable device.

"This is really high stakes, if this can't work then what will," commented Mark Mulligan, an analyst with Jupiter.

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Posted 06/27/08 at 10:42:44 PM by Paul Lilly

ESPN's "Ultimate Remote" looks nothing like the one Adam Sandler wielded in the move Click, nor can it manipulate time. It can't mute your girlfriend, and no matter what combination of buttons you push, you won't be able to call an audible and change the outcome of the SuperBowl. So can it still live up to its moniker and be the last remote you'll ever buy?

To learn what nifty tricks the Ultimate Remote can do, click through the jump.

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