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Posts Tagged ‘Parent Company’

Zimbalam brings mass distibution to indie musicians

Zimbalam, which launched in Europe in 2009 to help artists get their music widely distributed without a lot of work, opened its doors to US stores this week, meaning any artist using Zimbalam can now sell their music in the United States.

Zimbalam promises to distribute an artist’s music across multiple services, from Spotify and eMusic to behemoths like iTunes, Rhapsody and Amazon. The company is hooked into 35 different outlets, which lead to hundreds of other stores – a huge distribution network for musicians. Like competitor Tunec

The company’s revenue stream is simple: It charges $19.99 for an artist to distribute a single, or $29.99 for an album. After the initial release, there’s a yearly fee of $9.99 or $19.98, respectively. The company keeps all the royalties from sales until that figure is met and then gives 100% of subsequent royalties to the artist. In a surprisingly musician-friendly move, if the music doesn’t make more than the subscription fee, Zimbalam only charges what the music earned, and no more.

Through March 31, because of South By Southwest, Zimbalam is offering an even better deal for artists, charging only $3.99 for a single release and $5.99 for an album. All a musician has to do is use the coupon code SXSW when they sign up.

Zimbalam offers some free tools as well. It has developed a number of widgets for artists that let them do everything from embed their music on a website to create apps on Facebook and MySpace to interact with their fans.

Like its competitor Tunecore, Zimbalam takes a non-exclusive right on the sales of an album. Users can pick and choose where their music gets distributed, and can see aggregated or individualized reports on how their album is doing. They also get control of the price and release date of their album, as well as all the details of how it gets sold.

Zimbalam’s parent company is Paris-based Believe Digital, which says it’s the “leading digital distributor and services provider for independent artists and labels in Europe.” Zimbalam seems to be a natural extension of what Believe Digital already does and takes advantage of the relationships the company already has. The company was founded by music executives from around the world, with a lot of experience in the digital music industry.

The model seems to be working in Europe: Zimbalam’s website boasts that Believe Digital has paid $22 million in royalties since 2005 and has had 10 number one digital singles in the same time span. If the company can get similarly entrenched in the American music scene, it might become an invaluable resource for independent artists in the US.

Believe Digital, based in Paris, is a 70-employee company with $8.5 million in funding from xAnge and Ventech.

Companies: co:believe digital, co:zimbalam

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Packard Bell Studio ST media playback drive invades Europe

It’s not much more than a hard drive with HD media playback abilities, but the Packard Bell Studio ST certainly looks nice, doesn’t it? It’s Europe-only for now, but we’re hoping parent company Acer brings over a US-branded version of this box, which holds up to a 2TB hard drive and can do 1080p out over HDMI with Dolby Digital. Codec support is described as “all main formats,” which is a little shady, but we’ll be forgiving if it’s cheaper than the Western Digital WD TV Live HD.

[Thanks, Matt]

Packard Bell Studio ST media playback drive invades Europe originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SproutBaby acquires blogging network EcoMom to build online baby product empire

Online baby product retailer SproutBaby acquired blogging network EcoMom today in an all-equity transaction. The deal reflects a growing trend where editorial content and direct marketing are blended to drive sales in niche online communities.

SproutBaby sells “eco-conscious” infant products like organic baby food and skin care products that omit chemicals linked to cancer. EcoMom is a blogging network and online community of ecologically-conscious mothers.

“We realized we would have a much stronger offering together, than as separate companies,” said SproutBaby chief executive and founder Jody Sherman. ”Our community and market is made of parents who are dedicated to conscientious consumerism and raising their own families in a healthy and environmentally sound way.”

Although he wouldn’t release specific revenue figures, Sherman said SproutBaby, which launched last February, has high conversion rates; more than 5 percent of people who visit the site end up buying products from the company. Gross margins average out to be 40 percent on the 1,000 products the company carries. SproutBaby’s parent company, February Won, is backed with $360,000 in angel funding.

In very specific vertical markets, we’re seeing the traditional line between advertising and editorial content fade. Glam Media, another women-focused blogging network, recently raised $50 million at a $750 million valuation on the back of success it’s seeing with sponsored content and advertising sales. Passionate niche communities like those seen on EcoMom are likely to be more receptive to sales and offers that cater to their interests.

Tags: ecomom, sproutbaby

Companies: ecomom, sproutbaby

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MySpace’s Hail Mary Strategy: “Discovery”

MySpace’s new slogan, and the theme of their new product strategy, will be “Discover and be Discovered,” we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. This will be their differentiating factor from Facebook, execs told employees at an all hands meeting last Thursday.

The meeting was called in the wake of the firing of CEO Owen Van Natta and the related promotions of Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn to co-presidents. The meeting, which was held in the courtyard of MySpace’s Los Angeles headquarters to accomodate 600 or employees, was also broadcast to other offices around the world.

The meeting began, say sources, with a discussion of the drama around the company over the last several weeks. Parent company News Corp’s Digital Chief Jon Miller apparently didn’t mince words, saying that Van Natta wasn’t moving fast enough and that there was too much conflict among the executive team. Hirschhorn also denied rumors that he ever considered leaving the company, which is contrary to the statements of about a dozen sources who’ve said the opposite to us.

Miller also reiterated News Corp.’s commitment to MySpace and outlined how the co-president structure will work. “They get along really well,” he reportedly said. Hirschhorn handles product vision, Jones handles execution.

More importantly, MySpace’s go forward vision was presented to employees, say our sources, and it was all about a single feature thrust that they’re calling “Discovery.”

The idea is to hit users over the head with new stuff when they come to MySpace. New people they should be meeting. Movie trailers they should watch. Games they may want to play (perhaps against other MySpace users), music they should listen to, articles they should read. Etc. The activity stream that MySpace recently launched will be the backbone of Discovery, but other MySpace products will feed into this as well.

If they get this right, the thinking goes, people will want to visit the site over and over again to see what new stuff they can do.

This is effectively a recommendation engine around new content, says one source, but MySpace doesn’t want people calling it that. Still, the idea is that an algorithm (and advertisers) will determine what stuff you might like (or tolerate, in the case of ads) based on what other users are liking.

The goal is to give users something to do on MySpace that’s somewhat different than Facebook. And get them to come back often.

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ThisNext buys Stylehive to dominate social shopping

Social shopping startup called ThisNext is expanding — it just announced the acquisition of another social shopping site, Stylehive, and has created a new parent company called Curatemedia to manage both sites.

At ThisNext, you can recommend products you like, follow the recommendations of other shoppers, and also “shopcast” your ThisNext recommendations on other sites. Stylehive uses some of the same principles, but unlike the varied, generalist collection of products discussed on ThisNext, it focuses on style and fashion, and also features recommendations from editors and bloggers. Under the umbrella of Curatemedia, the Santa Monica, Calif. company says it will run ThisNext, Stylehive, and soon other social shopping sites that cater to specific audiences and shopping cateogries..

The company did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition.

ThisNext also confirmed that it has raised a third round of funding, which was revealed last week in a regulatory filing, and which comes from Clearstone Venture Partners, Anthem Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company didn’t specify the size of the round, but according to the filing it was $1.2 million.

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Gateway EC18T / Acer Aspire 1420P convertible tablet hits the FCC

We haven’t heard much about the Gateway EC18T since we saw all those leaked pics back in October, but it looks like things are starting to move: the convertible tablet just hit the FCC database, complete with some more external pictures. From all appearances, it looks like this one’s going to be a family affair, as the machine itself will be sold by Gateway parent company Acer as the Aspire Timeline 1420P, and the FCC docs indicate sister company Packard Bell will have a version as well. Badging aside, inside we’re looking at a 1.2GHz SU2300 Core 2 Duo with GMA 4500MHD graphics, up to 8GB of RAM, a 500GB max drive, an 11.6-inch screen, and an eight-hour battery life — so depending on price, this one could be pretty attractive. We’ll wait to see how long it takes before one version or another escapes the government and hits store shelves.

Gateway EC18T / Acer Aspire 1420P convertible tablet hits the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Dec 2009 23:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What It’s Like To Write For Demand Media: Low Pay But Lots of Freedom

Editor: This is a guest post by Andria Krewson, a freelance journalist who has written for Demand Media. Given our recent focus on Demand Media and so-called content farms, we thought it would be interesting to get a perspective from a Demand Media writer.

I made $37.50 at Demand Studios in November. That money went directly into my Paypal account, on time, with no billing hassles. But it probably took me about six hours of filling out a profile, studying a style guide and learning how to navigate the system. So my hourly pay was about $6, for a writer new to the system.

Sponsor

Andria Krewson is a freelance journalist and consultant in Charlotte, N.C. She has worked at newspapers for 27 years, focusing on design and editing of community publications. She blogs for her neighborhood at Under Oak and covers changing culture at Crossroads Charlotte. Reach her on Twitter as @underoak.

I had heard about Demand Studios from former co-workers before Wired wrote about Demand Media (Demand Studio’s parent company) in October, and media pundits like Jay Rosen followed up with comments on Twitter and an interview with the company’s CEO at ReadWriteWeb. [Ed: ReadWriteWeb's first analysis of Demand Media was in August.] Demand Media has been criticized for producing low-quality content designed for search engine optimization. It’s not journalism, critics say, and it’s clogging up Google searches, making good stuff hard to find.

But I suspect much of that criticism has come from people who haven’t gone inside the Demand Studios part of Demand Media to see how it really works, or they haven’t thought enough about what kind of content it provides, or they haven’t thought enough about how it feels to swallow your pride and make a little money with your strongest knowledge and skills, no matter the global hourly rate.

There are differences between the user-generated content at sites Demand Media feeds, and the content generated by Demand Studios.

So let’s get to it.

How it works

People sign up as writers, editors or filmmakers. I signed up as a writer. Contributors study the style guide, which gives specifics on allowed citations, and why citations are needed, and how to write for search-engine optimization without sounding too clunky. New writers can also consult forums and connect with other contributors with social-networking tools. Writers can then use keywords, pay rates and general content areas to search through available assignments. Generally, enough assignments exist that writers can find subjects of personal interest.

Fact sheets get $7.50 an assignment. I fulfilled one of those before I realized that rate of pay wasn’t worth the effort. The next two assignments, for $15 each, both dealt with the same topic, with slightly different angles, and I chose them because I knew the subject well. Still, I had to do some research, to back up my statements and provide links to .edu or .gov sites. No Wikipedia allowed.

Once accepting assignments, I had a week to submit them to editors. While I could have written each piece without any research, citations and outbound links are required, as well as a summary (a nut graf, essentially, in newspaper terms). Frankly, the discipline of filling out boxes with words could help some professional writers improve the focus of their pieces. Certainly new writers can learn from the system. And the SEO tips in the style guide are worth study.

One piece I wrote was bounced back for further editing. The editor’s comments were gentle but clear. I made fixes, resubmitted, and got paid, through Paypal, no invoices necessary.

What’s the content?

The stories are usually how-to pieces, often broken into steps. They’re evergreen, designed to be as relevant in a year or two as they are now. They’re the kinds of questions I would usually get answered through a phone call to my contractor father, or my brother the car genius, or my mother the seamstress/cook/homemaker/gardener/early computer geek.

You can tell by the assignment headlines that they’re generated from search engine queries, and sometimes those search terms provide some amusement. People are actually turning to Google to ask these questions? What happened to asking basic questions from friends and family?

But indeed, we’re in a different world, and the criticism of Demand Media by some pundits strikes me as a bit elitist, as if the Internet weren’t for everyone. A personal example:

(Daughter, 19, volunteers to help me with my eye shadow for a special event.)

Me: Where’d you learn this technique?

Her: Youtube.

(And indeed, eHow videos, supplied by Demand Media, show how to apply eye shadow.)

Next page: Swallowing my pride

Comcast inches closer to buying NBC

It’s been over a month since we last heard anything about the rumored Comcast takeover of NBC, but things are slowly starting to move forward: Bloomberg says that NBC parent company GE has bought out Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in the broadcaster for $5.8b, with up to a $2b refund due back if the Comcast deal isn’t done by the end of 2010. That’s no small gamble — Comcast will have to clear a “gauntlet” of federal regulators from the FCC and FTC, who will scrutinize everything from the transfer of TV broadcast licenses in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles to the effects on competitors like Dish Network and Verizon, who will still want access to NBC’s huge stable of content and programming. Big challenges, to be sure, but we get the feeling this deal is going down one way or another — get ready for a rocky 2010.

Comcast inches closer to buying NBC originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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