There's not a little fuss being made about the joint announcement from Google and the Prado in Madrid that some of the masterpieces in the latter's collection are going to be viewable in ultra-hi-res on Google Earth.
Matador Records' Patrick Amory tells Hypebot what is working for the label in marketing terms right now. We were especially taken with his approach to running a label blog:
"Our own label blog. Filling it with as much interesting stuff, non-musical as well as musical, non-Matador as well as Matador, has doubled our website traffic in the past year and vastly increased business on our webstore. It is also a highly effective method of syndicating promo content."
Of course, the record industry isn't always that smart... and often seems to bring others down to its own level. In a move which uncannily echoes the opening anecdote of Lessig's Remix, YouTube have announced that they'll be muting any UGC clips which feature un-licenced third party music. That'll definitely save the industry then.
And in a move (similarly) by turns desperate and, well, somewhat too late, New Labour has apparently opened an "office" in Second Life. Again: that'll do the trick.
Ahead of his upcoming report on digital Britain, Lord Carter has hinted that he'll be pushing for 100% broadband penetration as vital for the UK economy. Apparently he's also considering the merger of Channels 4 & 5 into a larger public service commercial broadcaster:
Over at Google, they've launched an addition to their maps of dozens of cities: public transport routes, but meanwhile have announced that they're ending the ability to upload to (the perpetually beta) Google Videos, one assumes in favour of YouTube.
On the BBC Audio & Music Our Radio Labs blog, our former BBC colleague Michael Smethurst writes with typical insight about the difficulties in creating unique idenitifiers for "works", be they books, records or radio shows.
The inexorable transition from physical to virtual product is demonstrated nicely by the announcement that Blockbuster will be working with Sonic Solutions' CinemaNow to deliver a Blockbuster-branded online and mobile video service.
The upcoming trial of Joel Tannenbaum, who's apparently being sued by the RIAA for a million dollars for illegally downloading, er, seven songs, is going to be webcast, a US courtroom first.
The convergence of the internet and the games console continues apace with YouTube optimising its content for the PS3 and Wii.
The World Service's great finance & industry correspondent Peter Day this week interviewed Wired's Chris Anderson about his "Free" theories and upcoming book.
Talking of free stuff... Andrew Dubber maintains the excellent New Music Strategies blog. This week he discusses the whys and wherefores of giving away recorded music. I've not read anything quite as succinct as his riposte to a musican asking why they should "give their music away":
"1) You’re not giving away music, you’re giving away RECORDINGS of your music; 2) Don’t try to make money from your music, make money BECAUSE of your music; 3) Economics works differently for bits than it does for atoms."
Oh, and one more Anderson-related nugget. There's a big old Long Tail backlash going on at the moment, but it seems eMusic's consumption figures still bear him out...
Finally, The Independent's web offering has never really stood up against the competition - especially the Guardian (and I write this as an Indy, rather than Guardian loyalist). The inclusion of Al Jazeera video content, however, is a significant enhancement.
Simon
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