Interactive Business

Universal Music is rolling out an online music broadcast service for consumers just as it launches a legal battle against Grouper and Bolt.com, where users swap videos and songs for free. The new service, launching in the U.K. today, will become available to U.S. consumers in December.

In a bid to block renegade Web sites from giving away its songs and videos, Universal Music Group is set to launch an Internet service to make sure it can cash in on its own material.

The new service, which launches in the U.K. today, will become available to U.S. consumers in December and will eventually give users legal access to the thousands of artists under Universal's umbrella.

The move is a frontal assault on outfits such as YouTube, the video site recently purchased by Google for $1.65 billion.

The Universal service "creates a direct-to-consumer broadcast network which is completely under Universal Music's control," said Rob Wells, Senior Vice President, Digital, for Universal Music Group International.

Robert Kelly, the CEO of WWEBNET, the New York-based company which built the service, said his company has struck deals with 70 content owners and was in talks with all the major record labels and movie studios.

"Entertainment industry executives have realized that they need to have their own networks, or else the software companies will just buy them and there won't be an entertainment business anymore," said Kelly.

WWEBNET, a five-year-old Big Apple startup, has received $6 million in seed funding from Palladin Opportunity Fund and other "angel investors," Kelly said.

Kelly said that his firm had retained EKN Securities and filed a letter of intent - a first step toward an initial public offering of the company.

Universal's new service, which will be controlled by Universal and operated on a subscription model, provides users access to song and music video streams and downloads, backstage interviews, concert footage, and vault materials from Universal's vast content library.

Universal, which is owned by French media giant Vivendi, is home to dozens of record labels, including Interscope/Geffen/A&M, Island Def Jam, and Motown Records. Artists such as Jay-Z, U2, Bon Jovi, and Mariah Carey all call Universal home.
Source: NY Post

Electronic books were once hyped as an inevitability. And along with the hoopla came prophecies that books’ and newspapers’ ink would run dry - a frightening prospect for fans of print.
“It’s amazing the gut reaction people have when you talk about taking that away from them,” said Darren Bischoff, senior marketing manager at E-Ink Corp. - the Cambridge-based company that created the technology for the Sony Reader’s display.

The e-book revolution has been slower than initially predicted, but Sony’s latest foray could be the next step in that direction.
And E-Ink, which makes a film that requires little light, is very much responsible for the Sony Reader’s book-like display.
It’s a technology the company said it can extend to newspapers as well. Though E-Ink isn’t responsible for manufacturing products, its film could be used to make highly flexible electronic newspapers, Bischoff said.
“If you read a newspaper in a taxi cab, in a plane, on the beach, wherever you can read a newspaper you can read our devices,” he said.
It’s piqued the interest of some publishers. E-Ink counts Hearst Corp., McClatchy Co. and Vivendi Universal Publishing among its investors.

Kenneth Bronfin, president of Hearst Interactive Media, sits on the company’s board of directors.
Still, Bischoff said the company isn’t out to replace newspapers or books.
“The newspaper is not going to go away. The physical book is not going to go away. But there are certain amounts of your day where you say, ‘Hey, this electronic book is very useful,’ ” he said.
The e-newspaper may still be years in the future. What form customers would prefer is also undetermined.
“At the end of the day, it’s a social issue rather than a technological one,” Bischoff said.
E-Ink isn’t out to save the newspaper industry. It’s out to sell its film, whether the purchaser is interested in digital books, signs or even watches.
“As a business model, we’re not out to sell electronic newspapers to the public,” Bischoff said. “We want to be good at making electronic paper.”
Source: BH.com