UPDATED 09:15 EDT / MARCH 21 2012

Beats Buys MOG, YouTube Launches Live Comedy Channel

There’s a lot of buzz going around the entertainment sector from TV to music as these two industries look to the digital world for their future success.  Here are some of the latest developments in the online video and music-streaming sectors.

Music Industry

Beats

Beats Electronics, the headset manufacturer founded by Dr. Dre with majority ownership by HTC, is purchasing MOG, the subscription-based music service.  The terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, and the acquisition not yet finalized.

MOG CEO David Hyman boasted that they have 500,000 active subscribers, but denied that they were in acquisition talks just last month.  MOG’s recent strategy to increase their subscribers was “frictionless sharing” on Facebook.

Spotify

Spotify, the Swedish music streaming company, is said to be revolutionizing how people listen to music with their Facebook integration.  We can’t deny the fact that seeing which music our friends are listening in on intrigues us, broadening our choice in music sharing and discovery.

During SXSW last week, Sean Parker, founder of Napster, and Spotify investor, predicted that Spotify would overtake iTunes, in terms of revenue, in a couple of years.

Another interesting development at SXSW was Spotify’s battle with MySpace over Mumford & Sons.  Both wanted the band to play at their parties but MySpace won, as the band played at the University of Texas last Saturday.

Video Streaming

YouTube

YouTube is embracing comedic entertainment as My Damn Channel launches their a daily live comedy show packed with live interviews and real-time audience interaction.  My Damn Channel Live is part of YouTube’s original content line-up.  Show starts on Wednesday, March 28th, at 1pm PT and will for an hour.

“It’s the beginnings of what a cable television network would look like – if it was run by lunatics,” said Rob Barnett, Hollywood veteran and founder / CEO of My Damn Channel.

BSkyB

BSkyB, the UK pay TV platform leader is launching a new brand, NOW TV, their upcoming satellite-less, over-the-internet TV packages.

“The launch of a second brand is an exciting opportunity for us and the rationale is very simple. Having two brands will allow us to meet the needs and preferences of different customer segments more effectively,” CEO Jeremy Darroch told The Guardian’s Changing Media Summit on Wednesday.

“We’ll offer two distinctive ways to watch: the market-leading full Sky service for the whole family, complete with the widest range of channels, high quality products like Sky+, HD and Sky Go, and the peace of mind of a monthly bill; or the flexible, more spontaneous, pay-as-you-go service of NOW TV.

“Because NOW TV will also be ‘powered by Sky’, customers will still know that it will give them the best, exclusive content and a high quality experience, from a provider they can trust. Either way, we believe we can offer even more customers a product that’s just right for them.”

Brightcove

Brightcove, provider of cloud content services, announced the Brightcove Content Exchange initiative, enabling Video Cloud media customers to access libraries of third-party video content and to execute advertising strategies around licensed content.

The initiative brings together a select group of Brightcove partners with large libraries of high quality online video, including AOL Video, Diagonal View, Internet Video Archive, NewsLook, ScreenPlay, Inc., and Touchstorm.  The idea is to make their content easily accessible to media publishers using the Video Cloud online video platform.

“Media publishers know that the breadth and depth of their content library directly influences their success with online video, since more content attracts more viewers, brings them back more frequently, keeps them engaged for longer periods of time, and makes a site more discoverable by search engines,” said Chris Johnston, director of technology partnerships at Brightcove.

“Most media publishers have limited resources to scale in-house video production, making it prohibitively expensive to satisfy viewers’ constantly-growing appetite for fresh content. The Brightcove Content Exchange initiative makes large amounts of relevant, professionally-produced video content easily available and facilitates multi-party revenue-sharing arrangements.”


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