WWDC2003 Session 725

Transcript

Kind: captions
Language: en
hi everybody thanks for coming Glenn
bullet
quicktime team we're really happy to
have this session especially with the
two industry luminaries that we were
lucky enough to get from Los Angeles
before I introduce John enhance CDs are
a particular passion of mine and and
certainly at Apple we've been working
with developers for years to deliver and
a half CDs that have any range of sort
of interesting content on them from the
simplest read me in a QuickTime movie in
the data session to really really
exciting follow the lyrics bouncing ball
kind of really really cool stuff and
John's going to talk about the sort of
record industry outlook on enhanced CDs
what they're doing what's good what's
bad what's worked well what hasn't and
the sort of interesting thing that would
sort of always pissed me off is that
record labels had this opportunity to
build a bridge with consumers and and
really the only thing that they ever did
was sort of have this 22nd transactional
relationship at Tower and here was all
the opportunity sitting in the data
session in event of an enhanced CD to
say hey here's a video of the band and
here's some biography and oh here's a
link to the website and here's all the
sorts of ways that we can continue the
relationship because you think you might
like this band so I'm really pleased to
report that that is changing now and so
the labels are looking at it enhanced
CDs as a way of adding value to the
compact discs in a way of sort of
beginning the communication and that's
really grown in exponential way so our
second speaker intervened Jane from
spark art is is going to walk us through
a lot of that technology that's being
implemented now at the labels so John my
Fionna has done an incredible job at
many labels doing enhanced CDs and
there's a consultant of music industry
we're really happy to have him give them
a warm welcome we'll save QA for the end
and when we do Q&A please if you would
use the microphone so that we can hear
the question clearly and it can be
translated immediately into Japanese
that would be great so I'll hand you
over to John thanks
good morning my name is John together
with my colleague Naveen we're going to
cover our background so i'm working with
enhance at ease most of the discussion
is going to cover the production the
authoring and the process of creating
enhance cities for record labels media
companies and marketing companies i
produced enhanced fees for the past of
several years three years or so but
recently within the past year I've begun
changing my production efforts due to a
trend in the industry let's go to the
first flight i'll do it a trend in the
industry to collect marketing and
demographic information from cd-rom
media who's also been pretty successful
and i'll go over some of the specific
examples later first I want to talk
briefly about the role in hand cities
have in the music industry and it's been
evolving over the past couple of years
it shouldn't be any surprise that some
record labels are using enhanced CDs as
one way to combat music piracy on the
internet by offering additional content
on the media itself entices consumers to
buy the disc rather than download it I
think that's a really important part of
enhanced at ease now in the past year
I've tried to advance the quality of
media that can be offered on enhanced
CDs and to make the consumer experience
more enjoyable and also to get
information back from consumers for the
label on the form of mailing lists
collecting demographic information first
I want to go over the technical
specifications of what an enhanced CD is
and then discuss the production tools
and methods I've used for clients in the
entertainment industry and then the
vigne will pick up the discussion and
talk about the future of enhanced duties
and key things he has been working on to
expand the market and interest for
enhanced CDs from the label and consumer
perspective a normal audio disc is
referred to as a Redbook standard this
is a format of most standard audio CDs
and it contains up to about ninety nine
tracks the Blue Book standard defines
the enhanced music CD it's also referred
to as CD extra and it's a specification
for a multi session press disc
comprising audio and data sessions
recorded separately essentially the
audio and data tracks to record in a
separate session so there's no
overlap between the audio and data and
also prevents the data tracks from being
played on home hi-fi stereo equipment in
the old days before multi-session discs
were a standard for creating enhanced
CDs cd-rom data was often recorded in
the same session as the audio meaning
that audio CD players your home CD
player or your car CD player could
recognize a data track and be able to
play it which is a terrible user
experience I've seen several older
enhance cities where the data track was
actually track 1 so you by seeding you
pop it in your CD player and you hear a
horrible screeching noise of course they
usually tell you that on the sleeves but
it's not exactly an ideal user
experience on a blue buzz multi-session
discs the first session is audio it can
contain up to 98 tracks and after the
session is the audio has been recorded a
second session the data is burnt onto
the disk typically the second session is
a hybrid session that contains both the
mac and pc data and there's also an
approximate 27 megabyte lead out and
lead in gap between the audio and data
sessions the gap is necessary to prevent
the data traction being recognized as
audio tracks on standard CD players it
also as the significant real estate
space on the did the enhanced use i
create are often for record labels and
media related companies so I concentrate
on packing as much media as I can on the
second session after the audio has been
finalized I usually always need to know
precisely how much audio is going to be
included on the disc in order to gauge
the real estate space I have left and
real estate space i'm just literally
talking about megabytes we've got 700
megabytes at maximum to work with so if
there's you know 18 tracks to you know
72 minutes that's not much space left we
always have to plan for the contingency
that we're going to have to leave
something off if we run out of space
always always always always use video in
quicktime format over to so come back to
this page i haven't found any format
that works better on enhance to these
quick time is definitely the best I
usually use Sorenson three compression
320 x 240 frame size and a rates of 1500
k per second well sometimes we'll push
it up to 512 by 380
for frame size in a 2,000 or 2,500
kilobytes per second for a rate but that
increases the file size considerably and
some machines have harder times playing
it so I'll typically offer the user a
choice to decide between the two and
just leave it up to them we tried
encoding it 640 by 480 but few machines
can handle it seamlessly so we usually
stick to 512 x 3 84 and 320 x 240 always
include standard web links on enhanced
cds photo galleries music always in
quicktime format and an option to sign
up for the project or artists or labels
mailing list the mailing list
information is interesting because it
can be collected straight off the disc
by sending the information directly from
the enhanced to the application to a
script on the webs and no browser is
necessary it's a seamless experience
you're just watching a video you can
sign up for an artist mailing list or
you know or do other interactive things
while you're watching watching video
content depending on the market for the
individual cd-rom I found the people
overwhelmingly sign up and give
demographic information on enhanced
music CDs given that fact I make it as
easy as possible for them to to sign up
don't know why exactly maybe it's just
because it's so easy it's sitting right
there you're watching a video you just
type in some information and send it
away you're feeling closer to the artist
or the project it's kind of unclear why
people do it so much but they really do
and it's great for the music industry to
get that data back due to the fast-paced
nature of the industry there sometimes
isn't enough time to produce the content
fast enough to make the production
delivery date as I mentioned before this
space limitations often make it
necessary to put bonus content on the
web logically labels and marketing
companies want to restrict access to it
so that only people who bought the CD
can get access to it there are a variety
of different ways to do that sometimes
we use flash variables session variables
cookies things like that to control the
exclusivity of it when I author enhance
CDs I nearly always use macromedia
director it's a it's a great tool and
used to create the main interfaces in
the portal to the actual content
director is really easy to use I can
hide hidden content with it a standalone
projector application and integrate a
lot of different media components into
the director of framework district a
blitz terminology i use the term
projector to refer to the interface it's
basically just a stand-alone application
assists on the disc if there's a type of
media that someone wants to use on an
intensity and director doesn't support
it chances are there's a plug-in there's
an extra or some script written in lingo
that'll get around it or you know
somehow be able to import it in there
and use it the most advantageous reason
I found Hughes director for interactive
enhanced CDs is its excellent ability to
channel information in and out of the
application database interaction allows
us to handle email collection push
dynamic content directly into the
interface and manage users experience
through the use of sessions and
preferences files we can record and
track pretty much anything we want to
about the users experience without
disrupting their experience it's all
handled by Scripps in the back end so
that's the main reason why I excuse to
use director as a powerful tool to
author enhanced CDs that require a lot
of interactivity and tracking there are
some limitations though and just anyone
out there is from macromedia like you to
spend a few minutes on how director
could be a little bit better the biggest
problem I have with oh there go go back
the biggest problem I have with director
is you have to author multiple
projectors per project I'll typically
author three projectors per project one
for the pc one for OS 9 and then one for
OS 10 / handles the authoring of
multiple projectors rather seamlessly
but director doesn't director does
handle many standard cd-rom media
formats so that's a very good thing and
QuickTime is one of the formats that
usually works flawlessly and director
mp3 audio in in director is often
problematic for me there's often
occasional distortion things that happen
especially in the QC process mp3 audio
sometimes gets cut off and the biggest
issue I think with director is the is
the size issue when you offer a
projector interface with no graphics or
content at all it takes up a minimum of
two megabytes of space when I'm dealing
with a 77 minute audio disc and I need
to author a hybrid mac and pc session on
the same 80-minute capacity disk that
two megabytes spaces is way too much for
that kind of project so it really can
mean the difference of fitting the data
on the disk or not if i use director
that's why i want to show you a few
examples of you know interesting things
that we've been able to do with director
and the first example of the James Bond
die another day enhanced CD the CD
featured and exclude an extensive photo
gallery of all bond movies a dynamic
photo gallery of all the bond women in
addition to two video clips one from
Madonna and email collection of course
and links to other video content on the
web the next example is the Fleetwood
Mac best of this one has to be was
definitely a disk space challenge
project somehow we were able to cram a
five-minute video lyrics to all 36 songs
on the compilation full discography
email collection web links and bonus
content onto an audio disc that was
already 70 minutes runtime the last
example was an interesting example of
requiring email registration to access
exclusive content on the web it was for
the lord of the rings fellowship of the
ring enhanced CD came out about a year
and a half ago the disc actually
featured practically no content at all
there wasn't enough time to put content
on the disc itself but an exclusive link
got you two bonus web content and access
to the content was given by required
email registration the site featured
several video trailers and you ecard
wallpaper stationary buddy icons and
more email signups are actually still
being collected off of that disc even
though the two towers isn't out for six
months and I think to date we've
received about 400,000 unique
registration from that enhance city that
was a really good enhance City it worked
out really well the tremendous response
from the first enhance city was a great
lead into the planning of the next
release the two towers and a special
internet version was actually prepared I
believe for the next release
and it was specifically offered to the
consumers who bought the first one some
of the music projects I work on are
distributed all over the world and an
interesting byproduct of that is that
some discs many discs often need to be
reauthorizations in foreign countries
the UK in particular has specific chart
regulations only one web link can be
included on a disc which is quite
limiting video data is limited to 15
minutes no more and email collection
can't physically appear on the disc
itself without impeding the chances of
the seat that the city will have the
chart most other worldwide territories
don't have those stringent restrictions
but there are some new laws now that
that require it require content to be
approved a little bit more specifically
now than it was before lastly I just
want to spend a few minutes going over
the eqc process for enhanced degrees
from an operating system perspective and
a user perspective after all the content
has been assembled and approved by the
content owner the fun is really just
starting for me and all the wonderful
engineers you have to sit down and test
every possible user pass through every
single screen of the enhanced CD all the
functionality has to be tested from a
from a detailed standpoint for the user
and operating systems of course and
typically they are tested on every
platform imaginable and they're always
minor discrepancies between OS platforms
and sometimes major discrepancies
sometimes with the media a director
playback error an encoding flaw or a
stupid mistake that I made and it's
usually the latter just as an example it
took several days to accuse me Linkin
Park's meteora CD and get it out the
door due to a Windows 98 and OS 9 issue
with a plug-in that I was using to play
the red book audio off the CD inside the
director interface took us about four
days to get through that and production
death threats were made in our
directions but we finally got a solution
and typically it usually takes about one
to four days to QC and enhance City
entirely depending on how much content
there is and depending on how complex
the back end components are as well
ideally from a user perspective the
enhanced CD experience should be as
seamless as possible and not require any
added effort on the user's part
generally aya I like to test to make
sure the user has all the components
needed to play all the content on an
enhanced City before the application
launches several checks can be made in
the background without the user being
aware of anything that's going on over
the most often scenario is that the user
doesn't have quicktime and they have to
they're forced to download it I'd love
to establish a method where the latest
version of quicktime could just be
automatically installed without the user
having to be having to do it do anything
and currently I don't place the
QuickTime installer on the disc itself
sometimes TVs are out in the market for
three four or five years so putting an
installer on the disc creates a problem
that it might be outdated during the
time span of the CDs on the market most
of the components we can check for and
automatically update in the background
and director has a great way of handling
some of those things with lingo scripts
and things like that so that the user
isn't bothered by having a download a
flash component or something that they
need this time I want to turn things
over to naveen who will probably
describe more of the marketing tracking
and the benefits that labels receives
from enhancing these in the future of
enhance these hello there
thank you very much John at first I
would like to start with the the current
state of ecds on the marketplace now
John gave you a little bit of a
description but John is really talking
about the premium ecd the reality is is
that the vast majority of ecgs that are
produced quite honestly don't even come
close to the Fleetwood Mac ecd or the
Lincoln Park ecd or some of the other
ETD is that John has worked on so
typically first of all just to introduce
the current state of e CDs basically the
ecd as John said is really the post
purchase an immediate connection with
with the consumer this person's actually
took their time to go out to a record
store or you know luckily hopefully buy
it online and this is the one time you
really have to connect with that
consumer post purchase and it's the time
for both the label and artist to make
the connection and you know that they're
a real fan because they actually bought
the disc it's also one of the one of the
few parts of a new media campaign that
the label typically runs that has a
quote unquote perceived value to the
consumer I mean the vet of the consumer
doesn't really value the website or
value anything else that the new media
Department will typically do at a label
but the enhanced discs you know by way
of a sticker on the front of the disc or
whatnot you know supposedly it's
supposed to have some value to the
consumer and yet even with these key
aspects of enhanced CDs nine times out
of ten they feel rushed and they almost
never take advantage of the technology
that's currently available at the time
of purchase so there are a couple
different types of enhanced CDs John
primarily was talking about you know
quote unquote standard enhanced cds
which are you know director Bill
multimedia pieces that actually sit on
the CD and sometimes connect with the
web or whatnot there's another type of
enhanced CD that John also briefly
mentioned which is more of like a CD
being used as a key to access exclusive
content for example the lord of the
rings and
is that John produced now the beauty of
the key type enhanced CD is that for
label catalog sales where the label you
know is not going to put an enhanced
disc on a Lionel Richie CD they can
actually they can actually use like
Gracenote technology like CD DB or what
not to actually connect the user you
know via a web interface to quote
unquote exclusive content now the
problem is is that neither of these
methods that are usually used in the
enhanced CDs ever fulfill their
potential typically a typical enhanced
CD that's produced by a major label
today will have one or two mediocre
quality video clips and and there really
are few exceptions I mean you know John
mentioned some very exceptional enhanced
CDs that were produced and that rarely
is the case the versatility of the
medium is not really taken advantage of
in any way shape or form the video
potentially on the disc can be much
higher quality and the beauty of it is
there's no waiting for the consumer to
access the rich content because there's
no need for the internet connection the
other beauty of enhanced CDs is that
they you know can obviously connect
directly with communities and online
related web content directly from the
disc itself as John was mentioning
another really key aspect that labels
fail to take advantage of is the ability
to install artist branded component to
just clean favors and desktops and
whatnot which really are extremely
powerful long-term mindshare branding
opportunities they're really taken
advantage of so how do labels currently
view enhanced CDs well you know they
currently view them as pain in the ass
to produce and as John mentioned their
QA nightmare and they're often rushed I
mean when you're producing a typical
enhance CD for an artist there's so many
cooks in the kitchen you have to deal
with the art director and the manager of
the artist and the artist himself and
the
new media department is running around
like chickens with their head cut off
it's just insane it's absolutely insane
so there's often late art delivery and
you know there's there's never really
time to really think about the next
level or think about you know our
consumers really going to use these
different components and as John said
you always have to make allowances to
take media off either due to space
issues or quite honestly vas it may not
be ready and then the labels often ask
because very few CDs are tracks
currently do people even use these
things and that's a question that I get
asked personally all the time when you
know we approach a label to produce an
enhanced its disc for a given artist or
whatnot but the funny thing is that the
potential benefits of the enhanced CD
are huge you know John was mentioning
some of the you know quote unquote
anti-piracy capabilities and enhanced
this because it has value and therefore
the consumer is going to say oh I'm not
going to go download the music on
Napster orcas are or whatever I'm I'm
just going to go by the disc because it
has a special video clip if the reality
is is that you know that's obviously you
know not very true but there is
significant opportunity to add things
like music videos live video live audio
collectible extra content such as you
know a IM icons avatars screensavers
desktop wallpaper and you know cool
database powered active deaths of
desktops that are built in flash in fact
one one thing that we've actually
produced that was really really cool is
we produced the Lincoln Park meteora
enhanced disc with John and we had this
really really cool screensaver this is
actually the screen that the consumer
first sees from the enhanced disc when
they go to to access the screen saver
and the screensaver was actually built
in macromedia flash and it was database
connected and you and it allowed the the
user to actually download video content
directly from the net and it actually
created almost like an artist branded TV
channel so if Lincoln Park videos 24
hours a day and then we also had a
concept for the Lincoln Park campaign
called newscaster where it was basically
linkin park news for the fans by the
fans we actually send a video crew out
on the road with linkin park and they
shot video and we put we pipe it in you
know not real time but weed pipe it in
on the on the lincoln park official
website and through the screen favor so
you know linkin park is the content
producer so why not take advantage of
the content and that's exactly what we
were able to do with the screen saver
and the screen sarah was extremely
successful in the first six weeks of
release of the album over 100,000 users
download and install the screen favor
the beauty is the screen savers track
another key benefit you know as John
started to mention is the data
collection aspects of enhanced CDs John
mentioned the artists mailing list
capability and the amazing success that
Warner Brothers Records saw from the
Lord of the Rings soundtrack there's
also the capability for labels to create
genre segmented mailing lists you know
most labels have a quote unquote rock
list or a pop list or whatnot and
they'll use those mailing lists to
market new artists that don't already
have established fan bases so that's a
huge benefit ecd usage statistics are
not typically tracked currently but
they're very easy to get because the e
cds are built in director and therefore
you can connect directly to a database
from the user's machine assuming of
course that the users online so you can
actually track the usage of the ecd how
many people are actually using it the
content popularity you know what content
users are actually using on the disc and
they're hosted there's a host of other
tracking capabilities available we
actually have a tracking system that's
very very powerful and we actually now
have the ability to tell you what
countries people are using the enhanced
CD from and in some cases even what dmas
people are using the enhanced CD from
additionally we can track the viral
aspects of a promotion and you know tell
you you know the send to a friend ratio
has as far as what the success what the
response rates are how many people are
doing it week to week time scale etc etc
etc directly from the enhance
through our reporting technology and of
course you can track much much more
another really key benefit that labels
really fail to take advantage of
typically is the cross sell capability I
mean you have a disc that's in the
consumers hand they're actually taking
the time to open the enhanced portion of
the disc why not take that time and
offer them you know cap previous catalog
from that artist you know or offer them
you know opportunity to purchase an
artist DVD or whatever is coming out for
that particular artist and if the
enhanced CD is database powered then you
can you can kind of update the offers at
any time you please there's no reason
not to take advantage of that I need
another key benefit that I was
mentioning a little bit beforehand is
the viral marketing capability of the
enhanced CD on the media hora CD for
example we actually had and meteora to a
friend right on the ecd itself so all
the user had to do was enter their email
address and click send and it would
actually you know connect to our
database system obviously if they were
online and we'd send that user an email
address saying hey Johnny wanted you to
check out meteora go check it out and
obviously word of mouth is especially
for the jaded consumer in that
particular demographic you know word of
mouth is really the best way to market
to them and the response rates as you
saw by the graph that's actually real
data is massive thirty to sixty percent
is typically the response rate that we
see from typical viral marketing
programs and that includes email to a
friend I am to a friend and SMS to a
friend another key quote-unquote word of
mouth well not really is the official
website toolkit this is something that
we actually included on the media or
enhanced CD as well and it was extremely
successful well over 100,000 kids
actually accessed the toolkit in the
first two to three weeks of album
release and we're using it on their fan
sites because we had exclusive art on
there that we had not used previously
on other Linkin Park creations we also
produce their website etcetera etcetera
and therefore we were actually able to
tell whether kids were actually using
the content on the in hit on the enhance
city or not this is what the toolkit
actually looks like so the toolkit you
know typically when we produce them will
contain the official PR photos of the
band official logo the album artwork and
then we also include a host of webmaster
resources such as how to build a website
how how to program HTML we're to host a
website for free or for very low cost go
geo cities we're to get a message board
so that fans can build their own
communities because fans really like to
do that so another core benefit of the
enhanced CD and I've mentioned it
previously is obviously the database
connectivity ability and this has very
very rarely been put to use in fact I've
not really seen an enhanced disk that's
really well database connected so but
you know things like updating the artist
news and tour schedules I mean the
reality is most labels that we've talked
to you about this say well who's going
to update it well someone's updating the
artist website so why not pipe it into
the same database the power the website
and therefore you know you update one
and kill two birds one stone so you know
tour schedules by links directly to
ticketmaster went or two or dates go on
sale to or journals directly from the
band and you know of course much much
more so why don't label do these things
well first item is cost obviously record
labels are not doing very well
financially right now so they don't like
to spend a lot of money and the new
media new media gets a good chunk of
change currently but they don't really
they're they're trying to cut costs
every place they can and an ecd is is
like is an easy thing to cut it's an
easy thing to skimp on its oh who cares
about being an CD no one ever uses it
anyway so that's that's really a one of
the first things to go typically when
labels trying to cut costs quite
honestly the high cost of production
tools doesn't impact on the cost of
these CDs as well Makka media director
for example you actually have to buy
a PC license and a Macintosh license in
order to produce hybrid enhanced CD so
therefore you're buying two copies of
the same program to produce a typical
enhanced disc and director isn't cheap
another some of the concerns are
obviously the production timelines in
the queue a procedure and enhance duties
because they have to be mastered and
obviously duplicated before they're sold
at retail there's very very strict
delivery times if the label is going to
meet there on till date so you know John
is often stuck working you know all
nighters to meet crazy ridiculous
deadlines and we are to from the design
side and the development side because we
really don't have much time and because
the enhanced if cuts be produced so far
in advance of the actual album on sale
as i said before assets sometimes really
hard to come by so we may not have the
exclusive video clip that we've been
talking about for three months when
planning a given artists release with
the label new media head you know it
just might not happen you know whether
it's not edited or it's not even shot
yet or whatever it just it often does
not occur now I'm going to talk a little
bit about how the typical artists of
view ec DS now the thing about my
company is that we actually work
directly with the artist as well so you
know oftentimes artists will you know
ask us about the enhanced disc or you
know what's going on with the new media
promotion and whatnot so this is kind of
how the artist currently look at
enhanced disc first I'm going to start
with what should be the artist benefits
of enhanced disc and obviously rarely
occurs the key benefit is fan
relationship management and that's very
similar to customer relationship
management because the person who buys
your disc is your customer so things
like an official artist fan club link
and potentially giving them discounts to
the official artist fan club links to
the public community so that fans can
interact with other fans direct
communication links with the artist by
way of up-to-date artist news the tour
schedule and the ability to offer
exclusive contests and updates through
that suppose a database connection
additionally you have a great
opportunity if you're an artist to grow
your street team or your e team now
typically a street team and an e team is
like a three month deal you know it's
totally front loaded at the beginning of
a campaign oral kind of go up and down
with single cycles and you know but I
genuinely think that especially for an e
team you know street team is typically a
fixed size because its cost etcetera etc
but II teams there's no reason not to
give the fans the opportunity to join
the e team at any time and keep that
eteam running for the course of an
entire album cycle and potentially in
between album cycles because those are
the core fans the user that actually
takes the time to join the e team and
whether they promote or not is a whole
nother question but you should at least
keep that online because it really
doesn't cost a lot much and of course
the mailing with sign up for feature
artist releases or information or
whatnot and as John said that can be
very very successful this is actually a
screen of the Lincoln Park enhanced CD
again this is actually the page where we
actually were marketing Linkin Park's
official fan club which was called the
LP underground now the elephant
underground has literally tens of
thousands of members who are paying to
join the club and through the enhanced
disc we actually had thousands of sign
ups and you know the Lincoln Park disc
came out in March of this year so it's
actually been very very successful as a
kind of a cross sell you know with the
consumer through the enhanced disc other
benefits as I mentioned before of course
are the viral marketing capabilities you
know they're they're huge there's no
reason not to do it it's kind of like
free marketing it's the consumer
marketing on the artists behalf and who
better to market for you there's no
reason not to do that as I said before
the cross Bell potential for artists is
even bigger than the labels now
typically labels don't really get into
the artist merchandise and you know all
that kind of stuff but or the fan clubs
but of course that's changing as the
industry continues to evolve so you know
labels are going to have more and more
reason to cross sell merchandise and fan
club members
ecd the merchandise is huge for an
artist to be able to sell their
merchandise or offer their merchandise
directly from the enhanced disk by way
of web link of course in future it would
be really cool to actually be able to
pipe updates as far as new merchandise
that goes on sale or exclusive
merchandise to fans who actually bought
the disk or etc etc etc them and there's
a million things you can do
unfortunately it never gets done so what
are some of the artists concerns with
enhanced discs well artists are really
concerned about the poor production by
the label of there have been several
instances where we've actually had to
recreate enhance CDs after the initial
shipment because we found the label
found later or the artist found after
the fact that the enhanced CD quite
honestly didn't even function so and
that's incredibly damaging because you
damage your fan relations with a poorly
produced enhanced CD this is your
opportunity to really communicate with
your fans on a direct basis and if you
damage if you have if you produce the
damage dcd that's not at the part of the
music on the enhanced disk or the album
packaging or everything else that goes
that everyone at the label and on the
artists side in the management company
worked so hard to produce then you know
the consumers oftentimes feel you know
screwed you know what's on this enhanced
it why is their sticker on this enhanced
on the CD package that says I have
exclusive content when I can't even
access it and that also reduces
perceived value of the ecd compared to
similar products in a very very crowded
marketplace so if you're on label x and
you're a rock band and label wives rock
band has a you know better enhance disk
and obviously things are similar as far
as radio play and all the other
bazillion variables that go into a
typical artist campaign then having a
poor enhanced disc is kind of like
having a poor package or you know
whatever it's not a real it doesn't it
reduces the perceived value directly and
it's all subconscious but it actually
has an impact and of course potential
and ability to grow the mailing list and
you know all that other stuff that that
can be caused by rushed or poor
production on behalf of the label
I'm going to discuss briefly how
consumers view enhance CDs both
currently and how they should the
current view of enhanced CDs by
consumers is that they are very cheaply
produced the brand of ecd you know every
CD that you buy that's enhanced sets
that little ecd logo at least in my
opinion has been very the value of that
brand has been very sharply reduced
because most of the ECB's that are
produced are quite honestly terrible and
they meet very low standards they lack
any real content and sometimes they
don't even work so there of course of
limited value to the consumer and
therefore consumers at this point
sometimes they don't even bother putting
them in because there's no point you
know it's either not going to work or
it's going to be the music video that
I've seen on MTV 5,000 times so there's
no point how consumers should vewy CDs
is obviously that they offer significant
additional value without added cost if
you go to Best Buy and you buy an album
for nine dollars 99 cents and it has an
enhanced disc portion then there should
be additional value on that enhanced
disk access to exclusive collectible
content such as a IM icons that are
specific for the enhanced disc desktop
wallpaper the screen saver technology
kind of stuff that I showed you active
desktops desk sites all those sort of
creative elements you know are very very
exciting to a consumer and many record
labels that have taken the time to
produce high-quality enhanced disk have
actually seen very positive results from
those added value additions to the
enhanced disk the ability to communicate
with other fans that's what fans really
want they want to find like like-minded
Souls online and the ability to
communicate via direct links to the
artist community or whatnot are
incredibly important for for the
consumer and of course the ability to
stay up to date on how the you know
what's new in the world of the artists
you know latest news and tours and
ticket sales and all that kind of cool
stuff
now what is the future of enhanced discs
well the future is is interesting it
really depends on how much effort labels
really want to put in to enhance disk if
the current trend continues then enhance
disks are going to be fade away as a fad
you know part of the multimedia craze of
producing cd-roms and they're really
quite honestly probably going to go away
but you know it's really a great
opportunity as I said for enhanced discs
to be you know to be a tremendous value
to the artist and the label through you
know all the things that I've discussed
and all the things with John discussed
additionally the two new major audio
formats on the horizon there's sacd and
there's DVD audio and those two those
two formats are going to obviously play
in as well as far as physical shipment
of audios containers concerned so labels
should really take the time now to learn
more about the consumers involve them in
ways that they really won't be able to
when the digital music revolution is
really fully complete we have things
like apples amazing new music store
which enable consumers to buy music and
there's no enhanced portion to buying a
protected file there's no it's just the
audio straight and it's cheaper than
buying a disc so eventually you're going
to run out of time where you know
eventually you know obviously you know
consumers will only buy music through
digital channels so the time is fast
coming where enhanced if will probably
be obsolete as digital music continues
to evolve so therefore now is the time
to really take advantage of the medium
as consumers are still buying hundreds
and hundreds of millions of CDs
worldwide to really find out more about
the consumer learn more about their
buying habits and give them access to
real exclusive content that they will
not be able to access when buying a
99-cent downloadable audio track
additionally through all the tracking
capabilities that enhanced CDs can offer
potentially you can really turn the
media promotion into a science there's
no reason not to do it if you can track
everything from the website traffic to
the player
graphic to the enhanced dis profit
traffic and compared to soundscan and
compare it to DBS and compare it to
media base and do all the correlative
cool stuff that labels really should be
able to do and aren't really doing
enhance see these are a really core
facet they're really cool really core
variable as far as the new media
campaign as a whole so you know it's
really a shame that that labels really
aren't taking full advantage of them
currently so now I would like to take
questions from the floor and I think
Glenn is going to say something nice
yeah nothing maybe that was awesome
thank you in working with john and anna
being and the labels for quite a while
the quicktime team is you know really
familiar with enhanced cds and you know
at first past some of the things up on
the screen there looked kind of
depressing but i really feel like this
is a huge opportunity for developers
developers you know on just the delivery
of media through the enhanced CD and
probably more importantly the tools for
creation as well as all the tools for
tracking there's a lot of incredible
success you know I you would know better
about the correlation between let's say
the largest selling CD last year was
Lincoln Park meteora so the intelligence
behind the marketing plan in the
delivery Hybrid Theory sorry it should
be meteora ok hopefully it will be it
will be that's the new record so if
you'd like to ask any questions please
use the microphones introduce yourself
and thanks to our speakers again
you