WWDC2004 Session 706

Transcript

Kind: captions
Language: en
hello good morning everybody I'm Glen
Bullock I work on the QuickTime product
marketing team you are in 706 QuickTime
in the music industry it's pretty clear
I guess is stating the obvious that
there's been quite a bit of change in
the music industry in the last several
years and arguably a huge amount of it
has been driven by technology and by the
internet a good deal of it bad a good
deal of it good for the music industry
we're here today to focus on some of the
really good things that have been going
on and we're very privileged to have our
two speakers today dick Huey comes to us
from New York where he's been working
with independent labels delivering a
huge amount of infrastructure and
marketing for dozens and dozens of
labels and providing new media access
and exposure for lots and lots of
independent bands our second speaker Ken
Wagner comes to us from an incredible
history over the last several years in
new media and before that in the music
industry and we're really privileged to
have him give us an update on the wilcos
story which is very famous and happy to
say the number one album on iTunes right
now
there's a lot of things we'll cover here
and you know certainly these folks are
available later on for questions we'll
hold questions till the end and then
they'll be floating in and out of the
QuickTime lab so they're accessible
there's a number of other sessions I
just wanted to highlight very quickly
after lunch in haight-ashbury
there's a session 7:34 on h.264 and it's
a really really important session it's a
pretty important technology that we're
going to be adding in the typical time
and lastly at 7:30 tonight the Design
Awards where some of the world's best
QuickTime content will be featured is
pretty exciting event tonight so don't
miss that so that further ado I will
pass it along to dick Huey and we'll
have him speak and then I'll come back
up and introduce Ken and then after that
we can have some questions thanks
[Applause]
good morning
the designs can come from your mouth as
great
so toolshed is an online marketing
company we we provide a number of
services to primarily an independent
label and artist clientele we do online
promotion we also do a great deal of
digital licensing on the digital
licensing side its licensing audio and
video on behalf of our label and artist
clients to a wide variety of digital
music services such as iTunes on the
promotion side is audio and video
promotion to media websites Merrick
online launch Apple
in some cases real and smaller sites as
well we also do or help coordinate
webcasts we work with developers to do
those we do pre-release album streams
and sort of provide a new media
department for hire new media being the
part of a record company that refers to
online piece so toolshed was born out of
the idea that independent music is too
good to be relegated to the backseat
with respect to to the overall mix of
music that's available on the net and it
was also born out of a conviction that
technology is only good and useful
within the sphere if it's wielded
directly sometimes it can get in the way
we try not to let that happen I started
to shed in 2001 this was after four
years as head of new media for The
Beggar's group and Matador Records these
are two seminal record labels seminal
independent record labels hey that works
look at that who are responsible for
really shaping the independent music
sphere in the 80s and the 90s bands like
Bauhaus prodigy badly drawn boy pavement
cat power these are household names in
the independent music world
and labels such as 4ad Beggars Banquet
to pure XL Recordings are all part of
this group when I started the new media
Department of beggar's it was under the
presumption that the promotional
landscape would be pretty much dictated
to me and I would slap myself into it as
best as I could
now seven years down the road I take a
different approach which is that if
there's something that I don't like I go
out and actively try to change it and
technology is helping me do that in
helping toolshed do that which is where
some of you who are developers come into
the picture the independent music
industry is an industry that's full of
good intentions it doesn't have the
baggage frequently associated with the
major label corporately dictated new
media departments it does have way too
few staff staff who frequently don't
have expertise in the area of online
marketing it has plenty of good ideas
and and too little affordable technology
available to it so there I am throwing
down the gauntlet this is the niche that
I place tool shed into and among our
clients
besides the beggars group and matter no
records we work with touch and go
records this is the label that brought
you or Jovic ill and more recently TV on
the radio and Chik Chik Chik righteous
Bay Records on a defranco's label we
work with key rockstars most recently on
the sleater-kinney record of about a
year and a half ago and the Decembrists
and spin art and a variety of others we
also work directly with artists Kristyn
Hirsch dan Zanes Aimee Mann are all
clients of toolshed so our vision is to
marry contacts and technology with
aggregated independent music content let
me give you some examples of how we do
that the toolshed brand itself we've
been able to make synonymous with great
independent music
and that gives us access on behalf of
our independent label and and harness
clients our challenge is to take
technology and make that a great
partnership allow these little labels
who don't have resources to do things
they wouldn't be able to do otherwise to
give them access they wouldn't be able
to have otherwise the Internet is a
great equalizer for independent labels
unfortunately the the mainstream methods
of distribution for media whether they
be physical record distribution or radio
are almost completely controlled by the
major labels access to huge amounts of
money among other things and or direct
control through ownership we want to
take major label technology and make it
available to independence let me show
you an example of how we're doing this
this is this is off the tool shed
website it's an example of our media
tool kit for every project that we work
we build we build a media page and if
you were to click through on any of the
project links that you see there you'd
come up with a page that would show you
all the assets that you would need if
you were a project manager or a Content
decision-maker
at at one of the sites I mentioned
earlier to put up a promotion one of the
main reasons independent artists and
labels don't get promotion is that they
are frequently unorganized about this
process it's hard to get in touch with
them so we put it all in one place and
we also provide them with with
information we we have something built
into this this is by the way just a PHP
front end on a MySQL database there's
nothing complicated or particularly
difficult about it we keep track of 1 2
or dates are happening and we use those
to actively market to the content
providers so that they know when the
band is going to be in their area
and then we give them links for for
audio and video one of the reasons we're
really by the way this the same kind of
system is utilized by most of the major
labels and as a media toolkit and and
there's our effective ours are I think
even maybe a little more effective
because we we bring bandwidth into the
picture as a as a company we we purchase
bandwidth and bulk and we redistribute
it through a variety of bandwidth
sharing and what's the term that I'm
looking for load sharing schemes so that
individual record labels or small record
labels can have access to good bandwidth
and then we take that in the form of
audio and video and we give it to
editorially important websites sites
that otherwise probably wouldn't post
audio or video because for one reason or
another they don't they don't have a
good bandwidth the only place and would
be too expensive for them so that's been
tremendously successful for us it's
something we've rolled out over the last
six months and we're continuing to roll
it out now the other thing that's
exciting about that is the ability for
us to provide reporting reporting is one
of the areas where we've never really as
independent labels or artists had very
good access to what happens with the
music once it goes out there you might
know that a particular website gets
500,000 hits a month you might know that
your particular download was downloaded
a thousand times you might know that or
you might not but the kinds of things
that we're starting to be able to tell
people are and I'll give you a concrete
example of this in a minute we can look
and see everybody that's linking to the
files that we put up many of them not
people that we've gotten in touch with
and we're news groups for instance we
get this all the time people grabbing
our track
and putting them up on news groups so we
google them and we Google the IP and
then we include that in our report to
the record label so they can see what's
happening virally with their with their
music we're also able to and this is the
concrete example I want to give you work
with companies to determine whether the
kind of music we put on a particular
website was of interest and the way we
do that is by looking at how long the
average download time was if we put up a
three point six megabyte file we did
this recently with one of our content
providers have a combien Fitch and the
average download time is 1.6 megabytes
which it was in that particular case
then most of the people who are or
majority of people who are listening to
this are only downloading about 30 or 40
seconds to the song and then clicking
away this is the kind of useful
information that helps us gauge where we
should be putting music and what we're
actively working for ways that we can
increase the kind of information that we
give to people and we're actively
looking for ideas and working with
developers who can who can develop
products for us that provide us with
that kind of information
let me every time I step over here it
gets a lot louder because of that got it
ok let's see I wanted I want to now look
specifically a quick time we work
extensively with Apple and with the
promotion department at Apple of which
plan bullish is a key part and I want to
show you how QuickTime is helping us
level the playing field for independence
and I'm going to go over here we see
there's a QuickTime newsletter schedule
that's published online by Apple we
utilize that and push for promotional
album streams which appear on thank you
this website
we have we have a placement up here
right now Julie and Coryell is one of
ours and the if you were to click on any
one of these you would be taken off to
the to the website I'll give you an
example let's see what an eye should I
pick the Wilko one as an example better
let's see here I'm not going to use this
one I'll use a different one let's see
let's see what this one is okay so this
one's going to Rhino and obviously Rhino
is able to control the interface and and
and what's presented if if they chose to
do so they would be able to put links to
the iTunes Music Store on here so that
if somebody was listening to a full
album stream on this page they could
they could click to and purchase the
tracks and you can make it as beautiful
as you want plus you get all the traffic
so this is a really exciting thing for
independent labels they're different and
artists have been very excited to see
what we've been able to do with this
[Music]
we're if you could switch back to the
other slide down
does it go back to the other one to the
slides that I was looking at earlier
there we go
Thanks we this this tool could be better
we need a very simple way to add drawers
to this for things like quick time if we
were able to circo's if we were able to
put all the assets that are needed for
that quick time promotion that you saw
in one place in a separate little area
and maybe even interface it directly
with Apple's FileMaker Pro database that
they use that would be a great useful
thing for us that would cut out many
emails and and streamline the process so
I'm trying to throw out ideas for for
people and encourage you to to look at
these kinds of things and see where
where you might come into the picture we
don't want to be a developer we support
the Mac platform and we want to utilize
it with by utilizing tools or we want to
support it by utilizing tools that are
developed for it that we can take to
independent record labels I'd like to
show you now so here where's my little
thing and that's fine actually you can
leave that there we have a project
that's about four years old at this
point
it's a QuickTime radio station called ad
decks you remember from school the a/v
audio-visual decks that used to come in
with the slide projector on it or that
was a film projector that's what it was
named after it's it's actually right
here and AV deck is was initially just a
quicktime radio station it is developed
now in its third iteration which I'm
going to show you right now into a very
integrated commerce and promotional
platform and I'd like to I'd like to
thank
developer partners liquid rock studio
Michael chefs here today for coming up
with its alpha build which you'll
forgive us if it doesn't work completely
correctly but I think it probably will
and also back born that backbone
networks who handles the radio piece of
this this puzzle so here we go
[Music]
probably turn it down a little bit maybe
live to do that there we go okay this is
um this is actually this player will
actually interface with a database that
beggars group maintains which contains
all of its metadata everything from the
actual song files themselves for every
piece of music that the beggars group
has ever put out to all the associated
metadata the song names track links the
release information etc it's going to be
it's going to interface with all of that
via the backbone network software and
will be able to use this to create
playlists on the fly which we're really
excited about so the idea behind this
was if you're listening to something and
you like it why not be able to buy it
so we'll click on the playlist button we
get this which populates with with the
existing playlist and from here we can
do a number of things
if we select something we could actually
let's pick this let's try the preview
button
it's pretty it's a PV button connected
it is okay all right double click maybe
or maybe not
let's try this one instead some of some
of this is hooked up in Sun isn't there
we go
okay and there we go for that particular
release right through to the iTunes
music store we're really really excited
about this the other thing that you'll
be able to do from here is you'll be
able to you'll be able to buy the CD and
this will integrate on the back end with
the beggars group mail order system and
and if and many of these tracks will
have video and clicking on this pops up
our video player this isn't our video
but it was a video that we had access to
so and we've tried to incorporate some
nice touches like in terms of playing
the stream fade out when it when the
radio is playing and you switch over to
video and vice versa so that's that's
what we have for AV deck we're really
excited about it it's going to launch we
hope in a couple weeks and future
iteration of this we hope will include
streaming subscription-based video where
we'd be able to develop content for this
give access to the artist in ways that
we haven't really contemplated yet and
and charge a monthly subscription fee so
we have free content and we'd have paid
for play content it would give increased
access of some kind that actually just
about wraps it up for me the only the
two areas that I just wanted to talk
real briefly about our what I would
consider to be opportunities and maybe
challenges to developers in the audience
the first one is I guess I'd loosely
title it DRM versus crop cross-platform
compatibility there's I'm sure
everybody's aware there are a wide
variety of format Wars that are that are
on at the moment between for instance
Windows Media and NAAC
this creates problems and opportunities
Windows Media 7.3 supported WMA with DRM
version 1
when does media 9 doesn't this is a
problem for somebody on the promotional
side of things because anytime a client
wants a secure download that for
instance collects emails as part of the
license procurement process we have to
use Windows Media which cuts out our Mac
users so I'm throwing that out there to
powers-that-be that that's a that's a
problem for us that I would certainly
love to see addressed by whoever feels
capable of addressing it and and on the
iTunes and we're we're keen to get the
ability to determine what music we've
submitted to to iTunes and what stage it
is in terms of in terms of placement
into the card I think any record label
I've talked to is interested in that
kind of thing there there are probably a
hundred other areas that I'd love to
talk to you individually about and I
will I'll be around afterwards I'm going
to turn it over now to Ken Wagner and
thanks very much for your time I
appreciate it thanks dick so you know it
seems like there's a good start here you
know there's a whole sort of big
leveling effect happening for
independent artists and we're seeing not
only companies like toolshed and others
provide new media marketing for
independent labels plenty of websites
that are available out there that are
strong or specific so it's not all about
Clear Channel and radio and MTV anymore
so there's a lot of opportunities and
we're seeing that sort of really start
to blossom and grow with that there's
sort of a whole bunch of new challenges
and things that we need to address and
clearly the sort of movement by lots and
lots of companies towards standards and
choice and differentiation in a
competitive marketplace based on
standards allows a lot of folks to you
know use different tools and choose
tools that are based on these standards
and apply them interoperable out there
if you're interested in internet radio
and specifically the product backbone
networks has created
and it is tremendous it's a complete
internet radio to set up in a box with
all the reporting that's necessary for
in really generating a complete and
robust internet radio in a box solution
that session is 725 it's 2 o'clock on
Friday in haight-ashbury so our next
speaker Ken Wagner I've known for quite
a while and you know as far as success
stories go and some probably some of the
most interesting anecdotes and and and
performance on what's happened the
beginning of the sort of peer-to-peer
decline of major labels the effect that
had on the non a list bands or whatever
and some of the initiative and some of
the tools that bands like Wilco and
through Ken Wagner taken have Clinton
kind of dispelled a lot of the myths
about you know what the web can or
doesn't do for bands and and how it
works so I won't steal in EM Ken's
Thunder I'll introduce him and here you
go I am ok my name is Ken Wagner as a
company called smartly done solutions
and I started smartly done in 1999 as I
was putting my record company out of
business and then have set out to try to
put every other record company out of
business in the process I'm just kind of
kidding but anyhow I had an independent
label from 1994 to 1999 called hit
recordings put out 25 records with
varying success and through the whole
process tried to take advantage of as
much internet opportunity as there was
out there because coming from an
independent label background have been
in the independent record business by
entire life 20 years I was always faced
with the wall of available opportunity
because of the limits of just resources
really trying to get on the radio
trying to get on TV trying to get in the
press everything like that and I just
really saw the internet as an
opportunity to
reach an audience and especially a a
direct audience if somebody was
interested in my band or in my label
they could come directly to me and I
could give them the content instead of
spending all my money all my resources
trying to get it out there and hoping
that someone would hear it hoping
someone would not resell at a record
store whatever and so with what I really
started smartly done to do was to really
help bands and help independent record
companies and independent businesses
reach their audience more effectively by
the web and one of my first clients
ironically ended up being this band
Wilco which I'm not sure if all of you
are familiar with but they're a band
from Chicago who had at the time three
records out on reprise records and grew
out of the band Uncle Tupelo and around
the time that I started working with
them they had their third record out on
reprieves
and were had just delivered a live
record to Warner Brothers that Warner
Brothers had said that they didn't think
it was the right time for the band to
release a live record so I started
working with the band to try to help
them find a way to put the record out
online this was back in the boom of 99
2000 so there were great opportunities
out there but then as the AOL Time
Warner merger happened moratorium got
put on anything so we ended up having to
shell the live record and then right
after that all kind of went down we
started to shift focus to setting up the
band's new record which was this album
called Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and I'll
kind of go through the story and talk to
you about the process of that record and
then leading up to the new record which
just came out last Tuesday so this is
kind of some information I've kind of
given you some background on myself in
the band basically when I went to work
with with the band at the time the
record had been out for their album
summer Keith had been out for about a
year and a half when I first started
talking to them and what ends up
happening really when you're
the mercy of the new media Department of
a major record company is kind of the
same thing as being dealing with any
other department at a major record
company which is you have about a maybe
90 day window where they're really going
to pay attention to you and then they
just do to just limited resources have
to move on to other things so what we
really set out to do with the Wilko site
and the whole will go online plan was to
really make will go a priority every day
on their own site so in doing that
initially we ran into starting to set up
the record and set up the site in
anticipation of this new record coming
out that was scheduled to come out in
the summer of 2001 and basically most of
what I submitted as a marketing plan got
rejected due to corporate policies we
weren't allowed to stream more than 30
seconds it wasn't allowed to be higher
than 32 kilobits per second and we
wanted to offer the full album to people
and they said no way
then the band delivered the record to
Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers
rejected the record and said that it was
I believed the exact term was commercial
suicide for the band released the record
and they asked the band to change the
record and around the same time the
record leaked onto peer-to-peer networks
and started being randomly traded and
the band were kind of in this limbo
because they were at a disagreement with
the record company and we really
couldn't do anything about it until the
issues got resolved ultimately the band
and represented of parting ways and
pretty much the day the band got the
rights to the record back we put a
stream of the entire record online and
in the first day we did 18,000 visits to
the website and did 15 gigabytes of
transfer on my 29.95 son a month hosting
plan $12 per additional gigabyte so I
was kind of figuring my hosting bill was
probably going to be around $4,000 for
the month so I emailed Jimmy Dixon at
Apple who I'd known for money worked at
Warner Brothers and Jimmy was kind
enough to introduce me to Glen
who Glen called me up and said don't
worry about it I've already been in
touch with Warner Brothers we're fully
and interested we're going to help on
the record that was like but we're not
out Warner Brothers anymore and Glen was
like how did that happen and I explained
him and he offered to help so we left
the stream of the record up to so we
launched the stream of the record on
September 18th a week after September
11th I have to mention the thing because
it seems like everyone eyes does but we
launched the stream on the 18th of
September and the band who just gone
through this traumatic thing of losing
the record deal and not really knowing
what was going to happen next and we
started to try to plan the band had a
tour plan that was originally supposed
to be in support of the record that was
supposed to start on the 20th of
September and after the whole September
11 thing and everything we sat down had
a meeting and the band were like yeah we
still want to go on the road so we put
the record online the band went on the
road and they did 30 dates around the
country sold out every show played nine
of the 11 songs off the new record to
the audience and everybody in the
audience at every show knew every song
from the streams and from the p2p a
record being out there ultimately it
took a while for us to get to Misha
resolved and find a new label the band
ended up signing with Nonesuch Records
which ironically is another part of
Warner Brothers got paid again for the
record that Warner Brothers had given us
back and then the record ended up coming
out in April of 2002 and debuted at
number 13 and sold 56,000 copies in the
first week after we'd given the record
away online for about eight months kind
of disproved the whole concept of oh no
the records on the Internet we better
rush the release date so anyhow these
are some of the things that I kind of
set out to do with Wilco and that you
can really do an offer to any band all
quick time enabled and really that's
kind of what I try to do with all of my
clients is I only work in QuickTime I
managed a company that was a part
content
partner with real for about a year back
in 2000 and I was desperately trying to
shift them to quick time and ever since
I started my own company really all I've
ever worked in this quick time any time
I encounter a new media department or a
manager or anybody that's got concerns
about the other formats I just explained
to them that for the experience the ease
of use and the deliverability there's
just no comparison the ease of
implementation and just the whole
quality I just don't feel that there's
any any comparison and that's really why
I really choose to just work in quick
time also the fact that I'm not
necessarily a super technical guy I come
from a record industry background
management record promotion and concert
production and record production but not
from a real technical experience I
started using Macs in 87 but was
primarily used it to facilitate my my
business as a FileMaker guy and just
general you know computing applications
and graphics but not super super
technical but I found that starting in
95 96 the ease of use for QuickTime is
what made it really easy for me to do it
and really is what kind of made me
become a web developer and I use that
term loosely because I don't super
consider myself to be a web developer
but what we've done with the Wilko
record again is from the audio previews
of the record at the same time that the
band was making in the process of making
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot they worked with a
director named Sam Jones who's a
photographer she's for Vanity Fair in a
pretty famous photographer and Sam
shouted documentary of the entire
process and as Jeff Tweedy from the band
said the less lucky we got the more
lucky he got because the whole drama of
the story played out with the record
company and everything and that
ultimately is what made the made the
film really interesting and we worked
with Sam to offer the trailer of the
movie and dailies of the film and some
snippets a really help build
anticipation at the same time that the
death the interest in the record was
building Sam was getting ready to put
out the film
another area that we've really worked on
which was really fueled by my attending
QuickTime live in 2002 was with
QuickTime broadcaster I've always kind
of considered the Internet to really be
a free broadcast license and the free
printing press if you will and it's
completely enabling and gives you the as
much reach as you are capable of taking
advantage of and using QuickTime
broadcaster we started webcasting shows
in the fall of 2002 and we've done about
a half a dozen webcasts from various
locations Chicago Washington DC Missoula
Montana Toronto Canada just kind of
wherever we can get bandwidth and it
kind of makes sense logistically we'll
we'll do live webcasts and I'll show you
some of those in a minute that led into
more conversations with Glenn more
things to do we've made the last two
records enhanced CDs and we've done some
pretty neat stuff I think with the
enhanced content on both records and
I'll show you some of that stuff as well
and then what we really set out to do
with the enhanced content again was
because of the fact that the wiki Hotel
Foxtrot had been online for so long we
are really looking to do something to
make it worth people's while to buy the
record the band have a very loyal fan
base but we really felt that we were
kind of fighting an uphill battle to
some extent just because of the fact
that the record had so saturated the
market having been out there for eight
months and then the additional thing
that we've just really started to
explore some iTunes integration and we
we've got some other things that we're
kind of working on an approximate out
bad
so I kind of jumped ahead of myself with
my timeline so I think I'm just going to
switch to the computer and just kind of
show some stuff because it's more
interesting than listening to me talk I
think so if you can go to a computer 3
here first thing is we're prominently
featured and I would chuck that our
success in the iTunes Music Store is
Glenn said written number one record in
iTunes right now records been out for a
week and again as Dick was saying
being featured on me being featured on
the that was Dexys Midnight Runners I
believe being featured on the quick
hindsight has proven to be a massive
promotional of massive promotional value
to us both in the Quicktime newsletter
that goes out every other week on
Fridays and on the site it just drives
massive track it the traffic to our site
says crafts our server a couple times
and it again goes directly to the
destination if it works and what we did
here is again we ended up with the
dilemma but sort of we kind of figured
it was going to happen it was inevitable
the record leaked onto the network under
the p2p in the end of March beginning of
April the record was originally slated
to come out in June and we had already
built the based on the success of the
first record we had already planned on
doing the preview of the second record
but as soon as it leaked on p2p the our
grandiose plan of building a player got
bum-rushed into three days work which I
couldn't have done again without the
help of Michael Schaff over there so
this is just a that's not it
that's later
this is a full album preview which is
launching multiple times because I keep
clicking up this now so a easier if
you look down at the screen
[Music]
so this is a we did three rates on this
we get a fifty six a hundred kilobit and
a three hundred kilobits stream to give
people the full stereo experience and
again that can we allowed people to kind
of track through the record song by song
and really preview the record and
satisfy their curiosity I personally
don't believe that there's anything to
fear about letting people hear your
music online and I think that the I've
been befuddled by the record company's
approach for the last ten years that
they've fought this opportunity when
they spend millions of dollars on radio
promotion and hundreds of thousands of
dollars on videos to try to get their
music heard by people and then they have
this golden opportunity to put their
music in front of people and they
constantly fight it and you have this
thing where you've got this new media
department at one end of the hall
spending thousands of dollars trying to
get the records played and you've got
the lawyers at the other end of Hall
spending millions of dollars to stop
people from hearing them and it just
seems to not be a really good business
model and I think I could probably
answer why they're having some problems
but uh anyhow so this is the the skin
player that we did for the record and
it's a it's been up since April
beginning of April leading up to the
record coming out last week I don't have
all the numbers on the record right now
both they're estimating that were going
to do somewhere between eighty and
ninety thousand copies first week out
and definitely going to debut top ten
with the record I'd say thank you but it
had nothing to do with me so but I'll
thank you on behalf of the band so
that's that's the player from the
society we kind of do the same thing
where we just really make it available
to people again you know I grew up in
there where my whole awareness of bands
came from finding out about bands and
reading the papers and reading magazines
and finding out about fans and going to
the record store dropping $20 or $30 on
every import record and it's really
doing it and again just from the
opportunity if I would here where it's
like you've got somebody's curiosity and
they come I think the thing that makes
the most sense is to make it as easy as
possible for them to hear your music and
I really have found quick time to just
really deliver on
that so that's again why why we use it
and why I think we've had so much
success so some of the things that we
did with the with the will cuffs as I
was talking about the movie before there
was this the movie of we and we included
the trailer in the enhanced CD content
for the for the first will go yank a
Hotel Foxtrot but as we were finishing
the enhanced content excuse me the
trailer wasn't ready for the movie yet
so we did include some content we had a
four or five minute clip of the band
playing a song live that we included on
the CD itself but then we brought people
off the site to the trailer for the film
and this way we were kind of able to
like update the content maintain the
content and I had grander ambitions but
I also had three days to develop the
enhanced content for the CD so I didn't
really make everything that I wanted to
happen on this record but again just the
ability the the ease of of embedding the
video in the website and everything just
was a no-brainer and so it was it was
very easy to do and very effective the
movie ended up doing really well both on
DVD and in the theaters and and was was
quite successful now the other thing
that I was talking about having done
with these guys is that we've been doing
a lot of of live webcast and originally
when I first started doing them we were
just doing a really basic embedding the
player and a page promoting it off the
site and just trying to get people to
come and we you know we did a couple of
them really just to kind of test the
waters I think we may have been one of
the probably the first band to really do
a webcast using broadcaster and
Southglenn I think yeah so we just
really jumped on it first again like I
worked with this company and we had done
1,500 live shows and live DJ sets all
available online and a lot of them we
had done
live content and I was really enamored
with that whole process and once I saw a
QuickTime broadcaster I was just like I
mean so since then we've worked since I
guess the first thing we did with
September of 2002 and we've just kind of
continued to refine that process and
after we've done a couple of Wilco ones
Wilco went on tour with REM last fall
and we kind of pitched REM about doing
some webcasts from their tour and they
they were into the idea and we ended up
getting to work with Warner Brothers and
working with REM to do this player for
REM glass tour and what we did is we
kind of pitched him on really building
it as a promotional device they had this
Greatest Hits record coming out and they
had this greatest hits tour that they
were doing where they were they the band
don't really go out and play there I'm
going to just pause it for a second the
band don't really go out and play their
play their hits all the time and they've
got this vast library of of hits that
they've built over a 20-year career and
as they were going to go out and do this
tour we kind of pitched him on the idea
of doing a player that was basically the
ref movie is only 144 K complete or is a
smaller Michael I saw you shake your
head so the concept being that this is a
completely viral viral item that was
able to be provided to radio stations
and to be popped up the Warner Brothers
site popped up the REM site and all of
the content we were able to update
dynamically and it's essentially an
email Abul web site really if you look
at it what they wanted to do was they
wanted to not only promote themselves
but they wanted to promote the other
bands that were on the tour they over
the four legs of the tour they took four
different bands and what we did is we
built in bio information for each of the
bands that were on the tour and then in
addition we built this little jukebox
which is going to show four oh four
because we killed the content but
what this was was just a sampler of all
the bands on the tour and again this was
up the plan when we originally did the
pitch again was 90 days out and we got a
green light 8 days before the first show
so but the plan was to offer fans an
opportunity to hear not only REM and
some of songs from the greatest
forthcoming greatest hits album but also
like it show people of other bands at
around the tour I believe the dates yeah
this was the whole tour here and again
we pitched him originally we're going to
build ticketing and everything into it
but just do the development time we
didn't have the opportunity but again
you kind of see how the whole thing is
really a website basically that was able
to kind of be put out there then what we
did was this was the first time that we
having worked with streaming video and
webcasting video despite the fact that I
had a ps3 in Missoula and I could have
done full-frame video I didn't have a
source source content so what on the
previous tour REM had carried a three
camera crew and we're doing video on
Jumbotrons and everything like that so
the original pitch was to do video
content but since there was no video
content we came up with the ideas doing
live images and shooting photos during
the show to kind of give people a visual
experience with no video and we Michael
helped us build this player which when
we first told the QuickTime guys that we
wanted to do it they were like you want
to what and but we ultimately ended up
pulling it off and I might ask Michael
to step up here for a second and tell me
how we did it since I have no idea but
anyhow what we did is the live element
is a the full two hour show
streamed live we did two shows from the
tour we did mozilla mountain and we did
Toronto Canada and it's a full the full
recording and the band's gave us
unlimited access we're able to normally
when you're shooting a big band to limit
you to computing three three songs
because after that they get all sweaty
and they don't want anyone to see them
but they gave us unlimited access we're
able to go anywhere on the stage and we
shot the entire time
and we were dumped in the dump in the
picture basically aa3 PowerBook setup we
had one power book onstage at the
monitor position and to power books in
front of house one doing audio and one
doing images and we did a resume of
shooting the images digitally dumping
them into iPhoto selecting them really
quick batching them and then I was
putting them from front from the stage
back to my partner in front of house who
was in turn putting them onto the server
and updating the script all the images
are all served from an XML file so we're
able to update the script on-the-fly and
add new photos so as you're watching the
show occur and there's a times elapsing
the photos are constantly fresh and kind
of keep you keep you in the loop the
ability to control the transitions how
long the photos display how long we did
the transitions take and all the
transition if you know if it's a wipe or
fade or anything like that so this this
worked pretty well and then what we did
is we did the live event and then in
turn just turned it around right away
edited the photos and put the live
stream up on demand and the band used at
Warner's used it to really kind of like
let people hear the band and let people
like see what the tour was like so
that's the REM player from there we we
crossed over into the with the Wilco
tour well actually not even with the
tour but with this new record again due
to development time which always seems
to be the trouble here and I it's like I
always put these things out there so far
in advance I put this pitch out there in
February and basically got the green
light on June 7th for a record that was
coming out June 22nd so we had 15 days
to really kind of pull the whole thing
together and I came up with a brilliant
idea that uh well the band change the
band change members the band added two
new members right before the writers the
rep this they finished recording this
record and what we really wanted to do
was to kind of satisfy people's
curiosity that the new lineup was going
to be up to snuff
and let people hear it and then also
again because of the record that had
done on p2p we're looking for a way to
add value and so what we did is we
allowed ourselves the ability to update
the content so on the actual disk itself
is only a ref movie that comes to the
server and gets whatever content that we
give them so by doing that we were able
to record the band's show in their
hometown Chicago on the June 12th and
have the archive of the show and photos
all built into a player and available to
anyone that bought the record so in
essence buying the new studio album you
basically get a free live record that
goes with it and as the band are just in
the process they're in learn Europe
right now touring will be back in the
States touring all for the next year or
so starting in the fall and what we
really wanted to do was kind of satisfy
people's curiosity so we built this
player that well here we go this is sort
of a image of the disc this is the front
end that you get from the from the disc
and it just tells you that you need
QuickTime and then it tells you to click
through to get the content once you
click through we've built in this really
nifty little thing that kind of comes
back and looks to verify that the
person's got the CD in their computer
and then gives them that gives them the
enhanced content if they don't if the if
they move the movie off of the disc and
they try to do it it will look back it
won't see the file on the disc and it
won't give them the enhanced content
will basically lock them out now we did
have one minor problem which is a good
one to watch out for but the plant
actually took the liberties of adding a
space to the end of our directory so on
Tuesday morning after the midnight sale
the record went on sale and I woke up to
71 emails from people saying your
content says that I need to have the CD
in my drive and the CDs in my drive and
it's telling me I don't have the CD and
so the other thing was was that Michel
neither Michael or I had received a copy
of the actual CD for testing
due to our limited development time but
within within a an hour so we were able
to figure out Michael was able to figure
out the issue was that they added the
space and we were again able to fix the
content on the server side and solve the
issue so from there the person clicks
through and they're they're given this
player here which kind of welcomes the
fan give them a message and then it
streams a full two hour and seven minute
long performance by the band again
recorded in Chicago with the live
photographs added and since we didn't do
this one live we had the luxury of kind
of doing
we had a guy named Zoran Orlick who's a
Chicago based photographer shoot and he
shot the band a couple times has done
really great photographic work so we
worked with his images and built the
player the timeline here is draggable so
the fan can kind of skip play anywhere
on the set in a later build we plan to
do the set list and build the set list
into the player so that the fan can
click and kind of jump around in the set
a little bit more accurately than than
the way it is now and again it's a
two-hour and 5 minute long show and we
did a couple of rates on this player and
again what we've done is we've left
ourselves the ability that we can change
this content at any time with the last
record with when we put out why Jeff we
had links coming to the site and the
band had a release an EP in Australia
they were going to play the Big Day Out
festival and the Australian label had
asked for some additional material to
put so they re-released the record with
a bonus EP and then there were
discussions at the label about wanting
to release the bonus EP which was like
six tracks from the record and but they
were kind of having an issue about like
they weren't sure how they wanted to do
it they weren't sure what the price
point was going to be or anything and I
was like well why you give it away off
the disc and they were like what are you
talking about and I was like well we can
just have people come from the CD and
come to the server so if anybody's got
the record they can have the you
EP for free and despite the fact that a
year earlier when the record came out I
had explained this to the label no one
really kind of got it until I explained
to them so what we did was on the
one-year anniversary of the first record
coming out
we gave fans again a skin player that
offered them six free songs it built in
the streaming player and then a download
button built into the player that
brought them to the site and I'll show
you that that destination page if I can
remember the URL of it but I think this
is it yeah so this is a destination page
from the player and what we did because
we didn't have any sort of like
sophisticated check back system we did
something really simple which was we
asked people to enter a five digit code
and the five digit code was the barcode
number off the back of the CD and if you
had that code then it allowed you access
to the download of the song you could
get the player and hear the stream but
you can get to the download section
without in theory entering the entering
thing but one of the really neat things
about Wilco is just that they've been
very generous with their content they've
been they just see this as a great
opportunity and they've been really
amazing about just giving it to the fans
they spend a good amount of money giving
content to their fans and we've really
seen the returns on at the prior two
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot coming out the
highest Bandit ever been in the
billboard charge was number 70 the most
records bandit sold was two hundred and
twenty thousand Yankee Hotel Fox starts
at four hundred and seventy thousand
copies sold right now and this record
like I said is done somewhere around
eighty or ninety thousand copies in its
first week out so what we did here was
we did like the free EP three covers you
could download the cover we did PDFs of
the cover so fans could print them out
and basically make their own bonus CD we
just gave it to people in exchange for
buying the Recker
and that's really the kind of stuff
we've done to try to you know again use
they use QuickTime as much as we can
because again I just really love it
we've got a really great working
relationship with Glenn and the team
support from you know me calling them on
three days notice and telling them I'm
going to be doing a webcast from the
moon to just you know me getting killed
bandwidth wise and them helping out and
it's just been a great working
relationship and I think that pretty
much covers covers it so I'll be happy
to answer your questions I'll be around
all week so anybody wants to talk
[Applause]