HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

What’s new in digital media?   Subscribe to digitalhhr.com to receive today’s news:

• Some good news for Yahoo for a change as its stock jumps 7% on a report that Jonathan Miller, former CEO of AOL, is talking with private and sovereign equity funds about funding a buy-out of the company.  More details here.
• Maybe some good news for the economy??  E-commerce sales jumped 15% on Cyber Monday, according to a report by comScore.
• MySpace is rolling out a new service to enable members to look at video clips embedded on their home pages via their mobile phones.  The service will be free to users, with MySpace bundling the video clips with ads.  More information here.
• Goldman Sachs is looking into launching an online bank.  The move appears to be one of the initiatives that GS is undertaking to expand its asset base now that it is a bank holding company.  Here’s the report from the Wall Street Journal detailing the news.

One copyright case that owners and licensors of digital content should be following closely in the coming months is the one brought against Universal Music Group by Stephanie Lenz, a Pennsylvania mom who posted a video on YouTube of her young son on a tricycle with Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” playing in the background. Universal submitted a DMCA takedown notice claiming that the video infringed its copyright in the Prince song. YouTube immediately removed Lenz’s video.  Lenz was able to get it restored seven weeks after filing a DMCA counter-notification asserting that her video constituted fair use of the song. Lenz then sued Universal for interfering with her legal right to post the video online. Continue Reading »

What’s new in digital media?   Subscribe to digitalhhr.com to receive today’s news:

• The New York Times has a piece on Facebook Connect, a new initiative to extend the web’s most popular social networking service to other web sites. 
• The Huffington Post just closed a new round of financing totaling $25 million, bringing the company’s valuation to $100 million.  More info here. 
• Digital music sales will continue to grow, reaching 41 percent of total sales by 2013, according to a report by Jupiter Research.  However, overall growth will continue to drop from annual sales of $10.2 billion to $9.8 billion.
• A new study on web video viewing habits may help marketers refine their ad strategies.  According to TubeMogul, only 16.62% of folks who click on a three-minute video will watch it all the way through.  While this sounds like a nail in the coffin for post-rolls, marketers seeking “true believers” (i.e. those sitting through an entire video) may see the post-roll as a cost-effective approach.
• Microsoft and Blockbuster collaborate to deliver video on demand to mobile devices.  Click here for more info.