BestBuy Is Now On The Digital BandWagon!

This is another key insight of things to come as we proceed to the future of all things digital.
Best Buy has now purchased Napster for $121 million, an all-cash deal that values the company at $2.65 per share.  The buyout, confirmed Monday morning, gives Best Buy a digital store to complement its hardware footprint.  "We can foresee Napster acting as a platform for accelerating our growth in the emerging industry of digital entertainment, beyond music subscriptions," said Dave Morrish, executive vice president at Best Buy.

The per-share valuation essentially doubles the price from Friday, part of a relatively unenthusiastic response from Wall Street.  Napster board members approved the move, though the exit appears more of a relief than a bonanza.  The purchase includes Napster's cash holdings of $67 million, an account that has been eroding over the past few years.  Currently, Napster carries a subscriber base of roughly 700,000, and the company now offers MP3s on the download side.

At the bell on Friday, shares closed at $1.36, and shares bumped upward to $2.52 on Monday.  NAPS has dropped nearly 57 percent over the past year, and nearly 62 percent over the past two years.  Napster lost $16.5 million on revenues of $127.5 million for the fiscal year ending March 31st.  The deal is expected to close during the current quarter.

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The T-Pain Goes Digital

Hello World This Just goes to show the future is now and the playing is level ground where 1st will be last and last will be first(The spiritually concern no what it means)

Grammy Award-Winning singer, song writer, and producer T-Pain recently launched his much anticipated full digital independent record label Nappy Boy Digital. The label’s mission is to create a direct artist to consumer connection without the constraints of the traditional major labels. Nappy Boy Digital is an obvious next step for record labels who may have finally realized that the Internet is a friend and not a foe. But as I learn more about the label, I can’t help but wonder if T-Pain squandered this opportunity to make a lasting effect in the music industry.

It’s clear from reading the press release and my multiple visits to the Nappy Boy Digital website that Nappy Boy Digital is simply nothing more than a record label that will be using internet as their sole distribution method. Well it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that as internet music sales continue to rise and CD sales continue to decline, that a primary online distribution method is a no brain-er. What I was expecting from the subsequent launch of NBD was for T-Pain to use this opportunity to change the way record companies use the internet to market, build relationships with their fan base, and build communities surrounding their artist’s music. Lynne D has been profiling artists who have been on the leading edge of harnessing the power of the internet and social media, but what we are yet to see is a record label who has successfully grouped some of the most successful social media tools together into a package that can be duplicated for every artist on their roster on their very own web property. This is obviously not what T-Pain had in mind by branding his label as a digital record label.

T-Pain has failed to understand that everything on the web generally ties into one another; great music combined with social, downloads, and ringtones will create a following who will in turn use these tools to evangelize your music. Harnessing these tools collectively while giving your audience the ability to instantly own your music, can create a great reach with a very small budget. Instead of really impacting the music industry NBD will go down as a good opportunity squander by short sighted thinking.

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Video Wars: Not Just Yet | Black Web 2.0

I was so excited when someone told me they saw the new John Legend ft. Andre 3000 video on MTV. I went straight to YouTube to search for it, and clicked on the first link that came up. Imagine my surprise when the video was branded Yahoo!That got me thinking though. YouTube really IS the video king. I can’t even think about how many projects I’ve worked on that included video thus included research on online video players. The main theme that’s out there for sites is, even if they’re going to host their own video, they need to have some of their content on YouTube to drive traffic back to their own site. This of course, makes me both happy and sad. I am happy because amazingly obscure videos no one would have heard of (It’s so cold in the D anyone?) or hard to find videos can be found on YouTube. However, the quality is horrific (though I have been spotting some super high quality videos popping up like this opening for the japanese cartoon Moyashimon).You might be asking, why does this matter? As more and more video content goes digital, I gurantee that more and more Black video content will be online and the gap between Black broadcast video and Black online video will close. It is important as all these new black media sites that are incorporating video know where to put their stuff to gain traffic and properly engage in all that cool web 2.0 community stuff: YouTube (plus, professional content is more than likely going to be what ends up driving revenue on YouTube and I heard something about profit sharing with content owners and ad revenue).That being said, I still love vimeo for the quality and community aspects, and I am really hoping that they continue to have growth. Their HD channel is awesome… so awesome I’d say it looks shiny and new every time I see it. What is your favorite non-YouTube, community driven video site?

Video Wars: Not Just Yet | Black Web 2.0

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Watch TV Shows Online Its All Digital- blinkx Remote

Watch TV Shows Online - blinkx Remote

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