Archive of thenextweb.com

Music and Bits – Film it Yourself

Written on 15th April 2009 4 COMMENTS
Anne Helmond, hard bloggin' scientist

Today, the Next Web Conference kicked off with three smaller events. The Spaces venue was filled with music lovers and mobile developers for two of the Wednesday events: Music and Bits and Mobile Dev Camp Amsterdam.

Kickoff by Peter Robinett (Mobile Dev Camp) and Edial Dekker (Music & Bits)

VPRO 3VOOR12 – Film it Yourself

Ron van der Sterren from the Dutch Public Broadcasting company VPRO showed one of their latest projects from the 3VOOR12 online music division: FIY. Film it Yourself tries to leverage the power of fans and concert go-ers by using their social media contributions in the form of video material. If everyone is filming the concert, why not use the (amateur) movie material from the crowd to accompany their professional sound recordings?

To try out the concept they filmed the Horrors concert last week with seven people, using different devices ranging from a Nikon D90 to a Nokia N95. After the concert everyone sent their material to a server and Ron van der Sterren manually edited all the material to put it in sync with their audio track.

The results of the first test can be found in the slideshow below. As long as they clear all the rights with the people from the audience who contribute their movies there are no copyrightissues because the rights for the audio recordings have been cleared. The next step is to find developers who can help develop automatic synchronization and for example a multiview grid. Think Microsoft Photosynth video with a multigrid view with a viewers’ edit made by the community.

FIY presentation at Music & Bits Summit

View more presentations from Ron Van der sterren.

3VOOR12 is bringing this concept to big Dutch music festivals such as Pinkpop and Lowlands. The next try-out is set for the Pinkpop festival where a local band opening the festival will be filmed by 50 people. Immediately after the concert Ron Van der Sterren will copy all the material from the fans to his harddisc and then manually edit it together. This, in order to solve one weakness of the project: it all depends on the fans to upload their material. if we look at the amount of amateur concert registration at YouTube this is not necessarily a problem. However, if you want to upload a crowd-generated movie a week after the concert all fan material needs to be uploaded before then.

Ron van der Sterren explains the Film it Yourself concept in one minute:

Music and Bits – Film it Yourself from silvertje on Vimeo.

3voor12, broadcasters, thenextweb09, tnw, tnw09, vpro

4 Comments »

Internet celebs like ObamaGirl help blogTV grow rapidly

Written on 27th October 2008 2 COMMENTS
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel

About a month ago, YouTube had announced that they do not plan to enter the live streaming market. However, many broadcasters have a real need for a platform that allows them to broadcast their live shows. Shaycarl who is one of the most popular and subscribed to users on YouTube looked for such a platform and found it on Israel-based blogTV. So have others. In the last 4 months, 28 of YouTube’s 100 most subscribed to vloggers and 80% of YouTube’s contributors (who are not YouTube’s Media Partners) are broadcasting at least twice a week on blogTV.

Livestreaming another way for self-expression

Leading internet celebs such as Sexphil, Charles Trippy, Lisa Nova and Shaycarl are all broadcasting their own popular blogTV shows now. blogTV has also announced today that even ObamaGirl will be starting to broadcast on their site every Tuesday and Thursday evening. This is major for blogTV considering that elections are just around the corner. In the last year, the company’s founders have reiterated that live streaming is the next type of user generated content that end users will turn to just like they are currently using Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. Live streaming is yet another way for users to express themselves.

Monetizing livestreams

Yet this whole story is not just about user generated content for blogTV. The company is also monetizing this content. Fifty of blogTV’s top broadcasters are internet celebs which enables the company to sell ads in these spaces at premium prices of $10-$12 CPM. These are considered to be very high prices for a user generated site.

Leading player in the live UGC arena

blogTV is growing very rapidly. In fact, Quantcast shows that blogTV has more page views in the United States and around the world than uStream.tv. This makes it a leading player in the live UGC arena. In September alone, blogTV hosted over 20,000 different broadcasters that broadcasted their own unique shows. blogTV is reporting that in each of the last 3 months they had over 30% growth.

Each its own niche

There are a few different players in the live streaming arena and each has found its own niche. uStream and Justin.tv are dominating the TV broadcasting niche whereas blogTV has captured the UGC live streaming niche. So if you feel like you have something to say to the world, get on blogTV and say it. If not, you can still tune in to all the interesting content that other users are providing. You won’t be disappointed.