Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Fast Company, MTV, WMG and Atlantic

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

This week Atlantic and Warner Music Group were the subject of a great article in Fast Company, as well as a pretty major announcement regarding our new ad partnership with MTV. I constantly feel proud to be part of a music company who is changing and innovating in a troubled industry, surrounded by extremely difficult economy.

Check out the Fast Company Article.

Read about our new partnership with MTV.

Apple to shut down Lala on May 31st

Friday, April 30th, 2010

Apple purchased Lala.com a few months back and faithful Lala users have been holding their collective breaths waiting for Cupertino to let us know the fate of the popular streaming service. In my inbox this morning was the following automated message from Lala.

Dear Eric,

The Lala service will be shut down on May 31st.

In appreciation of your support over the last five years, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store. If you purchased and downloaded mp3 songs from Lala, those songs will continue to play as part of your local music library.

Remaining wallet balances and unredeemed gift cards will be converted to iTunes Store credit (or can be refunded upon request). Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st.

Click here or visit Lala.com/support for more information, or to view Lala’s Terms of Service.

Thank you.

Lala

It’s a sad day for music fans but it’s nice to see Apple is doing the right thing and giving consumers iTunes store credits equal to the amount they spent on web songs. Personally I hope to see another incarnation of Lala’s technology soon, as I have almost entirely given up listening to music in iTunes. It looks like my Rhapsody subscription will have to tide me over until Apple tells us what the future holds.

Talking about the iPad with Alternative Press

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Check out my thoughts on how the iPad may effect the music industry at AltPress.com. Looks like I made the cut and was quoted a few times talking about the device. The interview was purely conceptual as none of us had seen the actual hardware, but I think everything we said holds up well post-launch.

Check out the full article here.

Alternative Press Ipad Story

Adobe Flash Video: One Web. Any Screen.

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

Adobe released a new video today showcasing their upcoming Flash 10.1 and AIR 2 technology running on a multitude of devices. As part of the Open Screen Project you can see one of Atlantic’s new videos for artist B.o.B running in Flash during the piece.

Check out the video on YouTube.

Rules of Productivity

Friday, December 18th, 2009

An interesting article showing a correlation between prolonged overtime work and a sharp decline in productivity. It’s amazing to see studies done by Ford at the turn of the century, and those done in startups showing almost exactly same loss in productivity with sustained overwork. Good for short bursts of productivity, but a loosing strategy if it becomes the norm. A great read.

http://lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.html

Rules of Productivity

The 4G Connected Car Prototype

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

photo-2

Today Alcatel-Lucent and QNX announced the 4G connected car prototype in New York. As part of the NG Connect program (an ecosystem built around 4G connectivity) Atlantic Records was proud to create a version of our award winning Fanbase platform for the music fan on the road. The car contains 4 internet connected screens allowing for an in car music experience like never before.

Check out a (shaky) video of an early version of Fanbase running in the car.

NG Connect also launched a micro site with detailed information on the program and the prototype.

Check out a video on the connected car staring yours truly.

Details on all the participants.

The press buzz surrounding the launch was great, with some standout coverage from Wired, Mashable and Reuters.

Wired

Mashable

Reuters

A great overview video from CNN.

As well as a great Fanbase mention.

NY Convergence

A full press rundown can be found on the NG Connect site.

The complete list

Check out the video below for an overview of the car and the possibilities that a nationwide 4G network can bring.

Interview in Adobe’s Edge Newsletter

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

I was interviewed a few months ago by Adobe for an article titled “From black box to contextual applications” which ran in this month in Adobe’s Edge newsletter and on the Adobe.com site. The goal of a contextual application is to provide a unified experience across multiple devices, while leveraging the unique capabilities and qualities of each. The article discusses the key tennants of contextual apps, Atlantic Record’s Fanbase applications as well as the Open Screen Project which Atlantic officially joined last week.

Check out the article.

edge