But in the meantime, there’s something for everyone online. Tonight, Spin Magazine continues [...]]]> Seeing a trend here? Suddenly it seems like everybody wants a part of the concert streaming game. Still, I’m waiting to see when smaller touring acts start using it as more of a promotional tool for building and maintaining a fan base.

But in the meantime, there’s something for everyone online. Tonight, Spin Magazine continues their 5 night celebration of their 25th Anniversary with a show from The National, live from Terminal 5 (maybe I’ll head over there). The previous three nights featured live streams from Smashing Pumpkins, The Flaming Lips, and The Black Keys. They wrap up the party tomorrow with a show from Spiritualized.

American Express is the series sponsor, promoting their Zync card. So far, they’ve scored 102,000 “Likes” on Facebook, which is the gateway to the content. Eagerly awaiting data on total and concurrent streams.

Follow the fun on Twitter, too, at #ZyncSpin25. Rock on.

Pay-Pay-View events, like the UFC’s, have traditionally been high priced affairs that attract a loyal fanbase, but limits the appeal to [...]]]> Back in March, live streaming provider Livestream issued a zero-tolerance policy in an open letter to the industry. The Ultimate Fighting Championships wishes that other streaming platforms offered the same assurances right about now.

Pay-Pay-View events, like the UFC’s, have traditionally been high priced affairs that attract a loyal fanbase, but limits the appeal to more mainstream audiences. However, thats no reason for platforms like UStream or Justin.TV to defend their users who participate in copyright infringing activities.

With the increased ease of creating your own personal video stream, content owners and event producers are facing an increased challenge to their business models. To that end, the UFC is suing Justin.TV and UStream to provide the IP addresses and data on users who made streams of their event available for free, circumventing the $50 charge to legally get the event.

Just like Viacom suing YouTube over their copyrights, we can expect an increase in legal activity like this as entertainment companies attempt to protect their new models, such as live streaming concerts. Unfortunately, just like illegal downloading of music and movies, the industry is a few steps behind the technology and its early adopters who have come to expect that nearly any live event can be found – albeit at a shitty quality – for free on either of the streaming platforms.

We continue to support copyright holders in all of their causes. Technology providers and users alike need to step up to the plate and defend the rights of users as well as content owners in search of a sustainable business model as we continue to turn the old ones upside down and shake every last penny out of their pockets.

To that end, VEVO and YouTube, with sponsorship from American Express, are launching an online concert series called “Unstaged.” The first show under the moniker will be Arcade Fire, which will stream their Aug. 5 concert from Madison Square Garden live. [...]]]> The music industry is slowly reinventing itself with a heavy emphasis on live performances.

To that end, VEVO and YouTube, with sponsorship from American Express, are launching an online concert series called “Unstaged.” The first show under the moniker will be Arcade Fire, which will stream their Aug. 5 concert from Madison Square Garden live. John Legend and The Roots are also slated for live streams, as well as two more yet-to-be-named shows.

According to the AP, the series is planning interactive features like a choice of camera angles, one to be controlled by an as-yet-to-be-named director and another that a user can choose.

The live concert experience is one that we’ve been pretty hot for at OVW. For me personally, I reported on my own watershed moment when live concert streams finally reached a high enough quality to be enjoyed on a big screen in the living room: a live Trey Anastasio Band concert powered by iClips.net. iClips has been dominant in the jamband scene and on the festival circuit, producing streams for Rothbury Music Festival and Austin City Limits Festival, as well as shows from moe., String Cheese Incident, Umphrey’s McGee and Drive-by Truckers.

Last year, The Allman Brothers launched Moogis, their own live streaming service, powered by OrchardTV.

Hulu Plus is offering “Over 120 seasons and 2,000 episodes of [...]]]> The summer doldrums seem to be a good time for Hulu to launch their subscription service, Hulu Plus. With few new episodes to stream for free, users will have to pony up the $10 to catch up on shows they’re late to the party for.

Hulu Plus is offering “Over 120 seasons and 2,000 episodes of rich library content.”

Subscribers can watch shows at 720p, and 480p for free.

I just re-added Hulu Desktop to my media center, having given up on it a while ago. Third-party integration with Windows Media Center makes it easy to switch between content you’ve already got and new content to stream.

Ben adds: The key differentiator here beyond more content seems to be the extension of Hulu to all screens which has historically been one of the major user complaints about the service. Because monetizing platforms like the iPad through advertising is more difficult than the web (where Hulu reportedly already gets higher CPMs than TV), the subscription model makes a lot of sense. That said, viewers will need wireless or 3G coverage to watch which will make it difficult to compete with iTunes downloads for quality of experience watching content on the go.

Tuesday at 1PM EST, you can watch I Want Media’s Future of Media 2010 event embedded below: iwantmediatv on livestream.com. [...]]]> If you’re not in New York or stuck at your desk during this week’s Internet Week events, we’ve got you covered. You can catch live coverage from Internet Week headquarters at Metropolitan Pavillion throughout the week here.

Tuesday at 1PM EST, you can watch I Want Media’s Future of Media 2010 event embedded below:

And watch Mashable’s Media Summit live all day today here. Check back for updates with more live coverage, and if we missed anything drop us a line and let us know.

On BermanBraun Along with co-founder Gail Berman, BermanBraun was [...]]]> Lloyd Braun just wrapped up the keynote at IAB Innovation Days from Internet Week headquarters in New York. Interviewed by Wenda Harris Millard, President & CEO of MediaLink, Braun discussed his views on the future of digital content, monetization, and design as a tool for driving engagement.

On BermanBraun
Along with co-founder Gail Berman, BermanBraun was born out of “an idea for a new type of media company, almost like a virtual studio.” The idea was to take all the experience and lessons from [Hollywood] and Yahoo! (along with a lot of the team from Yahoo!) and create a new kind of entertainment experience. We have 50 people today and 40 of them are in digital.

We sort of had this seminal moment in our company about 6 months in when we realized these sorts of little one-off things were not a scalable way of doing business…to make money on the internet today the business is advertising, and we are focused on display advertising. Display advertising is really in the sort of early stages of its evolution. Search has margins of 80%, digital has margins of 60% but not a lot of people have focused on display. For display you need a lot of reach.

Glow is up to I think we did about 5.1 million. WONDERWALL is about 12 million. The reach is really great but to us its about engagement. It’s hard for us to say look how great we are we do 12 million uniques per month [because] we have the MSN homepage.

On Design as a Tool for Achieving Engagement
We look at design as a programming tool. Look at Apple. “Not to compare us to Steve Jobs and Apple. Steve Jobs is like the John Lennon of our generation, it’s so amazing what those guys do.” He creates the iPod, before that there were MP3 players, and then he creates iTunes. “And that’s the genius of what he did, all of a sudden it becomes incredibly easy.”

On Discovery:
It was still more or less tables or indexes of content. You look at most major sites, most portals they all have the same design “Design is a tool for how to frame content, and how to show the audience what’s important or what’s not…I still get 5 newspapers delivered to my home each day…you get to see all the editorial decisions being made…what I see when I go on line is all the headlines…we like to be told in subtle ways what we should want…we like to be sort of enticed on what we should discover.”

I’m a big fan of windows, I don’t think there’s going to be any one way to get the content and there’s going to need to be business models so that studios can make money off the content…if it doesn’t happen someone’s going to be able to find it online.

On Paid content:
I don’t think the cat’s completely out of the bag yet…but I do believe people will pay for content. The problem is its not just going to be one company that does it, because everybody’s going to have to. Some brands are going to survive…there are some brands that may not be as relevant in today’s digital age.

On Creating Experiences for Different Screens
Wonderwall was built in Flash and that obviously caused a problem for the iPad. You have to create now for a bunch of different platforms. For us, we don’t think of any brand that we’re creating as being for any one specific platform. For Wonderwall, we created a [celebrity portal] because we knew that MSN didn’t have one.

We did the same thing with Glow on the lifestyle site, and its taking the thoughts that women have when they pick up a copy of Elle at the newsstand. At Glow we only focus on 7 content pieces per day, no one’s ever seen a website like this. It feels like a different way to experience a lifestyle product. Studies show that people love engaging and it’s a fun site to navigate through. The advertising’s been incredible.