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Did You Ever See a VC Cry?

“I’m afraid it will be too late”, intones uber VC John Doerr. He’s referring to correcting course in regards to green technologies and gobal warming. When Doerr speaks you should listen. As one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists, he’s directed the funding of Compaq, Netscape, Symantec, Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com and many others.

He gave a presentation in March at the TED 2007 conference outlining his vision for the so called Green Tech movement. He predicts that the next decade will bring an unprecedented wave of economic boom throughout the world as we fashion new technologies to conserve or eliminate our use of hydro-carbon based energy sources. It will make the dotcom boom seem paltry in comparison. He gave a more detailed overview on The Charlie Rose show last year.

He believes in this idea with all his heart. This has become his life’s crusade. You can get a sense of this when, at the end of his TED talk, he starts crying at the prospect of having to face his daughter in twenty years and explain how we finally started turning things around and saved the world… or explain how we didn’t.

He’s spot on or course. Let’s stop kidding ourselves. We’ve been lead down a path of pernicious complacency by greedy corporations and dim-whitted politicians who have made a concerted effort to deride and negate the evidence so clearly before us. Containing and reducing the production of greenhouse gases will not only preserve our world, it will also save a lot of people lots of money. Doerr focuses on the Walmart example. They’re one of the leaders in this effort. Do you really think Walmart cares about people? Clearly not. But they do care about longevity and their bottom line.

Watch the TED presentation here.
Watch the Charlie Rose interview here.

Internet Radio Royalty Rate - the FAQ

The Wunderkinden over at Digital Music News have posted an excellent (if pedantic) FAQ about the proposed royalty rate changes for streaming Internet radio. It gives you a pretty good idea how very complex this whole issue is. This debate is also a good trial run on how a consumer compulsory licensing scheme might play out in the near future.

Read the FAQ here.

For the record, I am not per se against raising rates across the board - including Public Broadcasting. Music has real value and society ought to pay money to get that value if they choose to consume music. Raising royalty costs will ultimately shift the burden to advertisers, where it belongs. We are about to see an explosion in streaming advertising (so-call “pre and post roll” ad insertion). YouTube will lead the charge on this as they complete their court settlements with major content owners. Once they turn on the advert switch en mass, this sort of ad buy will become as ubiquitous as banner ads and TV commercials. As a lover of music, I would just assume get more money flowing towards licenses now rather than later.

The Public Broadcasting issue is indeed troubling. It does seem like they should catch some sort of break here. In my opinion this break should not come at charging them less than others, but by providing private and public subsidies to counteract the hike. Truth is this sort of Internet streaming model will soon become the primary means by which the Public Broadcasting audience consumes their content- so they need to reconcile their responsibility to bring fresh ideas to the people while empowering the technology to produce dollars to keep musicians economically viable. Note also that the hike only applies to music played via Public Broadcasting - not original spoken-word based content.

Nielsen’s Tweaks: Time Spent Edges Out Visitation and Views

In their continuing pursuit of relevence, Nielsen has re-emphasized a key reporting metric from visits/views to actual user time spent on the site. Advertisers are getting itchy - they want more audience-oriented measurements. This speaks to just how hot online video has become.

Check it the full article here.