Spotify TV

Swedish music streaming service Spotify has launched it’s own app for TeliaSonera, providers of digital TV in Sweden and Finland.

This experiments sees the Spotify platform transposed for the Spotify Premium account holding viewing public, allowing them to listen to music through their tellyboxes.

The development is intriguing. It’s not the first time an Internet-based music streaming platform has converged with another medium – Last.fm and Xbox (disclosure: Edelman client) being the principle merging that comes to mind – and it won’t be the last.

Where this really gets interesting however is the potential for on-demand music videos through the Spotify platform.

Again, this is not a new trick; digital TV channels have been offering this for a while, but not with the same freedom and huge catalogue that a potential Spotify operation could bring.

Spotify have teased us with video recently with the Jimi Hendrix video stream and this further tickles the vehicle of visual content consumption.

Is there a desire to watch music videos in the same manner you’d listen to music online though? About $40bn was spent consuming music through subscription TV in 2009 according to BPI and Future Source data. That, of a $100bn industry is quite a chunk, suggests that there is a business opportunity there for someone.

Digital Economy Act Initial Obligations Code

A draft version of the Digital Economy Act Initial Obligations Code has been published by Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator.

When a regulator tries to impose their rules on the Internet, there will always be a core group of people who try to subvert them and will find a way around any sort of legislation. This makes enforcement of these rules nigh on impossible, despite how difficult they will be to follow through with in the first place.

What does this code mean for brands?

Are they now in control of the data they are putting out to be shared? Will they now need to put a disclaimer on all the content they are publishing online to signify if they’re happy for their fans to share it?

It seems to me that if a user were to use an image without permission (even accidentally), a brand could try and enforce the copyright three strikes ruling.

This means that subcultures like 4chan or b3ta could see their communities under constant threat of Internet eviction as they look to re-mix logos, videos and adverts.

That level of control is not healthy for creativity and innovation because it restricts the freedom that the Internet gives the anonymous satirist.

Too much control will lead to tension and tension may lead to revolution.

How Ofcom deals with that potential threat will be key over the next 12 months.

Foursquare, Ferris Bueller and Facebook

I spotted an interesting use of Foursquare from the Chicago tourism office on PSFK, which demonstrates a neat use of the social location service.

Tourists are being offered the opportunity to unlock a Ferris Bueller badge by emulating experiences from the film.

Posted on their Facebook Page, Foursquare are offering people the chance to say how they’de recreate his day off and win a top notch prize.

This demonstrates several things:

A willingness of people to create content
Geo-location content is customisable
Facebook check-ins will be an important next step

If people are continuingly willing to make, suggest and share, this suggests UGC is definitely not dead and is still a valuable asset for brands who want to get their fans engaged.

By allowing people to play with location-based content, brands can make experiences even more personal ni a way that has so far been limited – couple that with the ongoing developments in augmented reality and you have a very powerful localised service brewing.

Facebook, as the most pervasive social network, has an opportunity to further connect people by locality and do it on their mobiles, to a greater extent than Gowalla or Foursquare because of the sheer size of its userbase. For brands who are already well versed in Facebook Pages, this presence can be further amplified beyond a static Facebook Page which you have to log onto to engage with, but a free roaming brand-by-location approach, something a standard brand page does not yet fulfil.

This could be exciting for brands as people who are out of Foursquare but comfortable on Facebook will find that location and their favourite companies want to engage with them more, and where they are.