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How many people regularly watch music videos? I wonder. It’s hard for me to believe it’s a gigantic number, but the recent volume of activity to provide music video content online suggests my imagination must be way off.

Just a few weeks ago, Warner Music announced it was joining with Premium TV to offer its own video collection on a private label Warner site. At the same time EMI announced that it had struck a deal with YouTube to provide EMI music video content for display through the YouTube site.

Today, movie download service CinemaNow announced it too was climbing on the music video train. It announced plans to resuscitate a prior effort to sell music videos too. The Watchmusichere.com site is relaunching today with videos from Warner Music Group available for sale and viewing on portable devices.

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In a further advancement into domain once solidly controlled by Netflix, Blockbuster today introduced an Internet Only DVD rental service. The new service, which is being called Blockbuster By Mail, will be distinct from Blockbuster’s combined Mail-order and In-store service (called Total Access).

Unlike Total Access, subscribers to the new “By Mail” service will not be able to rent titles from retail stores as well as online. They will, however, be able to return to their local stores, or by mail. Use of the retail footprint for returns will theoretically increase turn-around time for some users.

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Despite a recent history of saying it wasn’t interested in subscription businesses, London’s Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal are reporting today that Apple is in late-stage discussions with Hollywood movie studios to offer movie rentals through iTunes. The rumored plan which includes $2.99 video downloads that will expire after one month doesn’t contradict Apple’s anti-subscription position, but other rumors circulating suggest (though much less likely) that Apple might also consider a subscription rental package.

While information on the concept of iTunes rentals is too early and inconclusive to verify with certainty, it’s not an unrealistic rumor. Apple is doing well with DVD sales through iTunes but its growing market share could easily be swallowed by Amazon’s Unbox video download service (partnered with Tivo), or efforts to provide digital rental services from Blockbuster or Netflix, should they materialize. Click to Read More

No matter who gets whacked, who goes to jail, or who turns into Tweety and starts singing secrets, tonight the world will say goodbye to the Soprano family.  But their family name will stay present next to the Corleone’s from the Godfather, Tony Montana from Scarface and all the other legends of Mafiosa Entertainment. 

Whatever happens in the episode, the curtain call will also mark the end of a program that, arguably, changed the fabric of Television programming as much as any other show in recent decades.  Just as Mash and All in the Family opened new doors for sitcoms – from the subject matters considered, to the tone of the dialog – the Soprano’s too, altered TV.  In bringing a gritty, edgy, violent concept and layering it with complex psychological nuance and wildly detailed character development, the Soprano’s ushered in a new era.   The Soprano’s was more than just mafia TV.  It was a program written and filmed with the kind of creative ambition and techniques usually reserved for feature films.  The Soprano’s brought the air of film making and story telling back to the short form.

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When investors look at early stage companies one of the biggest decision criteria underlying their investment decision is the quality of the people.   “Better to bet on a C idea and an A team than an A idea and a C team,” the saying goes.  With great ideas being somewhat plentiful, and the kind of adaptable idea-executing work being a challenge, it’s easy to understand.  Success is about execution.  And that requires a few things including, as Charles Schwab said, Vision  (“A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing.”) and as Vince Lombardi said, Teamwork (“Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”)

This past week, struggling hand–held maker Palm announced it was taking a sizable minority investment ($325m) from private equity firm Elevation Partners. The deal raises the question – are good people, and a change of perspective enough to fix a troubled, established company.  I don’t know the answer, turnarounds are tricky beasts, especially in consumer-facing product companies, but it’s a question worth asking.

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As some readers have noticed, our web hosting service has had some outages this week that have caused the Metue site to be down for a few hours during the middle of the day. They were apparently having electrical power management issues in their data-center. We are told the issues are resolved but needless to say, this was cause for concern and we are proactively looking to insure it can’t happen.

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Microsoft and Google have been racing to digitize the books of the world.  Over the past year, the battle of dueling press releases has seesawed back and forth as each has announced new agreements to digitize and index vast libraries.

The nature of the two companies efforts are different, with Microsoft scanning copyrighted material only if rights–holders opt in to the service and Google’s project scanning everything it can gain access to but only providing limited summaries and background for copyright materials the rights holders haven’t authorized full disclosure of.

The latest two announcements have belonged to Google.  Click to Read More