Content Distribution Is Hot Topic at Media Gathering.

LAST week's Monday-through-Thursday Digital Hollywood confab at the Beverly Hilton Hotel covered the digital media universe from creation to distribution and consumption.

Sponsors of the event read like a Who's Who of the computer industry, from AboveNet to Microsoft Corp. and everyone in between, like Zap Media, IBM and Lucent Technologies Inc.

Digital Hollywood's agenda underlines the shift that has taken place in the last two years from a focus on technology to an emphasis on content and business models. In the digital environment, all types of material are referred to as "content," whether they are text, photographs, animation, video, audio, complete programs or snippets.

Content may have been created in an analog format but, at some point, it has to be digitized for transport across multiple networks (broadcast, cable, satellite, fixed wireless) and display on multiple devices (TV, PC, media screens, palmtops).

In the last year, a whole new digital content marketplace has arisen called "online syndication." It's something like syndication in the television industry, where program creators and owners license their products to 1,600 TV stations, a few hundred cable networks and, increasingly, to foreign outlets. However, the scale of online licensing is something very new.

The largest syndicator is San Francisco-based iSyndicate (www.isyndicate.com), which provides material from nearly 1,100 content providers to 270,000 Web sites. Other syndicators include Screaming Media (www.screamingmedia.com), Yellow Brix (www.yellowbrix.com), NewsEdge (www.newsedge.com) and the Content Exchange (www.content-exchange.com).

Online syndication provides considerable incentive for media companies to license their products to many other sites on the Net. Almost everybody who is anybody is doing it, including ABCNews.com, Associated Press, BBCAmerica, Billboard, Business Week, CBS Marketwatch and Sportsline, CNBC, Copley News Service, Fortune, Fox News Online, Nightly Business Report, Reuters, and Rolling Stone. The incentives? Money, brand awareness and Web-site traffic building.

The money stems partly from license fees. A well-known column, for example, might bring in as much as $400 per month from each buyer. ISyndicate takes 50 percent of the revenue for making the deal and setting up the automated transfer from the content provider to the purveyor. Four hundred dollars may not sound like much, but if even a tiny percentage of the company's 270,000 buyers bite, it can add up to considerable revenue.

Not all content comes with a price, however. Much of the content distributed by iSyndicate and others is sent out solely to provide brand awareness for the content provider. For example, a movie studio might put out a trailer on an upcoming release, or write an article about it, then distribute the material to Web sites through a syndicator. This content usually includes links back to the studio's home site for more information.

In cases like that, iSyndicate charges nothing to the sites that want to run the content. It does, however, charge the studio whenever users click back to their home sites through links within the distributed content.

The technologies underlying online syndication are still in development. They include digital rights management (DRM), royalty accounting and procedures, and standardized transport and display languages. The broadband networks are under construction. The content is in production. But with all the activity, it won't take long for these business-enabling products and services to come online.

DoDots Does TV

One of the coolest press events planned during the Digital Hollywood conference was a Tuesday night bash at the House of Blues, which was supposed to celebrate the announcement of a convergent deal between Web innovator DoDots (www.dodots.com) and a "major television network."

There was just one problem: though the crowd partied down, the network decided to postpone the announcement.

The disappointment is only temporary, says a DoDots spokeswoman. "It was delayed because it's actually going to be a bigger and better announcement with some added elements that hadn't been entirely worked out," she said.

DoDots has developed a way for companies to speed their brands across the Web with "dots." Instead of distributing entire files and programs, they can just send a 2-inch-by-2-inch piece of content that sits on a Web page or a desktop. That square is a "dot," and DoDot licensees design it themselves. The dot can also contain a clickable link to other content material, sites, or applications.

Check out the DoDots site to see examples of how dots work. Apparently, at least one major network thinks they will.

Universal Makes Digital Moves

Universal Music Group (www.umusic.com) is all over the digital landscape. Last week, the company said it is partnering with Seattle-based Loudeye Technologies (www.loudeye.com) to digitize, encode, store, and stream music samples over the Internet as a first step toward allowing consumers to buy music from its library online. Loudeye will create 30-second samples of about 14,000 titles and 30,000 music videos owned by UMG.

Last month, UMG announced that it would create content for broadband networks over cable modem and DSL lines. The programs will be music-oriented pilots featuring premium music.

Research of Interest

More than two-thirds of people who get streamed audio and video online believe that advertising is a fair price to pay for free Web site content, according to a new Arbitron/Edison Media Research Internet study.

The research includes information about audience demographics of "streamies," their online activities, and attitudes about streaming. For more information, contact Arbitron Co.'s Thom Mocarsky at [phone] ([e-mail]).

A new study from Forrester Research, "Content Out of Control," finds that piracy will cost the music industry $3.1 billion over the next five years and the book industry $1.5 billion. The research, headed by Eric Sheier, looks at 50 entertainment companies and covers music, movies, books, video games, and TV. More information at www.forrester.com.

Radio sales and marketing firm Interep commissioned research to look at the future of radio in the digital environment. The study found that for now, radio will continue to do well even in the face of MP3 and streaming audio alternatives. For more information, check out www.interep.com.