Forbes has a story that says that Radiohead’s new album, which is priced at whatever fans want to pay, is popular on file-sharing networks like BitTorrent.

“On the first day that Radiohead’s latest became available, around 240,000 users downloaded the album from copyright-infringing peer-to-peer BitTorrent sources, according to Big Champagne, a Los-Angeles-based company that tracks illegal downloading on the Internet. Over the following days, the file was downloaded about 100,000 more times each day—adding up to more than 500,000 total illegal downloads.”

Reports say that legal downloads of Radiohead’s album are at 1.2 million now, but everyone is predicting that illegal downloads will surpass the legal ones. Why? Is it the illegality of BitTorrent? Is it easier to find illegal songs rather than look for where to get it legally?

That’s what some people are saying. Some people are already familiar with BitTorrent and LimeWire, but they don’t know where to go to get the album directly from Radiohead. (For the record, here is Radiohead’s site.)

Says Forbes:

“With popular album releases, illegal download volumes normally outstrip sales, says Garland. But more surprising is that fans chose to steal music they could legally download for any price they choose.”

Another answer is that fans may be turned off by having to register and offer their name and snail mail address to Radiohead.

Nevertheless, this pay-what-you-feel-like-paying gimmick is having a great effect on Radiohead’s awareness. Everyone’s talking about their album and the new pricing system. So even if they don’t make much money on this album, they’ve at least made a lot of noise.

Popularity: 34% [?]

The combination of Internet advertising, Internet TV, mobile ads, game advertising and IPTV advertising will generate $41 billion in revenues by 2011, says research firm MultiMedia Intelligence.

In 2007, new media advertising will generate about $18 billion worldwide, which means ad revenues will more than double in five years.

The company says that three new categories–Internet TV, IPTV and mobile TV–will make up about 20% of media ad dollars in 2011. So far, advertising in these nascent media is pretty low.

Technorati Tags: IPTV, research, advertising, TV, DVR, new media, mobile TV

Popularity: 44% [?]

The LA Times has a story about how YouTube users can generate more views by adding words like “sexy”, “nude” or “hot” as their tags or keywords. One woman posting her music videos online was encouraged by veteran YouTubers to post a sexy thumbnail image to boost viewers.

They call it “bait and switch” since many people search YouTube looking for sexy, hot girls. Surprise, surprise.

Unfortunately, YouTube has a strict no nudity rule which means that searchers don’t get what they search for. At most, publicly available videos are at a PG-13 level–meaning they have some skimpy clothing or racy dancing, but no nudity.

One example the Times cites:

A YouTube video called “Naked Chicks!” exemplifies a well-worn strategy for boosting a video’s view-count. In addition to its breathlessly pervy title, the video’s “thumbnail” image — the small photo you see before you open the clip — shows off the nicely tanned lower half of a bikini-clad woman.

People have been gaming YouTube for a long time. After all, many people call it “BoobTube”. But YouTube says that the issue of misleading thumbnails isn’t rampant. Still, it’s quite easy for anyone to garner lots of views by using the right combination of thumbnails and keywords. Here’s another example the LA Times cites:

In late August, popular video blogger and bawdy YouTube humorist Philip DeFranco, a.k.a. sxephil, posted a video titled “Big Boobs and You,” a rant about his aesthetic preferences vis-à-vis the female form. The video’s thumbnail was in line with its title, but the video only flashed the image for a split second, the rest was just a monologue.

DeFranco admitted the video was an experiment to see how much traffic an offering with that name and image could generate. It scored 1.8 million views, by far the most successful of the 107 videos DeFranco had posted up to that point. The conclusion of his experiment was clear.

Yes indeed. Sex sells.

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According to a white paper published by Cisco, global IP traffic will grow 37% every year through 2011.

Cisco said that consumer IP traffic will surpass business IP traffic in 2008, surpassing 17 exabytes per month by 2011. The paper says that delivering “cable and IPTV video-on-demand content” will grow the fastest, surpassing consumer internet traffic.

I’m not sure how Cisco is figuring this since IPTV today is delivered over privately managed networks, not the public Internet. Do they expect IPTV to travel over the Internet in the future? Or are they using IPTV when they mean Internet video?

Just trying to understand what everyone means by IPTV is getting harder every day. The standard definition for IPTV is essentially Telco TV, or broadcast TV delivered over privately, managed networks like DSL or Fiber to the node or Fiber to the home.  Here in the U.S. that means projects like AT&T’s U-Verse and Verizon’s FiOSTV.

Cisco’s report was based on its own estimates, as well as projections from10 market research companies.

Anyway, some other tidbits from the paper:

• Internet video and downloads will grow from 9% of all consumer Internet traffic in 2006 to 30% in 2011.
• Internet traffic is growing fastest in developing markets, followed closely by Asia-Pacific.
• Internet video-to-TV will increase by more than a factor of 10 from 2007 to 2011.
• Internet video-to-PC will increase by a factor of four. Internet video-to-TV will exceed Internet video-to-PC by 2009, the Cisco study forecasts.

Bonus: Download the Cisco White Paper here. (PDF)

Popularity: 45% [?]

A new content delivery network launched today, BitGravity, which was operating in stealth mode for over a year. So far, the company said it has signed over 50 brand name customers.

So what’s different about BitGravity? Why another CDN?  Perry Wu, BitGravity’s CEO and co-founder said in a statement that “the current CDN infrastructure is too limiting to realize their vision.”

The press release talks about the growing amount of HD and live content over the Internet, but doesn’t really get into specifics about how it works and how different it is from other CDNs.

The network, says the company, “is based on optimized routing methodology and network innovations.” Oh, sure, that explains everything. I’m hoping that BitGravity can show potential customers much more than that explanation in their sales materials.

BitGravity also announced it will serve as the CDN for Sling Media’s upcoming interactive services using the Slingbox. As you may recall, Sling Media was recently acquired by EchoStar, maker of the DISH Network. And as was reported earlier, rumors are growing that AT&T is looking to acquire EchoStar.

Some more good news is that BitGravity is working with some popular Web 2.0 webcasters. Says TechCrunch:

“Their flagship customer is Revision3, which has a number of popular high definition video shows (such as Diggnation and The GigaOm Show) that a lot of people watch right when a new show becomes available. Given how well those shows tend to stream, it’s the best endorsement BitGravity can get.”

Technorati Tags: BitGravity, Akamai, CDN, content delivery network, Sling Media

Popularity: 59% [?]