Digital Movies, Music Content Business: Shemaroo Acquires Pen's Audio Catalog

 

Shemaroo Entertainment, the Indian movie production and aggregation company which is also active in the digital content space has acquired the entire audio catalogue of Pen India (Popular Entertainment Network).

Pen India (Popular Entertainment Network)

Pen has a library of bollywood music that includes more than 1000 songs including sound tracks from music directors like Jatin Lalit, Anu Malik, Sameer Sen and Anand Raj Anand among others, and films Like Chachi 420, Aakrosh and Aa Gale Lag Jaa.

Why the Deal

• The deal offers Shemaroo the perpetual rights for a major part of Pen’s catalog. to leverage it across its digital platforms including mobile and internet, along with traditional mediums like physical rights, performance rights, radio etc

Shemaroo growth trend

• A few days back, Shemaroo launched a dedicated YouTube channel for streaming full length movies for free, and simultaneously released two titles on DVD and web.
• Shemaroo claims to own the largest library in the country, with perpetual rights for more than 600 titles. 

Competition

• T-Series, had acquired music and audio-video from Eros Films, last year.
• T-Series has a content partnership with Hungama.
• Both Hungama and T-Series also co-own content from Reliance BIG Entertainment.

 

New Video Advertising Formats: YouTube's First Watch Ads

 

From now you can expect to see a new type of pre-roll advertisement, called YouTube's First Watch, the first time you watch a video produced by a YouTube partner each day

• YouTube has been testing First Watch ads, which have only been seen by about 15 million users till now.
• YouTube reports a 1 percent click-through rate for First Watch ads.
• Youtube's First Watch ads is an extension of YouTube's "masthead" ads - the ads that begin playing when you visit YouTube's homepage
• YouTube advertisers involved in the First Watch test have included Tommy Hilfiger, Hotels.com, Lifetime, Macy's, and Virgin Mobile.
• First Watch videos won't appear on user-generated videos.

 

Yandex IPO: Biggest Internet Company IPO Since Google

Russian search engine Yandex is one of the few search engines that controls a larger share of a country's search market than Google. Yandex has a dominant share of the Russian market - about 64% of all searches done in Russia - similar to Google's dominance in the USA and most other contries. Google has about 22% of the Russian market - like Yahoo did before their partnership with Microsoft.

This Russian search engine Yandex went publicand here are some highlights on the money it made

• On the first day the stock price for Yandex opened at $25 and closed ing at $38.84
• The IPO gave Yandex over $1.3 billion from their IPO
• The Russian search engine set the record for the biggest IPO for an internet company since Google who raised $1.67 billion in 2004

Expanding Television Content Business: Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon is working aggressively to take its television content business beyond just television. The objective is to encompassing various platforms to create higher visibility and build affinity for their character ‘Keymon Ache’. Some of the steps they are taking in this direction are as follows:

• The Television channel is getting into a tie up with Tata DoCoMo, where 3G users can watch a show by making a video call, in sync with the airing of the show.
• The Television channel is launching various mobile games across different application stores, starting with the Nokia Application Store (formerly the Ovi store) and GetJar.
• Vodafone, Airtel and Idea subscribers can also have the Keymon Ache song as their caller tune.
• A new micro-site is set up where visitors can play games, download wallpapers and watch episodes online.
• Similar content has also been made available on WAP for mobile internet users.
• Nickelodeon is also undertaking pan-India promotions involving a 360 degree campaign across cities, on-air promotions, buzz through print, outdoor innovations, ambient media (OOH) at high footfall areas like Big Bazaar, MC Donalds, Airports and DTH promotions on Tata Sky.

Instagram's Latest Users / Usage Growth Statistics

A couple of months ago, photo sharing service Instagram announced usage statistics of 6 photos shared per second. Its all changed now.

As per the latest usage statistics shared by Instagram

• Usage statistics are up to 10 user photos posted per second
• Instagram currently has 4.25 million registered users after only seven months of existence.

More about Instagram:

Instagram is used for all the following:

• As an iPhone app for taking pictures and applying visual filters to them, making the photos look retro-cool. These filters are especially popular, because they can make even mundane iPhone photos look more interesting, or at least wackier.

• As a way to easily post your picture to a bunch of sites at the same time, such as Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and Tumblr. Most people have to do this manually, currently, using different apps.

• As a social network of photos, where you can quickly and simply see what your friends are doing through colorful photos, and add comments. You can quickly import your Facebook and Twitter friendships, and people from your phone book.