Almost Live TV

Even if everything here is complete bunk, we can’t keep our eyes off of the veritable train wreck that our favorite celebrities treat us to on a daily basis. So, we scoured the rumor mills and gossip columns to bring to you the latest in who is doing what, who is doing who, who is going to jail and everything in between. So sit back, grab your box of bon bons and enjoy the latest from the music celebrity rumor mills.

Busta Rhymes, are you getting a fair shot? TMZ.com reports that he was stopped by police and admitted to having a shot of Hennessy before hopping behind the wheel of his Denali. The arrest report that TMZ obtained stated that Rhymes failed the sobriety test, but only blew a 0.067 later at the police station, which is below the legal limit of 0.08. He was reportedly charged with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated and operating a motor vehicle while impaired.

Even though Paris Hilton really isn’t much of a music celebrity, she made the celebrity gossip hit list by getting sentenced to 45 days in jail for driving with a suspended license. She had the nerve to show up to court 20 minutes late powdering her nose. The judge put the clueless blonde in her place by sending her to the clinker.

Here’s some stuff from the world according to PerezHilton.com.

Pete Wentz reportedly left a little gift for Marilyn Manson at the rehearsal space that they share – a vial of his blood. What the?

It seems that American Idol sweetheart, Kelly Clarkson is slipping in the ranks. Her comeback isn’t going so great while fellow Idol veteran, Carrie Underwood in consistently outperforming Kelly on internet download charts.

A lot of hoo ha for a lip synched performance. Britney Spears (a.k.a. the rehab boomerang queen) recently “performed” at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney, Anaheim. And we use the word “perform” loosely. The sign outside said: NO cell phones, NO cameras, NO video. Hmmm, didn’t say anywhere on there “NO LIVE SINGING!”

OK, am I like the only one who says ENOUGH ABOUT BRITNEY?!!! She just isn’t that interesting.

The longest retirement in music history. Barbara Streisand, in perpetual “retire” mode, will be touring in Europe. And then that’s the very last one – again!

More American Idol dish. Jessica Sierra who was a former AI top ten finalist, apparently hit a guy with a glass, had cocaine on her person and, now this is interesting, is being charged with “the introduction of contraband into a detention facility.” Good grief! We don’t want to go there!

Looks like Courtney Love is planning on selling her late husband’s things. What better way to memorialize her hubby? She plans to pair up with Christie’s auction to put Kurt Cobain’s stuff up for sale. She plans to “make a lot of money and give a bunch of it to charity.” Uh, OK.

Ah, Boy George, did you really want to hurt him? Rumor has it that Boy George hired an escort, grabbed the poor guy and chained him to a wall. He handcuffed the poor little escort guy to the bed and produced a box of BDSM whips and sex toys, telling the terrified escort guy, “Now you’ll get what you deserve.” Nobody died, escort guy got away and Boy George was charged with assault and false imprisonment. The ’80s were a tough time.

PopDirt.com is dishing it big time! It seems that Paula Abdul doesn’t do so well when you put her on national TV without a script. Seems she gave a bizarre performance on QVC where she was promoting her jewelry line. Strange, strange girl, cute as a bug, though, and always seems so sweet on Idol – is that scripted??? Not her first bizarre public unscripted appearance, though.

Send that girl to driver’s ed! TMZ is reporting that they have recently acquired a lawsuit that was filed by the husband of the woman who was killed in a car accident that involved former pop princess Brandy. This is her second lawsuit on that accident. The suit claims that Brandy was traveling too fast for conditions, driving recklessly and carelessly and following too closely. The suit is for an “undisclosed amount,” but the woman’s parents are suing Brandy for $50 million. If this is any indication of what the husband is seeking, that girl needs to hire a chauffeur or stay off of the road.

Well, this is definitely a “hmmmm” moment and conjures up some interesting (if not disturbing) mental pictures. PerezHilton.com has some juicy info. It seems that passionate sister kissing James Haven, brother to multiple foreign kids adopting, blood vial wearing Angelina Jolie, is seeing Rebecca St. James. Now, if you are not moving in “those” circles you may not realize that St. James is a Christian pop singer. You also may not realize that she is a huge advocate for saving yourself until marriage and abstinence. Well, well, what is ol’ Jimmy thinking about that? Maybe Angie will adopt her and then it will be OK.

Now, we want to leave you with this warm, fuzzy mother and son moment.

TMZ says that Rush & Malloy says that Usher is preparing to fire his own mother, the woman who GAVE HIM LIFE, raised him and has been his manager from the very start. They reportedly do not get along, but it is said that Usher’s stylist and (surprise) fiance, Tameka Foster is egging it on. Usher’s rep is denying the rumor, but let’s face it, this seems like it happens more than we’d care to admit.

There is an endless stream of gossip flowing out of the lives of everyone, it’s just that the famous peeople’s are the best!

The music, television, movie and consumer electronics industries (hereafter collectively referred to as the industry) have been struggling with the rapid advance of technology and the new virtuality of content. Here are the top eight things the industry should do to harness the technology and recapture the simple tenet of giving the customer what they want.

1. Offer three consumption models.

a. Offer all content free with ads.

All content should be available on demand all the time free with ads. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. The worst examples of this are the television networks who still insist on having their content time expire after only a short period of availability. Networks should use the ad model to make their entire catalog of shows, current and past, available for free all the time. All media stores, such as iTunes, should also introduce the option of listening to or watching a brief ad per 10 minutes of content or so in order to enjoy the entire content rather than just short preview clips.

b. Rent all content without ads for a fee.

This is the same as 1a only without the ads for a fee. The best examples of this so far are Netflix and Yahoo! Music Unlimited. With the former, for as low as $8.99 per month, you can rent any movie in the store, and that now includes some that can be watched directly online. With the latter, for as low as $5.99 per month, you can listen to every song in the store as many times as you want with no ads. All media stores and sites should offer this option.

c. Sell all content Digital Rights Management(DRM, or copy protection)-free.

There will still always be a market for owning content outright, such as for those times where you just don’t have an Internet connection or don’t want to be tethered to a server. In these cases, for both online virtual formats and offline physical formats, DRM simply should go. It has proven to hamper sales significantly due to treating everyday paying customers as if they are pirates, restricting them to play back the content on too few devices, giving them the chore of backing up and managing licenses on their computer and violating their fair use rights. DRM will always be defeatable and the industry simply needs to stop investing an inordinate amount of time and money into something that has a negative impact on their bottom line. The industry should abandon it and get back to the basic premise of allowing the customer the joy of experiencing the content they paid for without any strings attached. The best example of this so far is EMI which is now allowing media stores to sell DRM-free songs.

2. Wireless Internet-enable all devices.

The computer cannot be the only access point. TVs, cable boxes, disc players, DVRs, game consoles, portables, boom boxes, phones, car head units – in short all playback devices – should come with built-in wireless connection to the Internet for access to content servers. The best examples of this so far are the Playstation 3 and the iPhone/iPod touch Wi-Fi Music Store.

3. End format wars.

When a new format is needed to advance the industry to the next level, there should be one and only one format that goes to market and becomes the standard. Like 1c, this applies to both online virtual formats and offline physical formats.

The current example in physical formats is Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. Two formats were necessary at first to spur competition, but the differences between them at this point are so negligible that ultimately one has to win for either to succeed. A standards body needs to exist to allow competition at first and to oversee a limited beta period to ensure customer opinions are factored in, but then to ultimately pick a winner before full-scale market launch. Companies should be required to register candidate formats in the early stages. The standards body should track investment and invention level of each candidate along the way. Then a winner should be chosen with a percentage of the licensing revenue going to all of the candidates commensurate with their investment and invention level. The candidates either agree to these terms from the get-go or they do not participate in determining and profiting from the next generation format.

The current example in virtual formats is mp3 vs. AAC vs. WMA vs. yet others for audio, and mpeg-4 (H.264) vs. WMV (VC-1) vs. yet others for video. Coupled with 1c, the industry should have standardized on mp3 and mpeg-4 a long time ago to ensure that all content will be universally playable on every device.

Correcting this immediately is essential. The industry should get a standards body in place as soon as possible and declare much overdue industry standards, such as Blu-ray, mp3 and mpeg-4. The marketplace will rejoice, sales will skyrocket and the floodgates will open on the dam the industry itself has been one of the largest contributors to building.

4. Allow playlists to be defined and stored on the servers.

What 1a and 1b do is move us away from the need to store and manage our own copies of the content on our client devices (or on our shelves). Moving playlists off of the clients is a natural extension of that. When we can dial up all content including our favorite playlists on demand all the time anywhere we have an Internet connection, the convenience of not having to permanently store and backup our own copies of the data will start to prevail. The best example of this so far is Yahoo! Music Jukebox.

5. Offer movies by the chapter in addition to whole.

Just as the norm is now to be able to buy individual songs rather than just whole albums, the same option should be available for buying the individual chapters of movies. Doing so would offer the same advantages as individual song sales – the ability to collect favorite chapters at lower cost and storage use, the ability to direct-access chapters on playback and the ability to arrange favorite chapters from various movies into playlists. Note that this would require players to pre-cache the next chapter to ensure gapless chapter-to-chapter playback, but that is certainly doable.

6. Offer a choice of bitrates.

Highly compressed bitrates were fine at first, but there is no doubt that even with today’s bandwidth and storage (which will only grow with time), those who want to enjoy higher bitrates should have the option. With 1a and 1b, bandwidth is the primary factor, and clearly higher bitrates are possible even today. With 1c online formats, storage is also a factor, but even with today’s capacities some may choose quality over quantity for must-have content.

7. Piggyback audio on video for physical formats.

The industry moving to a new physical format is a big undertaking. Assuming a new HD format succeeds for video, then audio should just piggyback on that success. The video format will obviously have enough capacity for audio, and consumers will not have to buy additional players. Previous HD audio attempts of DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD failed for several reasons – separate audio-only players, no single digital connection such as HDMI, format war, etc. – all of which can be avoided once either Blu-ray or HD DVD is declared the standard. Albums in uncompressed PCM, both 2-channel stereo and multi-channel surround, with HD extras such as music videos, live concert footage and still photos all played through an existing player with single HDMI connection would be very compelling. With lossless compression such as Dolby TrueHD, perhaps entire album box sets could fit on one disc. These are exciting new possibilities.

8. Leverage viral marketing.

This is an extension of 1a. Provide url-addressability to free ad-coupled content that sites anywhere can provide links to – it essentially equates to free marketing for you. It doesn’t matter from where the eyeballs found the content, just that they found it. More eyeballs means more ad revenue in your pocket and more exposure that will lead to the eventual purchase of the content and related merchandise such as concert tickets, t-shirts, posters, action figures, toys, etc. A free ad-supported lure has always been necessary (radio and TV) for widespread exposure. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. Music, movies and all TV programs should get on board and realize the massive new source of constant ad revenue never before possible without the new technology.

These eight things would take the industry out of its current slump and carry it into unprecedented growth territory.