The 2012 election cycle is proving a big one for Google NetPAC, the company’s political action committee.

According to a year-end report filed with the Federal Election Commission, Google NetPAC raised $836,305 between July 1, 2011 and Dec. 31, 2011 — the first half of the 2012 election cycle. And so far it has donated $221,250 of it.

That’s more than a 50 percent increase over what Google NetPAC spent at the same point in the 2010 election cycle. Which is significant. Keep in mind, we’re a little over halfway through the current cycle, and the committee still has some $740,960 cash on hand to spend.

Among the donations made: $5,000 to Rep. Lamar Smith, the Texas congressman who concocted the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that Google so vehemently opposes.

An odd disbursement, considering that Google NetPAC’s stated goal is to “support federal officeholders and candidates who share Google’s goal of promoting the Internet as a free and open platform for communication and innovation, to the benefit of our users.”

Hopefully the committee’s contributions to SOPA opponents canceled it out.

Feature image credit: iStockphoto | penfold

Pacific Crest analyst Chad Bartley this week raised his Fire sales estimate for this very reason. “We are raising our 2012 sales forecasts to 14.9 million from 12.7 million,” he wrote. “But we believe there is an upward bias, particularly from the new 7- and 9-inch models, which we expect to launch in mid-2012.”

It’s been speculated upon before, but it’s interesting to hear that Amazon may have a 9-inch version of the Fire headed to market later this year, particularly now that we know Apple’s iPad 3 will debut next month. Makes you wonder how the retailer’s loss-leader strategy will translate to the larger-screen tablet market that Apple dominates.

Maybe they’ll call it the Kindle Conflagration.

One other point worth noting here: In raising his Fire estimates, Bartley also reduced his Kindle e-reader unit estimates to 24 million from 28.6 million. It’s not clear that increased Kindle Fire adoption is responsible for that decline and Bartley doesn’t offer an explanation for it. But it’s pretty easy to make the argument that the Fire is cannibalizing sales of its less-capable predecessors.

[Image credit: The jjinc24/U8oL0 Web]

The agency just released its file on Jobs, compiled during a background check conducted in the 1990s, when Jobs was being considered for a spot on a White House council on exports. And, with the exception of a noteworthy nugget or two, it’s about as mundane as they come.

If you’ve read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs — or, frankly, any newspaper obituary of the man — then you’re already as well-informed on his life and peccadilloes as the FBI.

Put it this way: Among the highlights of the agency’s 191-page dossier is the observation that Jobs was a former hippie: “During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mr. Jobs may have experimented with illegal drugs, having come from that generation.”

A few others:

• Jobs had a tendency to “twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals.”
• Jobs underwent a “change in philosophy by participating in eastern and/or Indian mysticism and religion. This change apparently influenced his personal life for the better.”
• Jobs was “strongwilled, stubborn, hardworking and driven, which … is why he is so successful.
• Jobs liked to get his way.
• Jobs was not a member of the communist party.
• Jobs did “an outstanding job in the computer industry.”

Really, the FBI’s only discovery of note was that Jobs was inexplicably granted Top Secret security clearance by the Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office between 1988 and 1990. Oddly, those credentials were issued by Pixar, which may have done some government work around that time.

Beyond that? Not much. Had Isaacson written his biography of Jobs a few decades earlier, he would have saved the FBI a hell of a lot of work.

Below, the report in its entirety:

Jobs

Sources say the company has chosen the first week in March to debut the successor to the iPad 2, and will do so at one of its trademark special events. The event will be held in San Francisco, presumably at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Apple’s preferred location for big announcements like these.

No word yet on a street date for the iPad 3 (assuming that’s what it’s called), though my guess is retail availability will follow roughly the same schedule as that of the iPad 2: Available for purchase a week or so after the event.

As for the next-generation iPad itself, sources say it will be pretty much what we’ve been led to expect by the innumerable reports leading up to its release: A device similar in form factor to the iPad 2, but running a much faster chip, sporting an improved graphics processing unit, and featuring a 2048×1536 Retina Display — or something close to it.

If 2011 was the year of the iPad 2, will 2012 be the year of the iPad 3? Said a source familiar with the device: “What do you think?”

An Apple spokeswoman declined comment on the timing of the event, saying the company does not comment on rumors and speculation.

Evidently, Google has no trouble with that percentage at all.

In a letter to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) today, Google said that should it complete its proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility, it will license the company’s standard-essential patents under “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” terms (FRAND). To that end, it will honor Motorola Mobility’s existing essential patent licensing commitments and grant new ones going forward with “a maximum per-unit royalty of 2.25 percent.”

Now that might not sound like an untoward sum, but applied against a device’s selling price, it’s sizable. A rate of 2.25 percent on 2011 iPhone sales, for example, would have amounted to about $1 billion in potential royalties for Motorola.

That doesn’t seem fair or reasonable. More to the point, it runs contrary to the principles of FRAND licensing commitments, and bolsters arguments recently made by both Apple and Microsoft that the mobile industry really needs a consistent patent-licensing scheme.

“It’s a prohibitive royalty rate as long as they want to apply it against the selling price of what they call the ‘relevant end product,’” says FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller. “If they asked for 2.25 percent of the price of a baseband chip, they would at least propose a reasonable royalty base and one could then talk about how many patents go into such a chip and what the relative value of their patents is. But 2.25 percent of the selling price of the product as a whole is absolutely out of step with the concept of FRAND and with industry practice.”

“Plan B is that Plan A must succeed,” Saeijs told Swedish business daily Dagens Industri.

That’s quite a bet, particularly when success is anything but guaranteed. While Nokia has managed to ship one million of its Lumia Windows Phones to date, it continues to struggle. The company recently posted its third consecutive quarterly net loss, as smartphone shipments fell 31 percent and overall handset sales dropped 29 percent.

That said, the positive reception given the device so far does bode well for Nokia. Morgan Stanley expects shipments of Nokia’s new Windows Phones to hit 37 million units in 2012 and 64 million units in 2013.

If that proves true, there may be no need for a Plan B.

A stem-cell-infused gel, fracture putty induces rapid bone healing by producing a protein essential to bone formation. And it does so very quickly. When treated with the gel, rats with fractured hind legs showed no evidence of injury in about two weeks.

Trials of the substance on larger animals have only just begun, but they seem promising. Tested in sheep, fracture putty sped the healing process, as well — though not quite as quickly.

Still, researchers are hopeful that further refinement will transform the substance into something that can be used to treat humans, especially injured soldiers.

“Complex fractures are a major cause of amputation of limbs for U.S. military men and women,” said stem-cell researcher Steve Stice. “For many young soldiers, their mental health becomes a real issue when they are confined to a bed for three to six months after an injury. This discovery may allow them to be up and moving as fast as days afterward.”

Less lucrative, that’s what.

Charting the industry’s performance over the past five years, Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt figures its revenue in the fourth quarter of 2011 — $71.4 billion — is about twice what it was in the fourth quarter of 2007 — $37.9 billion.

But remove Apple from the picture, and that revenue declines — dramatically.

Turns out that without Apple, the mobile computing industry’s revenue in the fourth quarter of 2011 would be about what it was in the fourth quarter of 2007.

In Q4 2007, that was $37.93 billion. And in Q4 2011, it was $37.97 billion. In other words, non-Apple revenue in the mobile computing industry has been nearly stagnant for five years. Which is not to say that revenues wouldn’t have grown had Apple never entered the scene. Just that Cupertino has been doing a hell of a job commandeering a lot of their growth the past few years.

And that’s remarkable. Because overall, the industry’s revenue has increased over that time; it’s just that the bulk of that increase has gone to Apple. In the fourth quarter of 2011, for example, Apple generated $33.5 billion in mobile device revenue, which is about 47 percent of the $71.4 billion generated by the broader industry.

What seems to be happening, then, is that the bulk of the industry’s revenue growth is accruing to Apple, and because the company has the highest margins around, that’s where most of the profit is ending up, as well. Consider the earnings before interest and taxes chart, below.

“Apple is dominating the industry’s pool of profits,” says McCourt. “With about 11 percent of industry shipment volumes of smartphones and tablets, Apple generates about 47 percent of the industry’s revenues, and over 80 percent of its operating profits.”

The company said today that 100 of the 6,200 it sold through Woot.com between October and December of 2011 may not have been properly reformatted.

In other words, they still contained the personal information of their previous owners — everything from email and social networking passwords to photos and documents.

What an incredible cock-up.

Motorola’s solution to the problem? To “actively pursue the return of the impacted refurbished units” (visit motorola.com/xoomreturn if you think you may have one). Also: offer customers whose personal data might have been compromised a two-year subscription to credit rating agency Experian’s ProtectMyID identity theft service.

A decent gesture, I suppose — unless some miscreant has already pilfered your personal information from the device in the four months it has taken Motorola to notice its mistake.

“Motorola sincerely regrets and apologizes for any inconvenience this situation has caused,” the company said in a statement.

Update: The peanut gallery chimes in:

can already see great Synergies in Google Motorolla Aquisition. Google has Personal data and Moto the means of sharing it @JohnPaczkowski

February 3, 2012 1:16 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@yoda_2little

Chris

This morning, a Mannheim Regional Court granted an injunction against Apple’s implementation of push email in iCloud and its predecessor, MobileMe. Sought by Motorola Mobility, which claims Apple has infringed its European patent on a “multiple pager status synchronization system and method,” the injunction could force Apple to deactivate push email in iCloud in Germany, though it will leave the broader service intact. Assuming it stands. And at this point, it’s not yet clear that it will. Apple, as one might imagine, is fighting it.

“Apple believes this old pager patent is invalid, and we’re appealing the court’s decision,” a company spokeswoman told AllThingsD.

Apple, which has spent the past day pulling older model iPhone and iPad inventory from the shelves of its online store in Germany, is now scrambling to restore it. This morning, a court temporarily suspended an injunction that prevented Apple from selling or distributing iOS devices believed to infringe certain Motorola Mobility patents.

In a statement given to AllThingsD, Apple confirmed that the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and 3G/UMTS-based iPads should be returning to the shelves of its German online store in a matter of hours.

“All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple’s online store in Germany shortly,” an Apple spokeswoman told AllThingsD. “Apple appealed this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.”

The injunction at issue here was granted last December, but wasn’t served until recently, sources say. Apple began making the appropriate adjustments to its German online store earlier this week, while continuing to appeal the injunction, which was subsequently suspended this morning.

So what happens next? Well, this is only a temporary suspension. So, at best, it’s a brief reprieve for Apple, until the legal issues surrounding it are resolved. Top among them: Apple’s argument that Motorola Mobility is not honoring the FRAND licensing obligations (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) it has on some standards-essential patents.

“In a best-case scenario for Apple, the suspension would now be in effect until the appeals court makes a decision on Apple’s appeal,” FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller explains. “In that case, it would be in effect for well over a year.”

House lawmakers met with Google Deputy General Counsel Mike Yang and Public Policy Director Pablo Chavez Thursday to discuss new policy that unifies 60 of Google’s services under a single user agreement and grants the company greater license to share user account information between them.

But the closed-door session ended well short of resolution, with at least a few members of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that presided over it openly criticizing Google’s explanation for the privacy changes.

“[They] danced around actual details, and instead spoke in generalities, highlighting their efforts to ‘enhance the user experience’,” said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.

Subcommittee Chairwoman Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif. was equally critical.

“At the end of the day, ultimately, I don’t think that their answers to us were very forthcoming necessarily in what this really means for the safety of our families and our children and ourselves,” Mack said.

To be fair, Yang and Chavez reportedly did provide a thorough walkthrough of Google’s new privacy settings. But that wasn’t quite what the subcommittee was looking for. What lawmakers really want to understand is how easy or difficult it is for users to protect their privacy and control how their personal information is shared across Google’s services.

“Consumers want to know if they hit the delete button, that something truly is deleted,” said Bono Mack. “The concern is that if I’m logged into Gmail and then forget to log out when I then go to search for information about cervical cancer, my data can then be transported to YouTube. Does that mean my health information is at risk?”

A fair question, and evidently one that’s going to take a few more hearings to get an answer to.

Someday.

Though its Symbian platform is burning down to ashes and it has lost its title as the world’s largest smartphone maker, Nokia is going to be just fine, says outgoing chairman Ollila. In fact, with the help of Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 operating system, the company will remain among the top three players in the smartphone market, despite its plunging market share.

“Nokia will make it into the three,” Ollila told Finnish broadcaster YLE. “It’s completely obvious and the first signs are already there. None of the operating systems have taken off quickly. It will take time, as we have seen and as was expected.”

Well, not completely obvious — particularly after the horrendous 73 percent decline in fourth-quarter earnings the company recently reported. But Ollila says such financial tumult is to be expected from a big transition like this and the earnings slip doesn’t belie its potential for success.

“When looking at the bigger picture, it shows that three operating systems will dominate in the near future and each of them will have one strong manufacturer, with Nokia having a very good chance to be one of the three,” he said.

Nokia shipped 113.5 million units during the quarter, down from 123.7 million during the same quarter a year earlier, according to IDC. Meanwhile, Samsung shipped 97.6 million, up from 80.7 million a year ago.

That’s a nice jump, but nowhere near as impressive as the one charted by Apple, which shipped 37 million iPhones during the quarter — up from 16.2 million during the same quarter a year earlier — for a more than 128 percent increase.

That spike gave Apple an 8.7 percent share of the mobile phone market in the fourth quarter. Which really is astonishing, when you think about it. Recall that when Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone in 2007, he said Apple hoped to someday claim 1 percent of the overall handset market. Five years later, the company has far surpassed that humble goal, and is well on its way to claiming 10 percent.

The Munich I Regional Court on Wednesday evening denied Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Nexus, Samsung’s flagship Android smartphone, and its Galaxy Tab 10.1N, a newer version of the tablet intended to further differentiate it from Apple’s iPad, keeping it immune from litigation.

That differentiation didn’t much come into play in this ruling, though.

At issue in this case was a touchscreen-related patent that Munich Regional Court Judge Andreas Mueller evidently felt wouldn’t stand up. Said Mueller, “Samsung has shown that it is more likely than not that the patent will be revoked because of a technology that was already on the market before the intellectual property had been filed for protection.”

So, two patent spats resolved — for the time being. But the broader intellectual property battle between Apple and Samsung continues to rage on in various courts around the world.

The Macintosh TV

“In January we spoke with a major TV component supplier who has been contacted by Apple regarding various capabilities of their television display components,” Munster wrote in a note to clients today. “We see this as continued evidence that Apple is exploring production of a television. This latest data point follows January 2011 meetings in Asia that led us to believe Apple was investing in manufacturing facilities for LCD displays ranging from 3.5″ mobile displays to 50″ television displays.”

So Apple’s reportedly been shopping around for parts that might be used in TVs.

Not the hardest of evidence that the company will actually produce one. That said, the signs do appear to be adding up. Over the past few months we’ve heard chatter claiming Apple televisions have been prototyped and that Sharp has been retooling a production line at one of its factories to produce the modified amorphous TFT LCD displays that will grace them.

If that is the case, it’s entirely possible that the TV market will be the next one Apple attempts to reinvent. And if it pulls it off, the rewards could be great. Some say Apple stands to gain an incremental $50 billion to $100 billion in market cap if it produces a compelling HDTV, one that not only trumps the competition but steals market share away from it, as the iPhone has from incumbent smartphone producers.

Onstage at D:Dive Into Media Tuesday afternoon, Carey said the practices behind the phone hacking scandal that’s troubled the company since mid-2011 don’t extend beyond the publications at which they originated. Below, video highlights from the session which also include Carey’s thoughts on piracy, SOPA, TV everywhere and bridging the gap between consumers’ needs and News Corp.’s bottom line:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120131/news-corp-s-carey-hacking-scandal-made-for-a-difficult-year-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120131/salar-kamangar-its-time-to-channelize-youtube-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120131/salar-kamangar-its-time-to-channelize-youtube-video/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:26:15 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=170083 Turns out videos of dogs on skateboards are far more lucrative when they’re part of a dog-lovers channel or a skateboard channel. Or both. In the D: Dive Into Media video highlights reel below, YouTube boss Salar Kamangar explains why.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120131/salar-kamangar-its-time-to-channelize-youtube-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120131/vevo-ceo-we-made-150-million-in-the-last-year-alone/ http://allthingsd.com/20120131/vevo-ceo-we-made-150-million-in-the-last-year-alone/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:35:41 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=169030 When it first debuted in 2009, Vevo aspired to be a “Hulu for music.” Today, it’s exactly that: the second largest video property on the Web in the U.S., a title that — you guessed it — was once held by Hulu.

Further evidence of the company’s success: The impressive financials announced by Vevo president and CEO Rio Caraeff during an onstage interview at our D: Dive Into Media conference.

“In the last year alone we’ve generated over $150 million,” said Caraeff. “We paid the labels about $100 million (over the last 2 years). So we’re making money.”

An impressive feat for such a young company. How did Vevo pull it off? By not holding back its content.

“Our strategy was never to create value through scarcity,” Caraeff said. “We feel the Web is about choice and empowering people to go where they want. With Vevo we wanted to facilitate access. So you go to YouTube and you can find Vevo. Go to facebook, you find Vevo. It’s about ubiquity on the Web.”

Mobile is another point of access. Xbox is yet another.

“Our business is only as interesting as it is large,” said Caraeff. “If we want to reach a lot people, we need to be in a lot of places.”

So just how big is Vevo’s business? Pretty big.

“From a volume perspective our growth has been tremendous,” said Caraeff. “We had 300 million global views per month when we launched. Today we’re seeing 3.5 billion views per month. That’s about 42 billion views per year.”

So what’s Vevo’s next move? Will it pursue a linear strategy, head to cable?

“It’s unlikely that we’ll start a cable channel from scratch or buy a cable company in distress,” said Caraeff. “But I think we’ll have linear experiences on the TV all powered by Vevo.”

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120131/vevo-ceo-we-made-150-million-in-the-last-year-alone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120131/wmg-chairman-edgar-bronfman-jr-on-apple-spotify-and-the-fate-of-emi-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120131/wmg-chairman-edgar-bronfman-jr-on-apple-spotify-and-the-fate-of-emi-video/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:51:23 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=169800 Outgoing Warner Music Group Chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. had a lot to say on the D: Dive Into Media stage today. In a wide-ranging interview with host Peter Kafka, Bronfman talked about the fate of EMI, the value of services like Spotify, and what he would change about the recording industry’s deal with Apple.

“Apple from day one believed in music and content,” Bronfman said. “That was the good news. The bad news is that they decided all songs were created equal, and I fought Steve on that. … Ultimately, Apple got the better part of that deal. Ultimately, I wish we’d gotten more pricing flexibility.”

Below, video highlights from the session:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120131/wmg-chairman-edgar-bronfman-jr-on-apple-spotify-and-the-fate-of-emi-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120131/youtubes-salar-kamangar-on-building-a-video-channel-ecosystem/ http://allthingsd.com/20120131/youtubes-salar-kamangar-on-building-a-video-channel-ecosystem/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:23:06 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=169023 Entrepreneur Mark Cuban once said “only a moron would buy YouTube,” the implication being that Google was exactly that for purchasing the popular video site. That was back in 2006. Six years later, the site is a juggernaut — by far, the largest online video content property around. And Salar Kamangar is the guy charged with ensuring its continued success and stewarding its increasingly important relationship with Hollywood.

Onstage at D: Dive Into Media this afternoon, Kamangar talked about the transformation YouTube is currently undergoing. “We are channelizing YouTube the product,” Kamangar said. “We want for YouTube to become the platform for the new video channel ecosystem developing on the Web.”

Kamangar said that video on the Web is becoming much more niche-driven; and importantly, participatory. Enhancing these niches are interactivity elements and social experiences that Kamangar compares to a “5-D experience” that can add audience input, choose-your-own-adventure-style participation, and the gamification of content to the typical video viewing experience.

The theory behind the channelization of YouTube is that users will simply set a niche channel, and then Google will just serve up related content. Said Kamangar, “We think this is going to increase minutes watched and user engagement.”

And user engagement with ads.

“The rules around ads have changed a lot around TV and video,” Kamangar said. “YouTube has been known for dogs on skateboards, for example. The CPM for ads on those videos is relatively low. But if you packaged those videos as part of a dog-lovers channel or a skateboard channel, the CPM increases substantially.”

So how does this all tie in with Google TV? Does it tie in at all?

Kamangar says it does — or rather it will, eventually.

“We’re seeing a lot of interest from broadcasters to build apps, and someday those apps will be available over Google TV,” he said.

A few other remarks worth noting:

On SOPA:
We couldn’t be more against piracy. We think the way SOPA was written, it would have done more harm than good. … We want piracy to stop, but we want it to stop with as little collateral damage as possible.

On YouTube’s infrastructure demands:
What YouTube is doing is creating higher demand for broadband services. We’re really creating a business opportunity for providers of data.

On the future of the TV user interface:
On the TV side, I think we’ll see voice and gesture control. I think it will also incorporate ideas of identity. The TV will have to know what you like to watch, what you’ve watched and what you haven’t.

On Apple’s rumored HDTV:
I can’t wait to see it. Sounds like it’s going to solve all my problems.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120131/youtubes-salar-kamangar-on-building-a-video-channel-ecosystem/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120131/an-exit-interview-with-warner-music-group-chairman-edgar-bronfman-jr/ http://allthingsd.com/20120131/an-exit-interview-with-warner-music-group-chairman-edgar-bronfman-jr/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:35:55 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=169018 Today is a big day for Edgar Bronfman Jr. — his last as chairman of Warner Music Group.

A fixture in the music industry since the mid-1990s, Bronfman led WMG during a period of profound tumult, navigating a rough transition from CD to the digital download, and grappling with a generation of younger consumers who don’t always want pay for digital music.

Onstage at D: Dive Into Media this afternoon, Bronfman reflected on the evolution of the music industry, Apple, and the fate of EMI, which is currently being pursued by Universal Music.

“It strikes me as hubris that Universal will buy EMI,” Bronfman told Peter Kafka of AllThingsD. “What it will do is create a super-major that will have far too much power. … I think when Universal goes up over 40 percent market share, I don’t see how reasonable regulators can countenance. It will impact not just labels, but artists and cultural diversity. … Warner is going to fight this tooth and nail, and I hope others will join us.”

As with today’s Neil Young session, the perceived obsolescence of the recording industry was a topic of conversation and, as you might imagine, Bronfman feels labels remain a necessity.

“Commercial success still hasn’t come to an artist that isn’t signed to a record label, he said. “There are very few artists that can succeed without the help of a record label. The role of the record label is still required, it’s still necessary.”

And not just for musicians. Consumers need labels, as well.

“I really do think consumers are busy, and trying to sort through millions and millions of artists to find the ones that they might like just requires far too much work. That’s where the labels come in.”

A few other remarks worth noting …

On mobile:
Mobile is coming. It’s still not really there. It’s on the iPhone because Apple has a content strategy, but it’s not really there on other devices. … I think the mobile platform is a massive opportunity for music. … Think about it. The iPod made music mobile, but today, how many devices do you need to walk around with? You want it on just one. And inevitably that’s going to be the phone.

On Google Music:
Google Music is an oxymoron.

On unbundling:
Any time you can give consumers more of what they want, it’s a good thing. Unbundling the album is a good thing. In the case of music — because it is content that you can slice into songs — doing that is of huge benefit to consumers.

On Apple and iTunes:
Apple from day one believed in music and content. That was the good news. The bad news is that they decided all songs where created equal, and I fought Steve on that. Ultimately, Apple got the better part of that deal. Ultimately, I wish we’d gotten more pricing flexibility.

On Spotify:
We see Spotify as incrementally positive. It’s not slowing down music sales or downloads. We would all love to make more money from Spotify, but Spotify needs to make money, too. But artists should know that it is a real and growing revenue stream.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120131/an-exit-interview-with-warner-music-group-chairman-edgar-bronfman-jr/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120131/viacom-ceo-philippe-dauman-on-youtube-sopa-and-breaking-the-cable-bundle-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120131/viacom-ceo-philippe-dauman-on-youtube-sopa-and-breaking-the-cable-bundle-video/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:50:05 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=169403 Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman says the company he oversees is not a cable network. Instead, it’s a media network with an agnostic view about where its content is distributed.

In a wide-ranging interview at D: Dive Into Media on Tuesday, “Viacommander” Dauman chatted about “TV everywhere,” SOPA, the company’s ongoing battle with YouTube, and breaking the cable bundle.

Below, video highlights from the session:

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