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A Step Forward For Music Streaming in Australia

It seems my predictions of 2011 being the year of streaming has official begun, with the introduction of Australia’s first on-demand music service available on Sonos. In a lot of ways, Australia has been a few steps behind in media streaming. Services like Netflix, Pandora, Rhapsody and Spotify being unavailable in Australia, has highlighted the problems with licensing media streaming internationally. Companies are having to individually negotiate licensing deals with each country and frankly, Australia hasn’t been number one on the to do list.

This is why, I am happy with the introduction of Anubis.fm to Australia. Search, browse and play anything from Anubis.fm’s catalogue of more than 2 million songs, as often as you’d like, throughout your entire home—no computer required.   Create your own playlists and program your own channels. All new and existing Sonos customers will receive a free 30-day trial to the service. Anubis.fm on Sonos is part of the ‘Music on Tap’ plan and costs AUD$12.99 per month.

I was a little worried when I saw Anubis.fm was operated by Sony Music Entertainment Australia Pty Ltd, but am happy that they have incorporate all the big labels into the service including;  Sony Music, Universal Music, EMI Music, Warner Music, and key independent labels.

“Our goal at Sonos is to provide music lovers with access to all the music on the planet,” said John MacFarlane, CEO, Sonos, Inc. “By adding popular music services to Sonos, like Anubis.fm, we can continue to give our customers the ability to discover and enjoy unlimited music possibilities in any or every room.”

With hardware companies focussing on streaming in their products, we should expect to see many more services coming to the Australia market.

What Would You Do For Five Dollars?

What Would You Do For Five Dollars?

What would you do for five dollars? Well, from what I can see, a lot of people will do a bit for the cost of a coffee and donut. A couple of days ago, I was listening to the Small Business Big Marketing Podcast. Host Tim Reid spoke about his recent addiction to Fiverr.com. A service where people can submit tasks that they are willing to do for five dollars. It got me thinking about outsourcing, particularly the things I had read in 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss.

There are a lot of thought provoking ideas in 4HWW, but my main problem with the book was implementation. I tried using Elance, which he had recommended, but I found that it wasn’t suited to me. It was a little too time consuming dealing with proposals and a bit counter intuitive. I was spending more time finding someone to do a job, than just me doing it myself. This might be my own fault, although I have found a couple of fantastic services I have used in my business throughout the years which i’ll get to later.

After hearing Tim Reid speak about Fiverr, I decided it was time to check it out. I spent an hour or so on the website. There were so many people willing to do stuff! From video testimonials to dropping 30 business cards in a random city in the US. A lot of the ‘service providers’ on fiverr were well spoken and I found it surprising that they were doing things for $5! It even made me feel a little sad when I thought that these people had families and kids to feed. Then I thought about it a little more ‘hey, they aren’t doing too badly! They have a house, a computer, a HD Mino and an Internet connection! They’ll be fine.’
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Recording on the Zoom H4n

Just recorded a quick bit of audio of my brother Jake playing guitar and singing. He has a nasty cold, so he wasn’t massively happy with his performance. I can’t believe how good the quality of the h4n internal microphones are!

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4 Blogs For Design Inspiration

I was think the other day, why do I love the Internet so much? After a lot of thought, I  have come up with the answer. It feeds my obsessive personality. Whether I am going through a phase of obsessing about package design, photography or screenwriting, the Internet never lets me down. When I am obsessing about design, here are the four blogs I love to visit. Here they are, described by them.

[caption id="attachment_164" align="" ] 4 Blogs For Design Inspiration

Established in early 2007, The Dieline is dedicated to the progress of the package design industry and its practitioners, students and enthusiasts. Its purpose is to define and promote the world’s best packaging design, and provide a place where the package design community can review, critique and stay informed of the latest industry trends and design projects being created in the field.

The Dieline has quickly grown into the most visited website on package design in the world, and has become the voice of the industry. The Dieline’s first book on Package Design, “Box, Bottle, Bag” was released by HOW Books in early 2010, and has quickly become the top selling package design book on Amazon. The Dieline has also recently launched The Dieline Awards, a worldwide package design competition devoted exclusively to the art of brand packaging, further promoting the field. Winners were announced at the FUSE Conference at Trump Tower in Chicago on April 14th. http://www.thedieline.com/

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