In online music news, the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) is suing the Russian website allofmp3.com for the comical sum of $1.65 trillion, more than double Russia’s nominal GDP of $763 billion. To be sure, allofmp3 is skating on thin legal ice by using loopholes in lax Russian copyright laws to sell MP3s discounted as much as 90% from iTunes pricing. But if it weren’t so legally ambiguous, who would complain about song downloads for as little as a dime?

A few weeks ago I had the good fortune of happening upon a Tower records in the process of liquidating its CDs for half price. The place was mobbed. It seems that while people no longer can stomach paying $19 for a CD, the $9.50 price point was much more tolerable. This is not as much a lesson in bricks and mortar versus online music, the lesson is that people buy more music when the music is less expensive.

iTunes has noticed that the $10 price point is significant to customers. But it’s still too high. After all, they’ve compressed a higher quality digital format, cut out shipping costs and eliminated printing of CD booklets. It’s possible to buy CDs online for a similar price, the only trouble is that you’ll have to wait for several days to receive it.

A couple of years ago during an NPR round table about digital rights management (DRM), someone suggested a groundbreaking approach. Why not put every song ever recorded online and let users download them for a nickel each? When allofmp3 started that’s basically what they did. At that price, there’s no reason not to be impulsive. Five cent downloads would reduce incentives for file sharing and encourage listeners to experiment with new music.

A nickel per song doesn’t sound like much revenue for artists, but artists would drastically increase sales volume. If artists picked up 60% of the revenues, or 3 cents per song, then selling an albums with a total of 15 songs would only earn them $.45. If 10 million people downloaded the album they would earn $4.5 million on album sales alone. And what if the artists benefited from the mashups and amateur remixes that now proliferate on the web? Artists could offer up song pieces for sale and then split revenues with bedroom DJs.

As hard drive prices decline, the cost of storing music approaches zero. And if the price of acquiring the music approaches zero, then people have no reason not to buy it. Imagine the innovative companies that might spring up: online DJs who choose playlists from your own MP3 collection. Or, while listening to online radio you could simply push the repeat button for a song you like. The service would charge you a nickel, download the song instantly to your hard drive. Better yet, store your music library of thousands of songs online and stream it wherever you go.

This will never appeal to the RIAA lawyers who make their living by imagineering $1.65 trillion lawsuits. But it would benefit the artists and the public. And artists that no longer make their living attempting to sell overpriced albums can always sell overpriced tickets to sold out concerts (there’s evidence that this is already happening), incentivizing bands to play live more often.

Statastico would love a copy of TV on the Radio’s critically acclaimed “Return to Cookie Mountain.” The single Wolf Like Me is fantastic, as is their live show and nearly everything they’ve produced thus far. So how does someone like me get music? At about $.27 per track emusic.com is the best value out there.  If emusic doesn’t carry the album (and they don’t), then I buy the CD and endure the long wait. There are many other options, so I decided to evaluate them compared to my dream website anysongonearthforanickel.com.

Statastico compiled an entirely biased and unscientific assessment of the methods most people might use to acquire music. There are two scores, the price score and the usability score. Price score was taken as the inverse of the price as a percentage of $11.50. In other words, if it’s free it scored 100 and if it is close to $11.50 it scored near 0. The usability score is based out of 100 and is the average of the scores from the following 6 categories:

1. 1. Legality: Sharing songs with friends, file sharing and allofmp3.com scored 1 and 10 in this category; all others scored 100.
2. 2. Ease of Use: File sharing is time consuming and risky, while amazon.com and iTunes are straightforward. Emusic was marked down to 75 because they require a subscription.
3. 3. Music Selection: How many albums can you find? Predictably, our theoretical “any song on earth for a nickel” came out on top.
4. 4. Flexibility: Can users share the music easily with other, are there digital rights management, can you re-download MP3s that you may have lost (as on emusic)? CDs scored slightly higher because they allow users to select their own music compression, allowing flexibility for more advanced compression formats in the future.
5. 5. Audio Quality: CD format was given 100, AAC was rated higher than MP3s because of better quality at lower bitrates, and file sharing was marked down to 50 out of 100 because of inconsistent downloads.
6. 6. Instant Gratification: How long it takes to get the music? Physical transfers involving UPS scored low, online transfers (except file sharing) scored higher.

As you can see, the fictional website anysongonearthforanickel.com wins. Of the next four best options only allofmp3 would (allegedly) pay royalties to TV on the Radio (emusic doesn’t carry the latest album).

The RIAA should remember that customers - especially young customers - are extremely price sensitive and tech savvy. The RIAA will never shut down peer-to-peer networks, (in fact allpeers just developed an add-on for Firefox). The RIAA must embrace innovation rather than outmoded business models. By shifting the paradigm to low-cost song downloads, artists may once again get paid for their hard work.

For full source data click here.

Packed on the number 7 subway line to the U.S. Open, tourists ignored the New York custom of not chatting with strangers on the train. Everyone was abuzz about Agassi. Was he scheduled to play during the day or night? He had another cortisone shot? Can he win another match? But the most common phrases overheard were the clichés familiar to anyone who has watched the breathless U.S. Open television coverage of Agassi: “He has given so much back to the game” or “It’s really what he’s done off the court.”

Even if you’ve never followed tennis, it’s hard to ignore Agassi’s career. It has spanned 21 years and he has won every Grand Slam tennis tournament, a feat that eluded Sampras, Borg, Connors, McEnroe, even the great Federer (thus far). Beyond that, however, you probably know Agassi by his nearly $200 million in endorsements. About ten years ago he thankfully traded in his “image is everything” faded denim shorts and a classic 80s hair-metal coif for a shaved head, two children with Steffi Graf, and his work with the Andre Agassi Foundation in Las Vegas.

Commentators have fallen over themselves lauding what Agassi has given back to the game. But during the interminable rain delays last week, John McEnroe as commentator would inevitably turn about the sorry state of American tennis: Who is the next star? Where is the next batch of American rivals? The next Pete vs. Andre, John vs. Jimmy?

So what has Andre given back to the game? He produced TV ratings at last year’s U.S. Open final versus Roger Federer that were 92% higher than in 2004. His victory against Pavel last week broke records for first round TV viewing. And he provided late-night thrills versus Baghdatis in a match for the ages. But has he inspired any new interest in tennis?

The retirement of Agassi’s cult of personality reveals that tennis is a fading sport in the United States. An informal survey of urban tennis courts in southeast Washington, DC finds them empty on beautiful, sunny days. A few of the preppier neighborhoods often have tennis players waiting, but most of the competition for urban play space revolves around soccer fields or basketball courts. The TV viewership reflects this. NASCAR attracts nearly twice as many viewers as a Grand Slam final without Agassi. Even with Agassi, the NFL draft attracted almost as many viewers as the 2005 U.S. Open final between Federer and Agassi.

So as we bid Agassi farewell, we may also be bidding farewell to the last generation of U.S. tennis superstars. Prove me wrong, James Blake and Andy Roddick.

State fairs are in full swing, and presidential hopefuls are getting acquainted with Iowans. As the first state to hold a caucus in the 2008 presidential primary, politicians take advantage of the state fair’s 1 million visitors to test the political waters.

It’s an odd setting for DC politics. The Iowa State Fair is a demonstration of how agriculture has helped shape a quirky Midwestern culture. Today’s events, for example, include a Mom Calling Contest, hot beef sundaes, rubber stamp art techniques, “Focus on Ostrich,” by the Iowa Ostrich Association, at least two goat milking competitions, and a titillating program entitled “How’s My Wienerschnitzel?” Ambivalent fairgoers can escape to the Iowa Wine and Cheese Garden starting at 11 am.

For anyone born and raised in Iowa, the real highlight is the butter cow. Lines typically snake around the Agriculture Building as eager Iowans wait for look at the cow crafted from 500-600 pounds of butter. While the Butter Cow Lady, Norma “Duffy” Lyon, has sculpted a new butter cow annually for the last 45 years, this year she gave up the reigns to her 29 year-old apprentice, Sarah Pratt. Over the years, Norma has also sculpted butter objects to keep the cow company in her refrigerated showcase. These butter creatures hold a funhouse mirror to Iowa culture: Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” Elvis Presley, Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” John Wayne, The Peanuts Gang, Tiger Woods holding a tiger (really), and this year, Superman.

The Iowa State Fair also has another proud tradition: politicians eating fair food. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich visited the fair last week and ate a pork chop on a stick. Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, who first visited the fair 20 years ago during his bid for president, was reportedly devouring a hoagie in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other.

Other politicians couldn’t help but compare the Iowa State Fair to home. Indiana Senator Evan Bayh commented that “I see you serve beer at your fair and we don’t” in Indiana. (Wait until he finds out what time the wine garden opens.) George Pataki observed that, “We have a great state fair in New York but… we don’t have pork on a stick.” Republican Senator Sam Brownback was at the Iowa State Fair yesterday and Senators John McCain and Bill Frist are expected today or tomorrow. Iowa Governor, Tom Vilsack, has also visited several times - no word on what he’s been eating, but as a native Iowan it’s unlikely to make much news.

So are the state fair visits paying off? According to WHO-TV’s informal “Cast Your Kernel” poll taken on August 16th, not really. Of the Republicans, Senator John McCain came out on top with 24 percent, followed by Rudy Giuliani and Condoleezza Rice each with 20 percent. Neither of the leading Democrats has yet paid a visit to the butter cow. John Edwards and Senator Hillary Clinton were tied at 33 percent, while Iowa’s own governor Tom Vilsack came in third with 13 percent.

It seems that the 500 pounds of butter in the butter cow are enough to sustain the hopes of at least eight politicians. It is a copious amount - about 2000 sticks in all. That’s enough buttersticks to nickname 2,000 baby pandas, or draw butter for 2,000 lobsters. Or, you could butter 4,000 tubs of popcorn, or 16,000 pieces of toast.

And if you get addicted to shaving with butter like Kramer, you can get 16,000 close shaves out of this year’s butter cow. Those 500 pounds of butter would also fuel a very successful bake sale: 20,000 pieces of fudge, 35,000 of my mother’s famous brownies, 60,000 Toll House cookies, or 64,000 Rice Krispies Treats. Of course, if you’re in Iowa, you would most likely use 500 pounds of butter on 32,000 ears of sweet corn.

In a letter about his trip to Iowa, Newt Gingrich closed with this:

“…the process of electing the President of the most powerful country on earth passes through a state fair in rural America where more than one million people come with their families to eat nearly anything that comes on a stick, compete in numerous agricultural competitions and contests, ride the rides, enjoy the shows and see the ‘butter cow,’ but that is how we do it in America, where a free people get to put their candidates to the test face to face.”

Fair enough.

Notes: According to the new butter cow lady, Sarah Pratt, this year’s butter cow is a Jersey and requires about 500 pounds of butter.

Assumptions: One ear of Iowa sweet corn only requires half a tablespoon of butter. Popcorn needs 1/4 cup per tub. Lobsters apparently require 1/2 a cup. Statastic does not advocate sautéing pandas, no matter how delicious that might be. Butterstick was blogosphere’s attempt to name Tai Shan, the baby Panda at the National Zoo.

Some bloggers like to pat themselves on the back for being ahead of the mainstream media. But how serious is the blogosphere compared to the print media? I though today’s sensational story about JonBenet Ramsey would provide a pretty good test of how serious the bloggers are.

According to Technorati, English language blogs with “a lot of authority” mentioned JonBenet 180 times so far today and Hezbollah about 550 times. This actually was a pleasant surprise to Statastico (who does not have a lot of authority). So I went out to see how the newspapers were covering the same two stories.

For lack of a better idea, I measured the size of the columns that referred to each of the two stories. Unfortunately, the newspaper sample reflects where I bought the newspapers - about 2 blocks from the Capitol Building - so I’m a little light on samples from anywhere but the East Coast.

For the most part the Israel-Lebanon conflict dominated space on the front page relative to JonBenet. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were the only two papers to carry the JonBenet story entirely below the fold. The average newspaper dedicated 3.4 times more column space to Hezbollah than to JonBenet. Serious bloggers wrote 3.05 posts referring to Hezbollah to every post referring to the JonBenet story. Imperfect measures to be sure, but somewhat encouraging.

As to which form of media is setting the conversational agenda, I would still vote for the broadsheets. Especially now that we bloggers are ever-so-aware of the fact that we can get free advertising by showing up in the Washington Post’s Who’s Blogging link to Technorati. I’ll see you there.

Source: Statastic research

Notes: Washington Times measure includes a story about the media and the Lebanon-Israel conflict.

After nearly two full seasons of Washington Nationals baseball in the nation’s capital, 1.6 Comcast cable subscribers will finally be getting Nats games at home. While DIRECTV, Cox and others in the DC area receive the Nationals games from Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) for free, Comcast subscribers will enjoy a $2 monthly fee tacked on to their cable bills for carrying MASN. This is not an optional subscription fee like DIRECTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket, it’s a permanent hike, and it will provide $38.4 million in annual revenue for Comcast.

Fewer than 150,000* DC-area residents are likely to watch Nats games on TV. But if Comcast were to earn the same $38.4 million by selling subscriptions only to Nats viewers, they would have to charge them $44 per month. That’s money they can more easily extract from all 1.6 million Comcast customers in the DC area.

It gets better. Comcast extended basic TV comes with 76 channels, which for the sake of argument, provide 24 hours of programming for the local-monopoly price of about $46 per month. So 100 hours of TV on any of those channels will cost you about 8 cents.

If MASN broadcasts all 162 Washington Nationals games each year, and we assume that a baseball game takes 3 hours, that $2 fee from Comcast will be costing it DC-area customers $4.94 per 100 hours of Nationals baseball in the 2007 season.

But Comcast is more cunning that simply charging DC residents 60 times the normal per-hour cable program rate. They also chose to cut a deal with MASN at the very end of the 2006 season, meaning that they will broadcast a maximum of 22 games this year. So for the seven months between September of 2006 and Major League Baseball’s opening day of April 1, 2007, Comcast will broadcast about 66 hours of Nats games for the low, low price of $14. That comes out to $21.21 per 100 hours of programming!

Rest assured, Comcast isn’t going to make any money from this. Comcast executive vice president David Cohen said in a statement that, “Comcast does not intend to profit from the carriage of this new network, but its significant cost makes it necessary to pass along a price increase to our customers. It will cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade to provide MASN….”

I’m sure the shareholders are going to be pleased to hear that Comcast isn’t broadcasting Major League Baseball for a profit. So are Nats games just unusually expensive to film and distribute? Not according to MASN. They told Reuters that Comcast would be paying about $1.25 per customer per month. MASN also estimated that Comcast could make back another $.60 per cable customer on advertising. After subtracting MASN fees and adding in their advertising revenue, Comcast’s net income will be about $15 million for broadcasting 22 Nationals games between September 7, 2006 and March 31, 2007.

If you’d like to switch to DIRECTV now, click here. Statastico earns nothing from this hyperlink, just a little satisfaction.

Go Nats!

Sources: Statastic research; Washington Post; Comcast

Notes: *How many Nats TV viewers are there? It’s hard to say since there has never been full cable coverage. San Francisco had about 144,000 regular TV viewers the year after their Giants were in the World Series. This is likely a good proxy because it has a similar metro-area population and the Oakland A’s compete for viewers, much as the Baltimore Orioles do.

Google Trends is statastic! Not many web sites get the statastic adjective, but it’s no surprise that the Google Labs have pulled it off.

Google Trends is an anonymous snapshot of worldwide Google searches broken down by the geographic origination of the search. My favorite part is that terms are normalized, which basically means that Google takes the search term that you’re interested in as a percentage of all search terms from the geographic area you’ve selected. Google explains here.

The word or words that appears at the top of each section were the search terms that people around the world entered into Google. In all cases except the last one, these are the top results from around the world. The last comparison between Arcade Fire and TV on the Radio was limited to U.S. Google searches.

Now to see what the world has on its mind!
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When Republicans Google themselves?

Top 10 cities around the world searching for the word “corruption.”

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Hope the Romanians are voting in the midterms

Top 4 regions around the world searching for the words “democrat” and “republican.”

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Planning a vacation?

Top 10 countries around the world searching for the words “witchcraft,” compared to their search for “cannibalism,” and “spontaneous combustion.”

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We care a lot. But not as much as you.

Top 10 cities around the world searching for the word “Darfur.”
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When men are in charge

Top 10 countries that searched for the word “sex” compared to the frequency with which they searched for the term “love.”

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Now that’s not funny

Top 10 countries searching for the word “joke.” I don’t get it.

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Time for the Butter Cow!

Top 10 cities around the world that searched for “state fair.”

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“Well they’re both really important issues… the boobs, I mean.”

Top 10 cities around the world that searched for the term “breast implant” versus how often they googled the name of the Iraqi prison “Abu Ghraib.”

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“Jihad” must mean something else in Indonesian. Besides, there are hardly any Muslims there.
Top 10 languages that searched for the word “jihad” versus the frequency with which they searched for the word “terrorism” and “al Qaeda.”

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What exactly are the Indonesians planning for?

Top 10 countries that searched for the term “UFO” versus how likely they were to look up “Elvis.”

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Washington DC just isn’t very hip.

Top 10 U.S. cities that googled “TV on the Radio” compared to how often those same 10 cities searched for “Arcade Fire.”

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How do we know when a media technology is maturing? Look at how well it reflects society. Communications technologies often start with a limited set of users, and often a limited appeal. And there are often contradictory forces at work in media innovation, for example when Monk scribes gave way to Gutenberg’s printing press. Religious elite lost some cache, but the rewards were expanded literacy and increased creativity in literature.

Photography is an early example of a media that could both document life and afford artists a new medium to reflect life. But today there is a major difference: ubiquity. In 1997, it was estimated that there were more than 150 billion photographs existed in the U.S., and that was well before digital cameras. Today almost everyone has access to a still and video camera. Yesterday’s photojournalism is today’s snapshots. And the advent of photo sharing is also blurring the lines between amateur and commercial photography.

Music has been around about as long as Homo sapiens, and perhaps since the Homo neanderthalensis. But the transformative nature of music, its ability to fuel the social activism of the 1960s, for example, could only occur with innovations recording (starting with the phonograph) and distribution (beginning with radio). With the advent of Internet music sharing, there is a new wave of do-it-yourself creativity in music, whether through self-published albums, mashups, or local iPod DJ nights.

Documentary and experimental film is as old as the medium itself. But documentaries of the early 20th century were from the viewpoint of a few documentarians. One side of innovation in film distribution has increased the public’s access to our homes, cars, even stadium seating. The other side is more the surge in production. Just look at the Viewer Created Content on Current TV to understand how everyone from high school students to priests and drug dealers are sharing their point of view. And motion pictures are increasingly activist: The box office now has hits with political editorials, documentaries about global warming or docudramas about genocide.

So what about video games? Where do they fit in? It depends who you ask. Those under 40, probably grew up playing them and understand the appeal. The baby boomers have likely avoided video games, save for the ones that best imitate the card games they grew up with. First person shooter games have often been blamed for increased violence. The Economist magazine would beg to differ (see chart at right). Perhaps violent video games don’t reflect crime patterns perfectly, but they do reflect what’s CBS weeknight programming pretty well.

But do video games reflect more than violence in society? More on that shortly.

Sources & Notes:

DVDs include all DVD video software shipments in North America. Data provided by Digital Entertainment Group
Book sales data: Seattle Times
Movie Tickets: Motion Picture Association of America
CDs sales include only CD albums. No CD singles, LPs or downloaded music was included. Data provided by Record Industry Association of America
Games include computer and videogames. Data provided by the Entertainment Software Association

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran an editorial that put the estimated death toll from the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo at 3.9 million, the equivalent of the entire San Francisco Bay Area population.

The war, which has involved as many as six nations, started in 1998 and continues to this day. The International Rescue Committee and The Lancet found that 98% of the deaths were due to treatable disease and malnutrition, largely the result of displacement during conflicts in the east. The remaining 160,000 deaths were a direct result of fighting.

The quality of the data in the editorial and the reports on which it is based are very impressive; the results are not. By comparing our response to the conflict in Congo with other recent wars and natural disasters, we find a discouraging record:

• -On a per capita basis, 30 times more United Nations Peacekeepers were deployed to Kosovo, where 12,000 people died, than to Congo where 3.9 million people have died this far.
• -The dollars of international aid distributed to Aceh, Indonesia in the wake of the tsunami was almost 100 times higher than the aid that has flowed to Congo.
• -In 2005 the media reported on Darfur more than 5 times more often than on the conflict in Congo.

The lessons from the data are clear:

1. 1. The media is more likely to report on wars that have been labeled genocide.
2. 2. The media is less likely to report on festering wars with no apparent good guys and bad guys.
3. 3. Media reports drive world attention. World attention drives donation rates, the reaction of our governments, and the deployment of U.N. Peacekeepers
4. 4. Citizen donations are fickle.  Governments are ultimately responsible for addressing conflicts such as that in Congo.

To learn more about the war in Congo, visit the IRC web site. There is also a link to take action by writing your Senator (assuming you’re not a Washington, DC resident).

Sources: Statastic research, International Rescue Committee, Wikipedia, Washington Post.