With over 90,000 attendees from over a 150 different countries this show promises to be a great opportunity to learn and share best practices of bringing content to life. LicenseStream is excited to be meeting with media and entertainment professionals involved in the creation of music, video, and images, as well as those in the business of content distribution and broadcasting.

Conference Details:

NAB Show

Las Vegas Convention Center

Las Vegas, Nevada

Candice Muarray, Vice President of Business Development, will be on hand meeting with clients, prospects and partners. She will be demonstrating how LicenseStream helps media organizations automate content licensing, royalty settlement and content monitoring. Another powerful solution we will be showcasing is LicenseStream’s Content Tracker that enables companies to detect and curb unauthorized use of their content creating additional opportunities to monetize and discover new markets.

NAB provides a perfect backdrop to show how we optimize your overall product workflow whether content is monetized via direct download, subscription or ad-supported delivery, LicenseStream provides a quick path to market with either turnkey or fully custom deployments.

We look forward to seeing you there! Please contact us to ensure a time is available to secure a one-on-one meeting enterprise@licensestream.com.

A vital component of any brand protection policy, our imperceptible watermarking technology reliably communicates copyright ownership and monitors where images end up on the Web.  So, now that you’ve found misappropriated content what do you do?

Take your online asset protection one step further with Content Tracker, a new solution from LicenseStream now being offered by Digimarc for Images.  Content Tracker equips companies with powerful infringement management tools, bridging the gap between protection and compensation.

Find misappropriated content online? Choose from adaptable templates and create a usage term contract in a matter of seconds.

Want to remove one of your images from an unauthorized site? Draft and issue automated takedown notices and regain control of stolen images.

Want compensation? Easily communicate payment requirements and initiate collections with infringers.

Check out the following video to learn how our combined solution can save you both time and money: Informational video

If you’d like to learn more about Content Tracker and its infringement management tools, please contact us at enterprise@licensestream.com.

Copyright, Beyond the Basics for Media Companies, Content Archives and Creative Professionals

Our first webinar of 2011, this is a follow up to one of our most popular webinars last year Copyright 101.  Hosted by LicenseStream and our friends at Digimarc we’ve invited guest presenter Jonthan Bailey of Plagiarism Today to dive a little deeper on some popular copyright themes and questions.

When: Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Time:  10:00AM PST / 1:00PM EST

Presenters: Jonathan Bailey, Plagiarism Today, Mary Kuch-Nagle, Licensing Executive, Digimarc and Candice Murray, VP Business Development, LicenseStream

Register Now: http://bit.ly/hjg0nF

During this free, one-hour informational webinar we’ll delve into the following:

• An overview of the basics
• Works by multiple authors specifically how this affects copyright
• Basics of Fair Use
• Differences between copyright licensing and transferring
• And much more!
  

We hope you can join us, save your spot and register now: http://bit.ly/hjg0nF

LicenseStream’s Ray Connolly, SVP of Sales, will be in attendance at this year’s MIDEM conference in Cannes, France January 23-26^th 2011.  With nearly 7,000 delegates representing over 3,000 companies from 77 different countries, MIDEM and MidemNet bring together the music industry’s influencers and decision makers from across the globe. MidemNet provides insightful analysis into the rapidly emerging mobile and digital music markets.

This is an exciting event for LicenseStream as we expand into the $30+ billion music and audio content market.  We’ll be demonstrating LicenseStream Content Tracker, which monitors audio across the Internet, it then publishes detailed reports to a secure dashboard including critical information

such as how much music was used and where including website URLs and a downloadable recording of the captured detection.  LicenseStream enables content owners to better monitor licensed and unlicensed uses of their content on the Internet and automate licensing in applicable use cases.

We look forward to meeting with you and sharing how we can help your business thrive in the midst of dynamic digital landscape.  Please contact us at enterprise@licensestream.com to schedule an in person meeting.

A Busy Week in New York for LicenseStream: Visual Connections & PACA International

Starting with Visual Connections on Wednesday, October 13^th, LicenseStream will be showcasing client stock photo collections from the Chicago Tribune, SPIN, NYC Photo Library, Photo Resource Hawaii, the Missouri History Museum, Visions of America, Roth Stock and more.  LicenseStream will present how our platform enables major media companies to bring their vast content collections directly to content buyers and consumers.

View Online Client Showcase: http://www.licensestream.com/showcase

Proud sponsor of PACA’s 2010 Legal Session “Piracy: How to Find It and How to Fight It?”

LicenseStream is proud to be the sponsor of PACA’s 2010 Legal Session “Piracy: How to Find it and How to Fight It?”  The session moderated by PACA Counsel Nancy Wolff will discuss trends & issues concerning the prevalence of content piracy and how to address this growing problem.

During this session LicenseStream’s Candice Murray, Vice President of Business Development, will present how companies are using the LicenseStream platform to not only license their content and drive new revenues but also manage, monitor and remedy unauthorized use of their valuable media assets.  Other panelist include Masterfile President Steve Pigeon, PicScout's Amy Love, and copyright attorney Gregory Victoroff.  The legal session takes place Saturday, Oct. 16th at 11:30AM to 1:00PM at the New York Marriot Downtown (see details below).

Conference Details

Visual Connections Conference
Date: Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Time: 12:00PM to 8:00PM
Location:
Metropolitan Pavilion
125 West 18th St.
New York, NY 10011

PACA 15th International Conference
Legal Session: Saturday, October 16^th 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM EST
Conference Dates: Friday - Sunday, October 15-17, 2010
Location:
The New York Marriott Downtown
85 West Street at Albany Street
New York, NY 10006

ImageSpan and Digimarc yesterday announced their partnership to integrate LicenseStream Content Tracker solution into Digimarc for Images – Professional Edition providing creative professionals a seamless solution to monetize, manage, and monitor their image assets.

Digimarc for Images – Professional Edition users that currently embed imperceptible digital watermarks in their images and receive reports of where their content is found online, will now have the ability to receive reports via a LicenseStream dashboard integrated within the Digimarc for Images solution. The dashboard empowers creative professionals to maximize the value of their image assets with efficiency and ease by providing automated remedies to license and collect payments for use of their image assets.  Targeted for a launch later this year, the solution will be bundled into Digimarc for Images – Professional and Small Business Editions.

This initiative builds on a partnership announced in November where ImageSpan and Digimarc are offering a joint enterprise solution for Stock Photography Agencies, Media Companies, Museums and Archives.

Click to see full press release

Thank you to everyone who attended the “Driving New Revenues from the Web: Missouri History Museum’s Story” webinar last week.  We had a great turn out and many asked some great questions.  If you missed the webinar, a recording is now available for viewing on our website click on the following link to view now:

http://www.licensestream.com/licensestream2/Portal/knowledge_center/webinars.aspx

Quick Overview of the Webinar:  We heard from Angie Dietz, Digital Asset Archivist for Missouri History Museum discuss their need to leverage the power of the Web to extend their reach online so that anyone, anywhere could quickly find and license their images and other digital assets.  We then learned how LicenseStream helped the Missouri History Museum monetize its vast historic archives to drive new revenues and discover new markets.  We also reviewed how LicenseStream Content Tracker works with Digimarc for Images to find and address unauthorized uses of content across the Web and also create new revenue opportunities for the museum.

We hope you find this type of information useful.  Keep an eye out for other upcoming webinars by viewing our webinars page or signing up to receive notices . If you have other webinar ideas we’d love to hear from you (post in the comments below).

The ImageSpan team just returned from Museums and the Web, an annual conference that drew 600 museum professionals to Denver to explore “the social, cultural, design, technological, economic, and organizational issues of culture, science and heritage on-line,” according to the event’s online brochure.

Museum professionals view the Web as a potential treasure trove of opportunities, which may help explain why attendance rose about a third for this year’s Museums and the Web event.

The question is: how to best leverage the Web? Presenters from around the world strove to answer that question by sharing ways to engage audiences online. For example, one presentation covered how best to present large collections online so that the public can easily find what interests them, while another offered ways to complement, enhance and extend on-site learning with on-line learning.

The biggest trend to emerge from this year’s event was “a focus on sharing data and putting data outside one’s own website into spaces controlled by others,” said David Bearman, a partner in Archives & Museum Informatics and a key organizer of the event.

For many long-time museum professionals, releasing content to the “wild” of the Internet is a scary and daunting prospect. However, most of those in the museum community understand the educational, cultural and even monetary benefits of making their content available online. A lot of museum professionals simply want to make their content available for browsing by art lovers, or for educational purposes. Others want to know who is using their content and want attribution for it online, but do not want to charge for its use.

This latter group expressed interest in the combination of LicenseStream Tracker with Digimarc for Images, which lets photography agencies, media companies, museums and archives add an imperceptible digital watermark to communicate copyright ownership and information on how to contact the owner wherever the image is found online. The LicenseStream Content Tracker then crawls the Web looking for uniquely watermarked images, providing regular reporting on where a content owner’s images are found so they can take appropriate action.

Yet other museum professionals are just beginning to realize that there may be new markets for their content where it would be fine to charge a usage fee – for example, for advertising or another commercial purpose such as store design. Many museum professionals had their eyes opened to this notion at Museums and the Web, where the Missouri History Museum  demonstrated how ImageSpan’s LicenseStream  empowered it quickly and efficiently to start discovering new markets and sell hundreds of images.

As a result, a comment we heard often at the event was: “I know that we are sitting on a gold mine, but it’s just such a huge undertaking.” Museum professionals recognize that there is value in their content, but do not believe they can begin licensing it until they have a content management system in place and until they digitize, tag or keyword ALL of their content to make it easy to find, use and license.  However, the Missouri History Museum’s experience with LicenseStream demonstrated that this is not the case. The museum has more than 600,000 images, including many that are not digitized, and it is still implementing a content management system. However, already it has begun licensing its images with LicenseStream.

How? While LicenseStream is not a content management system (CMS), it can host content to enable licensing, royalty processing, multiple-party fee disbursement, etc. In fact, LicenseStream can “plug in” to any existing architecture and/or CMS to generate revenues that will help a museum justify the larger content management initiative.

Another huge trend at this event was the interest in mobile applications. This spike in interest reflects the broader market’s interest in mobile applications, as highlighted in a recent announcement by the research firm Gartner said investments in mobile applications and technologies will increase through 2011 as organizations emerge from the recession and ramp up mobile spending.

However, while several vendors focused on museum tours, we discovered that museum professionals were most interested in learning about mobile applications that are NOT tours. They want to know what additional applications are out there to help them take advantage of this new medium and its explosive growth, especially with the introduction of the iPAD.

As museums wake up to new opportunities via the Web and mobile technologies, it will be exciting to see how they optimize the use of these technologies to engage with audiences and advance their missions.

Have questions or comments about this blog post? Please feel free to share them by clicking on the “Comments” link below.  

As newspapers refocus their business models to encompass multiple platforms, and look for revenue alternatives to advertising, there is a lot of interest in new technologies at the Newspaper Association of America mediaXchange this week in Orlando, Florida. More than 650 industry executives have gathered at the event to share audience and revenue development strategies that generate growth in print and online.

Hype around iPAD (and other eReaders) 

There also is plenty of buzz at mediaXchange about emerging hardware distribution platforms that media companies are adopting to help drive revenues. In particular, there’s a lot of hype focused on the iPAD as companies test it and other e-readers (including the Kindle and similar tablets) as well as devices such as the Samsung Go netbook.

As a result, everyone’s favorite parlor game at mediaXchange is speculating about the magic price point that will bridge the gap between what current subscription models charge and the new, lower-cost subscription models tied to such tablets and similar devices. For example, The New York Times annual print subscription fee is about $785. By contrast, The New York Times’ monthly subscription on the Kindle is now $19.99 – up from the initial teaser offer of $13.99. In addition, publishers including The New York Times are testing bundle offers where the price of a device is discounted in exchange for a subscriber commitment of a year or two. 

Platform Strategy vs. Device Strategy

Based on comments we’ve heard at the show, publishers are still trying to understand whether to pursue a platform strategy vs. a device strategy. Ideally, newspapers should be able to publish content once for use across all devices in a way that is optimal for the newspaper's bottom line as well as for the consumer. However, each device sports its own key features and capabilities, and pursuing an individual product strategy for each device will not scale up to cost-effectively meet or take advantage of mass market demand for content.

Why Does This Matter to LicenseStream Subscribers?

Demand for content will continue to grow exponentially as newspapers, magazines and other media companies form business relationships with companies that are creating new conduits to the consumer – whether it’s Apple’s iPAD, Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s nook. That means the ability for media outlets such as the Chicago Tribune or SPIN magazine to search for and easily license digital content is more important than ever.  Just as important is the need of the photographer or videographer to be fairly compensated for the original content he or she creates.

ImageSpan and its partners already provide the tools to make your digital content license-ready, to publish it to the Web and to major search engines in a way that protects it, and to help you monitor, manage and monetize unauthorized usage of it. In addition, ImageSpan and its partners make it easier for potential purchasers of your content – including major newspapers, magazines and book publishers – to drive the revenues they need during  this time of great change. 

Have questions or comments about this blog post? Please feel free to share them by clicking on the "Comments" link below.  

An illustration sometimes works better than a photograph. It can more easily be manipulated to convey an individual style, a mood, an abstract concept or an attitude.  Drawn to work together, illustrations can lend a book or a website consistency. An illustration can be a sketch, a simple line or a detailed drawing. It can be either hand drawn or computer generated. It can consist of simple black lines on a white page or ornately colored and intricate as the illuminated characters found in the Book of Kells.

At ImageSpan, we work with so many photographers that it’s easy to overlook the illustrators who use LicenseStream's automated licensing and royalty payment services. One such user is Lisa Sage, an illustrator based in Limerick, Maine. A former computer programmer, Lisa fell into a career as an illustrator in 2008 while – ironically – trying to learn more about photography.

“I had been in the photography forums, trying to learn all I could, and within one forum had answered questions from a woman named Judy about the difference between photorealistic illustrations and vector art,” said Sage, whose website, Sage Family Studios, features illustrations, paintings and photomontages. “To explain the difference, I used images out of my portfolio. Then out of the blue I received a call from someone at Oxford University Press and it turned out to be this same woman! She was looking for really detailed illustrations and asked me to be part of the upcoming project.”

© Lisa Sage/Sage Studios LLC   “Within” was chosen for a new edition of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series

Sage’s illustrations are regularly uploaded to the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) site, where she participates in the forums. One of her images, highlighted for an Image of a Week award on the NAPP site, caught the attention of the visual effects director for a horror thriller called “The Gates of Hell.” Sage soon found herself creating digital matte paintings for the film. While Sage was working on the film (released in 2008), the movie’s visual effects director suggested she launch an email campaign to various art buyers who might be interested in her illustrations. Sage sent postcards to art buyers at various publishers. An art director from Chooseco, a publisher in Waitsfield, Vermont, fell in love with an image on one of the postcards. It turns out the art director wanted it for the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series of chapter books for pre-teens that Chooseco was republishing and that were popular in the 1980s.   “As the art director from Chooseco went through galleries on my website, he was able to click on the images they had fallen in love with and go straight into LicenseStream,” said Sage.

“I was at Photoshop World last year when I received an email from Chooseco’s art director asking to negotiate pricing. Understanding that this art director was with a small publisher – instead of a large New York press – I went into LicenseStream to adjust the drop-down menu pricing, making it easy for the publisher to license the images at the prices they wanted. I re-sent emails to the art director several times before I received a note back from him saying that the images already had been licensed. It happened so easily, that I wasn’t sure – and couldn’t believe – that it had actually gone through!”

To top off that success, Sage went on to win the international Guru Award in the Photomontage category at that Photoshop World in March 2009. Sage now is working to finish a bachelor’s degree in information technology with a specialization in project management. Her hope is to take on larger and more complex projects. Meanwhile, she believes there is plenty of work out there for illustrators. "A buyer can spend a lot of time searching stock images that just aren’t obtainable because they’re too difficult to get,” she said. “For example, often a photo buyer needs an image of a happy family – but one not looking directly at the viewer so they look natural.

© Lisa Sage/Sage Studios LLC  "All That I See” caught the eye of a film’s visual effects director. It later won a 2009 Guru Award

Perhaps you need an image of someone cooking dinner or reading a book.  Or say you’re putting together a document that explains a process, such as the difference between people paying for credit cards and people paying with cash.  These all sound simple but it’s amazing how much time people spend just trying to get the right image.” 

In addition, an illustrator can create a series of images with a uniform look and feel. “It’s hard to make photographic images feel consistent across a Web site,” Sage added. “With branding, illustrations are often easier to work with because you are creating them. Also, anything geared towards children is typically done with illustrations instead of photos.”

Instead of commissioning an original illustration or photo, art buyers also can now search for an image by Sage via a major search engine or go directly to Sage’s LicenseStream store, choose the image they want, and license it with a few mouse clicks.

“With LicenseStream, everything is so simple that you can shoot out a license very fast,” said Sage. “I’m relieved that it takes so much pain out of the process of licensing my work. That frees up time for me to focus on what matters – creating the images.”

Have a question or an observation?  Click on the “Comments” link below to share your ideas.