Just to give you a taste of what will online music look like in the near future....
Up Close and Personal
Live Picture Is Helping Rolling Stone Network Take its World-Class Image to the Web
Rolling Stone readers feel the music through words and pictures, according to Jann S. Wenner, the editor and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine. For the Rolling Stone Network, the official Web site of Rolling Stone magazine, these are words to live by. The online magazine has taken this premise one step further through the use of zoomable, interactive images of Rolling Stone's award-winning artist photos. The move demonstrates that once again Rolling Stone is an innovative leader in the publishing worlds-both physical and virtual.
For Rolling Stone, whose coveted cover photos have made its newsstand appearance a bi-weekly event for more than 8 million readers, image is key. The magazine has built its world-renowned brand on cutting-edge images and incisive reporting.
Rolling Stone, known as the definitive source of music information and popular culture trends, is a pioneer in its own right. Since its birth as a counterculture publication, the magazine defined pop culture journalism, creating a publishing category that has since been filled with dozens of music, lifestyle and entertainment publications. It is widely revered as a cultural icon, a testament to hard work, dedication, quality journalism and risk-taking. The magazine has dared to be different, and, by doing so, has won the loyalty of readers worldwide.
Quite an achievement for a magazine originally distributed as a broadsheet published on a shoestring budget back in 1967. Then a former Berkeley student, Jann S. Wenner, the editor and chairman of Wenner Media Inc., established Rolling Stone as a leading countercultural voice within the San Francisco Bay Area.
With Rolling Stone, Wenner changed the way we perceive musicians and their works. Over the past 30 years, Rolling Stone's innovative use of outstanding photography, dynamic imagery and cover designs has captured readers' attention, not to mention many prestigious awards. The powerful and dramatic images seize the excitement, essence and soul of music. Recently, the famous cover photos were featured in a national exhibit and displayed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. The works of Annie Leibovitz, Herb Ritts, Richard Avedon, Mark Seliger, and others made Rolling Stone's brilliant focus on photography possible.
The Revolution Continues... Online
The year 1998 marks another historical milestone for the publishing giant as Rolling Stone takes its coverage of the music industry and pop culture to the World Wide Web. The launch of the Rolling Stone Network represents one of most ambitious interactive multimedia endeavors currently under way. The Web site is the most comprehensive source for music content on the Web, showcasing the magazine's legendary content and featuring live streaming audio/video from concert venues nationwide, daily video newscasts, chat sessions, and Webcasts of "hot ticket" special events like music award presentations and festivals. Online shoppers can choose to buy from more than 140,000 CDs, 70,000 videos and more than 1,000,000 print titles.
As in the magazine, photography is playing a pivotal role in Rolling Stone Network's content. But now, Rolling Stone Network patrons can get up close and personal with famous pop and rock stars thanks to Live Picture(r) Zoom(tm) imaging software, which lets visitors click to zoom in on photographs of their favorite musicians. Zoom images give music fans the chance to check out the good looks and soulful expressions of some of the biggest names in entertainment. The plan is to give patrons the ability to browse Rolling Stone Network's impressive digital photo archives, and to order and download high-resolution images online-all in a matter of minutes.
Behind the remarkable capability of Zoom images is the Live Picture Image Server, which gives Rolling Stone Network a powerful way to display and deliver high-quality, high-resolution images fast. Live Picture technology accomplishes it all without concerns for bandwidth restraints and without suffering any degradation in quality. Visitors can view highly detailed images on demand over standard modem connections using any Web browser, and without being burdened by the use of special browsers, plug-ins, or having to download any client software to view the interactive photos. They simply click the mouse to zoom in on a photo, and in seconds, they can examine the detailed area of the photo.
"The Live Picture solution combines key components critical to our success," says Howard A. Tullman, CEO of JAMTV Corp., which developed the Rolling Stone Network site. "Live Picture Image Servers give us fast, efficient delivery of high-resolution images and electronic commerce capabilities to effectively market our merchandise."
JAMTV Corp. operates the Rolling Stone Network content, advertising sales, and visitor traffic. JAMTV is a leading online musical entertainment company offering the Web's largest aggregation of artist information, concert Webcasts, and original music programming. JAMTV also serves as a national cross promotional network linking major national market radio stations with branded "Virtual Venue" Web events. The Virtual Venue allows music enthusiasts to see and hear state-of-the-art Webcasts-in streaming audio and video-of live and archived concerts.
On Sale Now
JAMTV is helping Rolling Stone implement its ambitious strategy to co-market Rolling Stone Network's content and merchandise with prominent online merchants whose products and services complement those of Rolling Stones. For instance, through Rolling Stone Network's partnership with CDnow, visitors can buy Rolling Stone merchandise in addition to CDnow's own 250,000 music products.
Using Live Picture Image Servers, JAMTV can facilitate its joint eCommerce ventures while at the same time manage the heavy demands of the Web site's image-intensive content. Live Picture provides the imaging components necessary to conduct online sales and fully leverage the Web as a marketing venue, including digital image watermarking for managing copyright licensing.
Integrating the site's images with other content is key. The Web site's search engine links Rolling Stone Network's rich resources and merchandise. When a visitor searches for a particular musician, the search results include everything relevant to that artist, including articles, photos, Webcasts, upcoming performance schedules, concert T-shirts, collectibles, and other type of marketable memorabilia. In this way, the search results direct the visitor not only to Web sections within the network but to its partners' Web sites.
JAMTV executives say support for industry-standard image formats will become even more critical as Rolling Stone Network expands it marketing partnerships with other online vendors. By adopting the Live Picture Flashpix format-the format on which Live Picture's Zoom images are based-JAMTV and Rolling Stone Network are investing in a widely deployed standard with long-term vendor support, which guarantees seamless file format interoperability among the partners' systems. The Flashpix image file format and Internet Imaging Protocol (IIP) were developed by Live Picture in collaboration with Hewlett-Packard, Kodak and Microsoft. Flashpix and IIP make high-resolution images work on the Internet, and allow anyone with a Web browser to interact with even the most detailed pictures.
"We're pleased to be working with industry legend John Sculley and Live Picture CEO Kate Mitchell, and their dedicated team of imaging experts who have worked diligently to help us enhance the interactive, online experience at Rolling Stone Network," concludes Tullman.
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Direct link: livepicture.com (just click on customer profiles)
See the magic, Damien? Much more than BLOBs... It's even time for ODIS to start rock 'n rolling with LivePicture Inc. (their CTO is Eric Chen, the Chinese guy who developed QuickTime-VR!) |
