Talking digital with Hulu, JibJab and Thumplay

My latest segment on the LinkedIn Blog ran Monday, and it's quite a scoop. Where else have you been able to catch Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, JibJab CEO Gregg Spiridellis, and Thumbplay SVP Mitch Rotter alongside the "Don't Copy That Floppy" guy and gratuitous tours of the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile? Nowhere, that's where.

Perhaps most interesting in this piece, Hulu CEO Kilar touches briefly on piracy: "You're much better off competing and building a delightful service," Kilar says, "as opposed to thinking that you can stop and shut down things through gateways." That's a quantum leap for anyone in Hollywood. They may have realized that the best way to beat piracy is actually to compete, to actually make it easier to buy or watch your favorites than to steal them. Is that a better investment than millions of dollars in lawsuits against fans and websites? Methinks.

Also check out JibJab CEO Spiridellis touch on the best way to build a brand digitally, and Thumbplay SVP Rotter note that the mobile space is a marketplace that people keep with them every waking hour of the day. According to Juniper, goods purchased via mobile will be a $300 billion marketplace by 2013 ... though perhaps that's a conservative estimate when you're selling pdfs for almost $3000.

Radiohead made more on InRainbows than all other albums combined

Here's a mindblower from Thom Yorke in the most recent Wired, where he talks with David Byrne about music:

In terms of digital income, we've made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that's nuts. It's partly due to the fact that EMI wasn't giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff.

So InRainbows, released as a cost-optional download, made more for the band in three months than Pablo Honey, The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail To The Thief combined.

The qualifier is "in terms of digital income" of course — and Radiohead isn't on iTunes, the top-selling digital marketplace. It looks like they're on Amazon's, and I'd check Napster and eMusic, but you can't search their titles unless you're a subscriber (a design flaw for their services).

But still, wow. Three months trumping a storied 15-year catalog is pretty amazing. EMI is either doing something wrong or keeping all the money for themselves. I'd guess both.