I just finished reading an article from TechDirt and was shocked to find out how much the yearly licensing fees are for playing music in a nightclub or a restaurant. Here is a short extract from the article:

“It wants to increase licensing fees in a 120-seat restaurant to $19,344 a year — up from $125. Small cafes would be slugged with a 4729 per cent yearly increase from $124 to $5860.”

Source: http://techdirt.com/articles/20090615/0329305236.shtml

For those digital signage businesses who provide their clients with a digital signage solution that plays music in the background, have you considered what legal implications are involved and what the licensing requirements are? Even if your client has paid for the music clips or videos!

In Australia, retail stores that play music – whether from the radio, purchased CDs, computers, digital signage are required to pay a licensing fee otherwise it may be considered breaching copyright laws and eventually be fined thousands of dollars.

Now we all know that music can set the mood and atmosphere in your store, nightclub, restaurant or cafe but did you know that you may have to pay a licensing fee for playing music in your business environment or anywhere in public areas? Basically, if you play music in your store you need to have a PPCA public performance license to play protected sound recordings and an APRA public performance license to play musical and literary works. For more information about this visit https://transactions.business.gov.au/BLIS/musiclicence.aspx

All I can say is, just make sure that if you’re running a business or if you’re installing a digital signage solution with audio for one of your clients make sure you mention these licencing requirements to your client otherwise they (or possibly your business) may end up paying a hefty fine – so don’t risk it.

After thinking about this situation, do you believe a license is required for playing videos of unsigned artists playing original songs from Youtube in your store or business environment?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that because these artists are unsigned (i.e don’t have a label) the PPCA, or APRA won’t be paying them one cent so why should you pay for the license fee if all you’re playing is songs from these unsigned artists. For example, here’s one of my favourite Youtube R&B groups called LEGACI playing an original song. Keep it up boys.

Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Featured Post

Just recently I read an article about the upcoming Microsoft Xbox Motion Sensor that allows the users to control games with our bodies. Unlike the Wii, this means that you do not have to hold anything to interact with the console and game.

This new product is being called “Project Natal” and is basically a sensor for the Xbox 360 which tracks movement, listens and executes commands from the console… don’t know what I’m refeering to? then watch this trailer from Youtube:

If you’re from the digital signage industry you’re thinking to yourself “The future of Digital Signage interaction?”. If you’re like me, when something catches your attention you start brainstorming on how this can be applied to the digital signage industry.  If I was working for Microsoft I would recommend and provide directions to the management team to push this product out to businesses to use as a digital signage console…. and not just a gaming console. Let’s think about this, most digital signage players out there in the market are using desktop PC’s, embedded PCs or some form of a PC – fundamentally that’s what the Xbox 360 is – and soon it will have a sensor. In my eyes,  I can potentially see this used as a digital signage player and not just a gaming console.

In the past, many top digital signage gurus predicted that the next “big thing” in digital signage was going to be interaction and guess what…. they were right.

Lets imagine this scenario:

• You walk into a clothing store and you’re having trouble picking a dress for the night out with the girls.
• Now like in the example in the trailer, you walk up to the dsx (digital signage xbox) and you contact your best friend to get advice on which dress you should wear.
• In the application, you have the virtual product catalog of all the dresses available in the store.
• The application takes a picture of you (measuring your body size, height etc) and you start trying out the different dresses (virtually).
• Along the way you and your friend discuss whether the dress is suitable or not.
• When you found some of the dresses both of you like  you add it to you’re favourite list.
• You then press the “TRY” button or say “Let me try these” and the shop assistant brings in the dresses for you to try.
• All the transactions and  information end up being recorded online so that the next time you visit a store that has the dsx you can retrieve this previous information.

This is one of the many applications I can see working for the digital signage industry and I can’t wait till we trial one of these units.

Category: Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Blog Products, Digital Signage Blog Video