CI (of which I’m a Director) has been shortlisted for the Music Week Award “Distributor of the Year”.

It’s a giant shift in perception that we’re even being considered, and certainly the fact we delivered ~20% of Amazon’s US download store is a catalyst.

CI’s digital distribution service model /has set/continues to set/ standards in how with digital products and web services can work together. CI takes no fees from retailers, and no % of sales (think “DHL for digital products”).

It’s mission is “enable access to markets” by providing easy routes for any rights-owner to distribute to any retailer (160 at last count, including iTunes, mobile operators, China, Korea, etc…). CI’s clients are all in the independent sector, and represent over 2 million tracks. We also have a rather good jukebox in our office.

To be listed up against Universal and EMI (and Pinnacle is one of CI’s clients) is indicative of the shift in the balance of “power” in the music industry.

Fingers crossed!

From TED Talks: Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action — and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group. As he points out, humans have been banding together to work collectively since our days of hunting mastodons.

I also can’t ignore the other TED themes this month: Music and Rockets, with George Dyson (who provided me wih some useful advice for AMEE) talking about Rockets to Saturn and Pamelia Kurstin discussing the Theremin.

Set course for 2008….

I’ve blanked out the specifics, but each blue box is a meeting… it’s going to be a busy year.

EDF are providing bonus schemes to customers if they provide easier access to their data (fuel consumption), and then additional bonuses if they reduce consumption. Its a good stop-gap until smart-meters kick in and, of course, something that AMEE already supports.

Here’s how it works

* EDF email you 10 days before your quarterly bill is produced
* You read your meter and submit your gas and electricity meter reading(s) on-line within 7 days
* For each valid quarterly meter reading submitted on-line, EDF will give you 250 Nectar points per fuel
* If you reduce your energy usage from one year to the next, EDF will give you a further 1,000 bonus Nectar points for each fuel – That’s a possible 4,000 Nectar points in a single year
* You can check your energy usage every quarter using our on-line ‘Energy Tracker’

We’re going to see a lot more of this.