First let me say that Fizy has benefited from the synergy between Turkcell’s group companies and will have a channel on Digiturk.

Fizy’s Digiturk channel might be one of the first surprises of year 2012, and I believe that it will be very effective and useful. We have also learned that Fizy might work with D-Smart for a similar channel besides Digiturk.

Fizy will be in international markets

I think it is significant that Fizy is expanding to countries that Turkcell provide services. Turkcell currently operates in Germany, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and TRNC (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) but we have no information regarding in which countries Fizy will be available. Yet we know that Fizy will be providing service in three or four of these countries initially.

Premium membership is on its way

We heard that Fizy has no problems regarding advertising revenue and diversification of the revenue model is on the schedule for 2012. Also premium membership model will be launched but details on premium membership benefits are not available yet.

Fizy Shop will offer Fizy branded products

Along with premium membership, Fizy Shop will be opened on March 2012 where Fizy branded  products will be on sale. With products like music players and headphones, Fizy Shop will be demonstrating a rare working model among other e-brands.

Will be listed on the stock Exchange in 2 years

Turkcell’s plans for Fizy are not limited to new features and global expansion. As we have learned, the company is also planning to get Fizy listed on stock exchange in 2 years as management plans.

I don’t know if Fizy will be in the stock market in 2 years’ time but there’s one thing I’m sure of. Fizy bears the potential to be a global success since the day it was started, and might be one of the major players in Turkey, that expand globally, supported by its international marketing activities.

Original Post: Fizy’nin 2012 Hedefleri – Digiturk Kanalı ve Premium Üyelik Yolda!

This post has been written by Arda Kutsal and published on Webrazzi Global.

We had already heard that Fizy had been negotiating with MU-YAP on copyrights and had a communication breakdown with the organization. We had also received the information that the two parties couldn’t overcome this problem, even though they had face-to-face meetings.

We had heard that the website would be blocked in the past weeks, but we did not want to share this info with you before receiving official confirmation on the block of the website, which occurred just today.

Update: Bulent Forta, Chairman of MU-YAP, has spoken to DipNot.tv on the status of Fizy. You can read about it below.

Looking at the infograph we published last month, the service had 6.2 million unique visitors per month and more than 150 million page views. Visitors have spent an average of 36 minutes on the website, having more than 500 thousand registered users.

The service had been in touch with MU-YAP and other music companies since the day it was started. It is a saddening development that the service, which had been in close relation with MU-YAP and other music services, has been blocked by court, especially after it has become a worldwide known service and even compete in final in competitions including Mashable Awards.

I believe that the problem between Fizy, one of the most important of the recent Turkish initiatives, and MU-YAP, should come to a conclusion no matter which level it has reached. I hope that Fizy, getting nearly all of its content from YouTube, while MU-YAP publishes its video clip archive on its YouTube channel, will find a way of negotiation at this point.

We can reach Fizy by changing our DNS address and it looks as if it is under maintenance right now, which means you can’t use Fizy even if you can reach it.

Update: Bulent Forta, Chairman of MU-YAP, has made statements to DipNot.tv on the subject. Here are these statements without comment.

Fizy uses our members’ songs, but it does not pay any royalties to us. While portals including TTnet, Turkcell, and Avea are paying royalties for the songs they provide regularly, we cannot favor Fizy.

We have had nearly 20 meetings with Fizy before this decision in 7 months and offered 5 different business plans. However, Fizy was not interested in any of them. Until now, they have a retroactive debt of nearly 80 billion, and they have not paid it, nor are they planning to.

Fizy used to work as a search engine, and was a website like dailymotion. But in 2010, it became a website for listing songs, which is not different than other music websites. This led to unfair competition. As Muyap, we have taken legal action and office of the attorney general has taken a decision. Fizy can seek its rights legally too. Freedom of Internet does not mean freedom of stealing others’ rights. We are a organization protecting artist rights. Fizy says, “we use songs at 100 lira, but pay 5”. We cannot accept this.

This post has been written by Ali Altuğ KOCA and published on Webrazzi Global.

Fizy, online music service operating under Reklamz companies group, has released new beta feature. The feature is called Mood, which plays songs for whatever mood you are in, rather than searching the songs you want to listen to at Fizy. You can start the application by choosing one of the moods including nostalgic, calm, moving, melancholy, fun, happy and complicated. We have learned that technical works are continuing, particularly to improve performance.

Fizy runs a basic recommendation engine on the system and it can legally play Turkish with an agreement it signed with MUYAP in September. The service will sign a contract with Sony in October and it is technical studies to include foreign songs to the system.

I believe that with Turkish songs, along with foreign songs, it will catch the capacity of Pandora, especially with Fizy Mood, in the future.

To be honest, I didn’t ask guys from Fizy whether they imitate Pandora or what they think about this vision, but I can say that the new features of the service has reminded me of Pandora, which we used in the past, then was limited outside of the US.

Of course the service will be better as the recommendation algorithm is advanced a bit more and foreign songs are added in short time. However, I consider even this version of Mood a service that can run behind the scenes.
Finally let me say that Fizy Mood is serving on the sponsorship of gnctrkcll. As other advertising models applied on Fizy, gnctrkcll sponsorship doesn’t tire the users out.

This post has been written by Arda Kutsal and published on Webrazzi Global.

A majority of website bans are due to this content type, most significant costs are created by these kind of websites, after video sites, the business models that makes the most income for third parties are music initiatives, and video, adult, friendship, game and surely music sites get the highest traffic. In addition, in the last period, the type of content which brands invest the most is music.

Music initiatives are considered the center of entertainment, they are much easier to create the software and infrastructure compared to video, can be licensed in one center for Turkish content without messy licensing, and can easily attract masses  since there is not domination in the market. Under these circumstances, music initiatives have recently started to take more and more place in the sector.

Recently, when we wanted to listen to music online, we thought of preferred initiatives in the sector like Cokenmusic.com, Fizy.com, TTNetMuzik.com.tr, Muzik.net, GncPlay.com,  and Musicopat.com. A short while ago, MyNet’s music service Kavun was added to this list.

When we look at the list closely, we can see that Musicopat.com has recently shut down its music feature due to high costs and the fact that it hasn’t gotten the required commercial return, and continue as a music community. We do not know if it will change its mind.

Cokenmusic.com is a service that enables listening to both Turkish and foreign music with membership and it was launched within the scope of Coca-Cola’s marketing budgets. We do not have information on Coca-Cola’s own statistics, but as you can see on Google Trends graphics, it seems that it hasn’t made the expected effect.

TTNetMuzik.com.tr lets TTNet members listen to music free, while you need to sign up to download music and naturally, it gets support within TTNet marketing budget. We can say that the service is much better compared to past, and although its traffic climbs up when TTNet gives ad support, its general situation is not so different from its competitors in the sector.

I do not know about the last situation of Fizy.com’s contract with MUYAP but a short while ago we heard that they had some negotiations on the issue. I guess that Fizy’s operational costs are lower compared to a classic music website since it broadcasts contents of video sites as sound, rather than directly MÜYAP catalogues. I believe that the initiative, which continues with Reklamz partnership, will not have huge problems in making ad income. A while ago, Fizy experienced a sudden fall in its traffic when it removed YouTube content from its system, but these days we can see that YouTube contents is again in its system.

Music.net is an initiative of AdTech, the ad network, and after listening to 3 songs, it is required to sign up and be a member via SMS. I do not believe that it will have some big problems concerning costs and incomes. As a matter of fact, if we consider AdTech’s works, it has probably the biggest turnover in the sector. But it is hard to predict the future of this model, since operators are about to take some delicate decisions concerning membership via SMS, as we have heard.

GncPlay.com is a service that Turkcell launched within gnctrkcll, and it requires membership to listen to a whole song while you can listen to the first 30-second part of it without signing up. This service might again be considered a marketing activity and I guess that it I not working on a delicate income/cost balance. Unfortunately, it is not possible to make a correct statistical analysis because of the sub-domain it is broadcasting music currently.

Kavun, launched on Kavun.mynet.com a little while ago, enables its members listen to music unlimitedly, while you can listen to only first 30-second part of the songs if you are not a member. We can say that, taking place under MyNet in order to keep the traffic in, this service has a clearer aim than most of the above initiatives. In addititon, we cannot access its statistics as it broadcasts under Mynet subdomain.

Another service that Turkish Internet users used mostly was Last.Fm to which access was banned was banned by court a short while ago. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the service, is in the same position in terms of traffic as the popular services that we mentioned above and even, it has more traffic when we consider last.fm other than lastfm.com.tr that is blocked for the moment.

When we consider all of the above, we can see an interesting picture and we are required to think about it.

As the general picture brings us and preferences of Turkish Internet users as online music we can say that:

Turkish Internet users do not still prefer an only channel to listen to music and there is not domination on this field. Seasonal trends, viral affects, ad/marketing campaigns and special facilities that services provide give direction to user preferences.

Turkish Internet users give importance to results, rather than methods. They prefer the easiest and fastest way to access to music. This is not always an online music website. Music clips or songs without videos that can be listened via video websites can be sufficient.

Another point that we need to think about in an elaborative manner is that music-based initiatives mostly attract the audiences when they make ads, and then tend to be forgotten. For this, last 12-month Google Trends graphic of TTNetMuzik.com.tr will explain this trend.

Finally, one should look closely at supply/demand issue, which is the starting point of this study.  Yes, Turkish Internet users do like music content and music is probably one of the contents with the most rating in the sector. However, according to Google searches the word “music” has not shown a big climb in the recent years.

When we consider search trends of Google, in the last years, one of the most climbing key words son online game market, which we think that it is not being thought on enough. Even, the keyword game is more searched among Turkish Internet users than porn content. In this point, I can’t help thinking that if we asked “In Turkey, which one is most searched word: porn or game?” the majority would say “porn”.

There is another issue that doesn’t gain the attention, other than the fact that “Music” content hasn’t shown a climb in the last period, and the high importance the market gives to it. TV series!

“TV Series” searches exceed music searches in Google made by Turkish users and it has been climbing especially since 2008. However, it is not possible to say that there are a large number of serious initiatives in the market to match this demand.

When YouTube gained popularity and was bought by Google, video websites experienced a boom in Turkish Internet market and for us, it showed that this was a trend, and we saw brands’ marketing campaigns revolving around video initiatives. It was a correct approach and decision, since we can see the climb of interest in video content in that time clearly. However, the recent interest in music content, which made us feel urgent to make this study and is supported by brand names, catches our attention.  But this time, we cannot say that it catches the sufficient attention for this.

In Turkish Internet market, “music” is highly unengaged and not dominated. However, users do not show a climbing demand for it to happen. In the last years, demand for music content is almost the same as the demand for the keyword “music”.

If you like to know the reason for this, we have some opinions.

There is not a stable method for music content. It means that, it is not common in Turkish Internet market to go to a website like YouTube, DailyMotion, Izlesene, VidiVodo and watch a video clip. The most important reason of this is that demand for music content is mostly for “professional content”. Yet, amateur content in videos get much more demand and strengthens itself with a viral dispersion. Naturally, about professional music content, easy to apply and correct licensing model is not common in Turkey yet, so initiatives in this field apply different model from each other mostly. This makes it harder for the users to sense a standard structure and it prevents demand to music content get higher like video.

As a result, music, which producers in Turkish Internet market consider the trendy subject lately, does not attract the expected attention from consumers. This leads the initiatives in the sector not being able to get necessary feedback and fall into silence. And for Turkish Internet users whose only aim is to access music, professional music initiatives that are hard to realize and whose procedures are difficult, are being replaced by initiatives like Facebook, YouTube etc. that provide video/music content. While we don currently have statistics, we can say that the more than the music that is listened through the initiative we have mentioned above  can already be accessed via YouTube, Facebook and similar services.

In short, some regulations are required to be completed, and until they are completed, it is a fact that there is much supply in the music market, but its consumption  is done on different fields at the moment…

Image Courtesy: sxc.hu/josterix

This post has been written by Arda Kutsal and published on Webrazzi Global.

Turkish internet users can still reach both sites via OpenDNS. Also, you can reach last.fm by changing language settings to English, since the ban on last.fm is over the address lastfm.com.tr and only users with Turkish language selection are redirected.

Just to remind, YouTube is banned in Turkey for over a year and the case hasn’t been able to be resolved between both parties since then.

We believe the “web site bans” have a big negative effect on Turkish economy while Turkey has 7th largest and most engaged online audience in Europe with its 27 million Internet users. As comScore stated in the report published in May 2009, internet users in Turkey spend more time online and consume more pages than users in other European countries.

We’ll be updating this post as we get more detailed information.

This post has been written by Arda Kutsal and published on Webrazzi Global.

As an old iLike user, I would say that iLike, which enables users to find friends having common musical tastes, and the artists to create their own fan page and contact with their fans on digital media, has been moving with a beautiful vision since the first times of it.

Acclaimed by its users, the service had self-improved itself thoroughly in May, integrating artist pages with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Ticketmaster, and enabling them to do the management via iLike. In addition, premium account had made it possible to view the performance of the accounts and map of fans. Moreover, iLike had quoted only $99 for creating a special iPhone application for the artists. In short, with this management system, iLike satisfied not only members, but also the artists.

A few days ago, iLike announced that it started to sell digital music, thus opened the door for huge profits by adding mp3 sales to its services with prices between $0.89 and $1.29. Therefore, one of the world’s largest social networks MySpace can’t remain indifferent to these kind of initiatives, and the deal, if made, will be MySpace’s first acquisition since new CEO Owen Van Natta took control of the company in April 2009. According to information leaked from a few sources, the acquisition that can be done this week will be for like $20m.

What are MySpace’s expectations regarding iLike?

Currently MySpace Music is in the first place in its own field and his closest follower iLike. Founded in the end of 2006, iLike has 50 million registered users and a large Facebook audience. As of today, 10 million Facebook users are using iLike application, which might be a good way for MySpace to enter into Facebook.

If we recall that CBS acquired Last.Fm in 2007 for $280m when the website had 12.9 million individual visitors per month, the price quoted for iLike that has 3 million individuals does not carry the parallelism. It is that way because it seems more reasonable to estimate cost per member for social networks. However, when we consider Last.Fm’s acquisition for $280m cash when it had 15 million active users in 2007, iLike with more than 50 million registered users seems to be underpriced. In my opinion, it is possible that the leaked information concerning the estimated value is not very correct regarding iLike, which got $16.m investment, and if we take iLike’s future plans into consideration, I can say that MySpace wants to get iLike at a low price.

In any case a purchase will not affect our comments, so I recommend that artist who would like to have iPhone application hurry, since it will jump from $99 to $195 in two days with all its integrations.

This post has been written by Fırat Demirel and published on Webrazzi Global.