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Now the former top exec at NBC Universal, has joined the board of Shazam. Most recently she oversaw integrated media and digital networks at NBCU.
"“Lauren’s expertise on the intersection of content, technology and data will bring tremendous value to Shazam as we pursue our mission to be the world’s leading media-engagement company,” Shazam exec chairman Andrew Fisher said in a statement.
Universal is very familiar who Destiny is and what it's software does.
Last summer Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has invested $40M in Shazam.
http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/lauren-zalaznick-joins-shazam-board-1201160806/
Shazam is a really big business.
Besides the consumer application, reporting companies use the meta data and fingerprint to track what songs are being played on radio in an automated way. This data is licensed and sold.
Destiny and it's software is becoming the trusted source for much of the data.
I don't think any of us have thought much about the licensing deal with Shazam.
Now with the Apple name attached to it we can better assess that Destiny integration is very important and really connects it's technology with the key players.
Good for you! There is very little downside and there is a very possible big upside for those with vision and patience.
"When promised quick profits, respond with a quick 'no'- Warren Buffett.
Thanks for posting. Very interesting!
Right! That is what Steve has been saying. All we need is to give some time for the Clipstream to grow up a little. It's already learned how to stand and started making it's first steps...
The toughest times are behind us. The pps is still a great bargain, but may not be for too long.
Only 300 shares are still available at $1.08. If someone wants to get more then 4,000 shares, they have to bid $1.10.
http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/DSNY/quote
If it is, good for us!
I'm very sure, when Destiny will get a big customer, will get the PR as soon as the Canadian regulators will approve it.
We also can't say that Steve is keeping us in the dark on what's to come:
"- MPE is incredibly profitable. It generates about 22% margins on existing business. New business, such as Sony Australia, which didn't make the just announced quarter is almost 100% margin - there are no new costs at all. Think about it - 100% of Clipstream R&D has been paid for by Play MPE profits for the last four years and the company has generally been profitable, even after paying for all of that R&D. We haven't raised money or needed to dilute current investors since 2007 and we've been able to buy back 5% of our stock and to buy back 5 million $.50 warrants and millions of options out of Play MPE profits. All of the warrant overhang and almost all of our option overhang is gone - this is stock we can re-issue in the future to raise money if we think it is in our interest in the future.
- Clipstream is ready for prime time. We have a core automated system that we are proving out with our most critical audience, web developers. We're adding features based on their feedback, such as title images, but those features aren't required to sell. We're doing good business with market research companies and are sponsoring a new conference and are advertising heavily at CASRO, Quirks, etc. to grow that business. What I said on the call is we're going to grow that business ALOT when our second market research security pack comes as it is something they need that no one else offers.
- other customers we can sell to now include online retail and ISP's and cable cos. that want to offer Youtube style services to their customers under their brand. We can sell to part of the ad market, which we think is a $1.2 billion revenue opportunity to us now, but the feedback we are getting is that we should build out authoring tools, reporting tools and better integration to reach all of that market. Think of these things as new offerings to new markets, not that Clipstream isn't ready.
- future markets include opportunities such as selling movies need our movie security pack, expected in a few months. There are dozens of verticals we can get into, each of which requires new features and new marketing plans, but these are new layers of revenue we can add to the core of the onion, the core being the automated system.
- things are happening now. We've been doing high level enterprise pitches since December, but these high level sales are being done by myself, our directors and our existing sales team. What we are doing is expanding the team with senior sales people, but that doesn't mean we can't sell this quarter. We're also spending a lot of time on MPE. Staff were at Midem in France last month and are doing a sales tour in Europe at the end of this month."
Yes, it's true! And that is why the investors are very happy when the insiders are buying.
Brooklyn, to begin with you've posted a senseless message and then you became most defensive and insulting.
We are here to make $$, to exchange our deductions, based on facts, ideas and research. We're not here to lament how unfair the world is.
I'm very surprised at your innuendos. One thing nobody has ever questioned it is Steve's integrity.
How can you turn something very positive, like the CEO buying on the open market, into something negative?
It's a holiday weekend, so perhaps you just had one too many.
This is what we know from the CEO:
"- things are happening now. We've been doing high level enterprise pitches since December, but these high level sales are being done by myself, our directors and our existing sales team. What we are doing is expanding the team with senior sales people, but that doesn't mean we can't sell this quarter. "
The bidding war between Universal and Apple would be nice! lol
I think we already made this point about Yoshi earlier, but it's good to reiterate it.
That is why, besides adding sales staff, Destiny has already added two Front End Developers and now is looking for two more Software Developers and QA Tester.
That is a lot of additional tech personal for a small co.
Z, it's already started this qtr.
As soon as web developers will get their title images pack, the CAS revenue will jump up.
"- Clipstream is ready for prime time. We have a core automated system that we are proving out with our most critical audience, web developers. We're adding features based on their feedback, such as title images, but those features aren't required to sell. We're doing good business with market research companies and are sponsoring a new conference and are advertising heavily at CASRO, Quirks, etc. to grow that business. What I said on the call is we're going to grow that business ALOT when our second market research security pack comes as it is something they need that no one else offers.
- other customers we can sell to now include online retail and ISP's and cable cos. that want to offer Youtube style services to their customers under their brand. We can sell to part of the ad market, which we think is a $1.2 billion revenue opportunity to us now, but the feedback we are getting is that we should build out authoring tools, reporting tools and better integration to reach all of that market. Think of these things as new offerings to new markets, not that Clipstream isn't ready."
Sounds good to me.
My hunch is that he may sell MPE separately and keep the Clipstream until it will grow very big.
Clipstream is going to give birth to many offsprings and those also may be sold separately.
"Future markets include opportunities such as selling movies need our movie security pack, expected in a few months. There are dozens of verticals we can get into, each of which requires new features and new marketing plans, but these are new layers of revenue we can add to the core of the onion, the core being the automated system."
"One of the big drivers with future revenue will be new feature sets targeted at specific verticals. Those features are almost like brand new products (new authoring tools, etc.) which will be part of the Clipstream suite."
Another thought. If Apple will buy Shazam, they would have to make a deal with Destiny. There will be no free trials then.
I feel the same, Westify. We'll probably see the revenue uptick this qtr and it will keep increasing. By the end of the year we should see a substantial revenue and net income growth. By that time we also should get a major deal.
In the mean time, that is why Destiny is going aggressively after the automated market. No free trials there. It's going to be a cash machine.
Good points about Shazam's income!
Usually Apple is not into partnering with service companies like Shazam.
They seem pretty determined to either acquire or replace services like this.
Apple may dig deeper and find Destiny's software behind Shazam's name. It's interesting that Shazam has never announced the agreement with Destiny. They're obviously are not interested to advertise that Destiny's software is behind it.
"CEO buying 160k on the open market is just unprecedented."
Yes, I agree, especially considering that all these years he's been making relatively modest salary, has already over 11M shares and has never sold any of them.
Thanks, macberry.
No, I didn't ask him about that.
I only ask questions strictly pertaining to Destiny and post them on the board.
Steve had mentioned once that previously he would get the same question from a number of investors, because the first answer has not been shared with others.
Brook, this is not what I said.
You may want to re-read my original message, but here is what it sais:
"At one time Steve has said that these automated sales will be the MOST profitable for the co."
You could have misinterpreted my meaning because it was posted out of the context. What Steve has been saying at that time is these automated sales are the most profitable because: ones they start running smoothly, they will be almost 100% profit. The whole process of the purchase will be fully automated, including credit card billing.
Per CEO:
"Shazam has a database that associates the digital fingerprint of a song with the meta data associated with the song. Meta data would be things like the song title, artist, beats per minute, geography, etc.
They need to initially enter the meta data and fingerprint in the database, or they can't identify the song later. Historically, either they or the record label have done that manually, often weeks later than the song release.
We are the first third party to get much new music. For example, when the new Michael Jackson song came out after his death, there were only a few people in all of Sony that had heard it, but it was in our database for a few days before it came out. We offer Shazam extremely accurate data at the earliest point it becomes available to the public.
We charge Shazam a token amount in year one for the data, but are hoping / expecting that this will be a good source of revenue for us in year two and beyond. Initially, they are evaluating the value we provide to them.
We're involved in that in many cases it is our data (actually label data they entered into our system) being sold to Apple, but we don't get a piece of that revenue stream today.
The value to us besides the token revenue stream is that our customers want to be in Shazam's database. Especially independents, who might miss out, can ensure they are in the database by using us. They can use us as cheaply as a $250 minimum, so it is a no brainer.
Majors see the value that their content is in the database more quickly and it is guaranteed to be accurate as it is the same data they sent out to radio through us and is not manually entered later."
Right! At one time Steve has said that these automated sales will be the MOST profitable for the co. $100/mo x 100,000= $10M MONTHLY potential market. Even 10% of it would be fabulous!
That is why Steve has decided to run G2 ad indefinitely.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/About/About_Us
I've emailed this question to Steve a little while ago. Hopefully will get a reply this weekend.
"Apple is planning on partnering with Shazam to bring song identification software to its upcoming mobile software update iOS 8."
Destiny has recently announced "...an agreement with Shazam Entertainment Limited, the world’s leading media engagement company, whereby Destiny’s Play MPE® system will automatically transmit digital fingerprints and meta data to Shazam servers."
"Destiny Media Licenses Music Fingerprint and Meta Data from New Pre-Release Songs to Shazam"
http://dsny.com/node/1489
Thanks, Brook.
It seems to me there are lots of more "buys" than "sells".
http://www.stockwatch.com/Quote/Detail.aspx?symbol=DSNY®ion=U
When I expressed my concern to Steve re: the fact that Director of Sales is still in the negotiation mode, he sent me this response:
"In the mean time, the directors and officers are doing high level sales (two directors and I were doing sales in LA a few weeks ago, for example).
We also have senior sales people selling MPE now. We have a big European trip at the end of the month. We can't grow staffing any quicker than we are now - interviewing is taking a lot of staff time. That's why we engaged the recruiting company and the sales consultants to help hire."
In addition he specifically highlighted the fact that Yoshi is at the Silicon Valley now and also had sent me some links to his experience. I don't know who is the second director is, but we can safely assume that Yoshi was of them.
I've done some additional research and then posted it.
I find Yoshi's connection to Cisco and telephone companies are especially impressive because, per Steve:
"The market research vertical is quite large - we've barely scratched the surface. It is one of the smaller verticals, though. Near term big ones are ads, online retail and white labeling to the big phone and cable cos. Have you tried our ad? It plays fine on mobile and tablets now, something the industry has been begging for.
Yoshi has impressive credentials. All the companies that he has been in advisory or direct management positions were either bought out or have grown to be a BIG business.
Now he's taking a much more active role in Destiny. Presently he's managing Silicon Valley office and making sales trips together with the CEO to the big customers.
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac49/ac0/ac1/ac259/puredigital.html
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/25/qualcomm-acquires-gesture-recognition-ip-from-gesturetek-aims-f/
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223780
Mr. Kumagai served as an Original Member and Advisor to Pure Digital Inc., which was acquired by Cisco Systems Inc. in 2009 for $590 million after which time Yoshitaro joined Cisco as a Senior Advisor.
Mr. Kumagai was an original member of Picture Vision, a provider of virtual photo content distribution systems to PC and mobile phones. He was co-founder of Bayes Japan, a leading Japanese cellular phone content developer.
Mr. Kumagai served as the Chief Executive Officer and President of Onna.com, a company engaged in the development of a Japanese portal web site targeted at Japanese women, from 1999 to 2001 when the business was acquired in an acquisition.
Mr. Kumagai served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Vivitar Corporation from 1997 to 1999. Mr. Kumagai was responsible for the management of global operations throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.
Mr. Kumagai served as an advisor and a corporate Director of Plaza Create Ltd., a Japanese company engaged in franchising an innovative photograph processing store chain, from 1995 to 1999.
Mr. Kumagai has also held key management positions in the following companies: IDEC Corporation from 1991 to 1993 , the Mead Corporation from 1984 to 1991 and the Singer Company from 1981 to 1986.
Midem is the acronym for Marché International du Disque et de l'Edition Musicale, which is organised annually in and around the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France. The tradeshow, which is billed as the leading international business event for the music ecosystem, has been held since 1967.[1] Several thousand musicians, producers, agents, managers, lawyers, executives, entrepreneurs and journalists from around the globe regularly attend the event, which is usually held at the end of January, or early February. While delegates from recording, artist management, and publishers network, new artists showcase their material and live music is on show in the evenings.[2]
The event is now focused on the core music business (labels, publishers, rights societies & more); the technology sector (startups, developers and big tech companies); and brands and the agencies that represent them for music+brand campaigns.
Thank you for the acknowledgement, Brook.
Since no one has volunteered to write to the CEO what the investors disliked in the CC presentation, I've emailed the negative comments (no names) myself.
Here is the CEO's response:
- MPE is incredibly profitable. It generates about 22% margins on existing business. New business, such as Sony Australia, which didn't make the just announced quarter is almost 100% margin - there are no new costs at all. Think about it - 100% of Clipstream R&D has been paid for by Play MPE profits for the last four years and the company has generally been profitable, even after paying for all of that R&D. We haven't raised money or needed to dilute current investors since 2007 and we've been able to buy back 5% of our stock and to buy back 5 million $.50 warrants and millions of options out of Play MPE profits. All of the warrant overhang and almost all of our option overhang is gone - this is stock we can re-issue in the future to raise money if we think it is in our interest in the future.
- the minimum of issue is just the UMG minimum. They had been paying minimums in different territories. When we combined the different contracts and different minimums into a single global minimum, the money we were getting for being under minimums in various territories was lost and only occurred once in the global minimum. We also agreed to stop charging them for recipients that had never used the system once. Finally, the new contract is priced in Euros, so we lost the hedging the automatically occurred by pricing the contracts in so many different currencies. This is what I mean about chess. Short term pain is getting us a global rollout at UMG's cost and saving us marketing costs to deal with potential competitors. When UMG goes into a new territory, we can follow with the other majors and independents after they've built the market for us. As I said in the call, we were above the minimum in March 2014, but that was after the quarter end.
- Clipstream is ready for prime time. We have a core automated system that we are proving out with our most critical audience, web developers. We're adding features based on their feedback, such as title images, but those features aren't required to sell. We're doing good business with market research companies and are sponsoring a new conference and are advertising heavily at CASRO, Quirks, etc. to grow that business. What I said on the call is we're going to grow that business ALOT when our second market research security pack comes as it is something they need that no one else offers.
- other customers we can sell to now include online retail and ISP's and cable cos. that want to offer Youtube style services to their customers under their brand. We can sell to part of the ad market, which we think is a $1.2 billion revenue opportunity to us now, but the feedback we are getting is that we should build out authoring tools, reporting tools and better integration to reach all of that market. Think of these things as new offerings to new markets, not that Clipstream isn't ready.
- future markets include opportunities such as selling movies need our movie security pack, expected in a few months. There are dozens of verticals we can get into, each of which requires new features and new marketing plans, but these are new layers of revenue we can add to the core of the onion, the core being the automated system.
"An "insider" buying ... is hardly a "leap of faith"...it is a full fledged endorsement of the technology, management and company...this dude knows what he knows... "
The above was posted on the other board by Justfmam.
Somehow he's neglected to post the same assessment here.
Nobody knows his own company better then the CEO. When Destiny's CEO has bought well over 125,000 on the open market - that is the most irrefutable endorsement of the technology and the company's prospects.
Most of the other CEOs don't buy the company shares for the full market price. In fact, in most cases they just giving themselves millions of shares and pay "0".
Good sleuthing and action!
Thank you for posting! It's the best vote of confidence!
Take into consideration that someone else has bought almost 600,000 shares.
As a result the pps should be up Monday.
High volume buying at the ask. It usually institutional buying at the closing time.
Steve responded to the question re: SP and uplisting. They're expecting within a couple of month, when they have a couple of big sales to support a much higher pps.
He doesn't want to do 5:1 split.
Thank you, Brook!
Well done again, D! Obviously some SMART $$ have bought over 450,000 shares already today and it's only NOON.
Well said, Dagshah!
Atlanta, please delete all messages that are not pertaining to DSNY. Including my last two.