DDA4me : What Is a DDA

What's it all about?

On December 1st, 2008 a new option opened up for both consumers of music, and the producers of the music they love, when Sneaky Sound System and Gurrumul, amongst others, released their current albums on the revolutionary new DDA format.

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What is a DDA?

DDA (D:Net Digital Album) is a new format developed by Australian company D:Net Media Pty Ltd.

It is a Personal Digital Content Aggregator; in short, a new form of digital merchandise for the delivery and enjoyment of content. It is patented software, delivered either on a USB stick or as a direct digital download. It was initially conceived with the music industry in mind but is versatile enough to be applied to other areas of consumer culture and entertainment such as sports, cooking, fashion and travel.

It provides an ongoing relationship between content producers and consumers and can be a valuable marketing tool for any club or business. It is a common expectation of consumers that website content is free and that websites earn money from advertising, increasingly however the revenue earned from advertising by websites doesn’t match the value of the content being made available. Unlike a website, the DDA system offers a way for digital content to be monetised whilst offering great flexibility in the way it is used and presented to the consumer, the look and feel, what content it holds and of course, how it is to be monetised. Users do not need to be online to access the content as it is not a streaming service, it is ‘download and own’.

Like a CD package, each music DDA has the album tracks, the lyrics, the liner notes/credits, the photos and the art. Unlike a CD package the DDA can have hundreds of tracks (over varied file formats) and thousands of photos. Significantly, every DDA owner also gets their own space within the D:Net Media System – ‘myDDA’ - not just a back up of all of their content but a means to acquire new content (video, images, documents, tickets. . .) and access/enjoy the content they own from any internet enabled device. Other online features include a non-stop themed (e.g. music, sports) news services and exclusive forums – a great way to socially network with like-minded people. Importantly it’s all about content which is owned by the consumer and stored both locally and remotely for them - it’s not content they visit and stream when online at someone else’s website, it is ‘download and own’. Each DDA also has features like an audio player, track list builder, media transfer unit (easy click to transfer the play lists to iTunes > iPods and burn CDs) and video viewer.

In addition to the upload of premium content, DDA producers can use the multimedia blog software to record voice, music, video, images or text on their mobile phones and/or computers and upload it all within minutes to all of their Activated Users. Imagine your favourite artists, sports stars, celebrity or chef recording videos and photos any time they want and sharing such exclusively with ‘their community’ – DDAs become alive with a wealth of great new content.

Most people believe that consumers are more likely to spend money when they recognise great value. Using a DDA and specifically the Blogging aspect of the format enables content producers to quickly, easily and affordably offer that great value.

Each Activated DDA User can also use the myDDA application in Facebook – using their DDA login, they can then access and enjoy all of their content from within their Facebook pages.

For the music world, the operates under the assumption that many people in this millennium want greater value for money than what a ‘static content’ format like the CD delivers – they want a rich, ongoing, digitally connected experience. Although all music DDAs released to date offer greater content than the CD and iTunes releases of the same titles – plus an ongoing connected experience – the producers of such have sold them at prices equivalent to the other formats thereby offering a welcome greater value for money proposition for consumers.

This format offers new levels of freedom of use for every person who activates a DDA – freedom to enjoy their digital content whenever they want, wherever they are, and (with a DDA mobile phone application or I-phone) utilising whatever hardware they choose.

Using this format content producers can create bundled offerings of content such as:

Music
Newsletters
Books
Digitised historical content
Event tickets
Videos
Photos
Recipes
Artwork
Games

...all in the one digital file, and made available either by sale or free to distribute to fans, members or customers and once the connection is made, there can be an ongoing relationship.

D:NEWS