Around The Digital World in 19 Days

By: Brian DwyerWed Dec 19, 2007 at 8:23 AM

Charge up your iPod: October is ripe with digital-entertainment conferences. There are at least five big ones, and if you tried to attend them all, you'd spend most of the month in airport club rooms. Here's a cheat sheet to help you prioritize.

Hot topics: Are consumers stealing control from the record companies? How are legal P2P downloading, nontraditional music retailers (Starbucks, Wal-Mart ), music-discovery sites such as Pandora and iLike, and Internet radio upending the business? "The dam is breaking for free online music," says Pandora founder Tim Westergren, who is slated to appear. "Consumers are calling Congress about potential rate hikes for Webcast music and saying, 'No, no, no, we don't want this.' "

2. Streaming Media Europe 2007
October 4–5
London

Hot topics: How can big companies finally make money off streaming media? And how will the rise of Internet TV force broadcasters and advertisers to shift direction yet again? "The focus is on the push and pull between advertising and creativity," says keynote speaker Ari Paparo, DoubleClick VP of rich media and emerging technologies. "Companies are looking to innovate, using [advertising] 'bugs' that overlay the video, or ticklers that run at the bottom of the screen."

3. DisplaySearch HDTV
October 10–11
Universal City