Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, March 31

• Alibaba Signs Distribution Deal With BMG, Its First Music Partner Outside Of Asia: (more here) In a bid to increase its online entertainment offerings, Alibaba has struck an agreement with music publisher BMG, which gives it access to over 2.5 million tracks. The partnership is notable because it represents the first time Alibaba’s digital entertainment unit has signed with a music partner outside of Asia. The business already has agreements with Taiwanese music companies Rock Records and HIM International Music. The deal gives Alibaba access to BMG’s catalog, which includes tracks from Bruno Mars, the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, and Kylie Minogue. Music will be made available to consumers through streaming apps Xiami and TTPod, both of which are operated by Alibaba’s digital entertainment business. It’s important to remember that Alibaba is more than just an e-commerce company. It is also one of China’s biggest mobile Internet players, competing head-to-head with Tencent, which has already struck similar arrangements with Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Alibaba’s growth plans include selling other online services to the huge user base it has grown by operating China’s top e-commerce platforms and online payment service Alipay. Streaming music is a potential growth market for Chinese Internet companies, but only if they succeed in dealing with piracy. According to the Financial Times, China accounted for less than one percent of the $15 billion in global revenues made in 2013 by record companies, in part because pirated tracks are easy to obtain. The government, however, has begun to crackdown on copyright infringement, and deals like the ones Alibaba and Tencent have struck with BMG, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment give music publishers more power over their IP in China. In a statement, Alibaba said “the agreement will not only significantly boost earnings by BMG artists and writers from the world’s most populous nation, but also give them a powerful ally in hleping grow the legitimate music market in China.” This means that Alibaba will help BMG keep an eye on pirated music and work with them to take legal action against services that are using tracks that violate BMG’s copyright.

• US Health Regulator FDA 'Taking a Very Light Touch' on Regulating the Apple Watch: Bakul Patel, who oversees the new wave of consumer-focused health products at the Food and Drug Administration, said most wearable gadgets such as the soon-to-be-released Apple Watch and health-focused applications for smartphones have a way to go before warranting close scrutiny from the agency. "We are taking a very light touch, an almost hands-off approach," Patel, the FDA's associate director for digital health, said in an interview. "If you have technology that's going to motivate a person to stay healthy, that's not something we want to be engaged in." The FDA is mapping out its role at a time when health care and consumer technology are blending. Apple, Samsung Electronics Co. and other companies are building products loaded with sensors that have the potential to eventually gather all sorts of information about blood pressure, body temperature, glucose levels, hydration, oxygen levels and outside air conditions. Software algorithms are being developed that gather different information about a person's health to provide a diagnosis of potential illness that backers say may eventually be more accurate than a doctor. Some products raised flags with regulators after they've reached the market. In February, the Federal Trade Commission cracked down on some smartphone apps for dubiously claiming to diagnose melanoma based on an uploaded picture. Meanwhile, the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights is responsible for oversight of the security of patient-health data collected by electronic devices, a separate issue that is being closely watched by privacy advocates. "I worry that there are going to be companies that are skirting the rules," Gandhi said. "We have to see the enforcement, otherwise it creates a very uneven playing field between companies that are acting ethically and those that aren't." Patel said Apple and Google Inc. and other corporations should play a role in screening applications to be sure health-software developers aren't over-promising the benefits of their products. Both companies have visited FDA headquarters in Maryland to discuss their health initiatives, he said.

• India Startup Action: 5 startups pass out of Target’s accelerator in India; include a visual search engine, in-store location targeting plays: Five startups have just completed a four-month incubation program at US-based retailer Target’s accelerator in Bangalore. This is the second batch to graduate from the accelerator, which focuses on new ideas in retail. This batch of startups had innovators in omnichannel, data, digital marketing, mobile, and supply chain. Here’s a quick look at the five fresh Target graduates: Wazzat: Wazzat is a visual search engine. Its widget has both mobile and web APIs which ecommerce sites can easily integrate. The widget helps find visually similar products. During the incubation, it tested its “find similar” tool with apparel and shoes on the Target site. Whodat: Whodat makes mobile augmented reality apps for brands to help customers visualize their products. For example, it piloted an app at the accelerator for people to see how Target’s dinnerware would look in their homes. Visarity: Visarity enables interactive 3D experiences on both mobile and web, for apps as well as ads. It has wide applications in product demos, navigation maps, and gaming. Target used the Visarity platform to build a game experience for its media network. Torch: Torch is a wireless sensor built by Antarix Labs to monitor smartphone activity inside a store. In this way, it aims to provide offline retailers with the kind of analytics on customers that online retailers now take for granted. Synapse: This is another offline play. The Synapse app recognizes customers when they walk into a store and sends context-aware notifications to the lockscreens of their mobile phones. At Target, it piloted relevant push offers for customers on Android lockscreens.

• Snapchat's ad offerings present a conundrum for marketers: enormous engagement, but little data, targeting: Brands salivating over Snapchat as an engaging influencer marketing tool are all too often put off by costly campaigns and inconclusive results. But given the messaging app is insanely popular with millennials, agencies and brands are creating workarounds, or at the very least complementing Snapchat campaigns much as they did in the early days of Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. Snapchat hosts compilation videos shared from special events and locations via its Our, Live and Local Stories channels. There also are Discover channels with media companies like Vice and Comedy Central posting content. The app splits revenue with the media companies for ads on Discover channels, and those sponsorships can cost as much as $75,000 a day, say marketing execs. In other cases, brands like McDonald's cough up as much as $750,000 for daily official sponsorships. The content and ads disappear within 24 hours, ready for fresh material. That element vexes a number of marketers. Moreover, marketers remain skeptical of Snapchat given there's no way to accurately direct ads to specific audiences and no easy way to figure out whether they actually worked. One digital ad executive who recently saw Snapchat's sales pitch said, "It was not impressive because there's no way to target ads." "Snapchat is very limited as far as the data it makes available," said Justin Rezvani, CEO of theAmplify, an Instagram-focused shop that recently branched out with Snapchat. "Our focus is to track sentiment and conversations on alternative platforms, like Instagram." Rezvani said it's hard to measure basics like whether users are watching Snapchat videos all the way through. However, most signs point to Snapchat users being super engaged with the content. The Stories channels have attracted more than 1 billion views on active days, according to social shops contacted and figures reported by Snapchat. The content is so transitive that consumers cherish it more, Cicero said. "There's nothing to compare it to, so in general advertisers are hesitant," he said. "But the ones that take advantage now obviously will be more successful. They understand the mindset shift."