Interestingly, Disney-owned ABC.com, which just struck a deal to syndicate its videos on Hulu, saw the largest decline in streams since March, with a 15.9% drop in total streams.

Given that few of us here at RWW fall into MTV's demographic, we are just as puzzled as Peter Kafka at AllThingsD about the rapid growth of MTV's streaming video business. MTV grew faster than any other of its competitors among the Top 10 online video streaming sites. While MTV just launched its streaming video service in Japan, Nielsen's data is for the U.S. only. Looking at MTV's site though, there can be no doubt that MTV has made streaming video the center of its online strategy - and apparently this strategy is paying off.

Older Users Drive Hulu's Growth

On Hulu, according to Nielsen, the time users spent on the service increased by 119% since last November, mostly driven by the impressive growth that Hulu saw among users between 35 and 49. These users now make up 30% of Hulu's viewership and they spend far more time on Hulu than most other demographics (416 minutes per month - 10% more than any other group).

All of this is further proof that Web technology has gone mainstream in the music business.

The Guns n Roses MySpace page is impressive. It offers the full album online, a couple of days before the official release in stores. True GNR fans, including this author, will still buy the album when it is released. But by promoting the album online a couple of days before release, it encourages new fans and gives Guns n Roses a lot of free publicity and viral uptake on the Internet. This will almost certainly increase overall sales.

While Guns n Roses hasn't gone as far as Radiohead did with their latest album In Rainbows - which was released as a 'pay what you want' download before it was even an actual CD product - Guns n Roses and MySpace is an appropriate partnership for both parties. For Guns n Roses, it allows them to reach a young, hip, massive audience. And for MySpace, it gives them a lot of page views and we presume a very healthy profit from the record label and retailers such as Best Buy (which has a banner ad right at the top of the page). We should also point out that Guns n Roses has employed some heavy handed tactics to stop illegal file-sharing of the album, so they haven't been entirely savvy about the Web. Still, the MySpace promotion is inspired.

We've been impressed by many of the online music services this year - last.fm has continued to evolve its web services, Imeem has been a revelation for many music fans, Pandora's traffic continues to grow despite ongoing legal issues, sites like The Hype Machine (our coverage) and Muxtape (when it was available) offer something new and different, and so on.

But we're also noticing some of the more traditional radio stations vastly improving their Web sites - and NPR is a great example of that. NPR Music is currently marking its one year anniversary. It features content from NPR and 12 of its public radio stations, but what's impressed us has been the "original-to-NPR Music features" such as live performances, studio sessions, first listens to forthcoming albums, and interviews. This author is a subscriber to NPR's All Songs Considered podcast, which has recently featured a full Radiohead concert and a Guest DJ appearance by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.

I want my MTV? Not anymore. I can get everything I want in my Web browser! Although to be fair, even MTV has moved its music to the Web.

But now, a new partnership between MySpace and MTV Networks might have those content owners changing their tune - and actually encouraging people to upload all the content they want.

With Auditude, MTV Networks will be able to identify practically any of their content on MySpace - so long as Auditude has a record of it - without relying on user-generated keywords or tags. Once identified, the MySpace-hosted MTV content becomes an advertising platform for MTV. Auditude allows them to add a video overlay to the clip, advertising the content source, the original broadcast date, and links to purchase the entire episode or other related content.

Using Auditude's library, MTV Networks will have the opportunity to identify more than 250 million videos and 4 years worth of 100 channels of television on MySpace. And that's content that is highly likely to be embedded by MySpace users - music videos, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, among others.

While the concept of fingerprinting isn't new, this application is. In the past, content owners have used identification methods as a means of identifying unauthorized content for the sake of calling out the attack dogs and sending take-down notices.

The Auditude solution takes exactly the opposite tact: identifying content as a means to extend MTV Networks' reach with the MySpace audience. It's an incredibly innovative way to embrace the behavior of today's Web users while giving something back to the content owners.

It seems like the perfect ending - a win-win situation - to a bubble-gum pop MTV video. But is that the end of the story?

Analytics Anyone?

There's something else about the Auditude technology that makes this partnership all the more interesting.

With the ability to add a custom overlay to each clip uploaded to MySpace, MTV Networks gains something even more important than advertising and follow-on sales. What's that? Detailed viewing metrics and click-through data on a population that has - to date - been a complete mystery.

With Auditude ads - and the analytics to monitor them - MTV Networks can build a mini-Nielsen-esque view into how their content is being used on MySpace. They'll be able to see any number of interesting metrics and trends. Who is uploading content? Which shows get posted most? Which shows get watched most? What are the demographics of the people posting the shows? Which users are getting the most click-throughs?

The list could go on and on.

That data is valuable enough, by itself. But MTV Networks also gains the ability to compare those MySpace findings with the information they have about television viewers and people who access MTV Networks' content through authorized distribution channels.

For an industry that lives and dies by audience analysis, this new windfall of data - from a previously untapped resource - is a veritable metrics gold mine, certain to provide reams of reports and analysis in the short term. In the long term, it could change how - and where - MTV Networks' programming is released and distributed.

All from a little ad and the means to track and analyze it. That old Duran Duran video may have just gotten more valuable than ever.

"The audience for MTV2 and MySpace are incredibly similar," commented Philip O'Ferrall, VP of digital media, MTV Networks UK & Ireland. "Not only are they both incredibly passionate about their music tastes but they are powerful advocates for the latest up-coming artists, which both MTV and MySpace have a history of showcasing."

"The way that consumers are accessing music is changing. MySpace is the world's largest online music destination connecting bands and their fans," added Dom Cook, marketing director and head of music at MySpace UK.

This isn't the first time that MTV and MySpace have teamed up. The two previously collaborated in the hunt for a news presenter.

The partnership shows that MTV seems to be more interested in partnering with MySpace now, than trying to create their own social network and content. For example, just last month, MTV closed their own user-generated content based channel, MTV Flux and is now in the process of integrating the content into other MTV-branded channels instead.

The only question with the new show, "The MySpace Chart," is where is the U.S. version? The United States has more MySpace users and a bigger MTV audience...maybe the UK just has better music?

The N95, as readers of this blog will recall, is also being used by Reuters as part of a "Mobile Journalism Toolkit," which some Reuters field reporters are testing to help them file stories from the field and use the cell phone's camera to take photos and videos of news events. This is all part of a growing trend toward legitimizing citizen journalism and the embrace by mainstream media of amateur journalism's tools and techniques.

"'Citizen journalism' is beginning to embrace a wide range of public engagement with the media," said Timo Koskinen, project manager with Nokia Research Center when the mobile toolkit was announced, "from groups of contributors organized around subject or geographic areas to the casual participation of observers who are lucky - or unlucky - enough to be at the scene of a newsworthy event."

Yesterday we wrote about Twitter's growing influence in the reporting of news and its use by mainstream news reporters as an information distribution tool. It is interesting that while MTV is building technology to instantly stream live mobile video reports from amateur reporters in 23 states, they're apparently not planning to use Twitter. Those reporters will have cell phones, afterall, making them more than capable of Twittering.

MTV has actually used Twitter before. About 4 months ago during the Video Music Awards, MTV set up a handful of Twitter accounts to stream live updates from the awards show floor. Though it featured mostly inane updates from artists and hosts, like Lil' Wayne saying, "Yo we just left the awards It was crazzzzy," it at least shows that MTV is open to trying out new tools to push information to users. Though their Twitter experiment at the VMAs resulted in sub-par content (in my opinion), it was a modest success, attracting almost 1500 followers on their main account.

Twitter or not, though, MTV's emphasis on streaming mobile video next Tuesday, and their continued use of amateur journalists during the 2008 election cycle is part of a growing trend that is pushing citizen journalism into the mainstream and increasing its impact on how we report and consume news.

When MTV pulls the plug on the channel next week, it plans to keep the Flux web community alive, reports the Guardian. MTV has plans to "integrate the user-generated content concept into its MTV-branded music channels," writes the paper's Mark Sweney.

Some of MTV's other channels will host a show, tentatively titled "Flux Me I'm Famous" (which was the name of another show that aired on Flux), in which hosts would discuss the latest celebrity news and gossip being talked about on the Flux message boards. Further, Flux users will have the opportunity to vote on and influence playlists on MTV's flagship music channels.

Flux had an average audience of just under just under 70,000 viewers (though MTV says it reached a height of 90,000 for some shows). New Media Age notes that user generated content is hot in the UK right now, with BBC Three and E4 both recently relaunching to put added emphasis on UGC and social networking.