Posts Tagged ‘iTunes’
apple buys music streaming service lala
07 Dec, 2009 • posts i've written • No comments
Confirmed on Saturday, Apple, the biggest internet music seller, has purchased Lala; a streaming music service.
Will users ultimately want music files on their own devices or left in the cloud? Most music services seem to be betting on one or the other (Spotify and Mog are two recent entrants for the streaming competition); so this move allows Apple to hedge their bet and potentially offer a subscription model to iTunes users for streaming services.
Lala began as a CD trading site, allowing users to trade discs by mail. Now they offer over 8 million songs due to deals with EMI Music, Warner Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and others.
Lala users already had the option of either streaming a song (for ten cents after the first listen) or downloading the song to their hard drive for 79 cents – I wonder if we’ll see this type of offer instituted in the iTunes store in the near-future?
iTunes operates in 33 countries, has about 11 million songs in the catalog, and has sold over 8.5 billion songs since 2003.
to have and to hoard, part two
18 May, 2009 • posts i've written • 3 comments
I thought it pertinent to follow up to my earlier post on music collecting with the news of Napster’s newest offering.
Napster is taking a page from Microsoft’s playbook (specifically their Zune pass) by offering 5 DRM free mp3 downloads per month along with unlimited streaming for $5/month. The Zune pass is $15/month and 10 mp3s. In essence, Napster (now owned by Best Buy) is offering free streaming along with the purchase of 5 mp3s. It’s quite a tempting offer.
It’s interesting to think that all of these services: iTunes, Napster, Microsoft, and iMeem have all had to revise their models to ensure users could walk away with actual mp3s. The have-to-have-it-in-my-hand model trumps even the best anything-I-want-anywhere-I-want-it model.
UPDATE: I’m totally wrong!
Ha, about an hour after posting this, I received Bob Lefsetz’s latest diatribe… all about Napster and their new offering, “MySpace inured listeners to streaming. YouTube seconded the effort. How many clips consist of just the song? While rights holders were debating the future, it was already happening. Mind-sets have changed. Ownership is HISTORY!” Bob predicts that single sales will ultimately dive, and streaming will be the only way to monetize music. He’s probably right on that one, but I still question the idea that ownership is history – users seem to be challenging that assertion left and right.
What do you think? Will ownership be required in most paid models to entice users?
iTunes Search with Amazon’s DRM-Free store = Advantageous
Filed under: Audio, Macintosh, Apple, Freeware
There’s no denying that Apple’s iTunes Store is both well designed and chock-full of music, TV shows and movies for you to buy. It’s also got a rather awesome Genius feature for playlist creation [whilst cunningly up-selling you more tunes via the Genius Sidebar]. However when it comes to buying music, a large proportion of it remains crippled (and at 128kbps bit-rate) thanks to the iTunes Store’s FairPlay DRM. Sure, there’s iTunes Plus: but the selection remains lacking thanks to the devious tactics of the record labels. Amazon, on the other hand has had a high-bitrate DRM-free store for sometime.
Thankfully, there’s now a new option that allows you to make the most of Apple’s excellent store: and then skip over to Amazon to actually buy the music: Advantageous. Simply run the Advantageous installer, and a script [added to your iTunes Script menu shown above] will take the currently-selected track from the iTunes store, open your default browser and load the relevant Amazon search page.
It’s a neat, and above-all free, timesaver that may just provide an incentive for iTunes Store addicts to go DRM-free. Advantageous requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and iTunes 8.
[Via BoingBoing]
iTunes Search with Amazon’s DRM-Free store = Advantageous originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Week in iPhone Apps: Body Modification Edition [IPhone Apps]
Light a firecracker, listen to Steve Jobs’ Mercedes peeling out, grow a mustache, make a disguised-voice phone call with your various illegal demands. All in a week’s work in the App Store. Let’s have a look at the fruits of the last seven days.
Sonic Vox: Just in time for Halloween (or your upcoming anonymous ransom note telephone call), Sonic Vox is a real-time voice shifter that can add echo and changes in pitch. Hook your iPhone to line-out for Deepthroat Skype calls.
Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG App: Surely fast-tracked by AMG fan Steve Jobs (head of the queue!), for the rest of us, this is a reminder of what we will not soon experience first-handphotos and videos of a sleek, six-figure Benz, and sound clips of it peeling out.
Sonic Boom: Those folks behind the Sonic Lighter (and the voice-shifter above also, coincidentally) just can’t stop innovatingSonic Boom gives you a virtual firecracker onto which you can map a photo, adjust the size of the charge and length of fuse and spin around before making it go boom in a different-every-time explosion. $1.
Mustache: I haven’t shaved in days, but what’s on my upper lip is barely perceptible as anything beyond 7th-grade fuzz. As the developer of Mustache states: Mustaches are a symbol of power and virility, who wouldn’t want to grow one! Sadly, not everyone one can. Hand over a buck, hold a picture of a mustache in front of your face. If you’re not bold enough for this tattoo.
This week’s app coverage on Giz:
Our Android App Liveblog is going strongexpect weekly updates to commence once the store opens to developers, which is happening Monday.
The NDA keeping developers from discussing the ins and outs of their apps is dead.
Free landscape-mode emailing via Firemail
Brightkite, a location-based social network, seems perfect for stalkers.
A legal imbroglio over those silly beer apps like iBeer escalates. Yeah.
A stylophone app is coming, bringing Kraftwerkian joy.
This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.
