Tag: Digital
iTunes' variable pricing coincides with plummeting sales
Initial reports from major labels are suggesting that the switch to variable pricing on iTunes has been a failure. According to ‘numerous sources’ sales decreases have been seen across the board since variable pricing was implemented at Macworld back in January.
But lets remember the statisticians’ mantra – correlation is not causation. Just because sales decreases have been seen alongside the implementation of variable pricing, it doesn’t mean that the latter is causing the former.
Just as likely is the effect of services like Spotify on consumers’ music-listening habits. Although the streaming service is unavailable in the States, where these figures are mostly likely from, there are plenty of other similar applications that consumers are beginning to explore.
As people shift from ownership of music to being happy with just access when they need it, sales will decrease. On the flipside, licensing revenues skyrocket, so the same amount of cash is still floating around for music creators – this isn’t the death of the music industry.
(via Digital Music News)
Skyla Memoir – digital photo frame that incorporates a scanner
How’s this for a smart idea? A digital photo frame that also includes a built-in high-resolution photo scanner. Traditional photos can be scanned into the device and then instantly displayed on the screen.
It’s a perfect, neat, solution for the technophobes in your family. If your grandma can’t cope with digitising all her old pics, then just give her this and show her how it works, and she’ll be sorted.
There’s 1GB of internal storage, which will hold 2-400 scans. It’s also got a light sensor, so it can adjust brightness based on its environment and an 8″, 800 x 600 display. They’ve also chucked in a card reader, for grandparents who’ve progressed to digital cameras, and two USB ports so you can get the data back onto a PC if you need to.
I’m a big fan of simple concepts that make sense, and this is exactly that. So long as the interface is good, this seems like a great product. Perhaps a little overpriced at £178, but all digital photo frames are overpriced – let’s hope that competition drives down those costs a bit over the next year or so.
Spotify launching API
This is the big news that followers of Spotify have been waiting for for a little while. The revolutionary music service is launching an API “sometime this week”. It’ll give developers access to the raw workings behind the software, including its streaming facilities.
I don’t need to tell you that this is *fantastic* news. Freeing up the vast catalogue that Spotify has built up will energize developers and you’re going to suddenly see the service appearing everywhere – from phones to set-top-boxes and games consoles, but also on the web. The mobile aspect will be most interesting – anyone will be able to build their own mobile client for the service for any platform – BlackBerry, Symbian, iPhone, Android – whatever.
Also revealed by Spotify – 40,000 new users sign up each day, and users are spending on average 70 minutes listening to the service every day! That’s three lots of ads served to every user every day. Not bad!
When the API is out, we’ll scan the nascent developers scene and bring you the best of the user-built applications.
(via Guardian)
Spotify is three years old, hints at future plans
Our favourite digital music service, Spotify, is three years old today. That seems like a lot, considering we’ve only been able to use it in the UK since October, but in that short time it’s already completely changed the way I listen to music on my PC, and made me listen to a much wider range of bands too.
To celebrate the anniversary, as well as the 40th birthday of founder Martin Lorentzon, the company has put up a blog post that talks (in somewhat vague terms) about the future direction and plans for the company.
There’s a lot of hints in the blog post about mobile devices – something that the company hasn’t been keeping very secret. Intriguingly, though, the company also mentions set-top boxes, IM, and social networks as future directions for expansion.
Spotify mentions, too, the possibilities of enhanced social features and pre-release content for premium users – something that could drive greater takeup of the subscription service. That gets interesting in the comments section – with several people saying that if the fee was halved, then they’d pay it. I wonder if they’d get twice the takeup if they chopped the price in half.
The most exciting bit, though? The closing sentence of the post – “We plan to have more detailed information for you in the next few weeks, stay tuned”. If I were a betting man, I’d put money on that being the iPhone application that we revealed in February, a leaked video demo of which is posted below.
Spotify Blog
Google launching free, legal, music downloads… in China
Internet giant Google today launched a service that provides completely free, legal downloads of songs from all four major labels. The caveat? It’s only available in China. Damn.
There will be over 350,000 tracks available at launch, from both Chinese and Western markets. Users will be able to search by artist and song name, but also by the level of ‘beat’ in the song, and its ‘instrumentality’, whatever that is.
Google’s making the move due to massive levels of piracy in the world’s most populous country. The search engine lags behind its competitor Baidu in the country, mainly thanks to Baidu’s MP3 search functions. This launch should help Google compete in a market where 99% of music consumed is illegal.
Google’s free music service (via Reuters)
Spotify and 7Digital buddy up
Digital music upstart-of-the-moment Spotify has added yet another revenue stream to its growing collection – users are now able to right-click tracks to buy them via 7Digital.
Currently, the click just takes you to the relevant 7Digital page for the album. In the future, however, the companies hope to allow one-click downloads in Spotify itself, as well as functionality to buy entire playlists.
This move should further silence the doubters who claim that Spotify has no business model. On the contrary, this is now a third solid way of monetising their business, after ads and premium subscriptions. I do doubt a little how much people will use the functionality, though.
Music search engine Seeqpod threatens to sell its source code
Following legal action from the major music labels, music search engine Seeqpod is trying a novel strategy – selling its source code to third-party developers. It’s hope is to create hundreds of clones, all operated individually, so that even if the main site is taken down, the technology is still accessible.
It’s a remarkably defiant strategy. Seeqpod claims that its service is legal because it doesn’t host any infringing files itself – just points searchers to them. Although US companies might be fearful of legal action, other countries around the world might be far more welcoming. As Seeqpod is charging $5,000 for the code, they could make a pretty penny before they’re forced to shut down.
(via Listening Post)
Nokia wants to ditch DRM from Comes With Music
Nokia’s “Comes With Music” service, which offers unlimited music for a small amount bundled into the price of the of your phone, is unfortunately hobbled with DRM.
The ways things are set up means that any tracks you download are locked to one handset and one PC and if you want to do anything else, then…. well, you can’t do anything else.
However, Nokia doesn’t want it that way. Nokia understands that music should, in its very nature, be sharable with people you love. That’s why it wants to get rid of the DRM. Nokia’s director of global digital music retail, Adam Mirabella says:
“We have dialogues going with all of our partners and Digital Rights Management-free is also on the roadmap for the future integration of Comes With Music.”
Don’t hold your breath – I doubt we’ll see this for at least a year – but it’d certainly be nice, and would certainly make me retract most of my criticism of the service.
(via Music Ally)
Spotify signs up a quarter of a million UK users, and 800,000 a million users worldwide
Ad-supported streaming music service Spotify has managed to recruit a quarter of a million UK users to its excellent music service. It’s a nice milestone for the service which is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in digital music for a long time.
But Spotify isn’t resting on its laurels. On its official blog, the company is inviting users to hassle their favourite bands and labels to join the service. They recommend hunting down a band’s label, cross-referencing it with their uber-list of labels they have deals with, and if it doesn’t match, then asking them to email [email protected].
What are you missing that you want to hear on the service? Go hunt them down, and then tell us in the comments below.
(via NMA)
Epson R-D1xG Rangefinder digital camera – the Leica light
To look at the Epson R-D1xG Rangefinder, you wouldn’t know it was a digital camera. That’s because it’s based on the beautiful Leica cameras that make all photographer’s knees turn to barely set jelly.
What Epson did four years ago was to offer their first crack at it, the R-D1, for considerably less than the second mortgage taking…
