David Emery OnlineSpotify takes the axe to its free service – can it now claim to slash music piracy?
However, this feels like a bad move. In one feel swoop Spotify is reducing its ability to say, with much credibility, that it is out to reduce the amount of piracy. If you can only listen to 10 hrs, and then only five times to one track, how can Spotify claim that it can significantly eat into the massive amount of file-sharing out there?
Obviously there’s little positive to be drawn from this move, but it was inevitable that Spotify was going to have to make some concessions to be able to launch in the US. The success they’ve had in Europe has made those discussions pretty difficult I imagine, as you’ve got the majors trying to weigh up whether they want to let the genie out of the bottle again.
Personally, I think that the limiting hours aspect of this makes sense, but I’m less keen on the pre-track limits as it just makes the whole offering a bit too complicated from a consumer point of view – I can see the 10hr limit making people upgrade, but the per-track limit making people just listen to something else.
Visit ➔The often-rumored Apple HDTV
I’m wrong a lot whenever I speak in absolutes about Apple’s future plans, but I don’t think they’ll ever release a TV.
I think, for all the reasons Marco lists, that Apple will enter the TV market. It’s fractured, difficult and confusing for the consumer – it reminds me exactly of the pre-iPhone mobile phone market. And the pre-iPod market. And the pre-iPad market.
Visit ➔Speculation on an Amazon iPad competitor
I’d bet on Amazon releasing a true tablet, competing more directly with the iPad than the Kindle currently does, in the possibly-near future.
I think it would be shocking at this point if Amazon didn’t release a Kindle branded Android-based tablet this year. I think they’re the only ones out there that have the marketing reach and volume potential to compete with Apple, but I think they’re behind on hardware and software design (sure, the Kindle is the best eReader out there but it still feels like an Apple product of about 5 years ago).
Visit ➔Amazon: Look at ads and we’ll knock $25 off the Kindle
You agree to use sponsored screensavers and ads at the bottom of the home screen and Amazon gives you $25. I’m convinced a Kindle will eventually be free.
I, too, am convinced that the Kindle will eventually be free.
Visit ➔Streaming or Buying Books: Will Readers Choose a Subscription Model for E-Books?
A Spanish startup called 24symbols is launching this summer with the promise to do just that: provide a subscription service and become the "Spotify for e-books."
I’ve been wondering when someone would do this. I’d argue that for most people they’d be more into the idea of not owning books then they are into the idea of not owning music; I know I certainly don’t re-read books that often, and I for one would cope with tasteful adds contained within if it meant a model like Spotify could work.
Visit ➔Lockers vs Streaming Services
I don't get the idea of music locker services like the one Amazon just announced. If I'm going to stream music from the cloud, why should I continue to buy files and collect them? I've been a Rhapsody subscriber for something like 11 or 12 years and although it has taken a while to get used to, I vastly prefer subscription streaming services over file based music. I've just stared using rdio on my Android and on the web and I love it too. I've used Spotify and it is also excellent (once it is fully licensed in the US).
Amazon’s service is certainly interesting, but if you’re going to pay for a cloud-based music service why not use Spotify?
Personally right now – and this makes me sound pretty backwards, I know – I’m quite content with neither; having music on my iPhone which I have with me all the time eliminates the need for a locker-style service, and I pretty much just listen to new music so Spotify isn’t that useful.
Visit ➔Worldview is here, and it's awesome
Every time you send a campaign, we'll show you who is opening it, clicking links, forwarding it to their friends, liking it on Facebook or mentioning it on Twitter. Here's the cool part—we'll show you this on a map, in real-time, all wrapped in a gorgeous UI.
This is totally awesome – I love a bit of real time data visualisation. Makes me want to switch to Campaign Monitor (although with the amount of mailing lists we operate I think that would be a bit prohibitive).
Visit ➔The Universal Sigh
The Radiohead album ‘The King of Limbs’ will be available for purchase in all good record stores everywhere on Monday 28th March, except in the United States of America and in Canada, where for reasons beyond the purview of this writer it will be available from Tuesday 29th March. On VINYL! On COMPACT DISC! As a DOWNLOAD!
To commemorate this momentous occasion, Radiohead have produced a newspaper which will be given away, free, gratis, without cost to the consumer by accredited vendors from a multitude of locations WORLDWIDE!
This is what I’ve been working on for the last few weeks.
Should be a lot of fun on Monday – I’m particularly excited to see how the photos element turns out. I’ll blog about it in more detail in due course…
Visit ➔Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive
It’s a news ticker limited to one-word items, lacking any context, broadcasting mostly topics that I don’t understand, recognize, or care about. It’s nonsensical. At worst, it can offend. At best, it will confuse.
Personally I don’t mind the Quick Bar as a way of surfacing trends, but that’s only because it’s my job to be aware of these things; you should be able to turn it off.
The reason why you can’t turn it off though is the key problem here – it doubles up as Twitter’s stab at monetisation. As Marco mentions, advertising is not the problem here, it’s the implementation in the iPhone client but I think that misses the bigger issue: ‘Promoted Trends’ has got to be one of the worst forms of advertising you could come up with.
From an advertisers point of view you get a tiny amount of characters to get your message across, which is never going to be effective (have you ever clicked on a promoted trend? I haven’t.), with no targeting (when they could be doing very targeted ads as they know what you’re interested in by what you follow and tweet).
Come on Twitter; just have done with it and do in-stream ads and let me pay to be able to switch them off. Simple, effective and not dickish.
Visit ➔Rebecca Black Means The (Internet) Fame Game Has Changed
Earlier today I had lunch with a musician friend who was lamenting the trouble her band was having booking shows in San Francisco. When I asked her how she planned on getting the word out she said, “Get a publicist, or have a video go viral.”
I love the way it’s just ‘have a video that goes viral’ as if that’s something you can just ‘do’. The only thing you can control is whether the video – or your music, for that matter – is any good, so how about focusing on that?
Visit ➔Piracy doesn't fund the mob or terrorists
A scholarly report funded by the Canadian government and the Ford Foundation investigates the alleged link between copyright infringement and terrorism and finds none. Basically, counterfeiters can't compete with free, and so there's no money in it.
I imagine that the counterfeit market is far more price sensitive then the legitimate market.
Visit ➔Apple working on magazine app template for developers?
According to Anthony Morganti Apple has been so inspired and excited by the latest stream of iPad-optimized magazine applications that they are now working on a magazine-app template for use by developers in Xcode.
Seems like a no brainer to me – they can’t be too happy with Adobe being the mina player in this market. I wouldn’t be too surprised if they come up with a consumer aimed offering for this as well, to sit alongside iMovie, Pages et al.
Visit ➔Saturn fly-by video
There is no 3-D CGI involved in this amazing Saturn fly-by video...it's made from thousands of hi-res photographs taken by the Cassini orbiter.
I scarcely believe this is real:
Visit ➔Introducing Solo
Introducing Solo, the project management tool for the modern freelancer. We're designers and we've loved making Solo. We think that if you try it you'll love it too.
This looks beautiful – I wish that 1) I had a use for it and 2) all web apps looked like this.
Visit ➔iPhoto for iOS
So, will we see the rest of the iLife suite on iOS? It’s worth mentioning, first of all, that the whole idea of a “suite of apps” may be falling off Apple’s radar very quickly. High-volume, wide-market, affordable and convenient apps make bundles financially unnecessary. Still, we know - and Apple knows - what the idea of iLife is and has been: apps to organize, enhance, and share your digital life.
iPhoto seems like the obvious next step for iOS, but personally I’d love them to go the whole hog and just skip straight to Aperture; considering GarageBand runs better on my iPad 1 then on my 3 year old MacBook Pro I can see it working on an iPad 2.
Visit ➔Web Developers Will Now Be Able To Tap Into the Power of Rdio
If you’re a developer interested in integrating music with a social bent into your web apps, start your engines: Super-social music subscription service Rdio is opening its Rdio.com API and affiliate program to developers.
Seems very nifty – certainly more expansive then Spotify’s API. Although, with Rdio’s lack of a free, ad-supported option a little bit less interesting as well (do you really want your user to have to have a $4.99/m account to be able to use your app?).
Visit ➔Twitter Drops The Ecosystem Hammer: Don’t Try To Compete With Us On Clients
Specifically, Platform lead Ryan Sarver has a fairly lengthy outline of Twitter’s line of thinking with regard to third-party clients and services. And while there’s a little bit of dancing around the topic at first, it quickly gets very clear: third-parties shouldn’t be creating straight-up Twitter clients any further.
There’s no doubt this is a very disappointing move from Twitter, considering you can’t find a company that has its success more routed in external developers and APIs. Presumably this is linked to the fact that Twitter has been promising advertising (in the form of promoted tweets and trends) in 3rd party clients to its advertisers to launch in Q2 2011; to be able to guarantee it they have to have tight control over those clients, and this is the start of that.
This seems like a major misstep; surely they can generate enough revenue from the mainstream users using the official clients (including twitter.com) not to have to resort to this?
Visit ➔It Started With A Click: How to Spawn A Viral Hit
This think tank will inform and inspire those looking to understand how to make music go viral over social media. Lifting the lid and debunking dogma about how to create a viral hit, this illustrated session will combine panel-led debate with open round table discussion providing all with pointers, next step suggestions and an eye on how music will broken in the future.
Come and hear me witter on in person about all this music marketing malarky on Thursday. Hopefully I will have figured out by then how on earth you do make a “viral” hit…
Visit ➔Island Def Jam Partners With The Echo Nest To Create Opportunities For Developers
In what the companies are calling the first-ever alliance between a major label and the independent app developer community, Island Def Jam and The Echo Nest are partnering to make the label’s catalog available to developers who employ The Echo Nest’s API. [...] As part of this agreement, the label is rendered the publisher of the app, giving it control over distribution and making it privy to a portion of the revenue (the rest goes to the dev and The Echo Nest). In turn, IDJ will market the app and pay music publishers when need be.
Amazing work here – use Island Def Jam’s API and they effectively own your app. I can’t see any serious developer being interested in this.
The idea of being able to access label data through an API is an interesting one – we’re actually mid way through developing one ourself – but I wonder how interesting it is when it’s on a label by label basis; most of the time you’re going to want a much larger range of content I would have thought.
Visit ➔