Wouldn’t you like to bump elbows with media moguls and hear from the likes of Eric Schmidt, Biz Stone and James Murdoch? Me too! Alas, Quadrangle’s Foursquare conference is closed to the public and the press. But at least I can tell you whom you won’t be hearing from.
Okay, all you Spotify coveters who say you can’t wait to get the much hyped app on your iPhone, here’s your chance: Pony up $15 a month and you can get Rhapsody’s app, which does exactly the same thing.
Napster says it has an awesome new iPhone app that will let you stream music directly to your phone–just like the one Apple approved for Spotify, the superhyped service you can’t even get in the U.S. yet. But Napster says you won’t be able to use its app anytime soon, and it blames the big bad music labels.
Spotify is the best music service you’ve never used. That’s because the much-hyped streaming music company is only available for Europeans and for a select few in the U.S. who have either gotten sneak peeks or hacked their way into it. The service took one step toward wider distribution today when Apple approved its iPhone app. But that won’t help U.S. users until the big music labels agree to American distribution deals.
Sony did indeed have a bit of news to announce at the New York Public Library: Its most direct challenge to Amazon’s Kindle to date. Like the Kindle, the “Daily” reader will feature a wireless connection–Sony will use AT&T, while Amazon uses Sprint. And unlike current versions of the Kindle, the Sony device will feature a touchscreen.
But it will come at a price: The device will retail in December for $399. That’s $100 more than the current price of Amazon’s Kindle 2. And that price point is almost certain to drop in coming months.
Videogame players are spending more time playing videogames than ever. But that won’t do the videogame business much good unless those players actually start buying new games again.
Shades of Dick Cheney! Subscription music service eMusic’s last CEO took off last fall. Chairman Danny Stein, who ran the company years ago, ran a search for a replacement and decided that the best man for the job was…Danny Stein.
Last fall, the consumer electronics giant bought Napster. Now it’s assembling a fund for more M&A, to be headed by digital vet Ross Levinsohn. And for good measure, it’s in the market for a chief digital officer.
Common sense tells you that the CD is a vanishing artifact. Slightly more surprising: Music consumers–or at least, people who are willing to pay for music–are disappearing, too. So says the NPD Group, which estimates that 13 million Americans stopped buying music last year.
The people who run the Virgin Megastore chain have already announced plans to close their Times Square outpost, which is the highest-volume music store in the U.S. So news that they’re shuttering even more of their stores isn’t shocking. Just telling.
The most popular record store in the U.S. is about to call it quits. When will other retailers give up selling music, too?
The long-rumored/wished for $99 iPhone has yet to arrive. But if you’re ready to buy a phone that supports iFart but don’t want to pay full price, you do have one option: Buy one that someone else decided not to keep after all. Apple has quietly allowed some of its vendors to resell gently used iPhones for a while, but now Best Buy is making it a standing policy.
ComScore, the Web analytics company which has been bringing us a weekly installment of grim news about Christmas sales since November, weighs in with its newest update. You may have heard this one before.
No one wants to buy, or listen to, the supposedly long-awaited Guns N’ Roses album. Before anyone gets tempted to put two and two together here and blame the Internet for poor music sales, be warned: The music that is most popular among file sharers is the music that is most popular among buyers.
Best Buy’s CEO is warning of a “long-lasting change in consumer behavior” and asking employees to quit before he fires them. But there’s a tiny bit of not-so-bad news buried in this morning’s report.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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