That won’t help employees at Time Warner’s Time Inc. publishing unit: The company confirmed that it will make big cuts this quarter and spend up to $100 million on restructuring charges. This is different from the $100 million in cuts that had been previously reported, but it will still mean hundreds of layoffs at the publisher.

Time Warner also boosted its guidance for the remainder of the year and confirmed once again that it wants to spin off AOL before the end of the year. As well it should: The company said it has already spent a staggering $24 million on the spinoff so far this year, which includes $9 million in “pretax direct transaction costs (e.g., legal and professional fees).” It has spent another $83 million in restructuring charges at that unit in 2009.

As usual, Time Warner said ad sales have been lousy, but that its cable networks and film divisions had done okay. The breakdown:

• Cable networks: Revenue up five percent, because subscriber fees were up nine percent. Ad revenue was down one percent.
• Warner Bros. movie studio: Revenue down four percent, because of slumping DVD sales.
• Time Inc.: Revenue down 18 percent; advertising down 22 percent. Adjusted operating income down 42 percent. Hence the coming cuts.
• AOL: Revenue down 23 percent. Subscription revenue, which will continue to shrink, was down another 29 percent, and ad revenue, which is supposed to improve one day, was down 18 percent.

Spotify, the much hyped service that has yet to appear in the U.S., is a mobile play. Rival MOG says it will have a mobile subscription offering in the near future as well. But the new mobile product from RealNetworks’s (RNWK) service, Rhapsody, has actually been up and running for a little more than a month, and the company says results are encouraging: Real says that more than 500,000 people have downloaded its app for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone.

The problem: This stat alone doesn’t mean much. You can only get streaming music through the Real app if you’re already paying the company $14.99 a month for its “Rhapsody to Go” service.

So how many app users are paying customers? And more important, how many of them became paying customers because of the app?

I’ve asked Real for comment, but I don’t expect one, since the company has typically been close-mouthed about this stuff. But I’m told that Real has about 700,000 to 800,000 paying Rhapsody customers overall. So it’s possible that almost all of the app downloaders are already paying customers and that the app is just a nice bonus.

Did anyone out there actually start subscribing to Rhapsody because of the iPhone app? Let me know via email or in comments below.

UPDATE: Real, to its credit, isn’t making too much of the numbers itself. From spokesman Bill Hankes:

Although we are pleased to see excitement and interest in the Rhapsody iPhone app, it is too early to tell how this will translate into subscriber numbers since we suspect many of the people who downloaded the app are current subscribers already or are trying Rhapsody for the first time with the seven-day free trial.

Amazon’s (AMZN) basic Kindle will now sell for $259, down from $299–and down from $359 earlier in the year. And the new version, which will allow users to download books in 100 countries besides the U.S., will sell for $279. It will be powered by a wireless connection provided by AT&T (T); the U.S.-only Kindle will continue to use Sprint (S) for a wireless connection.

Is there a catch? Maybe. Anti-Amazon gadfly Tom [Redacted!] (Tom, what do you do when you’re not emailing us this stuff?) points out a bit of fine print on Amazon’s order page: If you take your new Kindle outside the U.S. and try to actually buy something–or simply redownload something you’ve already bought–Amazon will charge you two bucks.

Here’s the fine print, which didn’t seem to make it into the press release–or (cough) the embargoed stories: “When traveling abroad, you can download books wirelessly from the Kindle Store or your Archived Items for a fee of $1.99.”

Still, it’s hard to see how Sony (SNE), whose comparable e-reader only offers a U.S. wireless connection (also from AT&T) and is scheduled to go on sale in December for $399, will be able to stay at that price point. And dark-horse Kindle competitors like iRex and Plastic Logic are going to have match or beat Amazon just to get into the race.

Last December, talks between Warner and YouTube to renew a licensing deal broke down, and Warner’s videos disappeared from the world’s largest video site. Now, as Advertising Age has reported, an agreement is in the works that will bring Green Day, Madonna and their label-mates back to the site.

What hasn’t been reported, so far: The deal terms themselves. Neither company is talking, but sources familiar with the negotiations tell me the new pact will be similar to the one Google’s (GOOG) video unit struck earlier this year with Universal Music Group.

That deal created Vevo, a sort of “Hulu for music videos,” owned by Universal and Sony (SNE). So think of Warner’s deal as a “son of Vevo.”

The big idea is the same: Try to create more value for videos by limiting their distribution and creating a more ad-friendly atmosphere around them, and share ad revenue between YouTube and the videos’ owner. The big points:

• Unlike Vevo, Warner and YouTube won’t be creating a separate site for Warner videos, and Warner won’t be creating a separate company dedicated to its videos. Instead, YouTube will help Warner create a “premium advertising platform” for its videos within YouTube.
• Warner will take primary responsibility for selling its videos, and YouTube will receive a cut of the revenue.
• Warner will no longer receive a licensing fee each time one of its videos is played.

I gather that a lot of this is still being hashed out, and some of this will evolve even after the deal is inked. For instance, Warner needs to figure out how it’s going to sell advertising for its clips, since it doesn’t have its own sales force. Timing is also up in the air: Even after the two sides formally announce the pact, users shouldn’t expect to see Warner videos instantly reappearing on YouTube; it may be that they only get rolled out as the new ad platform is built.

Then there’s the ad platform itself: I haven’t been able to get a concrete definition of what this is supposed to look like, but for now, I’m imagining something like the “channels” YouTube has made for partners like ESPN, except they’d be made on an artist-by-artist basis.

All in all, this sounds like a fair deal. Warner loses a guaranteed revenue stream, but if its contention about the value of its videos is correct, it will make even more than it did under the old arrangement. Meanwhile, YouTube gets to hang onto “premium” inventory without being locked into the kind of  pay-per-play arrangement that helped drive the site’s expenses sky-high.

The potential downside for YouTube: If this works–or if the Vevo deal works–it will have to create similar packages/portals/platforms to retain or attract other “premium” content suppliers, like, say Hollywood studios. But given that the site has had limited success getting those guys on board so far, that’s not the worst fate in the world.

In the meantime, even though Green Day is Warner act, you can still find plenty of its clips on YouTube–it’s just that most of them are odds and ends like this grainy concert video:

It doesn’t. Except when it does.

Contrary to News Corp. (NWS) CEO Rupert Murdoch’s comments earlier in the week, Dow Jones will not be charging customers who subscribe to both its Web and print versions a weekly fee to read the paper on its iPhone or BlackBerry apps.

But if you’re only subscribing to one version? That’ll be a buck a week, starting Oct. 24. The Journal will also start charging mobile-only users $2 a week, which is essentially the same price as a Web-only subscription.

That second charge makes some sense to me. The Journal has always said that it would start charging for the apps it makes for Apple’s (AAPL) and Research in Motion’s (RIMM) handsets. Right now these apps are gratis, which means you can either pay the Journal to read it in print or on the Web, or read it on your iPhone and pay zilch. That had to change at some point.

But while I have to be a tiny bit delicate here–Dow Jones owns this Web site, and I still have some aversion to insulting my employers in public–I don’t see how dunking paying customers a second time makes sense.

I do understand some of the impulse. Publishers of all stripes seem to think that while charging for content on the Web is tough, people are happy to pay for something delivered wirelessly. I think that many publishers are going to be very disappointed when they try this out in practice, but that’s another story.

And I also know that News Corp. has steadily been pushing Dow Jones to raise its subscription prices for the WSJ since it acquired the company, and this strategy sort of dovetails with that.

But seems to me that if I am paying for information, I will expect to consume it wherever I am, at the same price. And you’re starting to hear some publishers say the same thing–see Variety’s comments about subscription plans today in PaidContent.

I don’t actually pay for my WSJ subscription; my employers, who, I should stress, are truly excellent people, have hooked me up–so maybe I’ve got this wrong. Or maybe it’s merely a marketing issue: If you jack up my WSJ subscription and tell me you’re throwing in access to the mobile app for free, I might be okay with it.

But tell me you’re charging me an additional fee to read it on the go and it will stick in my craw. Let’s see if the paper’s paying subscribers feel the same way.

Both messages are a result of long and tortured negotiations with record labels that have finally come to a close with a deal Pandora says it can live with, though it’s different than the one founder Tim Westergren said the site had nailed down in November. The flip side is that the service will now require users who listen to the service for 40 hours a month to pay 99 cents if they want to hear any more tunes that month.

And the big picture is that Pandora, which has been warning of its doom if it was required to pay steeper royalty rates, can switch gears and brag about its growth. Westergren tells me the service is motoring at a great clip–he says it is on track to generate $40 million in revenue this year, almost all of it from advertising, up from $19 million in 2008–and it can now accelerate.

“I think that this is going to have a really huge impact,” he says. “We’ve been talking about going out of business for the last two years, and that’s not good for growth.”

The new arrangement might also convince investors to cut the service a big check. Earlier this year, multiple sources told me Pandora was looking to raise a very big round, perhaps in the $40 million range, and was talking to private equity shops about a deal. Westergren wouldn’t talk to me about fund raising, but it’s fair to assume that his company looks more attractive now than it did in January.

As for the deal itself, I’ll spare you the details, but in essence it’s a straightforward rate cut. The deal requires a lower per-song fee than Pandora and other Webcasters were supposed to pay under the terms the Copyright Royalty Board signed off on in 2007. It’s retroactive to 2006 and calls for an increase every year up through 2015.

The new deal means Pandora will be spending more than 25% of its revenue on royalties, but it will still be paying less than it would have under the old rules. Under the original terms, for instance, Pandora was supposed to shell out 14 hundredths of a penny ($.0014) per song streamed, per listener. Now it won’t pay that rate until 2015. Meanwhile tiny sites with less than $1.25 million in annual revenue will have a different structure.

The downside is that the deal will require Pandora to tax its heaviest users since it is still paying a per-song fee. “There’s a very small percent of listeners who are using it a ton, and that’s great, except when you’re paying per song,” Westergren says. He estimates the 99-cent fee will apply to a a “single digit” percentage of its 11.5 million monthly users.

The cable giant had planned on charging customers in four locations on a “consumption” plan in which they’d pay between $15 to $150 a month based on the amount of data they hoovered via the Web. But noisy opposition to the plan surfaced immediately and has been getting louder over the past few weeks.

Instead, the company says, it will spend time on “customer education” to clear up “misunderstandings” about the plan, which it still believes “may be the best pricing plan for consumers,” etc. Translation: We need more time to figure out how to do this without getting our heads ripped off. Or handing over customers to the competition.

That’s what was already happening in Rochester, where Time Warner’s plans were supposedly driving customers to Frontier Communications Co., which offered a (presumably slower) DSL service. From the Associated Press:

“‘We have gotten hundreds of calls from Time Warner customers into our call centers,’ said Ann Burr, the head of Frontier’s Rochester unit, in an interview with The Associated Press. ‘I guess it’s been a public relations crisis for Time Warner.’”

This doesn’t affect other pipe guys’ plans to institute similar caps or consumption-based pricing plans: Comcast (CMCSA), for instance, has a monthly cap on its broadband plans, and threatens to cut off customers who exceed it (thanks to Business Insider’s Dan Frommer for the fact-check).

And as of yesterday, at least, the cable guys’ trade group was pooh-poohing people who complained about the idea. Here’s Kyle McSlarrow, CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, on his group’s blog:

“Hundreds of billions of dollars have been and continue to be invested by our industry in the deployment of broadband and now the deployment of next generation broadband; speeds have doubled or tripled in just the last few years; new and spectacular applications keep getting launched; no anti-competitive conduct has remotely occurred; and, in fact, compared to many other industries, the Internet ecosystem seems to be one of the few really healthy, growing, and creative parts of our economy with continued investment and innovation taking place every day. At a time of economic and financial challenges for our country, I for one would rather Congress spend its time on real problems, not fictional ones.”

[UPDATE: McSlarrow just put out a new post discussing Time Warner's move.]

By the way: McSlarrow, Time Warner Cable, Comcast other pipe guys with similar plans, like AT&T (T), may not have a terrible idea. But they’re going to undergo a lot of public whippings before they get this one through.

NEW YORK–Time Warner Cable today announced it would alter plans to test Consumption Based Billing, shelving the trials while the customer education process continues.

Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt said, “It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met. While we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process.”

Time Warner Cable also announced that it is working to make measurement tools available as quickly as possible. These tools will help customers understand how much bandwidth they consume and aid in the dialog going forward.

Britt added, “We look forward to continuing to work with Senator Schumer, our customers and all of the other interested parties as the process moves forward, to ensure that informed decisions are made about the best way to continue to provide our customers with the level of service that they expect and deserve from Time Warner Cable.”

[UPDATE: Negotiations between YouTube and music labels are already getting unpleasant: Warner Music's clips are disappearing from the site, and both sides are taking credit for the move.]

Universal Music Group officials told CNET this week that they’re going to make close to $100 million from Internet videos this year–an 80 percent increase–and that most of that will come from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube.

I believe that may be possible–in part because people close to Universal Music Group told me the same thing earlier this year. But I think that those YouTube dollars may not continue to increase at the same rate, whether it’s for Universal or any music label.

That’s because YouTube’s current arrangement with the labels is a money-losing one, people familiar with the company tell me. And that’s unlikely to continue as the company renegotiates its deals with the four major labels–UMG, EMI, Sony (SNE) and Warner Music Group (WMG)–which expire throughout next year.

Here’s how the current deals work: Whenever someone clicks on an official video that’s been sanctioned by the labels, YouTube has to pay the labels either a per-stream fee or a share of ad revenue associated with the clip, whichever is greater. Since YouTube is just beginning to get serious about selling ads next to its content, it’s usually paying the per-stream fee, which industry executives peg at about half a penny per clip.

That kind of deal might have been OK during Google’s go-go days, but it’s unlikely to fly now. And as Google execs start sitting down with the labels, it’s reasonable to think they’ve got much more leverage. While music videos are some of the site’s most popular programming–look at how many label-sponsored clips like Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” are among the site’s most popular offerings of all time–Google doesn’t need their blessing in the way that YouTube did when it was still transitioning from rogue copyright violator to upstanding citizen.

Meanwhile the labels are under great pressure to dig up dollars wherever they can find them because their core CD business evaporates day by day. Universal Music recorded some $4.4 billion in revenue during the first nine months of this year, so $100 million in high-margin video revenue would be a meaningful contribution to the bottom line. But it may be harder to get in 2009 than it was this year.

I can’t show you most of YouTube’s most popular clips here–the site disables embeds for those. But here’s a less-viewed one I do like.