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.
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.
Pumped up about the potential for e-books? So is Stephen King. Just as he was nine years ago. These digital revolutions always take time–just ask the music business, which sells a product that is already delivered in digital form yet derives just 20 percent of its revenue from digital products. So don’t plan on ripping down your bookshelves just yet.
The industry’s report card is just like every report card it has had since the advent of Napster: Digital sales are up, but not enough to counter the plunge in CD sales. We’ll hear the same thing in 12 months. In the meantime, though, there is lots of good music to listen to. Go find some of it and have a happy new year.
It took nearly a decade for the penny to drop. But the music labels finally acknowledge that their lawsuit strategy hasn’t stopped piracy. Now they’re asking the cable and telco companies for help. They may get it.
Give the music industry credit–a decade after the original Napster, it’s now standard practice to let fans listen to an entire disc worth of new music, for free, before it ever gets to stores. The latest example: Britney Spears’s new album, “Circus,” which you can listen to at iMeem.com. Or at the bottom of this post, via a groovy embeddable player.
That’s the offer, sort of, being made by something called Datz Music Lounge. Are there catches? You bet–this is the music business, after all. But it’s a potentially intriguing idea that could work both for music fans and the industry.
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. Read more »
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