snapshot 5/23/07

E-mail brings books in small doses for commuters
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070523/wr_nm/usa_books_technology_dc_2;_ylt=AsTh9ew9RZMYKiRRRnZN1s9kM3wV
A new Web site is offering to send classic books in bite-size installments to your handheld device or e-mail every morning before you go to work, or whenever you want, for free. The e-mails from www.dailylit.com are designed to be read in under five minutes. Jules Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days" comes in 82 parts while Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" could take nearly two years of working days to read at 430 parts.


Sprint to offer Pandora streaming radio
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070523/ap_on_hi_te/sprint_streaming_radio;_ylt=AlXhp_mEZdwpD9sO4Bq8T9dkM3wV
Sprint Nextel Corp. has teamed with Pandora Media Inc., a popular online music service, to deliver personalized streaming radio to its mobile phone users. Pandora is a free Internet-based radio service that lets people create stations based on their favorite artists and other songs it finds that match in style. The music service has attracted 6.9 million users since launching in November 2005 and was recently banned, along with a dozen other popular media Web sites, such as YouTube and MySpace, from the Defense Department's computer system because of network bandwidth concerns.

Pandora's Internet radio service now will be available beyond computers — on Sprint beginning Wednesday. It will be free for the first 30 days of use but will cost an additional $2.99 per month with a Sprint data plan. The service will work initially on five phone models but will expand to all high-speed data phones sold by Sprint by the end of June, the company said.


McCartney No-Show on iTunes
http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070523/tc_pcworld/132159;_ylt=AlC6Uqrc7J4L6D5s6H4Rz2dkM3wV
Apple Inc., which made a big deal earlier this month about offering Paul McCartney's 25-album catalog to its iTunes music store, was the odd man out Tuesday as most other online sellers and subscription services added the former Beatle to their portfolios.

On Tuesday, however, some or all of McCartney's backlist went live on Napster LLCs' Napster, RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody, Viacom International Inc.'s Urge, and Microsoft Corp.'s Zune Marketplace. Rhapsody, a monthly subscription service, had all 25 McCartney albums on its site for real-time streaming, and was also selling tracks for its usual US$0.89 each.


Illegal downloading on downward track among US youth: survey
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070522/tc_afp/lifestyleusitcrime;_ylt=AuqF0Dd9jIJx4.pfEMGr4ORkM3wV
Illegal downloading of songs, software and other copyrighted materials from the Internet among US youth has dropped sharply in the past three years, a survey showed Tuesday. The Business Software Alliance said its survey showed the percentage of young people between the ages of eight and 18 who acknowledged illegal downloads of software, music, movies or games fell from 60 percent in 2004 to 36 percent in 2007. In 2006 the figure was 43 percent.


Hypebot Takes On eMusic
http://hypebot.typepad.com/hypebot/
Hypebot, an online music blog, has taken on eMusic in a multipart series that attempts to uncover some of their strategies and pricing models. The 2nd largest online music retailer is clearly not amused by the investigative report, and has responded tersely to Bruce Houghton’s postings. According to various sources, this has usually meant per track net payouts ranging of from 19 to 29 cents with the higher payouts in recent months. This would make eMusic payments to labels 50% to 75% smaller than iTunes and other download stores who pay labels 60-65 cents per track.

One eMusic payment statement that I reviewed offered a base per track payout of 22 cents. Many artists and labels enter the eMusic system via a digital distributor who then also takes 10-30%. At 15% this would reduce the effective payments to a label to just under 18.7 cents per track. Most artist/label contracts** also require payments at a statutory rate of 9.1 cents per track to the songwriter leaving the effective amount for the label to split with the artist at between 9 and 10 cents.***

eMusic also shared the results of an internal customer survey:
84% say they discover music they would not have found with any other service
91% say the low cost encourages them to try music they had not heard of previously
74% say they are more likely to download complete albums on eMusic than on iTunes
78% say they typically add more than 20 songs to their collection EACH MONTH on average than they did before they signed up


RockYou! Rocks Out to New Partnerships With SNOCAP, Fliptrack, Nettwerk Records and Pump Audio
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/?epi_menuItemID=989a6827590d7dda9cdf6023a0908a0c&epi_menuID=c791260db682611740b28e347a808a0c&epi_baseMenuID=384979e8cc48c441ef0130f5c6908a0c&ndmViewId=news_view&newsLang=en&div=-1054896837&newsId=20070521005471
RockYou!, the leading provider of widgets on the web, today announced that the company has partnered with several of the most cutting edge music companies including SNOCAP, Fliptrack, Pump Audio and Nettwerk Records. RockYou! provides a unique way to showcase and experience online music. The company serves over 360M free music plays a month on existing widgets such as slideshows. These musical widgets can be added to most personal blogs and social networks. RockYou!’s partnerships will expand the music choices and artists that users can choose from to personalize their RockYou! widgets. It also gives RockYou! music partners an outlet to promote and expand their artist fan-base.


Pandora Shows Off Streaming Prototype, Someone Better Tell Sansa!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/23/prototype-of-pandora-wifi-device-shown-tonight-in-san-francisco/
They also made a pre-announcement, however, of an upcoming Wifi music player to be built by SanDisk and powered by Zing . The working prototype that CTO Tom Conrad demo’d tonight was physically similar to the Sansa Connect device launched last month with Yahoo, although it was slightly longer and thinner. The Sansa Connect device is also powered by Zing.


Amazon acquires Brilliance Audio
http://news.com.com/Amazon+acquires+Brilliance+Audio/2110-1030_3-6185975.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news
Amazon.com announced Wednesday its acquisition of audio-book publisher Brilliance Audio, in a move to tighten its tie with book publishers and expand the number of audio-book titles. Amazon is seeking to expand beyond offering only best-sellers under an audio-book format. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In making its announcement, Amazon's CustomFix subsidiary also noted it now supports standard CD and MP3-CD audio-book formats through its Disc on Demand service. The Disc on Demand service aims to provide authors and publishers an inexpensive and simple method to introduce new titles without being required to maintain a physical inventory.


Blockbuster sells DVDs online
http://www.contentagenda.com/article/CA6445714.html?nid=3038
Blockbuster has added a sell-through area to its Web site and is in discussions with BrightSpot Media to offer visitors free and discounted entertainment in return for viewing targeted commercials. Meanwhile, Blockbuster.com has added an Outlet store that offers new movies for sale as well as previously viewed titles, with 5% discounts for Total Access subscribers.


Music Download Card Upstart Grabs $1.5 Million Infusion
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/052207disc/view
Another model involves the sale of downloads through cards at shows and events, a concept being pushed by upstart DiscRevolt. The company, which caters to independent artists, recently rustled $1.5 million in funding, according a report by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. The company allows independent musicians to create customized download cards and offer download redemption through the DiscRevolt website. Musicians can purchase the cards from DiscRevolt at a wholesale cost and subsequently offer markups to fans. DiscRevolt, founded by Mike Shamus and Joe Kirk, is based in Alpharetta, Georgia. The financing came from angel investors, according to the report.


PassAlong Networks to Power MP3Car Music Download Store
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=256459
Downloading music in your car is about to become a reality, thanks to a new service announced today. StoreBlocks™, the fourth generation digital media services engine offered by PassAlong Networks™, developer of digital media innovations, today launched a music download store for MP3Car.com, parent company of the in-dash StreetDeck™ all-in-one mobile electronics package for navigation and entertainment.

PassAlong is partnering with MP3Car/StreetDeck and Gracenote® to develop in-car music discovery and music downloading capabilities that would allow passengers to click-through an in-dash application to purchase songs. This new technology was recently showcased by BMW and Intel at the Geneva Auto Show.