snapshot 6/1/07

Prince single free to cell phone listeners
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070601/wr_nm/prince_verizonwireless_dc_2;_ylt=Asp8_RJSv3bITbW1BpMA0kVkM3wV
Prince is giving away the first single from an upcoming album to cell phone users as the rock star, who is also launching a perfume, looks to create a buzz around his "Planet Earth" album, due out in weeks. Similar to David Bowie's involvement with a Nokia phone launch last year and Paul McCartney's plan to publish an album through Starbucks, Prince's latest stunt is part of a trend for long-established musicians to try to interest new fans in their latest music by aligning themselves with the next new thing.

Prince's new single "Guitar" became downloadable on Thursday to Verizon Wireless phones to customers who use the service provider's new V Cast song ID feature, which identifies songs for listeners who hold their phone next to a speaker.


Deutsche Bank: Apple TV will affect DVD market
http://ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/deutsche-bank-apple-tv-will-affect-dvd-market/
Deutsche Bank has said it believes the Apple TV will take a chunk out of the $26 billlion DVD player market in the next few years. In a note to clients, the film claimed Apple is “positioned to introduce a compelling integrated home media infrastructure solution,” with YouTube content serving as a catalyst for further sales and market expansion. “We expect Apple to continue adding video content (TV, movies, etc) to iTunes/Apple TV further increasing its appeal,” the firm added. Deutsche Bank rates the company’s stock a “buy,” with a target price of $140.


Spiralfrog 'To Launch Summer 2007
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ida27a19ad4f62ef3db2e374c2a1a3b2d
Spiralfrog, the much-touted ad-supported online music service, will finally launch in the United States by the end of summer 2007, chairman and founder Joe Mohen told the CISAC Copyright Summit today. The service is currently beta testing in Canada, where Mohen says the site features 500,000 tracks and a "who's who of advertisers."


Blockbuster, Best Buy to launch movie download services
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070601-studio-ceo-blockbuster-best-buy-to-launch-movie-download-services.html
Best Buy and Blockbuster are both set to enter the growing movie download business—at least that's what Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer told a bunch of industry analysts during a conference call yesterday. "We have nearly a dozen active agreements in place for digital delivery of our content with such major players as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Blockbuster, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart, with more to follow," said Feltheimer.


Youtube to re-encode videos for AppleTV and iPhone?
http://www.last100.com/2007/06/01/youtube-to-re-encode-videos-for-appletv-and-iphone/
Perhaps leveraging Apple’s ’special’ relationship with Google (who acquired the video sharing site late last year, and whose CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple’s board), Steve Jobs has managed to get YouTube to re-encode their entire back catalogue using the higher quality — and AppleTV compatible — H.264 codec, rather than make do with Flash.

Meanwhile, MacFormat speculates that an additional reason for Apple’s insistence on YouTube supporting H.264 is to ensure future compatibility with the iPhone. So far the company has dodged questions regarding whether the device will be able to playback Flash video, but with YouTube now supporting H.264 (which the iPhone can playback), it becomes less of an issue. Now all Jobs has to do is persuade every other video sharing site on the web to comply too.


Apple Takes a Bite out of DRM
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/itunes_256_vs_128_bit
To our subjects’ ears, there wasn’t a tremendous distinction between the tracks encoded at 128Kb/s and those encoded at 256Kb/s. None of them were absolutely sure about their choices with either set of earphones, even after an average of five back-to-back A/B listening tests. That tells us the value in the Apple’s and EMI’s more expensive tracks lies solely in the fact that they’re free of DRM restrictions.


Sam's Club Tests TV-Installation Service
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118064903135520578.html?mod=rss_whats_news_technology
Sam's Club, the warehouse-club division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is experimenting with a third-party service for helping customers install their high-definition, flat-panel televisions, possibly stemming returns of the pricey sets. Sam's is offering the installation service from either of two third-party providers in 106 of its stores in Florida, Minnesota and Texas. Overall, the chain operates 580 stores and posted $41.6 billion in revenue last year.


Music meets politics in Darfur campaign
http://news.com.com/Music+meets+politics+in+Darfur+campaign/2100-1027_3-6188203.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news
In an ambitious music campaign to raise money for Darfur, Amnesty International is relying on a new widget to promote viral sales of re-recorded John Lennon songs on sites like MySpace.com and across the blogosphere.

One piece of that equation is a widget called MixedTape that lets anyone cut and paste 10 lines of code to add a music player, political petition and CD store to their MySpace page, blog or Web site. Created by e-commerce site GoodStorm, MixedTape is designed to let people upload and curate a blend of their own music so that visitors can sample or buy songs directly from the widget on the page. Or, in the case of the Amnesty International campaign, the MixedTape will sample songs from the Instant Karma album, then point people to iTunes to buy a download.