snapshot 9/04/07

IPhone outsells smartphones in July
Apple Inc's iPhone outsold all smartphones in the United States in July, its first full month on sale, accounting for 1.8 percent of all U.S. mobile handset sales, research group iSuppli said on Tuesday. The two models of the iPhone on the market sold more than Research in Motion's (RIM.TO) Blackberry series, the entire Palm (PALM.O) portfolio and any individual smartphone model from Motorola (MOT.N), Nokia (NOK1V.HE) or Samsung (005930.KS).


Sony may start movie download service
Sony may soon compete directly with Apple and its popular iPods and iTunes, producing its own movie download service and products, company officials said Tuesday.


Don Was offers free music via Web series
Like most of the music industry, award-winning record producer Don Was -- who has worked with dozens of artists including Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Al Green and Willie Nelson -- is struggling to make sense of the Internet. His foray takes the form of a syndicated Web video series on the newly launched My Damn Channel, where he interviews such rock stars as Ozzy Osbourne and films studio sessions with artists like Jill Sobule.

Any music recorded for the site can be downloaded for free, subsidized by Internet advertising. In addition, content created for the site can be found on YouTube, and soon will spread to other digital platforms.


Music exec says business model is 'done'
Rick Rubin, the man who coaxed some of the best studio performances out of the Beastie Boys, L.L. Cool J and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, threw the curtain open on the music industry this weekend. What was exposed was perhaps more uncertainty and frustration than many may have expected.

"Columbia is stuck in the dark ages," Rubin told the Times. "I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry, but the reality is, in today's world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be the best at the existing paradigm, but until the paradigm shifts, it's going to be a declining business. This model is done."


Rhapsody Opens MP3 Download Store
Rhapsody has tried to simplify this process with a new section dubbed The MP3 Directory. By browsing through the alphabetical listings listings you can see what Rhapsody at least is offering as universally compatible mp3’s. Pricing is generally 89 cents for subscribers and 99 cents for everyone else - less than the same tracks in the AAC format on iTunes but more for non-subscribers than on WalMart.com.

One flaw we found in our test of Rahpsody’s storefront is that when searching for tracks in the general store it was not clear which where being offered DRM free. Only by shopping within the MP3 directory could you be sure what you’re buying is DRM free.


iTunes Developing Plan To Sell Ringtones
Apple is planning to expand its iTunes Music Store to include ringtone sales, according to the New York Post. The paper's sources say that Apple is developing a plan with the major labels to include ringtones in the offerings from the popular digital store.

The new service is reportedly going to allow users to not only convert songs purchased through iTunes into ringtones, but let consumers customize them and choose which clip of a song they want to use. However, the ringtones are expected to be compatible only with the iPhone. Also, Universal Music Group is not expected to participate in the Apple ringtone offering, according to the Post.


Thomson Acquires Distributor
Thomson SA has acquired SyncCast Corp., a wholesale distributor of online movies, music and other entertainment, as part of an effort to boost its own digital-services businesses. The price wasn't disclosed. Thomson, of France, has been building an end-to-end system to cut the time and steps required to prepare movies, television shows and other content for distribution. Using the company's new arrangement, preparing a movie for TV, for example -- including changing proportions to fit a TV screen, adjusting the resolution, and making the appropriate number of copies -- might take 25 hours, compared with 100 hours without the integrated digital processes it has put in place.


Hands On With SpiralFrog
SpiralFrog allows users to download protected WMA files at no cost. Since the files are WMA, SpiralFrog will not work with iTunes. Tracks may be transfered to compatible portable devices, but I have not yet dug up my old Sansa MP3 player so the files I download have not made it past my hard drive. Downloaded tracks go in a SpiralFrog folder (mine is in my standard "My Music" folder along with everything else) and can be played on any music player compatible with protected WMA (I used both WIndows Media Player and the Slacker player).

In a nutshell, I think SpiralFrog is an average product that misses its greater potential. With some tweaking I think it could carve out a nice little niche. SpiralFrog does nothing wrong per se -- it lives up to its goal of offering free music to users -- but it feels half-finished. While the site design is clean and simple, it is also bland. The site currently offers about 700,000 tracks, but SpiralFrog's shallow facade offers no hint of such depth. Navigation, layout and search functions are poor compared to those of other download sites. If price dictates user experience, then you definitely get what you pay for.


Gadget Maker or Service Provider? Firms Start to Overlap
Now Nokia wants to be an Internet company and Google, according to rampant speculation among bloggers and technology analysts, may be about to enter the mobile phone fray.

“Devices alone are not enough anymore,” Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, chief executive of Nokia, said last week in London as the company announced plans for a digital music store, a game service, social networking links and other mobile Internet initiatives, grouped under a new brand, Ovi. “People want more; they want the complete experience.”


Big Fat Rumor: iTunes Kiosks Hitting Stores
The purpoted kiosks will be placed in retail shops nationwide where you’ll be able to dock your iPod and/or iPhone and purchase content with your CC or GC. A few other chunks of salt include an entire minute preview for tracks, the fancy new keyboards, automatic software updates and a touch screen UI.


The Music Man
"The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don't consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it's just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about music, bands, everything."


Porto Media: Download DVD Quality Movies and Go
PortoMedia has developed a high speed flash memory card (Movie Key) that enables a fully secure DVD quality movie to be downloaded from retail Movie Point in less than 15 seconds. Each Movie Point is loaded with between 500 and 5,000 titles and is refreshed regularly via satellite/DSL with the latest movie and TV content. The consumer has the option to rent or purchase content. The content is protected by Windows DRM, guaranteeing both security and compatibility with a wide range of playback devices. We will offer a low cost reader/ set top box that attaches to a TV allowing the consumer to simply plug in the key and press play to view the movie on the big screen TV. The content can also be played back on any PC, compatible MS set top box or portable player, or on the Xbox 360."


Apple store iPhone sales outshine AT&T by seven to one
The average Apple retail store sells as many iPhones in a single day as most AT&T retail stores sell in an entire week, say a team of analysts for investment research firm Piper Jaffray.


Media by Microsoft
Media Center does three things very well. It manages photos, movies and music on your computer. It records TV programs, letting you use your PC as a TiVo style digital recorder. Media Center also fetches content from the Internet, and dozens of "channels," such as Comedy Central, are preloaded right in; one click and streaming video clips begin.

Apple's try at the same grand unification--Apple TV--lags behind Microsoft's method. Microsoft's system supports high-definition video; Apple TV does not. The Xbox 360 can play DVDs and music CDs; Apple TV has no slot for reading discs. And Xbox 360 plays videogames, something you can't do with Apple TV.


Movies: Straight to Download; Hollywood experiments with direct-to-download feature films. But will people trade in the big screen for the monitor?
On July 3, MGM released the low-budget dark comedy A Dog's Breakfast to the iTunes Store and Amazon Unbox. The film, written by, directed by, and starring David Hewlett (from the cult MGM Stargate franchise), had garnered a large online following thanks to a few sneak-preview screenings, a couple of YouTube clips, and an $8-a-month Web site Hewlett created. This is a test for MGM, which has no other direct-to-download releases scheduled.

Similar experiments show that it may be a few years before other studios premiere films directly on the computer screen. Last year, Revelations Entertainment, Morgan Freeman's production company, released 10 Items or Less as a digital download while it was still in theaters. It gained little attention--though Michael McGuire of research firm Gartner says it's difficult to judge whether people just "didn't care about the distribution model or didn't care about the film." He adds that the scheduling of movie releases could change as well.
"The windows [between a movie's theatrical, DVD, digital download, and pay-per-view releases] are going to collapse," he says.

David Card, a senior analyst at JupiterResearch, believes that movie download releases "won't take off until it gets easier to connect your TV to the Internet," which would greatly increase the success rate of a download model. Besides, some indie films could be more profitable as digital downloads, says Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking firm Media By Numbers. "There's still nothing like the moviegoing experience, but not every movie requires the big-screen treatment or the big-screen distribution," he says.


Mystrands brings music discovery to online music videos
MyStrands, a music discovery service, has launched a web site, Mystrands.tv, featuring clips of music videos and concert footage from YouTube. While many companies offer ways of discovering new music, or new video, Mystrands is doing both. Given the many competitors in music discovery and in online video, Mystrands’ combination of services for music lovers could set it apart.

Mystrands has also been working hard on connecting digital music with real life. It offers “partyStrands,” a set of services for live venues, featuring a way to let party-goers recommend songs to DJs at a show using cell phone text messages.


11 Video Download Stores Compared
NBC’s recent decision to end selling television shows through the iTunes store, is a reminder that, unlike digital music, Apple isn’t the undisputed king of online video. In fact, far from it. Aside from the numerous ad-supported video sites, of which YouTube is the industry leader, there exists a plethora of paid-for video download stores — both rental and purchase-to-own — each of which is hoping to take a large slice of this emerging and potentially lucrative market.

In this post, we take a look at eleven paid-for video download stores, noting that while there appears to be much competition, many of the resulting services lack innovation, in terms of their technology choices and how they approach copy-protection.