snapshot 9/7/07

Universal's Rringles Hit Stale Note
Universal's $5.98 retail package of 3 songs a ringtone and a wall paper image for your cell phone. Will some please explain to me the logic of bringing digital goods back into the physical world?

Wal-Mart and Best Buy are on board as sellers and will probably discount the package. So maybe this is about grabbing shelf space or selling to technophobes or consumers too young or poor to have a credit card to buy online. But how pissed off are they going to be when they figure out that that they still have to be a be a tech wiz to use what they've bought and that it's a pain in the ass to try to load stuff onto your cell phone.


Beatport Readies Beatsource - Hip-Hop Download Store
Beatport, the leading dance music online music store, is preparing to unveil Beatsource, a completely new store that will specialize in hip-hop and urban music. The site will be “dedicated to the urban DJs and the fans that love them for what they do behind the decks,” according to the company.


Apple seeks TV price cut
Apple is mulling a plan to cut the price of TV show downloads in half -- an idea that's not going over too well in Hollywood. According to three people familiar with the proposal, Apple has told networks and studios that it would like to slash the cost of most TV episodes sold via iTunes from the current $1.99 to just 99¢ -- the same as what Apple charges for most music singles.


'The Long Tail Is Just Not That Long'
Tracey Scheppach's job is, simply, to help advertisers find new methods to hawk their wares on TV. But deciding on those methods is far from simple. Instead of figuring out where marketers ought to best to place their ads on TV -- a science in and of itself -- Ms. Scheppach analyzes ways to exploit changing technologies that threaten to render the current system of advertising on TV entirely moot.

What about shorter form? Of course, shorter form will have a significant share of impression and also minutes associated with video consumption, but one lesson that I have learned from TiVo is when a consumer has control over what they want to watch and when, the long tail is just not that long. People want to watch the prime programming content at a place and time that is convenient to them. Once all of these shows are on all platforms, people are going to watch prime content. That's not to say they aren't going to watch YouTube, but there's a lot of hype that the tail is really long, and what I'm saying is all this content is going to find its place and the tail is not that long.


Apple To Work With Polk, JBL, iBiquity on HD Radio Tagging System For iTunes
Apple is working with iPod dock makers JBL and Polk on a system that allows anything heard on an HD Radio/iPod dock system to be tagged and sent to an iPod, which will later be transferred to iTunes. Once on iTunes, a playlist is presented where users can purchase any tracks they heard while listening to HD Radio. iBiquity will be working with HD Radio stations to make this iTunes Tagging an industry-wide standard.


Apple's IPod Touch Will Not Allow Downloads of MP3s from the Web
Apple confirmed with Listening Post that the iPod Touch will not allow users to download MP3s from web pages over its WiFi connection, so devotees of MP3 blogs will need to stick to the old plan: download to computer, import into iTunes, and sync to iPod. However, streaming radio is still a strong possibility for the iPod Touch, and could become a bigger part of the iPhone too. When asked whether the iPod Touch would handle streaming radio from either Apple or third party sites such as Pandora and Seeqpod, my Apple contact told me there are "no announced plans."


September quarter iPod sales tracking around 10 - 11 million
After examining iPod unit data from the month of July, researchers at Piper Jaffray say Apple is on track to sell 10 - 11 million iPods in total during the three-month period ending September 29th.