Alltel Beefs Up Cell Phone Music Service Celltop
U.S. cellular carrier Alltel Wireless and mobile application developer mSpot on Tuesday introduced a new service for wirelessly synching music stored on PCs to mobile phones. Alltel's Music powered by Celltop is a service that lets subscribers access their music libraries from mobile phones. Celltop is Alltel's new technology, based on Qualcomm's Brew uiOne platform, which uses customizable "cells" to serve up content to subscribers. Cells are applications like call logs, text messaging, ringtones, news, weather, stocks, and sports scores that can be customized to appear on a phone's mail screen by clicking a phone's soft key.
Music by Celltop uses software developed by mSpot, called Remix, which synchs music stored on PCs wirelessly to a phone. Subscribers can listen to the music as it's being downloaded. Remix then saves the music on the phone's memory card and more can be added depending on how much a memory card can hold, according to mSpot. But it only works with music that is not protected by Digital Rights Management, meaning music that is not restricted to authorized viewing or playback of copyrighted material. The service costs $4 with a one-month subscription or $10 with a three-month subscription and it's currently only available on Motorola's Moto Rokr Z6m phone. Alltel plans to launch the service on other Celltop-based phones in the first half of this year.
Blockbuster shares drop on Apple news
Shares of Blockbuster Inc. plunged nearly 17 percent on Tuesday after a new threat emerged to the world's largest chain of movie-rental stores: Apple Inc. announced it now offers movie downloads via iTunes.
iTunes rentals and the system date
We got an interesting tip from "Jack", who noted that you could affect the time remaining on an iTunes movie rental by altering your system time. I gave it a shot to be sure. It's true, if you're willing to offset the date on your computer until you finally have time to watch that movie, you can get past the 30-day time limit.
It was also noted that if you fast-forward your calendar to the due date of a rental, iTunes will remove the movie from the library but apparently not from your drive. That seems odd to me, but that's the way it works, at least if you switch the date up yourself. And sure, you could get a little creative with a DVR and some streaming output, but the price isn't so bad to me that it warrants the extra effort.
en2go International Inc Appoints Steve Wozniak to its Board of Directors via hypbot
Former Apple head Steve Wozniak has joined former EMI digital exec Ted Cohen on the management team of digital entertainment application developer en2go.
The free music revolution could start with Jook
However, at the Great Digital Experience, a preshow event held the night before the tradeshow opened, we got a peek at gaming peripheral maker Razer's subsidiary Jook. Its music solution, also called Jook, aims to bring music sharing into the realm of social networking. In short, Jook wants to turn any portable music player into a personal radio station enabling anyone, regardless of their player, to wirelessly transmit songs to people around them. To effect that, the technology utilizes two parts... a wireless transmitter that plugs into any digital music player (the sample we saw was a dock plugged to the base of an MP3 player), and an indicator unit that seems to be integrated into the headphone cable.
Jill Sobule The Latest Musician To Embrace New Music Business Models
Last month we wrote about musician Kristin Hersh embracing a version of the new business model we suggested for musicians way back in 2003. It's a model where the musician can actually embrace file sharing and do better because of it, by focusing on using the file sharing to sell more scarce goods, such as specific songs or access to the musician. One of my favorite ideas in that discussion was that the musician could offer up that he or she would play a backyard concert for a supporter. I've yet to see anyone else pick up on that suggestion... until now. Well-known singer-songwriter Jill Sobule has just announced her plans for a new album and it involves a website that allows people to buy in at different levels from $25 (you get the CD before it's released) all the way up to $10,000 (you actually get to sing or participate on the CD). At the $5,000 level, Jill will come and perform at your home. I still think the lowest level ($25) is a bit too high, but the various levels and the rewards at each level do seem about right for the model. It's not clear how Sobule feels about file sharing on top of this, but it's clear that she's really embraced this new business model -- so I'm hopeful that it works out for her.
Hands-on with iTunes movie rentals: quirky and restrictive, but dead easy
Despite the few quirks we experienced, the steps required to rent from iTunes were dead simple and the ability to play the movie after just a few minutes of clicking "rent movie" was a big plus for our Type A personalities. Assuming you have the bandwidth that is. Sure, we're not talking HD video or 5.1 audio here. Nevertheless, the quality was surprisingly good when displayed full-screen on our 30-inch, 2560 x 1600 pixel display -- even when sitting at keyboard-length from the monitor. Perhaps the most telling result of our experience is this: we're tempted to rent again, soon.
iPhone, iPod touch updates are incremental, welcomed, and point to future
With the last update, an icon was added to give users access to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, allowing them to order music directly from the phone. One small improvement here is that you can now pay for your purchases by redeeming gift cards (entered at the iTunes store), particularly valuable for parents who don’t want to give their kids a credit card.
While you cannot purchase or rent movies or TV shows directly (download times would be considerably long), Apple has made it easy to rent content through iTunes and transfer it to the iPhone. When connected to iTunes, a video tab appears. Select the movies you want to transfer and sync. On the iPhone side, content is distinguished as purchased or rented. As movie rentals on iTunes are timed — 30 days to watch from the time it’s rented to a 24-hour window to watch — the interface lets users know how many days are left until the movie expires. The update also allows users to navigate movies by chapters, just like they can when viewing DVDs.
iTunes Grammy contest: Pick the winners, win 10,000 iTunes songs
Tunes and iGoogle are giving away 10,000 iTunes songs to a select contestant who correctly predicts the Grammy award winners (or who gets the closest). Simply download the iTunes Grammy contest iGoogle gadget, add it to your iGoogle home page, and make your prognostications. You'll automatically be entered in the contest. For you gadget haters, there's even a printable sweepstakes form to fill out and mail. iTunes is also holding a daily Grammy trivia sweepstakes; the winners will receive iTunes store credit redeemable for 10 songs.
iTunes and Apple TV rentals and purchases: what you can (and can't) do
Recording industry should brace for more bad news
The big problem that EMI, and by extension the rest of the industry, faces is the sudden stampede of brand-name artists away from the traditional recording companies. The Eagles are with Wal-Mart, Madonna left Warner for Live Nation, a concert promotion company. EMI has lost Paul McCartney and Radiohead, and Coldplay is said to be threatening to leave. Last week the label's biggest seller, Robbie Williams, announced that he too would be leaving the label. All pretty devastating.
I don't know if Williams will sign with another record label or not. I really doubt it. The bottom line is that music has lost its economic value to consumers. But it still has emotional value. People will never stop listening to music. They've just stopped paying for it. So the challenge comes in figuring out how to capitalize on that emotional value. There are lots of ways to do that and guys like Williams, Clark, and Enthoven are sure to find them and transform the landscape.
IODA To Labels: No Deals With Imeem & LaLa
In a letter to its labels this week, digital distributor IODA recommended not granting licenses to prominent net services imeem, LaLa and others that offer full song streams due to inferior royalty structures. The distributor's struggles underscore that even in Music 2.0, there are vast inequities which leave indie labels fighting for position behind the major labels and their large catalogs.
U.S. cellular carrier Alltel Wireless and mobile application developer mSpot on Tuesday introduced a new service for wirelessly synching music stored on PCs to mobile phones. Alltel's Music powered by Celltop is a service that lets subscribers access their music libraries from mobile phones. Celltop is Alltel's new technology, based on Qualcomm's Brew uiOne platform, which uses customizable "cells" to serve up content to subscribers. Cells are applications like call logs, text messaging, ringtones, news, weather, stocks, and sports scores that can be customized to appear on a phone's mail screen by clicking a phone's soft key.
Music by Celltop uses software developed by mSpot, called Remix, which synchs music stored on PCs wirelessly to a phone. Subscribers can listen to the music as it's being downloaded. Remix then saves the music on the phone's memory card and more can be added depending on how much a memory card can hold, according to mSpot. But it only works with music that is not protected by Digital Rights Management, meaning music that is not restricted to authorized viewing or playback of copyrighted material. The service costs $4 with a one-month subscription or $10 with a three-month subscription and it's currently only available on Motorola's Moto Rokr Z6m phone. Alltel plans to launch the service on other Celltop-based phones in the first half of this year.
Blockbuster shares drop on Apple news
Shares of Blockbuster Inc. plunged nearly 17 percent on Tuesday after a new threat emerged to the world's largest chain of movie-rental stores: Apple Inc. announced it now offers movie downloads via iTunes.
iTunes rentals and the system date
We got an interesting tip from "Jack", who noted that you could affect the time remaining on an iTunes movie rental by altering your system time. I gave it a shot to be sure. It's true, if you're willing to offset the date on your computer until you finally have time to watch that movie, you can get past the 30-day time limit.
It was also noted that if you fast-forward your calendar to the due date of a rental, iTunes will remove the movie from the library but apparently not from your drive. That seems odd to me, but that's the way it works, at least if you switch the date up yourself. And sure, you could get a little creative with a DVR and some streaming output, but the price isn't so bad to me that it warrants the extra effort.
en2go International Inc Appoints Steve Wozniak to its Board of Directors via hypbot
Former Apple head Steve Wozniak has joined former EMI digital exec Ted Cohen on the management team of digital entertainment application developer en2go.
The free music revolution could start with Jook
However, at the Great Digital Experience, a preshow event held the night before the tradeshow opened, we got a peek at gaming peripheral maker Razer's subsidiary Jook. Its music solution, also called Jook, aims to bring music sharing into the realm of social networking. In short, Jook wants to turn any portable music player into a personal radio station enabling anyone, regardless of their player, to wirelessly transmit songs to people around them. To effect that, the technology utilizes two parts... a wireless transmitter that plugs into any digital music player (the sample we saw was a dock plugged to the base of an MP3 player), and an indicator unit that seems to be integrated into the headphone cable.
Jill Sobule The Latest Musician To Embrace New Music Business Models
Last month we wrote about musician Kristin Hersh embracing a version of the new business model we suggested for musicians way back in 2003. It's a model where the musician can actually embrace file sharing and do better because of it, by focusing on using the file sharing to sell more scarce goods, such as specific songs or access to the musician. One of my favorite ideas in that discussion was that the musician could offer up that he or she would play a backyard concert for a supporter. I've yet to see anyone else pick up on that suggestion... until now. Well-known singer-songwriter Jill Sobule has just announced her plans for a new album and it involves a website that allows people to buy in at different levels from $25 (you get the CD before it's released) all the way up to $10,000 (you actually get to sing or participate on the CD). At the $5,000 level, Jill will come and perform at your home. I still think the lowest level ($25) is a bit too high, but the various levels and the rewards at each level do seem about right for the model. It's not clear how Sobule feels about file sharing on top of this, but it's clear that she's really embraced this new business model -- so I'm hopeful that it works out for her.
Hands-on with iTunes movie rentals: quirky and restrictive, but dead easy
Despite the few quirks we experienced, the steps required to rent from iTunes were dead simple and the ability to play the movie after just a few minutes of clicking "rent movie" was a big plus for our Type A personalities. Assuming you have the bandwidth that is. Sure, we're not talking HD video or 5.1 audio here. Nevertheless, the quality was surprisingly good when displayed full-screen on our 30-inch, 2560 x 1600 pixel display -- even when sitting at keyboard-length from the monitor. Perhaps the most telling result of our experience is this: we're tempted to rent again, soon.
iPhone, iPod touch updates are incremental, welcomed, and point to future
With the last update, an icon was added to give users access to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, allowing them to order music directly from the phone. One small improvement here is that you can now pay for your purchases by redeeming gift cards (entered at the iTunes store), particularly valuable for parents who don’t want to give their kids a credit card.
While you cannot purchase or rent movies or TV shows directly (download times would be considerably long), Apple has made it easy to rent content through iTunes and transfer it to the iPhone. When connected to iTunes, a video tab appears. Select the movies you want to transfer and sync. On the iPhone side, content is distinguished as purchased or rented. As movie rentals on iTunes are timed — 30 days to watch from the time it’s rented to a 24-hour window to watch — the interface lets users know how many days are left until the movie expires. The update also allows users to navigate movies by chapters, just like they can when viewing DVDs.
iTunes Grammy contest: Pick the winners, win 10,000 iTunes songs
Tunes and iGoogle are giving away 10,000 iTunes songs to a select contestant who correctly predicts the Grammy award winners (or who gets the closest). Simply download the iTunes Grammy contest iGoogle gadget, add it to your iGoogle home page, and make your prognostications. You'll automatically be entered in the contest. For you gadget haters, there's even a printable sweepstakes form to fill out and mail. iTunes is also holding a daily Grammy trivia sweepstakes; the winners will receive iTunes store credit redeemable for 10 songs.
iTunes and Apple TV rentals and purchases: what you can (and can't) do
Recording industry should brace for more bad news
The big problem that EMI, and by extension the rest of the industry, faces is the sudden stampede of brand-name artists away from the traditional recording companies. The Eagles are with Wal-Mart, Madonna left Warner for Live Nation, a concert promotion company. EMI has lost Paul McCartney and Radiohead, and Coldplay is said to be threatening to leave. Last week the label's biggest seller, Robbie Williams, announced that he too would be leaving the label. All pretty devastating.
I don't know if Williams will sign with another record label or not. I really doubt it. The bottom line is that music has lost its economic value to consumers. But it still has emotional value. People will never stop listening to music. They've just stopped paying for it. So the challenge comes in figuring out how to capitalize on that emotional value. There are lots of ways to do that and guys like Williams, Clark, and Enthoven are sure to find them and transform the landscape.
IODA To Labels: No Deals With Imeem & LaLa
In a letter to its labels this week, digital distributor IODA recommended not granting licenses to prominent net services imeem, LaLa and others that offer full song streams due to inferior royalty structures. The distributor's struggles underscore that even in Music 2.0, there are vast inequities which leave indie labels fighting for position behind the major labels and their large catalogs.
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