Groove is a Canadian-made mobile app that’s tearing up the charts, reaching a top 1o spot in over 30 countries, and climbing to number 1 in the Canadian app store over other music apps including Rdio and Songza. The app is part of Montreal-based FounderFuel’s latest cohort, and in move that’s becoming a trend for Founder Fuel companies, it has just gone free, and racked up 85,000 downloads in just… → Read More
On the heels of Google wading into the music streaming waters with its Google Play Music All Access service, with a $10 fee for all-you-can-eat streamed tracks, the indie music agency Merlin has today published results of a recent survey of its 20,000-label member group, plus an analysis of 6.5 billion music streams over the last year, which spell out where the money is coming from today. → Read More
Apple had a bit of a head start when it came to mobile software sales, since it launched its App Store earlier than the Android Market (which would later become what we call Google Play today). But the gap was more pronounced in terms of downloads when they kicked off, but lately the gap has been closing, and today both Play and the App Store announced very close milestones. → Read More
The mobile app economy continued to show impressive growth in 2012, with Apple’s App Store maintaining its course, while its rival, Google Play, was able to make some significant gains. A November report from mobile analytics firm App Annie showed that, while iOS revenues still hold a lead over its rival, Google Play revenues were up 311 percent overall from January 2012 and downloads were up 48… → Read More
App analytics platform Flurry has released its annual look at how many new mobile devices came online during the holiday season, and the results show a dramatic change from the situation a year ago. Over 50 million iOS and Android devices were activated during the period between December 25 to December 31, versus just over 20 million devices last year. → Read More
America’s favorite funnyboy [citation needed], Jim Gaffigan, has just released his new special, Mr. Universe, in download and streaming formats. For $5 you get three SD or HD downloads or three streaming sessions for your content consumption comfort. You can pay with PayPal or Amazon check-out. → Read More
Marketing technology company Fiksu has released new data that shows a downward trend in mobile application installations on iPhone. The increase, in broad terms, is marginal, given the size of the iPhone’s user base, but any non-upward movement is curious.
Says Fiksu, there was a drop from 4.505 million iPhone app installs per day in June to 4.25 million app installations per day in July. → Read More
Looks like EA finally understands what we’ve been talking about for a while now: that, in just a few year’s time, we’ll look back at disc-based media (here, video games) and be all, “Man, how quaint.” Peter Moore, who’s the president of EA Sports (no minor position, that), called the disc-based distribution model a “burning platform,” and that companies are either staring in the face of… → Read More
It’s the tree of life, and for no particular reason, either. As a corollary to Biggs’ “cable companies are doomed” article from earlier today, I thought I’d demonstrate how easy it is to accomplish what he was threatening. That is, live a happy and successful life without having to pay $100+ a month to Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV, or whomever. (Note: I’m neither happy… → Read More
There’s a new study that suggests that teens are moving away from illegally downloading music. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that teens are turning to iTunes (or whatever) en masse, but rather is a reflection of the way the Web works in 2009. Music blogs, streaming sites like Imeem and YouTube (note: not all streaming on YouTube is 100 percent legal), applications like Spotify, etc. are… → Read More
One of those highly paid analyst types from Wedbush has gone on record saying that the only thing holding back a true-to-life Xbox 360 game download service, à la Steam, is hard drive capacity. Right now, you can buy a 120GB hard drive for $140 on Amazon, which is ridiculous given the low, low prices of standard hard drives these days. (A recent CrunchDeal spotted a 1TB hard drive for $77.) So if… → Read More
Here’s a spicy rumor for you all to enjoy. Apparently RIM is planning some sort of BlackBerry TV store/service/thing, and may launch it as early as CTIA next week. (CTIA is like CES, but just for cellphone stuff; actually, a more accurate comparison would have been with Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress; thank you.) It’d be a subscription service, and the TV shows download over a Wi-Fi connection… → Read More
Welcome to the future, Safari fans, because the Safari 4 beta just hit the download shelves and it’s ready to tear some things up in Tiger and Leopard and even Windows. The download requires the latest security patch (2009-01) but other than that you’re ready to ride. Guess what? Javascript is 4X faster! UPDATE – Now with video. → Read More
Oh, North Carolina. The state, which is home to Ric Flair (pictured here), is now considering a tax on downloadable items. This, in a time when people are losing their jobs left and right. Download an eBook, get taxed. Download a song, get taxed. Download a movie, get taxed. Download a game, get taxed. You get the idea. → Read More
It wasn’t too long ago that the music industry was complaining all day long that digital downloads would ruin the music industry. Au contraire! The BPI (sorta like the UK’s RIAA) has just revealed that 2008 was the biggest ever year in Britain for singles. And yes, the industry has digital downloads to thank. → Read More
What I’m about to say will anger a lot of CE manufacturers, but this has been the laziest year in consumer electronics to date and I’m recommending that rather than spending money on the boring stuff that has come out in 2008 we all spend our money on digital media – games, music, audiobooks, ebooks, and the like. And I don’t mean digital Blu-Ray and game disks, either. I… → Read More
Today is a crazy, crazy day in San Francisco. I’m at day 2 of TechCrunch 50, but John Biggs made his way over to Yerba Buena to live blog Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event. Not a whole lot on the mobile front out of the event just yet, but Steve Jobs did mention that the iPhone/iPod Touch App store has now surpassed the 100 million download mark, demolishing the 60 million… → Read More
Comcast has now jumped into the downloadable video content game with the Fancast Store. It’s a lot like many other video download stores in that you can either rent or buy movies and TV shows, it requires you to install proprietary media management software in order to download and view your content, and it’s not Mac compatible (you can, however, order content from a Mac and download it on a… → Read More
Vudu, our favorite digital content download service, is now offering extended rentals of SD movies for 99 cents within seven days of the initial viewing. HD movies can be extended for $1.99. But that’s not the best part. There’s a new channel dubbed “99 for 99” that offers 99 recent “blockbusters” for, you guessed it, 99 cents. Steven Horn VUDU’s Programming Director and supposed… → Read More
So CNET has a scare-you-to-bits piece about states beginning to tax digital downloads like iTunes. Nine states “have considered” such a tax this year alone, while the great state of Tennessee will tax “the retail sale, lease, licensing, or use of specified digital products transferred to or accessed by subscribers or consumers.” Then CNET brings up something called “nexus,” which is… → Read More
Though they’re completely open about the fact that their source is a bit peculiar, BGR is reporting that that Nokia may be looking to start up a movie download service. Rather than a pay-per-view or rental service, the new service is tentatively all-you-can-eat. One lump sum per month garners you unlimited access to a catalog of 320 x 240 H.264 movies, streamed straight to your handset. Love… → Read More
Hot damn, you can already download the iPhone 2.0 Firmware! MacRumors dug through Apple’s servers, and found a direct link to the file. Those of you who just can’t wait, click here and enjoy the ride. I don’t have an iPhone, so I can’t independently confirm whether or not you’ll brick your phone by upgrading. Tell us how it works out for you. → Read More
Now you’ve gone and done it. “It” being, maybe, freaking out the entertainment industry by not buying as many DVDs as you used to. (That, incidentally, sorta gibes with a study that come out today.) One of them there Lehman Brothers analysts downgraded numerous industry stocks yesterday because he doesn’t like how people are now downloading movies more and more often. Studios… → Read More
Impress Sony held one of those “rally ’round the flag” meetings in Japan earlier today, announcing, among other things, that it will launch a movie download service for the PS3 this summer. That’s the U.S. launch date, at least; Europe and Japan will have to wait longer. The Xbox 360 has had a movie download service since November, 2006. With this move, and others, Sony wants to be… → Read More
Apple has now sold over five billion songs from its iTunes music store. The program has been around since early 2001. Earlier this year, iTunes surpassed Wal-Mart as the most popular place to buy music. Apple still hasn’t figured out how to sell Drakkar Noir for under $40 through its store but, still, five billion songs is impressive. It’ll be interesting to see how long iTunes will be able to… → Read More
Firefox 3 [Mozilla.com] → Read More
Blockbuster will deploy an in-store download service in the coming months. The program, initially available only in Dallas, will let consumers download movies onto a portable device in, as Blockbuster’s CEO James Keyes hopes, under 30 seconds. So far, only Archos-made portable media players are compatible with the as-yet unnamed service. No details regarding what movie studios have signed… → Read More
Remember AllofMP3.com, the easy to use, consumer-friendly music downloading site based in Russia? It got shut down last July amidst threats that Russia wouldn’t be able to join the World Trade Organization. It’s a long story; read more here and here. Well, the RIAA brought a copyright infringement lawsuit against AllofMP3.com back in December of 2006, saying that the company made some… → Read More
Sony Ericsson has a somewhat interesting patent in the works that would essentially allow your digital audio player to determine where you were located and then offer you up a list of downloadable tracks that have been tagged to that location. The idea is that certain music works well in certain locations, like I’d tag “Ain’t That A Kick In The Head” to all the gas stations… → Read More
Get ye over to NiN’s site and get you a copy of The Slip. All you have to do is give Trent your email address, which is just fine by me. The album is available in a variety of different formats, including V0 MP3, lossless M4A, FLAC and 24/96 Wave, which is better than CD quality. Or, you can wait till June for the CD to make its way into stores. → Read More
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