When Apple announced back in February that The Daily would be the first subscription news app on iTunes, it was seen by other publishers as the model going forward. Some like it, some don’t, but at least Apple knows how it wants to treat subscriptions going forward. Or does it?
Some subscription news apps seem to be in limbo right now while Apple figures out how to handle special situations. If you are a single-title publication like the New York Times, The Daily, or Businessweek, then it is pretty straightforward and the current rules apply. But what if you are a news reading app that brings together articles from many sources, some paid and some free? In other words, what if you are an aggregator app like Flipboard or Zite, but you want to charge a subscription for the app? How should that subscription be split up between the app and the publishers, and should Apple even be involved with policing those types of licensing and copyright issues? It’s all getting sorted out right now. → Read More
The second most senior Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Dick Durbin, will propose a new scheme that would force online retailers like Amazon and iTunes to collect local taxes for each and every transaction. He’s expected to make the proposal the day after Tax Day, and it’s expected to be controversial within two seconds of having been announced. → Read More
“But you said you’ve read the terms and conditions… even God has not read the terms and conditions.” → Read More
Amazon’s move into the cloud music storage and streaming game is nothing if not controversial. I love it. They’ve seemingly looked at what companies like Apple and Google have been dealing with for months, if not years, and just said “screw it, let’s just do it.”
Ballsy. Brilliant. Wonderful.
Of course, the service itself seems kind of “meh”. But I’m more than happy to take “meh” over nothing at all — which is exactly what the other big players have given us. It has been all empty promises (Google) and endless whispers (Apple). Amazon actually did it. And they deserve credit. → Read More
Make no mistake about it: the digital music space will be turned upside down this year, courtesy of giants like Apple, Google, HP, Sony and now, Amazon.
Earlier today, the latter announced that it was entering the world of digital music locker services with a bang, introducing services dubbed Cloud Drive and Cloud Player that basically let you store your digital music – and more – in the cloud and stream it from browsers on any computer as well as from Android phones. → Read More
This past weekend, we broke the news that iOS 5, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, was likely being released in the fall. This would break the tradition of a summer release. And we also noted that instead of a separate event in the early spring, Apple was likely to use their WWDC event in June to talk about the new OS for the first time. Sure enough, today came word from Apple that seems to verify both things.
Apple will host WWDC in San Francisco on June 6 through June 10, they formally announced today. The focus of the event? “At this year’s conference we are going to unveil the future of iOS and Mac OS,” Apple marketing exec Phil Schiller says in the release. Yes, that means iOS 5 as well as OS X Lion. We previously reported that Lion development was moving along quickly and it could mean a release around WWDC. I suspect we may at least see a release candidate given to developers around then.
And if Apple intends to first show off iOS 5 at the event, they won’t release it then. Developers will need time to prepare their apps for the big changes in store. → Read More
tunesBag, an Austrian music sharing startup that has been around for quite some time, has just raised €250,000 through a government fund and an undisclosed investor. The platform itself is, like many others, a cloud-based iTunes where you can sync your local music library via the cloud to a variety of devices. But the startup has recently added a nifty feature that lets users connect their Dropbox account with their tunesBag library, making the service effectively iTunes-meets-Dropbox.
Through tight API integration, this works well and lets users sync all of their tracks to Dropbox so that they can be streamed. The question remains how many people are actually using Dropbox as a music storing and sharing service with the arrival of many other cloud-based ‘locker’ services dedicated to music. → Read More
Today at their event in San Francisco, a familiar face took the stage: Apple CEO Steve Jobs. And he kicked things off with some big numbers. The biggest was this: 200 million people now have Apple ID (iTunes) accounts. These are accounts tied to credit cards with one-click purchase access.
“Amazon doesn’t publish their numbers. But it’s very likely that this is the most accounts with cards anywhere on the Internet,” Jobs said. → Read More
Southwest Airlines, of Kevin Smith fame, has partnered with Apple to create an in-flight entertainment download store called InAirtainment. Users would connect to the Internet via in-flight Wi-Fi, then download music, movies, and TV shows. Southwest gets a small percentage of the fee. → Read More
In my previous post about Apple’s new subscription plans for the App Store, I offered up three possibilities. With the move, Apple is either: brilliant, brazen, or batsh*t crazy. But reading over the comments on that post (admit it, you did — it’s okay, I do too, sometimes), you might think there was a fourth option: evil.
To those who have followed tech news for any extended length of time, this is a familiar refrain. Company X changes something, therefore Company X is “evil”. Over the years, this has been true of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, etc. But no company has seen this vitriol to the extent of Apple over the past few years. And curiously, it seems correlated to their meteoric rise in power and profitability.
But if Apple is really evil — or at the very least, if several major moves they’ve made over the past few years have been evil — shouldn’t the opposite be true? Shouldn’t Apple be losing a ton of customers who are fed up with their cruelty and inhumane torture of developers, users, and the world in general? Makes sense, right? → Read More
We all knew it was coming, but the details of the App Store subscription model, which Apple outlined today, are fascinating on a number of levels. Simply put: this is one of the boldest bets Apple has ever made. And it could backfire. Or it could be huge beyond belief. Either way, it’s going to be very controversial.
We’ve already gone over the basics, but as a quick recap: any service offering an app with any sort of subscription component must now offer it within the app using the new in-app subscription options. Those companies are welcome to offer subscriptions outside of the app as well, but they must also have to option to do it in-app and it must be for the same price (or cheaper) than the out-of-app option. If a subscriber signs up in-app, Apple keeps 30 percent of those revenues. If they sign up outside of the app (still granting them accesses to the app), the company keeps 100 percent of the revenues. → Read More
How big a business are mobile apps? In a new report, market research firm Gartner forecasts that global mobile app store revenues will triple from $5.2 billion last year to $15 billion in 2011, and keep growing to an astounding $58 billion by 2014. As with any forecast of a hypergrowth market, you can be sure this one will change in six months, and the further out you go the more guesswork involved. (Remember, less than a year ago nobody was even able to predict how many iPads would be sold this year). But here is one prediction you can count on: you will be hearing these numbers thrown around a lot all year long until a better forecast comes along.
Gartner breaks down the forecast into advertising revenues and paid downloads (including in-app purchases), as you can see from the chart above. Paid downloads and other direct purchases make up the majority of the expected revenues, but mobile advertising is expected to grow nicely over time into a multi-billion dollar market. → Read More
Here we are. Apple has announced on this promotion page that there have been 10 billion downloads from its App Store since its inception.
It’s a huge milestone in the life of the App Store, which lets people downloads games and software programs for their iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. → Read More
Apple has revealed its year-end iTunes charts, and it turns out that Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” was the single most downloaded song of the year. My first reaction was, “That’s Train singing that song, what?!” Shows how little I’m plugged in to popular culture these days. Now, if you want my opinion on who should win the Ballon d’Or, on the other hand… → Read More
While it won’t help you listen to John Cage’s 4:44, you can now listen to most of Blitzkrieg Bop (2:12) and all of Napalm Death song thanks to the new 90-second preview in iTunes. Launched last night, the preview appears work with only a few select songs including Dark Fantasy by Kanye West.
Sadly, this only applies to songs 2:30 in length or more. Songs shorter than this will maintain the 30 second preview. → Read More
We’ve already highlighted the four apps that Apple has chosen as their “award winners” for 2010. But they’ve also highlighted the following: Overall Paid iPhone Apps, Overall Free iPhone Apps, Overall Grossing iPhone Apps, Overall Paid iPad Apps, Overall Free iPad Apps, Overall Grossing iPad Apps.
Below, find the full top 10 lists for each of those. One thing interesting to note: the top three grossing iPad apps for the year are all made by Apple themselves (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote). Also interesting: MLB At-Bat.com 2010 beat out Angry Birds as the top-grossing iPhone app — even though it’s currently free. That’s because the baseball season is over, but in-season the app is $15 → Read More
Apple has just announced their year-end top lists for iTunes, which they call “iTunes Rewind”. These lists span music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, etc. But the most interesting list is probably for apps.
Notably, they break the top apps of the year into whether they’re designed for the iPhone (and iPod touch) or the iPad. And this year, they’ve selected four apps that they’re especially featuring as “award winners” for 2010. Those are: Hipstamtic [iTunes Link], Plants Vs. Zombies [iTunes Link], Flipboard [iTunes Link], and Osmos [iTunes Link]. → Read More
Navigating Apple TV and its various peeks into the presumed future has been a valuable waste of time. For $100 plus an HDMI cable I get to sample various media dead ends including NetFlix, iTunes rental, buy, and streaming options, YouTube, and other stuff I can’t remember right now. In the past, I would have spent more time testing the work arounds for adding podcasts and ripped music to broaden the choices, but something about the device suggests we’re in such a rapid shakeout it might be easier to wait.
But for what? Google TV seems caught in little brother mode behind the next loser tablet wave. What ultimate value is there in trading Apple’s dead ends for another set of second rate dead ends? The idea that we can replace the aggregate value of the Hollywood studio system with some loose coalition of rag tag revolutionary product ignores the tendency for the avant-garde to go mainstream. At some point, having everything work from one device is the best way of killing any possible interest in what’s available. → Read More
Obviously, there is a lot of pent-up demand for the Beatles on iTunes. Decades after their last album, they were still the third best-selling music group last year, and that was without any digital sales. Since going live on iTunes for the first time this morning, all 17 albums are currently in the top 100 best selling albums on iTunes. And 15 of them are in the top 50.
The best selling Beatles album is Abbey Road, currently at No. 12, followed by the White Album (no. 14), Sgt. Pepper’s (No. 15), and the $149 Box set (No. 16), and moving up the charts fast. The least popular Beatles albums? Yellow Submarine (No. 72) and Beatles Fior Sale (No. 57). → Read More
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