Apple has posted a cryptic message on its Web site, teasing the world about an “exciting” iTunes announcement that’s coming tomorrow. What could it be? I saw that someone had suggested The Beatles were finally coming to iTunes, but really, who cares? If you want The Beatles on your iPhone you can grab the newly remastered albums that came out last year, “rip, mix, burn,” then off you go. Not very exciting, no. What could be exciting, though, is a streaming music service. In an instant, Apple would have killed the MP3 once and for all. You hear that? That’s the sound of the RIAA thanking Apple over and over again. → Read More
When Ping launched in early September, the music social network had one major problem: it wasn’t social. Sure, you can share stuff inside of iTunes, but there was no good way to post the songs you liked to the two big social networks: Facebook and Twitter. The truth is that Ping launched with Facebook Connect integration, but it was only for contacts, and then Apple and Facebook had a bit of a dust up. Today, Apple is bringing Twitter integration to Ping.
As Twitter has just announced on their blog, by connecting iTunes to Twitter, you’ll be able to not only find your Twitter friends on Ping, but you’ll be able to tweet out Ping activity as well. That last bit is a key to making Ping actually work. → Read More
The iOS 4.2 Gold Master for all iOS devices is floating around along with iTunes 10.1, the only version of iTunes that supports the new version. What does this mean? It means you can try iOS 4.2 on your iPad today, as we speak, and, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be extremely happy. 4.2 adds real multi-tasking and folders to the iPad, two features that make the device truly shine. I spent an hour yesterday just dragging little icons into each other to organize my extensive Crush the Castle clone collection (including Angry Birds). The update also adds a better keyboard and a few other tweaks that make the iPad really hum. You can also wait a few days to get the real update, but there’s no sport in it. → Read More
Well it didn’t happen on September 1 as some had been anticipating, but it looks like Apple is indeed extending iTunes song preview times. And while initial reports suggested they would up the previews from the current 30 seconds to 60 seconds, they’re actually tripling many of them, to 90 full seconds, the blog Symphonic Distribution reports.
MacRumors, meanwhile, snagged a copy of the iTunes Connect letter apparently being sent to label representatives that has all the details. They can be summarized as such: → Read More
Well it didn’t happen on September 1 as some had been anticipating, but it looks like Apple is indeed extending iTunes song preview times. And while initial reports suggested they would up the previews from the current 30 seconds to 60 seconds, they’re actually tripling many of them, to 90 full seconds, the blog Symphonic Distribution reports.
MacRumors, meanwhile, snagged a copy of the iTunes Connect letter apparently being sent to label representatives that has all the details. They can be summarized as such: → Read More
Yeah, today is Apple Day, but we still have a few hours till the big announcements. How to fill the time? Let’s start with this bit of news: Starbucks has launched something called the Starbucks Digital Network. It’s a collaboration with Yahoo, and it will “[serve] up a collection of hand-picked premium news, entertainment and lifestyle content along with local insights and events.” → Read More
Exclusive -When Jason tried out online music streaming startup Grooveshark’s iPhone app in July 2009, he wrote that it was great but that he “wouldn’t expect this to pop up in the App Store any time soon”. He was right, and last February the company got so fed up with waiting for Apple that they released the app for jailbroken iPhones on third-party application store Cydia.
But last August, Apple suddenly changed its tune and approved Grooveshark for iPhone, which hit the App Store soon after. But less than a week later, Apple received a complaint from Universal Music Group UK about the app, prompting Cupertino to yank it off the store. → Read More
It’s October 1, which means that you’re average American think Oktoberfest has started. Not true: Munich’s Oktoberfest begins in mid to late September and lasts through October. A minor technicality if all you’re looking to do is celebrate the holiday best known for, well, bier and busen. In any event, there’s a handy iOS App that was just released that can help New York City folk find Oktoberfest beer gardens. It’s called Beer Gardens NYC, and it works quite well. → Read More
Back in May, a patent troll called Sharing Sound sued a host of companies, alleging that all of them infringed on a (ridiculously broad) patent for online music distribution.
Targets were Apple (iTunes), Microsoft (Zune), Napster, Rhapsody, Brilliant Digital Entertainment (Kazaa) and Sony / Sony Ericsson. Similar actions were filed a week earlier against Amazon, Netflix, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble and GameStop.
The patent being contested – U.S. Patent Number 6,247,130, titled “Distribution of musical products by a website vendor over the Internet” – would essentially prevent all these companies from using any type of online store environment which allows them to provide song previews, a shopping cart or even a music player. → Read More
If the new Ping sidebar that was launched today as a part of iTunes 10.0.1 looks familiar, perhaps it’s because you’ve been using the iLike Sidebar — an iTunes (and Windows Media Player) plug-in that does pretty much the same thing. We know at least one person finds the two very similar: Ali Partovi, the co-founder of iLike.
“I just hope Apple also copies iLike’s mission of democratizing music by empowering artists, especially the little guys. With Ping’s restrictions so far on artist signup, the major labels are the winners, not artists, and that breaks my heart,” Partovi told us today when asked about Ping’s newest feature. → Read More
It launched with much fanfare, but I don’t think it was unreasonable to call Ping a dud out of the gate. While pretty much everyone initially signed up to try it out, a few days later, the activity stream seemed to trickle to almost nothing. And there was a good reason for that: Apple’s social network for music made it very hard to share stuff — you know, be social. But an update today makes it at least a thousand times better.
iTunes 10.0.1 released this morning brings some big Ping updates with it. Most notably, you can now use Ping with your own iTunes library. Previously, you could only share songs on Ping through the iTunes Store — a big difference. This basically meant that even if you already owned a song, you had to hunt it down in the iTunes Store to share it. This was almost laughably tedious, and it ensured that no one would use Ping for more than a couple days. → Read More
An article yesterday on Billboard gives some new details into Google’s upcoming music store plans. Over the past several years, there have been no shortage of services that have launched with the hopes of being the “iTunes killer”, but if the details told to Billboard by “industry sources” are true, and if Google can actually get the labels to agree to what they want to do (a big, no huge “if”), Google Music sounds like it could be a very serious threat to iTunes.
Here’s the basic gist of what Google is supposedly proposing: they want to offer an online music store not unlike iTunes, but run entirely through the web browser (and perhaps an app on Android devices). But users would have the choice of downloading some content to their mobile devices to take on the go, or immediately putting it in a cloud storage locker, which users would pay around $25 a year for. From this locker, all music bought could be streamed to any web browser at no additional charge. And again, music could be downloaded to a mobile app for when you’re not going to be online. → Read More
Asymco, a Helsinki-based app developer / industry analysis advisory firm, ironically founded and led by a longtime Nokia manager, just posted this telling chart on its blog:
According to the firm’s research, iTunes download rates for music and iOS apps are both still growing, but accelerating much faster for the latter. In fact, Asymco posits, based on data from the recently updated Music and App Store, that the total number of app downloads has already reached the same level as that of songs in less than half the time. → Read More
Can someone please explain this Bloomberg Businessweek story to me? I’ve read it a few times and am still having a hard time understanding what is or what isn’t being implied, or not implied, about a partnership between Coinstar and Apple.
First of all, the title is awful because most people likely don’t know that Coinstar owns Redbox (they acquired them last year), the DVD rental kiosk company. Instead, most people know Coinstar as those machines in supermarkets where you turn in your loose change for cash or silly things, like Facebook Credits. So why on Earth would they be partnering with Apple on some online venture?
Well, again, it’s about Redbox, as they sort of note in the first paragraph. But what are they going to do with Apple? → Read More
With the launch of Ping this week in the latest update for iTunes, Apple is finally adding social elements to its software. Ping is very promising if only because of Apple’s reach through iTunes to 160 million music consumers. And it will no doubt get better over time. But at launch, it is riddled with problems which stem from the fact that Apple does not know how to create social software. It is completely out of its element, and it shows.
The biggest problem I have with Ping is that it lives in iTunes. Not only does it live in iTunes, it is isolated there. iTunes is not social. It is not even on the Web. And Ping doesn’t communicate with any other social networks. I can’t see people’s iTunes Pings in Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else. While Ping does make iTunes itself more social, the problem is that I don’t live in iTunes. It is a store. I go in to buy stuff and get out as fast as I can. I am not sure Ping is going to make me want to hang out there more. → Read More
We all know Google Music is coming, it’s just a question of when – and what it’ll look like, of course. According to Reuters, Google hopes to launch the service as early as December 2010.
Citing unnamed ‘people familiar with the matter’, Reuters says Google’s VP of Engineering Andy Rubin (which we likened to a Steve Jobs-caliber product fanatic in the past) is spearheading talks with music labels on plans for a digital music download store and cloud-based song locker service, which he hopes will see the light of day before year’s end.
Only thing that could get in the way of a pre-Christmas debut: the company has yet to sign a single licensing deal with the music labels, those same sources told Reuters. → Read More
There seems to be some confusion out there right now about iTunes Ping, Apple’s new music social network, and Facebook. Some people seem to think it was never a part of iTunes, that Apple decided against connecting; while other reports say they think it was at one point integrated, but that it wasn’t working and has since been removed. I can tell you for sure that yesterday Facebook Connect was a part of Ping — because I used it.
When I first loaded iTunes 10 yesterday and started up Ping, connecting with Facebook was the first thing I did to find friends. At first, I will say that it didn’t work. I hit the Connect button, entered my credentials, and nothing happened. But I tried again and it worked perfectly. I found a handful of Facebook friends who had just started using Ping as well and connected with them. → Read More
Right now, many of you are likely downloading iTunes 10, the latest version of Apple’s media software. The most notable feature in this new version is Ping, Apple’s first stab at building a music social network (or really any kind of social network). It’s interesting on a number of levels, but even the most basic level is pretty interesting: Ping’s social graph.
First of all, to use Ping at all you have to opt-in to it. While Apple CEO Steve Jobs touted the 160 million built-in users (it’s currently available in iTunes in 23 countries), that’s a bit misleading because many people won’t opt-in to using it — many of them for no other reason than they’re lazy or just don’t care. But assuming you do opt-in to it, the next social layer is interesting as well. Immediately, you’re taken to a Privacy Settings page where Apple asks you how you’d like to use the service. This is where you decide if you want to use the friend model, the follow model, or the lurk model. → Read More
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been hitting refresh on the Apple iTunes website waiting for them to put iTunes 10 up for download. Sure, it has said it was available since this morning, but when you click through, it would still be iTunes 9.2.1 with a promise that iTunes 10 was “coming soon.” Links being shared on Twitter were likewise bogus. It was starting to look like a Duke Nukem situation. Well, it took several hours, but it’s finally here.
Apple announced iTunes 10 this morning at their event in San Francisco. The latest version is more than just a minor update, there are several things that have been reworks, including some UI elements. But the biggest addition is obviously Ping, the music social network Apple has baked into iTunes. I got a chance to use it earlier on some demo computers and on the iPhone/iPod touch — it’s very interesting. Now it’s time to see if 160 million built-in users agree. → Read More
One of the big announcements at Apple’s event today was Ping, the music social network that Apple has baked into iTunes. But it’s not just on iTunes for the computer, it’s also a part of iTunes on the iPhone and iPod touch. This will be a part of the new iOS 4.1 release which is going out to developers right now, and should be out for consumers next week.
In the demo area after the event, Apple had a bunch of iPod touches loaded with iOS 4.1, so we got to play around with it. It’s a pretty slick experience on the device because it’s so simple. Below find some pictures of how it works. → Read More
