Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Rhapsody announced today that it won’t require its users to use special software to access the service, since they’re launching a Web-based interface. Any PC/Mac/Linux user can point his browser to ‘rhapsody.com’ and, according to Red Herring, stream up to 25 songs per session, for free (song downloads are not available for now).
What’s the business [...]
Creative’s Soundbuzz Music Store launches: available from within the MediaSource app, tracks go for $.99 and albums for $9.99. Creative’s Technical Marketing Engineer says they’re working on an improved, refined version of MediaSource. There’s also the Creative Soundbuzz Music Video Store launched back in September.
The big news today in digital music-land is the launch of Oboe, Michale Robertson’s latest venture.
So what is it?
In short, Oboe allows you to backup your music collection, so that you can later sync it with your PC or stream it from their online interface. They’ve even got an iTunes plugin which will allow you [...]
The Wall Street Journal, on the labels’ push for higher-priced tunes since “hey, ringtones go for $2.5 or more!”:
“Ringtones are meant for showing off in public [...] people are much fussier about having the right one, having it sound good and being able to change it the second they feel it no longer represents them—all [...]
You may be experiencing difficulties when trying to purchase an album from the iTMS—you’re not alone, and according to Apple it should be fixed by next Monday, November 28th.
It’s a market with a particularly slim profit margins, so why bother? BusinessWeek says it’s a marketing tool—“Companies say they still feel compelled to maintain a presence in online music, both to get a toehold in a growing market and give a complete product offering.”
Also, David Card at Jupiter Research thinks that the subscription model [...]
We had covered Warner’s decision to form a digital label back in September. Brad points us to it: Cordless Recordings breathes a new air to the world of online music distribution and leaves us impressed.
Forget albums—artists release 3-song “clusters” every 4-5 months to keep things focused and fresh. Genres? “We are open to anything edgy [...]
Review: Virgin Digital Red Pass: we presented this subscription service yesterday. According to the review, it’s an overall decent but not breathtaking effort. The software is fast and there are some advanced features to take advantage of. But downloads are slow (might be a temporary thing, they launched officially yesterday) and you can’t move to [...]
Yet another player in the subscription-based music services arena.
Virgin Group launched Virgin Digital Red Pass today [via]. The service is available to US and UK residents, and it’s Windows 2000 & XP only. For an impressively low $7.99/month you get access to more than 2M tracks and 60 professionally programmed Internet radio stations. Songs are [...]
Pandora, an amazing, out-of-this-world music discovery service now has a free version available.
As explained in their FAQ: “Pandora is available in two forms. Both versions have exactly the same features. The first form is an advertising-supported version which is entirely free. Over time we’ll be incorporating ads into this version of Pandora.” (The other one [...]