The Wall Street Journal's Amir Efrati and Ethan Smith are reporting that Google is working on a consumer-electronics system designed to stream music--and, eventually, maybe video and other media--around the home. Their story doesn't have much in the way of detail, but does say that Google's brainchild might be akin to a lower-cost version of Sonos's excellent-but-pricey music-streaming products. Absent more details, there are several ways to respond to this sketchy bit of news.
How much is a song worth? It’s a question that’s often been discussed since the internet got involved in the music industry. Is it 99 cents, as iTunes, Amazon and other digital retailers believe? Is it some minuscule percentage of a monthly subscription fee, a la Spotify and online radio stations? Or is it free? One new label has made free music the center of its business model.
Apple’s iTunes may have ushered in a digital revolution to the music industry, making music more affordable and—in tandem with the iPod and other MP3 players—more of a feature in people’s day-to-day lives, but according to Pete Townshend, iTunes is a “digital vampire” that’s bleeding musicians by taking a commission for each download sold.
Sorry, naysayers. The Beatles on iTunes was a big deal — so big, in fact, that the band carried music sales to a rare year-over-year increase.
When you’re offering up as much content as Apple does–thousands of TV shows and movies, millions of songs and downloads–you need somewhere to house it. According to storage industry reports, the iPad makers have acquired 12 petabytes of storage for video content in the iTunes ecosystem. This may go hand in hand with Apple’s announced [...]
Newsflash: Digital music sales will overtake CD sales in the US for the first time in 2012, according to a new study released by Strategy Analytics.
A music industry veteran claims that Apple is pushing hard to launch a digital music locker service in April. This service would allow iTunes users to store their music online and access it from any compatible device.
It’s hard to discern the difference between the lower quality, compressed 16-bit tracks that are available for download through Apple and other digital retailers and the 24-bit original audio recording so it probably doesn’t make a huge difference for the majority of listeners. For the music snobs who can tell the inferior track from the [...]
Are iTunes’ days of digital music dominance finally about to come to an end? New reports are suggesting that Google is closing in on a launch date for its much-rumored music service at the same time as Spotify is said to be making progress with its potential second US signing.
Recent numbers show that iTunes accounts for about 66% of the downloadable music market, with Amazon trailing a distant second at around 13%. There are two big reasons Amazon should be kicking the bits out of iTunes, but Apple’s stubbornly immovable music service only seems to keep getting bigger and stronger.
Google has been talking to major record labels about starting their own digital music store, Billboard.biz reports. The service will be like iTunes and involve digital downloads that you can buy as well as a subscription-based cloud-based digital locker to store your purchases.
