Two major mobile apps got updates for special features at the end of the week. Spotify on iOS (App Store) now has the option to both stream and sync audio at 320Kbps, the same quality as it exists on the desktop. While it requires either a more intensive Internet connection or extra storage for cached tracks, it puts the app's audio quality ahead of other on-demand music rivals.
Warner Music Group was reported its fourth quarter sales, and while they stayed consistent, at $780 million, revenue from digital music sales increased by 17 percent. What's more, it is now a 28 percent slice of the pie of all sales. This is a sign of the changing way music lovers access their music, and the label provided a further breakdown of these sales.
Spotify scored a more symbolic win Wednesday after checks found that Coldplay had put its latest album, Mylo Xyloto, back on Spotify (link). The appearance, which includes other streaming services like We7, follows after the rock band kept its whole album off of streaming music services for fear of losing album purchases at iTunes and elsewhere. The decision was unusual as it came just weeks after the band's manager David Holmes had reiterated his objections to what he saw as lost revenue.
U2’s manager Paul McGuinness has voiced his thoughts on the arrival of ad-driven online radio services exemplified by Spotify. While McGuinness was supportive of the concept, and can see it as a viable make-up of the way that music is distributed in the future, he still has serious reservations about it. The main problem, according to McGuiness, is that Spotify and the labels have not been transparent enough about the money generated by the services, and this has resulted in artist mistrust.
Spotify has already reached three million paying subscribers, the company's US managing director Ken Parks gave out in a discussion Thursday [free reg. required]. The benchmark number given to the FT was triple the million from a year ago and saw it growing much faster than before, having reached two million in September and 2.5 million in November. The three million now represented a larger 20 percent portion of the base and didn't include those who were just part of free trials.
Rhapsody, the streaming music subscription service, announced on Thursday that it has bought Napster assets in Germany and the UK. The company also bought Napster's business in the US before laying off the majority of those employees. Rhapsody promises to keep the European employees on, however, and the Napster name there will remain untouched.
The first app to take advantage of Spotify’s move to allow third-party app support to its mobile APIs has been made available on the iTunes store. SpotON Radio has been launched as a free app initially, although it may shift to a $2 asking price after its launch window. As expected, to access Spotify’s music library users must hold a Spotify Premium membership ($10/month) to use it.
The IFPI in its latest study (PDF) saw an eight percent upswing in digital music revenue in 2011. The increase is the first it claimed to have had since 2004 and lines up with an American rebound in overall album sales. They were important enough for online content to represent 32 percent of the industry association's combined business versus 29 percent in 2010.
US album sales have grown for the first time in seven years, Nielsen Soundscan reported Wednesday. A three percent increase to 458 million albums in 2011 was helped by digital sales from iTunes and other sources jumping by 20 percent, to 103 million, overcoming a six percent drop in CD sales to 225 million. Single songs themselves grew faster, up nine percent to 1.27 billion songs.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) published data showing the rapid rise of digital music on Monday while simultaneously making its familiar complaints about the perceived effect of piracy. Downloads from iTunes and similar stores grew a fast 24 percent in 2011 over 2010 to 26.6 million. As in past years, the tally wasn't yet fast enough overcome the decline of the CD market, which dropped 13 percent to 86.2 million and led to an ultimate six percent drop in album sales overall versus last year.
The Rhapsody streaming subscription music service has just reached over one million paying subscribers. The growth also means Rhapsody president Jon Irwin kept his promise and shaved his head to commemorate the milestone. Just last year, Rhapsody was at 650,000 subscribers when it became an independent company.
Spotify's BlackBerry app has exited the test stage and is now available to supporting hardware. Users can visit Spotify's mobile site from their browser to download the app, with Spotify offering a 48-hour free trial. After this period, they will need to either sign up for a 30-day trial or pay for the Spotify Premium subscription, which costs $10 per month in the US.
UK-based Rara on Tuesday will bring a new streaming music service to 18 countries around the world, AllThingsD revealed. The company is the brainchild of Rob Lewis, who also founded Omnifone, which provides music services for LG, Sony and RIM smartphones. The service is priced at $5 per month for unlimited, ad-free streaming over the web, or can take their music with them for $10 using an Android app, with an iOS app coming.
Spotify has updated its recently unveiled Spotify Platform, currently in beta, with a new smart radio playlist function. The latest preview build nestles the Radio section in among the new Spotify Apps. Users can now drop any song onto the app, which prompts it to create a radio station of similar music.
Schematic Labs has announced that SoundTracking (Free, Android Market), its social music sharing app, is now available for Android. The app is designed to allow users to capture a moment in their lives with music and share a track that they are listening, in real-time, using Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare. Users can also share a photo as well as a geolocation, along with the song snippet.
Spotify UK managing director Chris Maples in an interview Thursday hinted that an iPad native app was coming soon. Although hesitant to give details, he explained to Pocket-lint that it was "a priority" and "absolutely in the pipeline." To date, Spotify has only had a smartphone-sized app outside of the desktop.
Spotify at its special event unveiled an app system for its music software. The Spotify Platform uses apps based on HTML5 and JavaScript that can build on the core music player app. Among the examples include a Last.fm discovery and scrobbling app, a Rolling Stone app for reviews, and a TuneWiki app that syncs lyrics to the tracks.
Spotify's Wednesday special event will be all about adding an app-like platform, according to new details. An "app finder" would come to the jukebox app, the Wall Street Journal said, and let users add functionality to the normally barebones software. Mimicking the iOS App Store, it would bring in third-party developers but would see apps vetted for compatibility and "other criteria."
Spotify's special event on Wednesday may related to third-party app support. Inside updates relayed to AllThingsD revealed that Spotify had been talking with developers about making its music library available to any app as long as it's accessed through a $10 monthly Spotify Premium account. The streaming audio is already available through third-party devices like Sonos boxes, but implementations are usually tied to special hardware deals.
UK telecom regulator Ofcom has put out a statement calling for Internet providers to step up their honesty as to traffic management. It noted that even those who had agreed to a voluntary guideline weren't providing enough detail and that it wanted basic guarantees. Providers were asked both to provide real-world average speeds as well as whatever throttling or blocking they were undertaking.
Spotify trumpeted on Wednesday that it had reached 2.5 million paid subscribers. The figure includes both those paying for the basic web access, either $5 or five euros, as well as Premium members on the $10 or ten-euro plan. Although it didn't mention free users, recent checks have about four million new free accounts since getting the deeper Facebook tie-in.
Streaming music services MOG, Rdio, and Spotify have shot back at distributors and artists leaving in a new response. MOG chief David Hyman put the blame the most directly on labels, telling Fast Company that paid revenue from subscription music was a "black hole" that he couldn't control. If a label paid an artist poorly, it was that label's responsibility to improve its internal relationship, he implied.
Spotify on Monday sent out invitations to Electronista and others in the media for a special event on November 30. The invite to New York City was short on details other than "exciting news" on a global scale. Company chief Daniel Ek will headline the event along with a "special guest or two."
Subscription music services faced more of a backlash after UK distributor ST Holdings stated that it would follow Coldplay's path and keep its labels' music out of subscription music services. All of the work its primarily electronic musicians, such as drum-and-bass artists like Blu Mar Ten, Cyantific, Makoto, and Mistabishi, was being pulled from flat-rate subscriptions on Napster, Rdio, Simfy, and Spotify. The company noted that its digital revenue had dropped for the first time ever, by 14 percent, and that much of the blame could be pinned on having its first full quarter supplying those services with music.
Spotify has enrolled more than four million subscribers to its music service in the past six weeks. Much of this growth can be attributed to its tight integration with Facebook, which was launched at the Facebook f8 conference on September 22. If Spotify's growth continues on its current track, it could have as many as 35 million subscribers within 12 months.
Gartner in a new estimate saw digital music accelerating rapidly but also a possible sea change towards subscription services. It expects the total business to hit $6.3 billion for this year, up nearly seven percent from $5.9 billion in 2010, but for that pace to accelerate as CDs die out and subscriptions grow. It saw an eight percent increase coming in 2012 to $6.8 billion and a 13 percent jump in the longer-term future of 2015.
Logitech gave owners of its long-serving Squeezebox music hubs an update Tuesday for MOG's online audio. The addition lets listeners stream on-demand from MOG's whole catalog at 320Kbps, at the higher end of the compressed audio most listen to. It joins Napster and Spotify among the choices for unlimited music on the devices.
Spotify took advantage of Microsoft's Windows Phone event in New York City to launch its previously teased Windows Phone app Those who can use the 7.5 update, which should include every Windows Phone owner so far, can get access to the unlimited streaming music service whether on 3G or Wi-Fi. Its interface fits into the Metro look of the OS while still supporting playlists, queues, and interacting with friends.
The Who lead Pete Townshend used a presentation at the John Peel Lecture to chastise Apple for not doing enough to support bands. He argued with the AP attending that iTunes "bleeds like a digital vampire" artists whose music it sold but didn't encourage. He suggested that Apple should pay more independent artists directly, rather than favoring distributors, and let artists stream their music instead of one-off downloads. He even proposed Apple take on label-like tasks, such as running talent scouts to find undiscovered bands and promote them itself.
Undercutting the other popular service, Spotify, Pure Music has just launched a cloud-based music service, RegHardware found. Its monthly subscription fee is £5 (about $8), or nearly half the price of Spotify's price. The Pure service will stream from a library of millions of songs, radio channels and mixes to notebooks, smartphones and Pure's own DAB radios.
Boxee has updated its iPad app with version 1.2 (free, App Store). It includes new playback controls on the iPad screen in the lower right hand corner that allow the iPad to work like a remote control for the Boxee Box. The app will also now remember the playback progress of any local files played through the Boxee Media Manager app and resume playing from there.
Spotify and Nokia have teamed up for a native Spotify app for the N9. The MeeGo app provides full access to Spotify's library of music tracks, playlist management, and an offline caching mode. As always, the app is free (Nokia Store), but it needs a $10 Spotify Premium subscription.
Spotify answered one of its most frequent calls Wednesday by releasing a test version of Spotify for BlackBerry. The early app gives much of the same music streaming as in the Android, iPhone, and Symbian versions, including offline caching and Last.fm scrobbling to track plays. Its current version requires an SD card and won't limit caching to Wi-Fi.
Boxee gave owners of the Boxee Box a reward for the weekend on Friday with the addition of Spotify streaming. Those who pay the $10 monthly subscription for Spotify Premium can listen to any track in the catalog and get access to their playlists. The Boxee app is optimized for the TV-sized interface and doesn't have the social features, but it does have the song sharing inbox.
Spotify saw its revenue jump 458% last year. However, the online ad-supported streaming music service still managed to record a second successive net loss, this time $41 million. The figures were based on when the company had just passed 1 million subscribers in 2010. It now has over 2 million paying customers with its expansion into the US this year.
Rdio in an attempt to head off Spotify responded with a completely free service. The new option lets users stream either on the web or in the Mac and Windows desktop apps without ads. Rather than limit the number of listens per track, as with Spotify, Rdio is offering a meter of an unspecified amount each month.
Western Digital on Tuesday brought out its next-generation WD TV Live media box and companion WD TV Live Hub. The new version has a revamped, tray-based interface and now has Spotify music. Listeners with a Spotify Premium account can stream at the full 320Kbps with support for making playlists, sharing, and getting access to others' content through profiles and the song inbox.
Rhapsody shook up online music Monday by buying Napster. The deal will put the two streaming and download music services together. Cash involved in the deal wasn't mentioned, but Napster's now former owner, Best Buy, will have a minority stake in the combined service.
The founder and CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, just announced over Twitter that the streaming music service has added a Private Listening option to a new desktop client. This is in response to Facebook user complaints after receiving countless updates as to what their friends are listening to over the Facebook verbs feature introduced at F8. Ek likens the feature to a browser's private mode.
Microsoft in an update Thursday recommitted itself to music by launching a new, lower cost Zune Pass. The new option will cost the same $10 per month as competing services but drop the 10 free permanent MP3 tracks from the $15 original. Listeners will also sync to fewer computers and devices, down from six to four, when the plan goes live October 3.
Spotify has issued a statement defending its new Facebook sign-up and login process for access to its streaming music service. Previously, users just signed directly into Spotify itself; now, new users are expected to use their Facebook account, or create one, in order to access the Spotify service. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek claims that users can adjust their privacy settings within Spotify if they do not want to share what they are listening to on the social network.
Spotify in the wake of its Facebook Open Graph support said it was phasing out the invitation-only system for the US version. Listeners will have the option of signing up on their own, like their European counterparts. The company's community lead Andres Sehr explained in a brief TechCrunch chat that members would need to sign in through Facebook to get the free access without an invite.
Facebook continued its string of news at f8 by detailing its media sharing. Part of a new system of verbs that replace the generic Like, it focuses most on music: users can spot someone listening to a song in the live ticker and start listening to the same track. Services will still need to launch the separate app if it exists, but the method will let anyone listen to similar content if it exists in a subscription service.
Facebook's music service launching tomorrow will have a unique live social listening option between friends. Creative director Ji Lee briefly tweeted and promptly pulled word of a "listen with your friend" feature in the ticker, which was just added to Facebook on Wednesday. In mentioning that it was "live," he implied that users could click a currently active song and at least launch the same song in a valid subscription service, if not sync it to the same time marker.
Spotify, which recently made its way over to the US from Europe, has topped two million total subscribers. The premium streaming music service wouldn't reveal how many of these paid subscribers reside in the US, though at last count, and just one week after the US launch, there were 70,000 subscribers in the US.
Facebook's media plans will be scaled down when they finally show at f8 on Thursday, insiders uncovered Tuesday afternoon. Instead of playing on Facebook through a central hub, listeners or viewers will have to launch an outside app. It will still carry over information and use a Facebook sign-on, but AllThingsD understood it would still have to open the third-party app when relevant, such as with Spotify.
Facebook's imminent music service should include more partners than thought. New code exploration from Yvo Schaap has shown that Rhapsody, Deezer, Soundcloud, and Vevo will join those known to be part of the service. MOG, Rdio, and Spotify had been the only services identified before.
Music streaming service MOG just announced it will launch a free streaming music service, bringing a competitor to the free version of Spotify, which itself recently launched in the US. The ad-supported service will roll out on September 15, and supplement the smarpthone apps already available. It will offer on-demand streaming music.
Spotify, the music streaming provider, now has a radio style web interface through unofficial means. Known as Echofi, a listener can now specify a group or band that they like, and then listen to similar music for as long as they like. This capability, similar in function to Pandora, was created not by the company, but by a third party, coder Andy Smith.
Ford has reached a deal with Spotify to integrate its Internet music streaming into AppLink. Drivers with Sync-equipped cars will have the option of controlling at least some parts of Spotify through the car's center stack and voice commands rather than having to use an iPhone or Android phone. The two haven't said when it will be ready.
