Tag Archives: Apple

iTunes 11 Delayed for Another Week

Sad to inform you, but Apple has decided to take an extra week before the release of their newly improved iTunes 11. According AllthingsD,an Apple spokesman said: Continue reading

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Apple’s Preparing to Change iTunes to Improve Music Sharing

According to Bloomberg, Apple’s planning an overhaul of iTunes that will mark as one of the largest changes to the world’s biggest music store since its 2003 debut… the changes will be unveiled by year’s end. Because the plans aren’t public. The company will more closely integrate its iCloud file- storage service with iTunes so users can more seamlessly access and manage their music, videos and downloaded software apps across different Apple gadgets. Apple’s also planning new features for sharing music.

 

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The Online Music World Infographic

Gerson Lehrman Group released the new current music on-deman infographic. Mapping out the top 10 music services (the current major players), their fees and how fans view them. Check it out below.

Infographic:

 

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Google in Negotiations With Major Labels to Expand Cloud Service n’ Open MP3 Store

It looks like Google’s looking to expand its cloud music services and join the war on better music on demand services – competing with the top dogs Apple and Amazon. Read on, post by Ben Sisario at New York Time:

Five months after it introduced a cloud music service with limited capabilities, Google is in negotiations with the major record labels to expand that service and also open an MP3 store that would compete with Apple and Amazon.

According to numerous music executives, Google is eager to open the store in the next several weeks. It would most likely be connected to Google’s existing cloud service, Music Beta, which lets people back up their songs on remote servers and stream them to mobile phones and other devices, said these executives, who all spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private and continuing.

A Google spokeswoman declined to comment, and the labels also had no official comment about Google’s plans.

Google may be hoping to announce its store before Apple opens its latest cloud music program, iTunes Match, which was unveiled in June and is expected to be operational by the end of October. But it was unclear whether Google would be able to close the necessary deals with labels and music publishers in time to open a full-service store.

Its earlier negotiations with music companies, for a so-called smart locker service — a Web storage system that lets people link their digital music collections to a vast central database — broke down over financial terms and the music companies’ complaints that Google was not doing enough to curb piracy.

Now Google is aiming for a more extensive service, but the labels and publishers do not feel that all of their concerns have been addressed.

We want to make sure the locker doesn’t become a bastion of piracy,” one senior label executive said.

To operate the most efficient kind of locker service, a company like Google needs special licenses from the music copyright holders. Having failed to get licenses from the labels and publishers, Google opened a scaled-down version of Music Beta in May, and its executives publicly criticized the labels for blocking the deals.

Music Beta was announced five weeks after Amazon opened a similar unlicensed service, Cloud Drive.

Apple got licenses for iTunes Match, which will instantly link a user’s songs to Apple’s master collection. With an unlicensed service, users must upload each song individually, a process that can take hours or even days.

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