According to a new study by Ipsos' TEMPO Digital Music Brandscape, despite the emergence of Amazon, Apple's iTunes platform still managed to gain market share in the increasingly crowded legal net music store crowd.

iTunes moved to 57 percent market share, up from 50 percent last year at this time, and Amazon's DRM-free store moved into second place with 9 percent share, a large number considering the store has not been open for even a year yet. Rhapsody, which recently turned DRM-free, jumped up in market share as well, from 4 percent last year to 7 percent now. Each continues to expand and is expected to take more market share, but at whose expense? It appears everyone but iTunes.

Other stores such as Napster, Yahoo Music and Walmart have taken a hit in market share, at the expense of the now clear leaders.

Can anyone overtake the DRM giant that is iTunes though?

Continue reading...

Permalink to this article Topics: MP3 & Digital Audio Online music services Post your comments

According to the EFF, the recent Hollywood suit against RealDVD is nothing more than a smokescreen aimed not at piracy but instead at stifling innovation.

"It has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with controlling innovation," said Fred von Lohmann, EFF's senior attorney.

The suit contends that RealNetwork's RealDVD software is in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as a breach of contract with the DVD Copy Control Association.

RealNetworks claims that the software "allows consumers to securely store, manage and play their DVDs on their computers" and "does not enable users to distribute copies of their DVDs." It also mentions that RealDVD adds another layer of DRM to the ripped movies which makes it much harder to move to films off the computer that has the program installed.

Continue reading...

Permalink to this article Topic: Lawsuits & Legislation Post your comments

TF is reporting that Romanian ISP UPC Romania subscribers headed to the large Romanian torrent site Torrentbits.ro will have blocked access, another setback for the site which has been trying to come back since it was raided by the police last year.

The new move by the ISP mirrors that of the more famous case involving the The Pirate Bay in which all Italian ISPs blocked the site at the pressuring of the IFPI. The Pirate Bay successfully won an appeal in court however and is now unblocked in the country.

UPC Romania has over 1 million subscribers currently and users had been reporting problems accessing the site for days. Users from other ISPs receive this message on the frontage however, addressing the problem.

Permalink to this article Post your comments

Sony has confirmed that it will be giving Japanese PSP users direct access to the PlayStation Store via the handheld's built-in Wi-Fi connection.

Beginning on October 15th, users will be able to use the store to purchase and download any game that would normally only be available on UMD from that point forward. The downloads will have faster loading times and get rid of the need to carry around the physical UMD.

There will also be add-ons and in-game items available from the store for current games as well as future games.

No word was given on whether users could download movies or music but the company did promise "more network services" for the handheld by the end of 2008.

There was no word on European or North American launches but it is safe to say we will see the update at some point.

Permalink to this article Topic: Consoles 3 comments

Google has announced that it will begin offering full-length TV episodes through its YouTube platform beginning this week, thanks to a content deal with CBS.

“This is what the users want,” noted Jordan Hoffner, the director of content partnerships for YouTube.

The videos will of course be free to YouTube users but will have advertisement before, during and after the episode, similar to rival video site Hulu which promotes NBC Universal content.

Shiva Rajaraman, a senior product manager for YouTube, added that the company is still searching for the "right ad format for the right content experience.” For the time being it remains committed to in-video overlays for short clips but is still experimenting with longer videos.

Users heading to the CBS page on YouTube will find classic shows such as “MacGyver” and "Beverly Hills: 90120" as well as newer shows such as “Dexter” and “Californication.”

Permalink to this article Post your comments

The BBC has announced that its popular iPlayer service has gone portable and will be compatible with a large list of portable devices, including the Apple iPod Touch and iPhone.

"This is the first time that you can play BBC iPlayer TV programmes on a range of portable media devices," says Anthony Rose on the official iPlayer blog.

Rose says the iPlayer will work on Sony Walkman E and S series, Archos 605 WIFI and Internet Media Tablet, Philips GoGear 52xx series, Samsung YP-P2 and YP-Q1 and Nokia N96 devices. The entire list, which is updated weekly, is available here.

Continue reading...

Permalink to this article Topic: Online video Post your comments

After first being announced at CES 2007, Sling Media has finally announced the availability of the SlingCatcher playback device, 18 months after its initial unveiling.

The SlingCatcher, according to Cnet is a "playback device that's designed to pull digital content from three sources and display them on your TV. It can play a variety of digital video files from an attached USB storage device (anything from a thumbdrive to a hard drive); display anything on your PC screen (including full-motion video) via the SlingProjector "screen scraping" software; and stream video from any source connected to a Slingbox (elsewhere in the house in high-resolution, or from a remote Slingbox source over the Internet at lesser quality)."

The SlingCatcher, especially with its $300 USD price tag, may seem like a niche product for the time being, but it stands to gain momentum when a few more features are upgraded.

Sling Media's has already introduced Sling.com which it calls a "premium library of movies, TV shows, and Web videos" which already has content deals with NBC, Fox, CBS, Showtime, Break.com, National Geographic, and MGM. Dave Zatz, a former Sling employee adds "SlingCatcher will eventually tap directly into Sling.com for some web video, perhaps partially taking the PC out of the mix."

Continue reading...

Permalink to this article Topic: Gadgets 2 comments

Last month we reported that Wal-Mart was shutting down its MP3 DRM servers, effectively killing off any music you have purchased from the retailer, unless you burn the music to CD and then rip it back DRM-free.

It appears the giant retailer has done an about face after public backlash and will keep the servers running at "the present time," according to Ravi Jariwala, a Walmart.com spokesman.

The decision follows that of both Yahoo and MSN who decided to shut down their servers and reversed the decision after public backlash.

"(Walmart.com) will continue to evaluate options and no decisions have been made at this point. In the meantime, we'll continue to offer MP3 downloads through our online music store and will assist with DRM issues for protected Windows Media Audio (WMA) files purchased from Walmart.com," added Jariwala.

Permalink to this article Topics: MP3 & Digital Audio Online music services 6 comments

Microsoft VP John Schappert has confirmed today at the Tokyo Game Show event that the Xbox 360 "New Xbox Experience (NXE)" dashboard revamp is coming on November 19th to 26 countries and in 19 languages.

The NXE will completely transform the intrerface of your console but the biggest change is the move to cover flow-esque navigation, working the same way Vista's Aero task switcher does. From there you can cycle through various channels (avatars, demos, new movies, Netflix, etc) and it appears there will be an expansion of channels, from the current 5.

NXE will certainly include Netflix support with the ability to stream over 15,000 movies, concerts and TV shows to your 360. You can also "stream the movie with up to seven other consoles in a 'party' you can also haul around the dashboard, in and out of movies or games."

Continue reading...

Permalink to this article Topic: Consoles 29 comments

According to an Xbit Labs report, the popular Xbox 360 console will be getting an external Blu-ray disc drive, and "soon."

The report says that Toshiba-Samsung Storage Technology Corp. has been contracted by Microsoft to begin manufacturing the drive and that it will sell for the cheap price of $100-150 USD, in an effort to stay competitive with the Sony PlayStation 3, which has a built-in Blu-ray drive.

Of course this isn't the first time that we have heard of Xbox 360 Blu-ray rumors but it is the first since June.

Microsoft did not comment on the report and has always maintained that their business model was geared towards digital downloads.

Permalink to this article Topics: Blu-ray Consoles HD DVD 32 comments

Yesterday we told you about a letter from the US Chamber of Commerce to President Bush in an effort to convince him to sign the annual attempt at draconian intellectual property enforcement legislation. The centerpiece of their argument to the President is a pair of oft-cited statistics claiming piracy has cost the US 750,000 jobs, as well as annual financial losses of $250 billion.

Now Ars Technica has published an interesting article that sheds a significant amount of light on the actual source of those figures and the closer you look, the less credible they look. That's not surprising considering $250 billion is more than the combined US revenue of the music, movie, and software industries. It's more than a little difficult to believe they're losing more than they're making.

A look at the sordid history of these numbers reveals just how useless they really are. To begin with they appear to have been extrapolated from the results of a survey compiled in the 1980s. The survey was conducted on a small sample of US businesses, with the resulting numbers then multiplied into an estimate of worldwide losses not from piracy, but from the IP laws in many countries, which are far less restrictive than in the US.

Continue reading...

Permalink to this article 22 comments

Google has announced they will be adding links to select media content on YouTube videos that will allow users to purchase music and games from both Amazon MP3 and iTunes.

The service, the YouTube eCommerce Platform began today and will be expanded internationally over the next few months.

"Our goal is to improve the overall YouTube experience by connecting consumers with relevant information and entertaining content," Chad Hurley, co-founder and CEO, YouTube, said in a statement. "The addition of retail links will enhance the viewing experience and allow people to engage more deeply with the content they want to consume."

Beginning today, on the pages of "authorized video content", Google will be placing embedded download links to the online music services of Amazon and Apple.

Continue reading...

Permalink to this article Topic: Online video 2 comments

Two days ago we reported that Real's new legal DVD ripper, RealDVD, was temporarily not available, but it appears now that the restraining order on the software will not be lifted until the district judge that placed it "learns from experts, including the court's, how the software functions."

RealNetworks claims that the software "allows consumers to securely store, manage and play their DVDs on their computers" and "does not enable users to distribute copies of their DVDs." It also mentions that RealDVD adds another layer of DRM to the ripped movies which makes it much harder to move to films off the computer that has the program installed.

The software will not reappear on Real's site or in stores until at least late November, which is the next time U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel will have a hearing.

"I am extending the temporary restraining order because I'm not satisfied in the fact that this technology is not in violation," Patel added. "There are serious questions about copyright violations. There are questions about violations of the (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and violations of these companies' agreement."

Continue reading...

Permalink to this article Topic: Lawsuits & Legislation 3 comments

In the recent years no internet music store has come even close to challenging iTunes for the number one spot. With generally every store selling songs and albums at the same price it's Apple, with the wide-spread iPod, who collects the money. However, now Sony BMG Music and Dada S.P.A. have decided to do something different by selling song for as cheap as 66 cents.

Dada.net offers consumers from the US a limited monthly download plan for a fee of $10. The user can download 15 songs from the selections of both Sony BMG Music and Universal Music Group. According to Sony, Dada.net will also feature in the future songs and artists from other major and indie labels.

The monthly fee of Dada.net will have to be paid as a part of your cell phone bill and therefore it doesn't work on all of the operators or mobile plans. Also currently the MP3s can be downloaded only to your computer, but downloading music directly to your phone will be made possible in the future.

Continue reading...

Permalink to this article Topic: Online music services 11 comments

Several times a year we see lobbyists and legislators in Washington trying to sell the Department of Justice on the idea of a so-called Copyright Czar. Such a position would essentially create a staff of pro bono lawyers to litigate what are currently civil cases for copyright holders (ie the music, movie, and software industries). Now they're getting heat from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which sent a letter to President Bush claiming IP infringement "has already caused the loss of an estimated 750,000 American jobs."

That's right. Of the 9.5 million Americans who are unemployed, nearly 8% have apparently been put out of work by pirates. At least if you believe the Chamber of Commerce figures.

Of course you'd be hard pressed to confirm that since the letter doesn't bother to list any sources for that figure. Nor does it explain exactly how it "poses a severe health and safety risk to consumers."

The letter was sent in support of a bill known as PRO-IP, or the "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act,” which is just the latest version of legislation that gets proposed annually and shot down just as routinely in one or both houses of Congress.

Permalink to this article Topic: Lawsuits & Legislation 29 comments

MySpace has announced that over 1 billion songs have been streamed so far through their newly launched MySpace Music service.

"We can confirm that we hit a milestone of one billion music streams only a few days after launching the new product," the company said in a statement. "More importantly, we are still compiling our metrics on engagement and unique users which will tell a much richer story on how positively the community is responding to the new music experience. We're excited to share more information and data as soon as it's available."

MySpace Music officially launched on September 25th, and includes the full catalogs of the Big 4 labels as well as many indie labels.

Although comparing the two is a far stretch (one is free, one is not), it is important to note that the iTunes store hit its five billionth song downloaded after five years in business whereas MySpace music hit 1 billion in a week.

Permalink to this article Topics: MP3 & Digital Audio Online music services 4 comments