Online digital music sales growth has dropped off substantially in recent years, causing record companies and Apple to look for new ways to encourage music discovery and purchase.
According to anonymous sources, Apple could secure deals with music companies as early as mid-November to create an ad-supported music streaming service.
Positioned as a radio service to rival Pandora, Apple’s music offering will be available on its iPhone, iPad and iPod touch as apps instead of using a Web browser. It could reportedly come to devices in the first three months of 2013.
Apple is pushing hard in licensing discussions, trying to get more flexibility and earlier access to new releases, which could provide an edge over Pandora.
“Apple’s negotiations with record labels have centered around advertising, the [sources] said. In addition to an upfront fee, record companies are seeking a percentage of ad sales and the ability to insert their own commercials for artists,” Bloomberg reports. “Apple sees the service as a way to grow its iAd mobile advertising platform, and is exploring ways to integrate iAd with iTunes to steer customers back to iTunes.”
“If Apple offers a radio product, it will be far superior to anything else on the market,” says Rich Greenfield, a BTIG LLC analyst who recommends selling Pandora shares. “They’re seeking direct licenses to avoid all the restrictions that come with a compulsory license.”
Nathan Myhrvold, the former Microsoft CTO who currently runs Intellectual Ventures, has been issued a patent for a system that could prevent people from printing objects via 3D printers using designs for which they have not paid.
“The patent, issued [October 9] by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, is titled ‘Manufacturing control system’ and describes methods for managing ‘object production rights,'” reports Technology Review.
“The patent basically covers the idea of digital rights management, or DRM, for 3D printers,” explains the article. “As with e-books that won’t open unless you pay Barnes & Noble and use its Nook reader, with Myhrvold’s technology your printer wouldn’t print unless you’ve paid up.”
However, there is a caveat to consider since manufacturers are not required to use DRM.
According to ETCentric staffer Phil Lelyveld: “The patent appears to be incredibly broad, but as the article says it only applies to 3D printers that implement DRM technology.”
The patent goes beyond 3D printing to include additive manufacturing. “It also covers using digital files in extrusion, ejection, stamping, die casting, printing, painting, and tattooing and with materials that include ‘skin, textiles, edible substances, paper, and silicon printing,'” notes the article.
In a discussion of the IP implications of the maker movement, Wired editor Chris Andersen said, “I can tell you with certainty I’m going to be sued. I’m going to be sued sooner or later — hopefully later.”
“That inevitability, though,” the Atlantic writes, “is part of the organic disruption the Internet has brought about. ‘This is what the web does,’ Anderson said: ‘You’re incentivized to try things out, to iterate, to throw it out there and see what happens.’ And that kind of freewheeling invention is bound to butt heads with a system that stridently emphasizes the ‘property’ aspect of ‘intellectual property.'”
The article continues, “In forums where makers — ‘hobbyists turned entrepreneurs turned, you know, megalomaniacs’ — discuss IP issues, Anderson said, one thing becomes clear: ‘The simple answer is no one knows what the rules are.'”
Anderson is promoting his new book “Makers: The New Industrial Revolution.” During Thursday’s talk, he discussed new partnerships forming between makers and established tech and manufacturing firms. Anderson also detailed what he considers the two approaches to patent litigation.
“You can either do a patent search and find out whether you’re going to violate a patent” — and “you probably won’t get a good answer.” Then, “if you do then violate a patent, the fact that you did a search first actually increases your liability.”
Or “you can do what we do, which is just: Do it. Wait for the [cease-and-desist] letter. When the letter comes, try to innovate around it,” Anderson said. “If the trolls come after us, one of us is going to be brave enough to fight back. And the courts will ultimately decide.”
Microsoft has been making moves to compete with Amazon and Apple in multimedia content, redesigning and ramping up its music and video offerings.
“The evolution of Music and Video begins up front, where the apps have shed their Zune branding. Instead, Microsoft chose to reuse the Xbox brand, as the company moves to expand the scope of the Xbox name from gaming to all media and entertainment,” Ars Technica writes.
At first glance, the Xbox Music and Video applications are very similar. “In both apps, the first/main screen is dominated by Microsoft’s attempts to sell to you,” the post states, introducing a reoccurring theme in Microsoft’s multimedia offerings. “Users are greeted by a mix of promotional areas that highlight ‘hot’ artists or movies, and entryways into the music, movie, and TV stores. Your own media are hidden out of view to the left.”
Browsing your own content in the apps is difficult. For video, there are a bunch of unscalable thumbnails and faulty filters that make searching difficult; for music, the spreadsheet layout is “extraordinarily slow” and lacks a “fast scroll” mechanism like an alphabetical sidebar.
“One smart feature: when Music is playing, the volume popup that appears when you use the hardware volume keys also includes playback controls and album art. It’s a nice touch,” the post states. “One not at all smart feature: the play/pause key on keyboards with media keys doesn’t control playback of the Music app. Want to quickly pause playback to take a phone call? You’ll have to go into the app to do it.”
Ars Technica also details Microsoft’s Pandora competitor: “Xbox Music offers free streaming of a claimed 30 million songs available through the service. The streaming is free and unlimited, albeit ad-supported, for six months. After six months, you’ll be restricted to 10 hours a month.”
Android will be running on 2.3 billion computers, tablets and smartphones by the end of 2016, according to a new report from Gartner.
By that same time, 2.28 billion devices are expected to be running Windows. “That compares to an expected 1.5 billion Windows devices by the end of this year, against 608 million using Android,” reports Reuters, noting a significant shift is anticipated for the future of this technology sector.
Android has seen rapid adoption as a smartphone and tablet platform. The operating system also helps Google push its main search business.
“Worldwide shipments of personal computers fell by over 8 percent in the third quarter, the steepest decline since 2001, as more consumers flock to increasingly powerful tablets and smartphones for more basic computing,” explains Reuters.
“Microsoft’s Windows has dominated the personal computer industry for decades, but the company has struggled to keep up with shift to wireless, and in smartphones its market share is around 3 percent.”
Google has a tradition of releasing research papers detailing the software it uses to drive its online services, allowing open source projects to take advantage of its ideas.
A relatively new project from Google called F1 is a regional database management system (RDBMS), which the search giant uses to run its online ad system in conjunction with Spanner.
Google only revealed F1 last May and has yet to release a paper on the technology, but Silicon Valley startup Cloudera has already created its own open source version, called Impala.
Cloudera hired Marcel Kornacker, one of the main engineers on the F1 project, and has been working on Impala for two years. “Impala is a means of instantly analyzing the massive amounts of data stored in Hadoop,” an open source platform for spreading and crunching data, explains Wired.
Hadoop is used as a batch processing platform for various data-crunching tasks. Cloudera has brought Hadoop to the business world and now aims to more efficiently use the platform with Impala.
“With open source tools such as Hive, you can also analyze Hadoop data in much the same way you would query a traditional database using the common Structured Query Language, or SQL,” notes the article. “Impala lets you query the same data ‘in real-time’ — i.e., in seconds. According to Cloudera, it’s 10 times faster than a tool like Hive.”
Cloudera is four years old, but is only just starting to build “what I wanted to build when we started the company,” says founder Jeff Hammerbacher.
GoPro recently launched its new Hero 3 action cam lineup — three HD cameras that are 30 percent smaller and 25 percent lighter than the previous models.
The rugged new cameras, designed for extreme sports and outdoor enthusiasts, feature built-in Wi-Fi, boosted frame rates and 4K resolution (for one model).
“The latest cameras aren’t just your average next-gen improvements over the predecessors, either: GoPro has added a slew of new features that completely evolve the Hero,” reports Digital Trends.
The 1080p lineup comes in three different models: the $200 5MP white edition, $300 11MP silver edition and $400 12MP black edition (which also shoots at 60 fps). All three models include built-in Wi-Fi.
The black edition is capable of shooting 4K resolution when the frame rate is dropped to 12 fps.
“The question you have to ask, of course, is whether that’s useful at all,” notes Digital Trends. “Shooting at this resolution means, in addition to a low frame rate (hello, choppy video), your camera is creating massive files.”
A study from security protection company AVG surveyed 4,400 consumers from 11 countries and found that one-fourth of users aged 18-25 are friends with their bosses on Facebook.
Consumers in Italy and the U.S. were more likely to friend their bosses (33 percent) compared with the small eight percent of French participants.
“The study also revealed that 60 percent of Facebook users in the 18-25 age range who are Facebook friends with colleagues do not restrict any content from them,” reports Mashable. “Topping the list of the countries with the least restrictive users is Japan (73 percent do not restrict), followed by the Czech Republic (70 percent), New Zealand (67 percent) and the UK (66 percent).”
One in eight young adults reported having posted abusive content about their employers online.
“Our research shows that a good percentage of young adults between the ages of 18-25 do not filter personal or professional data or pictures that are posted online,” says Tony Anscombe, AVG’s senior security evangelist.
“They need to pay closer attention to how they interact with their bosses, colleagues and friends via social channels, and ensure they don’t negatively impact their future by sharing information in a careless manner,” he suggests.
Stamped is a startup launched a year-and-a-half ago to create “a new kind of review site that allowed people to discover and share their favorite things to read, listen to or eat,” reports AllThingsD.
Recently, the company was acquired by Yahoo for an undisclosed amount, so Stamped will close up shop by the end of the year and move to offices in New York.
“In a note on the company’s website, the founders of the team, which includes a handful of ex-Googlers, said: ‘We’re excited to start work again on something big, mobile, and new — but we can’t discuss the details just yet. And we’re really stoked to be able to hire lots of talented engineers and designers for this new project,'” notes the article.
The acquisition is Yahoo’s first under new CEO Marissa Mayer and reflects her strategy to invest in mobile with smaller, sub-$100 million deals.
Stamped had attracted some top name investors including Eric Schmidt, Ellen DeGeneres, Justin Bieber, Ryan Seacrest, Columbia Records and more.
JVC has announced its LED edge-lit 55-inch smart TV. Bundled with 4 pairs of passive 3D glasses, the new model will run $1,300 when it becomes available in January.
“When JVC merged with its subsidiaries to form JVC Kenwood Corps, many assumed — and the company’s public statements indicated — that it would be narrowing its focus, directing its attention towards home and car audio, and effectively ceding the TV market to its competitors,” notes Digital Trends.
“It has certainly spun a 180 by announcing its new 55-inch JLE55SP4000 XinemaView 3D HDTV. Further confounding industry analysts is the fact that the TV is just the initial entry in an entire line, which the company is calling BlackSapphire.”
Specifications include built-in Wi-Fi, a QWERTY keyboard, 1080p full HD and 120Hz refresh rate, built-in woofer and 45 watts of output power.
The set features USB, HDMI, component and composite inputs and comes pre-loaded with Netflix, Vudu, YouTube and Pandora.
“The TV has onboard 802.11n wireless and boasts a number of apps including, uniquely, the Slingbox Player,” reports CNET in its review. “This is the first TV that enables users to serve content from a Slingbox in another room, or anywhere in the world.”
LG recently held a launch event to debut its first Ultra HD television. The company says the 4K smart 3D TV will be offered for $19,999.
“The LG 84LM9600 has a native screen resolution of 3840 x 2160, four times the resolution of a typical 1080p television,” reports Digital Trends. “The 84-inch LED Ultra HD panel also includes LG’s proprietary ‘Resolution Upscaler Plus’ technology to up-convert 1080p content to the Ultra HD resolution.”
For gaming, the TV allows two people to compete in a multiplayer game without the need for split screen. “Using glasses that are sold separately, the television is simultaneously displaying two video feeds and each pair of glasses is designed to pick up a specific feed,” explains the post.
LG’s Ultra HD set will ship bundled with six pairs of flicker-free 3D glasses. The TV also includes a 2D-to-3D conversion feature.
“While the massive panel is just 1.57-inches thick, the television is over 150 pounds in weight plus another 25 pounds for the stand,” writes Digital Trends.
The set features built-in Wi-Fi, LG’s gesture system with Magic Remote, four HDMI inputs, three USB 2.0 inputs, and a 10-speaker system rated at 50 watts.
“The television ties into LG’s Smart TV ecosystem, so consumers will have access to plenty of applications like Netflix, Facebook, Vudu, Skype and Hulu Plus,” adds the post.
LG says the sales price in stores may eventually be closer to $16,999. The only comparable Ultra HD TV to be offered this year is Sony’s 84-inch model, which lists on the Sony site at $24,999.
Redbox Instant, Coinstar’s new venture with Verizon, has secured a deal with Warner Bros. to distribute digital movies.
Warner Bros. becomes the first studio partner for the upcoming subscription streaming and rental service created to compete with Netflix and Amazon.
“This agreement fits perfectly with Redbox Instant by Verizon’s vision for bringing people the movies that matter, wherever and whenever they choose, using the devices and media they prefer, at home or away,” says Shawn Strickland, CEO of Redbox Instant by Verizon.
In a separate multi-year deal, DVD titles released between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2014 will come to Redbox kiosks 28 days after their retail release dates. Warner initially pursued a 56-day delay, which Redbox avoided by buying discs from retailers for day-and-date distribution.
“The Instant by Verizon digital service, which is set to launch later this year, can support and distribute Warner Bros. UltraViolet-enabled pics, a key part of the overall deal given Redbox’s easy interface with consumers,” reports Variety. “Redbox also announced plans to join the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem industry group to promote UltraViolet through marketing and promotions.”
“Streaming titles will be available in VOD and electronic sell-through format, and the pact covers a multi-year SVOD pact supporting feature-length content,” notes the article.
Local TV stations have collected $1.15 billion in political ad spending as of the end of September, reports analysts at Wells Fargo.
When considering network and national ads, the total increases to $1.33 billion. The total for September alone in local ads was $304.6 million.
“Of the $1.15 billion spent through September 30 at the local-station level, 42.2 percent was on presidential campaigns; 36.9 percent for congressional; 17.7 percent on ballot issues; and 3.2 percent ‘driven by’ presidential and senatorial advertising,” details TV Technology.
The top markets with the most exposure as a percentage of market revenue include Butte-Bozeman, Montana; Great Falls, Montana; Sioux City, Iowa; Davenport, Iowa and Glendive, Montana.
“Sinclair, Gray Television, LIN TV and NBC-owned stations have the most exposure in hot political markets,” notes the post.
The top markets in terms of absolute dollars include Washington, D.C.; Cleveland, Ohio; Las Vegas, Nevada; Tampa, Florida and Orlando, Florida.
“NBC, News Corp., CBS and Sinclair have the most exposure in these larger markets,” explains TV Technology.
The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences held its 64th Primetime Emmy Engineering Awards last week in Hollywood.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) both received Engineering Emmys.
“A first for the 92-year-old ASC, its Emmy was awarded for its ‘ASC Color Decision List,’ a development of the society’s technology committee that is used to communicate consistent color information from a shoot through postproduction — enabling cinematographers to create and maintain an artistic look,” writes Carolyn Giardina for The Hollywood Reporter.
“AMPAS was recognized for the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), a standards-based color management architecture designed for the production, mastering and long-term archiving of motion picture and television (non-live broadcast) content.”
Additionally, Kodak was honored with the Philo T. Farnsworth Award for the company’s contributions to the television industry. Richard Green, founder and former president and CEO of Cable Television Laboratories, was given the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award.
“During the ceremony, the participants also paid tribute to last year’s Charles F. Jenkins Award winner, industry visionary Bob Lambert, who passed away last month,” writes Giardina. “Lambert had been unable to attend the 2011 ceremony, and a clip from his recorded acceptance was played in his memory.”
During SMPTE’s annual conference this week, Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood suggested game consoles and DVR devices will soon no longer be dominant players in the television realm, as users shift to streaming players and smart TVs.
Wood said that he sees television heading in a direction in which the “end point is where any piece of video is available in any language, anywhere [via streaming]. That is the world we are heading to.”
He added that although game consoles dominate the current streaming market, their lack of growth will hurt them as consumers shift to smart TVs and streaming players. Of course, this supports his self-interest as CEO of steaming player maker Roku, and the release of new game systems within the next few years could change the “flat” growth Wood mentions.
He also said DVRs are “going to go away. That is a stepping stone.” He suggests the DVR will first go to the cloud, and then will simply become integrated into the new on-demand world of television.
Wood also discussed Roku’s newest product, the Roku Streaming Stick. The $100 device is about the size of a USB flash drive and connects devices to Roku’s streaming services.
