Music sales via Apple’s iTunes Store have dropped about 14 percent since the start of the year. Meanwhile, streaming services now supply one-third of the recorded music revenue in the U.S. The total number of streams reported for services such as Spotify and Pandora have increased 46 percent this year over 2013. This shift may be one reason behind Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats Electronics. The company is reportedly planning to relaunch Beats next year as a part of iTunes. Continue reading Streaming Services Grow While iTunes Music Sales Decline

Qualcomm has acquired Wilocity, a Sunnyvale, California-based startup that works with a high-speed wireless technology called WiGig, which operates at a much higher frequency than Wi-Fi. WiGig has been considered as a potential replacement to wires for sending videos between components in the same room. It could transfer multiple 4K video streams, while Wi-Fi can only handle one. The bet is that WiGig will also become a standard feature on smartphones and other mobile devices. Continue reading Qualcomm Acquires Wilocity in Pursuit of WiGig Technology

Netflix is building its own customized server boxes to deal with the massive volume of streaming content to millions of users. But the company is also considering new “off the shelf” technologies that could be less costly and more efficient. Netflix is working with hardware companies such as Western Digital to develop new technologies and design methods to improve performance and deal with the massive data traffic that Netflix experiences. Continue reading How Netflix Decides on Building or Buying for Infrastructure