JUNO SOUNDTRACK Blog

Filed under: General, Apple, Microsoft, iTunes

Steven Levy, author of “The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness” is on Boing Boing’s “Get Illuminated” podcast in the most recent episode.

Levy talks about Steve Jobs and the creation of the iPod (something he’s researched to a level unmatched), the Zune and why it’s a lousy device and, what the inevitable define bossa nova music could be.

It’s a worthwhile listen. Levy is a brilliant and articulate guy who practically burries himself in technology.

[via Boing Boing]

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summmer music

Filed under: News, RIAA, IFPI, BPI, Napster, eMusic, iTunes, Rhapsody, Zune Marketplace, Yahoo! Music

Jupiter Research has done some prognosticatin‘ and come to the conclusion that digital sales are going to keep on growing. In fact, if predictions hold true, digital sales will grow at a compounded rate of 16% per year, to a total of 2.5 billion dollars, or just over 22% of total US consumer spending on music.

Glenn Coolfer astutely observes, “Before you do any math, read a blog post about the survey by Jupiter analyst David Card. He explains something the press release does not: Jupiter did not count ringtone sales as digital revenues. He wrote, “Digital music sales will total 22 percent of US consumer music spending in 2011, and ring tones another 12 percent.” Combined with download spending, the adjusted digital figure mp3 melodije download free actually 34%. That leaves the CD with about 66% of the market.”

Subscription services are forecast to keep growing as well, with a staggering 32% compounded growth rate in just that category alone. Napster must be salivating but, frankly I don’t see it. Unless some major shift comes along and changes the subscription landscape, or the Major labels relent to an eMusic style model, I just don’t see how 32% growth in subscriptions is remotely possible.

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Filed under: News, General, Napster, eMusic

Cingular is set to launch cheap mp3 non-OTA music service for its mobile phones. Details are a bit sketch but, the new Cingular service will be vastly different than that of its mobile phone market competitors. Users will be able to download from three competing web services, Napster, Yahoo! Music and eMusic and transfer those tracks to their Cingular handset of choice via cable connection to a PC (Uh, wasn’t 3G supposed to make all these wires go away? Bluetooth? Wi-Fi?)

Cingular’s system breaks the mold set by other mobile operator backed services which have attempted to dive deep into your wallet while failing to mention that most handsets will happily play the Mp3’s you already own. It may be a bit old school but, Cingular’s service sounds like a good deal for end users, as opposed to a magic tool for removing dollars from customer’s wallets.

I’ve been pretty anti-mp3 phone in the past, and that hasn’t changed. I’m still unconvinced that you’ll get anything more than a substandard version of phone, mp3 player or both when you attempt to mix the two together in one device. For certain, it’s not as easy a recipe as peanut butter and chocolate. If you remove the crazy types of restrictions that most mobile providers use to hijack your wallet, a slightly sub par mp3 player/phone wouldn’t be a bad alternative to say, owning a “nice” PMP and a smaller ultra portable class player.

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