IMusic? Stunningly Magnificent.

And this Ladies and Gentlemen, is about as stunning as you get.

Apple IMusic simply has just turned the music business on its head to the benefit of listeners. 

It is superb.

Does it allow you to listen to any Album? Yes it does
Can you add to that to your music collection (my music) as if you own it? You can, unlimited
Can you buy the Album directly through Itunes? Yep although we're not sure why you would
Can you "follow" artists as in a Social Media way? Sure
Can you form playlists or listen to curated playlists by artists? Indeed, like the one Joni Mitchell just made
Is it easy and beautiful to navigate? It is, although like a new Fax machine, takes a day to get around it
Is there anything wrong with it? Not a bit

All for under 10 euro a month with a free 3 month trial which presumably, is designed to attract in those Spotify or Pandora users whom, quite frankly, it's hard to see why they'd move back.

If you have an Apple product it's there by now and you should simply sign up. 

That's objective recommendation too, because we have nothing to do with Apple but just thought it was something very cool.

What it will do is of course, lose revenue to Apple (and the artists) from downloads and replace that revenue with streaming subscriptions. Which probably, will mean less for everyone in the business. 

Although, the user benefits with every possible Album for a low cost.

On the other hand, it also democratises music, allowing you access to free new Albums that you'd never had bought you thought, but can now listen to and might stream. So it's great for new bands.

But it's a Wow. Really. Did you get that? A total, complete WOW.

Another boost today for Programmatic buying. This time from Apple.

The automation of the media marketplace by bringing buyers and sellers together online through RTB or 'programmatic buying' continues at pace and noting our post of only yesterday (follows below).

Today Apple announced it was extending its mobile advertising network to itunes radio via programmatic ad buying. Targeting includes the ability to cross reference customer mobile numbers and emails with market data - surely one that will worry privacy advocates.

Of course customers can 'opt out' but those that do, is tiny in number.

Brands can also get involved in customer match opportunities which if you use itunes, you'll know it well.

It's guessed that itunes radio has nearly 50 million users and it competes with the likes of Spotify. Apple's carplay will also surely give it momentum "in car", a key marketing tool for radio sellers as more and more 'connected cars' hit the market. Indeed, it's now standard on the likes of the new Suzuki Vitara.

More and more media owners are going to be forced to move to RTB. Simply, it WILL be the marketplace in time.

U2 New Album. It's free.

U2's new Album, 'Songs of Innocence' was released at The Apple Event with CEO Tim Cook. What's different about it is that immediately it went free to every itunes customer (500m) immediately.

Which is the largest album release of all time. Obviously.

It's on Itunes Radio and Beats music too but I've tried to find it and frankly, can't. But it's there.

And it's one hell of a promotion!
(but pretty hackneyed launch if you ask me.....)

Aereo loses, TV wins. Isn't this a bit like Napster?

So the US Supreme Court, on a 6:3 majority only, have ruled that Aereo is illegal. It reverses a lower court decision in favour of Aereo on appeal.

Aereo, as you'll note in other blog posts here, was the online re-broadcaster of TV stations content based on a 8/10 Dollar monthly subscription.

Had the ruling gone the other way (in favour of Aereo) it could have spelt the end of TV.

This is potentially a fatal blow to the online service. 

The problem was copyright violation and the fact that Aereo, by supplying some kit (an aerial etc), it was something different than simply "re broadcasting". Almost like a Video recorded function which was a key Aereo argument.

After all, video recorders re-broadcast content?

Anyway, losing means losing big.

For Aereo to survive now, it will now have to negotiate fees with those broadcasters who've been through court against them. And then, probably at a prohibitive price.....if at all. I don't think they'd even enter the conversation.

It does not affect the likes of Netflix or other streaming services. Equally it won't affect cloud services which store copyrighted content.

I have to say it reminded me of the whole furore over Sean Parker's Napster. It was the fastest growing business one-time with music downloads which the court shut-down.

And then along came Itunes and Parker returned with Spotify. Today he's worth circa 2 Billion usd.

So perhaps Aereo lost today and TV won. But then, perhaps it's only a matter of time......

Spotify just went free on Mobile. This is going to hurt.

Music streaming just got shot.

Spotify announced that its music streaming service will be free (yep, free) to mobile users. Now that's a real shot at Itunes Radio (which is free) as they prepare to launch fully. Other services will be really hit because you can't compete with free - only match it.

Spotify was previously 9.99 a month (spotify premium) but they did have a free version for desktop and laptop.

And they also announced to get more publicity, that they now had a whole lotta Led Zep online. For free. (Led Zep 4, cover above, is always thought to be their best moment btw).

The service will be supported by Advertising for revenue.

This will concern local radio stations with a music bias, who'll have difficulty in retaining online listeners too. 

Of course, Spotify will try to upsell you to ad-free versions and indeed other services such as 'on-demand'. But this is a breakthrough in the fight for listeners however, it's also a sign of a race to the bottom for all subscription services.

What's happening is, people are able or prepared to pay less so they're moving. If Spotify's subscription model was a roaring success, they wouldn't be doing this, trust me.

And will advertising pay for the music copyright fees and run the business? Difficult to see, but it is a model working for Facebook and starting to work for Twitter. 

One thing for sure though, it has killed the market.

Flipboard. Steve Jobs favourite App. And probably the best App in the world. Ever.

Cut a long story short...

My Iphone (5S 64 running ios 7) was choc full of music downloads. I know, it's a lot of Albums, but consequently I didn't have the phone capacity to download apps or really do anything. And there's no bigger phone.

So I got my fab iTunes Cloud account, transferred the albums off the phone, up to the cloud to stream/download in due course when I need to and now, my phone capacity was back.

So I downloaded Flipboard.

Now I had just forgotten how much my life had fallen apart without Flipboard. I had become a nervous wreck. Lonely, unstable. I stopped showering (okay, I'm exaggerating here, but you get the drift).

Instantly I got my techy stuff back, my music, my art, my books, my news, my videos...the upgrade is even better...if that was possible.

Flipboard's Mike McCue is a genius and although the Twitter App comes close, this is the best of them all. The image above is from Wired where they say Flipboard was a favourite App of Steve Jobs. That does not surprise me.

And it's free.

Treat yourself for Christmas.
Download it now and live again.

Budweiser is trying to own music. But then, isn't everyone.

Budweiser is trying to own music. But then, isn't everyone.

I know of a number of brands who are trying to get into this space with dedicated music channels for users. The problem is, they won't and don't own music - that's Spotify, ITunes and a myriad of dedicated online streamers.

Budweiser has got into business with Facebook (10m bud fans there) and Vice with what they call their 'Made for Music' campaign trying to connect music fans with Bud. It includes "behind the scenes" video and photos. They're also focussed on helping new bands break into the spotlight - or read that as they're not prepared to pay the costs of streaming established bands.

There's also a Budweiser music festival. 

There's nothing wrong with this per se - save the clear problems targeting music fans on Facebook who are under drinking age which has to be/should be a big big issue - except, if you're going to do it, do it right.

You need topline bands and artists that are available on the likes of Ireland's own, Muzu.tv. And music costs through royalties, big time. It's not cheap at the top end.

But there is no other way. Get into bed with a big established music online provider or frankly, don't do it.

It's just in danger of being as naff as it sounds.

Spotify. They've blazed a trail in music streaming and now face a huge challenge. So they turn to advertising and their first TV Commercial.

'We are Spotify, we are for music', sounds like the Pedigree Chum Campaign 'We are for dogs' and you can't help but see in Spotify's new, first, TV Campaign, influences from Apple advertising.

I have no understanding of their copyline either, "Music is worth fighting for"? Sounds like a copywriter trying to be evocative without making sense. 

However, the point is that this is Spotify's bid to get into US Homes through TV advertising, promoting its music streaming business before competitors enter the space. And the space is hotting up.

Apple, Amazon and most notably Google, are all primed to enter the Spotify space. Big players with big money.

Music Streaming is different to music downloading (as in ITunes) in that it allows you to listen to tracks for a standard subscription. 

Launched in Sweden in 2008, Spotify currently has over 20 million active members with about 6 million paying and has a valuation of circa 3 billion usd. So it's a relatively young start-up that has grown and has trail blazed a new segment of streaming music. All from a base in Sweden. Not bad at all really.

Its success hasn't gone unnoticed and hence they're now faced with big players coming into their market - always a problem for a start-up. If you're successful, others will follows. And hence therefore, this new TV Commercial to try to develop subscribers before the big boys get hold. Which is exactly the right thing to do, whether you like the commercial or not.

Spotify deserves the success either way. And turning to Advertising will help it now. But it's now faced with the challenge of its young life. 

Google to launch new Music streaming service. This giant is awakening.

Google really seem to have their heads up especially with the oncoming onslaught of glasses and their move into retail. It's almost like there's a new energy a Google, a new momentum?

According to the front page of this weekend's Financial Times, they're about to launch a music streaming service and The FT know because of the discussions taking place with big music labels. It will therefore compete with Deezer and Spotify.

Although there's an irony here because music labels didn't like google as they saw Search engines facilitating, music piracy.

Advertising accounts for about 95% of google's revenue so these type of services (and glasses) changes their revenue model to being based more on consumer income. No bad thing. 

Music streaming normally allows two price options - free, but be subject to advertising or, pay, and get premium music, ad-free service. With download you get to keep the tract and this "streaming" market is worth over 1.5 billion usd a year....at the moment.

Commercial music download concepts (like Apple's itunes) is different to streaming and Google already launched a US music download store in late 2011. They also have YouTube plans for subscription music services and others (such as travel, price comparisons and so on). 

Google can easily bring these services to the Nexus tablets and their Android phones (as Apple do with Itunes on iPhone). By scrutinising consumer habits and downloads, Advertising Agencies might be well prepared to get involved with this. It could be a valuable database.

But this will give Google another string to its bow. It seems a sleeping giant is awakening....and when it does, we will feel the roar.

HMV. Shares at 2p from £2.72. Debt of 220 million. Valued at £10 million from £1 billion. A brand that ignored digital is in a death spiral.

It was July 1921 when Edward Elgar (the 'Land of Hope and Glory' man) opened the first HMV ("His Master's Voice" which featured the famous logo and 'Nipper' the dog as above) store in Oxford Street, London, pictured below.

Elgar was the first composer to understand the "gramophone", as being a technology of the future.

The men behind the store, Williams and Owen, had founded 'The Gramophone Company' in 1897 to help spread the new technology (what was a recording device), and opening a shop to sell it, seemed to make sense. Ten years later they merged it with Columbia to create, Electric and Musical industries. EMI. Still one of the world's leading record labels and famous for signing The Beatles in the 60's.

Pioneers.

But today, it is the very threat of technology, that has brought about the demise of HMV. Internet digital sales, such as Itunes, has eroded sales on the high street and HMV stood by, like so many companies of old and watched it all happen. Who was in a better place to adopt online music when it began, than HMV? It was the music brand. Indeed, it was the DVD brand.

In 1984, Dublin's own, Bob Geldof, opened the flagship store on Oxford Street as the biggest music store in the world and it still is. I was in it many, many times. In 1998, HMV was spun off from EMI and sold to Advent International, a private equity house. In 2002, it floated on The London Stock Exchange at a 1 billion sterling valuation. Last Friday it was worth less than 10 million.

It now faces a breach of its banking covenants in January and therefore, "material uncertainty" of 220 million stg debt with 8 Banks. When you start to breach banking covenants, it's the start of a quick but slippy slope. I know. I've done it and it's the first big flag of impending doom.

Why is it happening?

Alan Giles CEO since 1999 said in 2004 he wouldn't "bet the company" on making the investment needed for digital because, "if we had bet the company then we would have lost it". Irony. They didn't make the investment and now they have lost it.

In fact, since he said it, the sales of "singles" has risen from 40m a year to 180m a year (!) almost entirely due to digital downloads. So talk about an opportunity lost.....

The Web now accounts for 60%+ of sales, HMV has about a 20% market share of UK sales and 5,000 staff losing about 36 million stg every 6 months and 176 million in net debt. The share price has gone to 2p, from £2.72.

Christmas accounts for 60% of all annual sales so these days right now, are critical to the future of HMV. However, it's unlikely they're going to make it.

Their online offering http://hmv.com/hmvweb/home.do is frankly, naff. Real "retailer built", rather than Social Media savvy. And they no longer have the money to make the investment they need to. 

And HMV is now irrelevant in a changing market landscape. Even today, it just isn't at the digital races. It's simply become extinct.

It is the story of a big brand that didn't get digital. Like their sister company, Waterstones, who let Amazon own books - or Blockbuster/Xtravision who let Netflix own video - or TV broadcasters who let The Huff Post own the news -  or Microsoft who let Apple own computing - they are the  story of the ongoing saga of dinosaurs in a world that's changed. There's no excuse either because even allowing them to miss the boat at the start, they've done little to catch up. It's appalling actually because that lack of thinking, might now cost 5,000 jobs.

Instead of walking away with some payments no doubt, the management team should be taken out and flogged. Publicly.

But herein lies a lesson for the other companies out there who have their heads in the sands. There still is lots of them and they will be replaced by this new order.

The Web is here, are you?

(I'm grateful for some of this content to Graham Ruddick's article at the beloved, The Sunday Telegraph)

Microsoft launch XBox Music. Too little, too late. Again.

 
Microsoft, who are famed for doing nothing really, have just unveiled their X Box music service, called.....XBox Music!

It's a competitor to Itunes with music streaming (30 milion tracks), downloading and indeed, Radio. 

It's free if you'll tolerate the Ads or it's a subscription service under 10 usd a month which allows you unlimited steaming which at the moment, is designed for Windows 8 only (so too bad if you're on Android or Mac) but that's all to come shortly. Equally too, a cloud based locker is in the pipeline for storage (and stats during the week on cloud services show it's really being adopted).

The purchase of songs operates exactly like Amazon or Itunes and it's ideally targeted at mobile devices - notably The Surface tablet which has caused such controversy.

Although they did previously have a music service called Zune, it was discontinued as it wasn't competing. 

I'm not a fan at all of Steve Ballmer CEO or of Microsoft.
They seem to do everything poorly and get to everything late without any innovation but rather, a "me too" service.

By putting commercial people in charge (Ballmer was a salesman whereas Gates was a techy) rather than techies, they lost their way. Not a mistake that Apple made with Jobs at the helm.

So here too is another example of a music service that's late and rolled out in a limited way - not fully thought through.

It seems to me that Microsoft needs a shake up if it's ever going to reachieve its glory days as world-dominant. Today, Apples's Iphone business alone, is bigger than Microsoft.

This launch won't make the slightest change in that.

Apple Iphone 5 about to launch. Their secret Iradio launched discovered. And this is much, much bigger.

 

Next week, Apple's CEO Tim Cook will unveil, what we now know, will be called The Apple Iphone 5. This is Apple's next generation phone to compete with Samsung's Galaxy S3 launched earlier in June and of course, facing possible bans in the US after Apple's victorious court case which I blogged about here: http://streamabout.blogspot.ie/2012/08/court-ruling-apple-persist-samsung.html . 

It will also be compared Nokia's Lumia 930, launched this week, although the mobile phone pioneer, Nokia, has had its shares cut to "junk status". So hardly a competitor.

What we didn't know, was that Apple was secretly working on the launch of iradio, as big a gamble as itunes - but more of that in a minute.

The Apple Iphone 5 we know very little about except strong rumours. 

It's going to be taller than the current iphone with therefore, a taller screen and about 30% thinner. The connector gadget is getting smaller, with the connectors getting better, giving much faster wireless and ultimately, quick 4G connections. It's likely to have more RAM and a faster processor - so generally just a better phone.

More importantly, reports strongly suggest that Apple is planning its own internet radio service allowing it to compete in the music streaming business against people like Pandora, We7 (UK owned by Tesco) and Spotify.

What would happen is that people select tracks from a 'catalogue' and play them continuously via an internet feed or, more likely, it will feed you music based on your interests (as distinct from actually picking the track).

Rather than owning them or downloading them as in the itunes model, you get continuous radio based on what you like. 

Depending on whether Apple choose to go for the model where customers pick their tracks or instead, feeding them music based on interests, they will be a direct head-to-head with Pandora/Spotify. 

Spotify (where you pick your own tracks) loses money quite heavily due to music licensing issues whereas by feeding out music based on listener interests (Pandora), it has been much more successful.

Most of us know the type of music we like but don't know what we want. So developing internet radio based on a indication of preferences, seems to make sense. 

Other similar business saw share prices fall dramatically Friday, on foot of the news. Apple is such a good company, nobody wants to see it enter into the same space and even talk of Apple entering into online radio saw Pandora shares drop 18%. I think the radio option makes more sense (streaming you music based on your preferences) and indeed it's not that long ago when I chatted to Irish radio businessman, Dermot Hanrahan, who outlined exactly the same vision. Yet again, ahead of his time.

Online radio, iradio by Apple, will be a world beater and by being deeply integrated into their products, such as the Iphone 5, will guarantee distribution. Furthermore, if they get a lot of listeners to their iradio, it will also generate sales on itunes, as when listeners hear a track they like, they might want to buy it.

Great business.

Unlike the giants of old, Microsoft as a clear example, Apple do not sit on their hands. Innovation and invention precedes their greatness.

Digital Libraries getting investment. It's an opportunity of a lifetime. The book version of itunes.

The advent of ebooks and online distribution has opened up a whole new world for libraries and indeed, for business.

The Digital Public Library of America has just announced an investment of 1 million usd to help make library materials available online. Now while this is intended as a public archive project, it symbolises what's going on with ebooks and libraries online.


Having books online, not only frees up the physical needs (and costs) of building libraries, but brings books to a whole new readership. It makes them easily accessible which has knock on effects of positive literacy (if that's how you spell it) never mind, bringing libraries into the digital age.


Simply, you could "borrow" or rent an ebook for say, 7 days and after that it's deleted from your reader. Not unlike if you buy an ebook by mistake, they can automatically delete it. Over Wifi or 3G, the library has control over your reader and it can automatically withdraw books. Something similar could be done commercially, no problem.


Now that's a magnificent opportunity commercially if it's not provided by the State or "goodwill" companies such as the Digital library of America. Imagine, for example, a "rent a book" website - not unlike the way you rent movies on itunes.

If you're a member of a library currently, you'll know the hassle of returning books and indeed, the issue with library admin in making sure that you do. With a digital library, all of those issues disappear. You're just renting the book until it's due back and when it is, it disappears. Plus renting a book will be significantly less expensive than buying it.


Plus you develop large groups of readers who'd like possibly to buy newspapers, magazines, accept ads from coffee shops and so on.

Copyright is of course an issue but already libraries work within that problem. Plus if a rent-a-book website is successful, it will drive publishers into it. In the same way that music publishers withheld support from itunes...until they couldn't because it became too strong to avoid.


Libraries loan you books, you read them, you return them. Nothing changes except it's all done online.

You can imagine too the improvements in Search, where finding your book is quick and efficient, without the need to call into your library and wander through shelf after shelf. Ordering books in advance is made easy too and membership is simple ecommerce enabled. A fee, paid online by debit/credit card.


It's likely that this will become a major hit, in my view and encourage people, to read, notably the young. Apart from that, it also means published works will be archived and available online forever - no more "out of print" for example.

"I love libraries" is on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ILoveLibraries but with a relatively poor 43,000 likes. Pity.

Digital libraries make sense with the development of ebooks.
The only downside is that '50 shades' will be an even bigger hit.
Ah well, it will be worth it.