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Posts Tagged ‘music-streaming’

When Jason Kincaid tried out the iPhone app online music streaming startup Grooveshark built and showed off in July 2009, he wrote that it was great but that he “wouldn’t expect this to pop up in the App Store any time soon”. He was right on both counts.

Grooveshark now says it has given up on its ambitions to get approved for the official App Store, claiming that Apple has been “ritually rejecting” the app for “primary selfish reasons”. We’ve heard that song before.

The startup says it spent many months developing the iPhone application, and on occasion went months without a hearing a peep out of Cupertino.

Denied access to the App Store, Grooveshark decided to head underground and is today releasing the app on Cydia, enabling people who have jailbroken their iPhone and iPod touch devices to enjoy it – and it is actually pretty cool.

Much like Spotify – who, for the record, has seen its iPhone app approved by Apple – premium aka VIP users of Grooveshark can use the app to search for tracks within a gigantic catalog of music at lightning speed and instantly stream them from the device. Playlists, favorites and whatnot are completely synced, so the experience for paying Grooveshark users who happen to have a jailbroken device are now able to basically get the exact same experience on their iPhone or iPod touch than using the recently revamped Web application.

The app also enables you to make tracks and entire playlists available offline, so you can enjoy the music even without the need to be connected.

All in all, it’s simply a great application that many would love to have to their iPhones, I’m sure.

At the very least, for those people there now exists an option to get it installed on there, despite Apple. Or they can just go out and buy any rival device that runs Android, or go get a Blackberry, or purchase a recent Palm phone …

Earlier this week, news broke that the EU was opening an antitrust investigation into Google — and Microsoft’s fingerprints were all over it. One of the three companies filing complaints about Google is owned by Microsoft, while another is a member of a group that’s partially funded by them. Google promptly responded to the inquiry with a blog post called “Committed to competing fairly” that gave a brief overview of how its search rankings work.

Today, Microsoft has written a blog post that admits that it played a part in instigating the inquiry, stating that “complaints in competition law cases usually come from competitors.” And it’s also accusing Google of “telling reporters that antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors.”

Microsoft’s post, which was written by VP and Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner, details some of the company’s recent discussions with the European Commission and US DOJ, which have revolved around the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal (which, in turn, led to talk about Google’s allegedly anticompetitive practices). Heiner also notes that Microsoft has been directing other “concerned companies” to competition law agencies.

Here are some of the more interesting passages:

As Google’s power has grown in recent years, we’ve increasingly heard complaints from a range of firms—large and small—about a wide variety of Google business practices. Some of the complaints just reflect aggressive business stances taken by Google. Some reflect the secrecy with which Google operates in many areas. Some appear to raise serious antitrust issues. As you might expect, many concerned companies have come to us and asked us for our reaction and even for advice. When their antitrust concerns appear to be substantial, we suggest that firms talk to the competition law agencies. (Complaining to Microsoft won’t do much good.)

Both search and online advertising are increasingly controlled by a single firm, Google. That can be a problem because Google’s business is helped along by significant network effects (just like the PC operating system business). Search engine algorithms “learn” by observing how users interact with search results. Google’s algorithms learn less common search terms better than others because many more people are conducting searches on these terms on Google.

These and other network effects make it hard for competing search engines to catch up. Microsoft’s well-received Bing search engine is addressing this challenge by offering innovations in areas that are less dependent on volume. But Bing needs to gain volume too, in order to increase the relevance of search results for less common search terms. That is why Microsoft and Yahoo! are combining their search volumes. And that is why we are concerned about Google business practices that tend to lock in publishers and advertisers and make it harder for Microsoft to gain search volume.

Although Sweden-born streaming music startup Spotify has done well in Scandinavian countries it would appear to now have a local competitor in the shape of a new service launching in Norway.

Tech companies Aspiro and Platekompaniet have teamed up with telco Telenor to launch a music streaming service for Norwegian users. That’s all fine and dandy. However, someone there needs to go to marketing 101 classes as the service is called WiMP. Yes, I can just imagine myself “WiMPing out” at my Oslo pad listening to music…

Comcast is in discussions with partners to offer a music streaming service to its customers as an à la carte offering, we’ve heard from multiple sources. For an additional monthly charge of $5 or more, users will be able to stream on demand music online via a website and on their TV via their cable box.

For the last 18 months a Danish ISP called TDC has been offering customers in that country the ability to stream music online as part of their basic ISP packages ranging from $47 to $65 per month. From what we’ve heard from our friends in Denmark, the service is very popular.

The Comcast service would offer users the ability to stream music without any additional charges. Services like MySpace Music, Spotify and MOG (and the late iMeem) offer similar services today, but not through the cable box.

In the past we’ve said that the music industry’s last stand will be a music tax, and they’ll aim for the ISP’s when they finally try to convince governments to do it. Comcast’s planned service isn’t a music tax, and presumably it will be an optional add on to normal Comcast ISP and cable TV services. Still, I can see a time in the not too distant future that we’re all paying $5/month for music via our ISPs. Whether we choose to or not.

You like music, right? How about CDs?

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Giveaway: Olive No 4 Hi-Fi Digital Stereo

Amazon.com has dropped the price of Assassin’s Creed II for Xbox 360 and PS3 down to $39.78, today only.

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CrunchDeals: Assassin’s Creed II for $40

Did you know: CIA agents wear Rolex watches so they can “trade” their way out of sticky situations! That’s why an unnamed CIA agent bought this watch in Europe back in 1977 and now it can be yours.

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Get you a CIA Rolex

The much hyped music streaming service Spotify has extended its mobile reach significantly today with the release of an app for phones powered by the Nokia-led Symbian operating system.

This follows earlier clients for both iPhone and Android and means that the service will now be accessible on millions more handsets from Nokia, obviously, along with Sony Ericsson and Samsung which also support the platform.

Unfortunately, for once users in the U.S. will have to wait longer as Spotify has delayed the launch of it’s service there until the new year.

Phones powered by Symbian far outstrip the iPhone and Android (for now) in Europe where Spotify is currently available. Today’s release should see the company strike further carrier deals or at least extend their current offering with mobile network 3, leading to more ‘back door’ or ‘feels like free’ premium subscriptions.

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How bad are things getting for music streaming startups? We knew that imeem was on the verge of shutting down before getting a last-minute cash infusion from some of its investors, but an SEC filing from Warner Music adds some more details about exactly how dire imeem’s situation is, as well as that of another music startup, Lala.

Warner Music Group, an investor in both imeem and Lala, thinks they are no longer worth much, if anything at all. It wrote down its entire investment in imeem and half of its investment in Lala in the most recent quarter. As detailed in its 10Q report filed with the SEC, it took a $16 million charge to write down its investment in imeem, and an $11 million charge to write down part of its investment in Lala, plus it took another $4 million charge to write down a bad debt from imeem which it never expects to collect. That comes to a total of $33 million down the digital music drain.

The reason imeem is in such dire financial straits is because of the crushing payments to music labels it has to dole out for every song streamed from its site. It has renegotiated its deals with the labels to pay on a revenue-per-user basis instead of per stream, and Warner’s filing hints at why it had to do so. It appears that imeem had simply stopped paying those per-stream fees, which would explain the $4 million in bad debt. And that was just for one quarter for one label. No wonder imeem nearly ran out of cash. It had to stop paying its bills.

According to comScore, imeem’s U.S. traffic has come down about 25 percent off its peak last July. As of March, 2009 it was at 5.3 million unique visitors in the U.S. and 24 million worldwide. In the perverse world of music streaming licensing, the bigger your audience, the more money you lose.

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One of the reasons that Internet music streaming services Pandora , imeem and Last.fm have been able to build large audiences is because they are run by people who have a passion for music. Or should I say, a passion for music beyond pop music. With Goom Radio , I’m not so sure

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Goom Gets $16 Million To Litter Web Radio With Beyonce And DJs