MySpace has just announced a high-profile move into the digital music retailing space, to compete head-on with Apple’s iTunes. It’s called MySpace Music, and is a joint venture with major labels Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. They’re describing it as a “fully integrated 360 degree global music solution”. Whatever that is.No, I’ll tell you what it is. It goes beyond MySpace’s existing music features - streaming tracks on bands’ profiles - and is basically a platform for artists and labels to sell music and other content on the MySpace Music site, on band profiles, and through regular MySpace users’ profiles too. It includes DRM-free song downloads (so they’ll work on your phone), but also a mobile storefront run by Jamba, which like MySpace is owned by News Corporation.
In short: you’ll be able to buy full-tracks, ringtones and wallpapers from your favourite bands’ MySpace profiles, as well as non-mobile products like t-shirts and gig tickets. It’s all rolling out over the next few months, and since it’s global, it’ll work for us Brits too. It’s a big deal for MySpace and the music industry, although in truth, for us music fans it’s just a (theoretically) easier way to get all this stuff from one place.
Hey, I wonder whether MySpace Music will be available on phones too? MySpace has a mobile site, after all…
Apple may be about to join the likes of Nokia and Omnifone by offering an ‘all you can eat’ download service for the iPhone and iPod so reports the Financial Times. According to the FT’s insider tipster, the story goes that Apple is in talks with music labels as part of a plan to spur sales for iPhones and iPods but has come up against a brick wall with executives who feel that Apple’s suggested $20 per year subscription is far too low. If Apple is unwilling to budge, there may be no deal at all and hence no all ‘you can eat’ service, at least for now.
The other side of the tale is that Apple is also considering a more conventional subscription based model with a monthly fee which certainly makes sense for contract locked devices such as the iPhone. There is all sorts of speculation swirling around the internet about this today, though as is typical, Apple has not supplied any official comment.
Our guess is it isn’t a matter of if but when and it’s interesting to see how mobile music services, such as Omnifone, may be starting to have an impact on how the business model for digital music at large evolves.
(Via Apple Insider)
File this under ‘Highly speculative’, but it’s so juicy I couldn’t resist posting it. Wireless Watch Japan has a theory that Apple may choose to sell its iPhone in Japan via the soon-to-launch Disney MVNO.
Why? The site suggests that Apple’s favoured revenue share agreement (it takes a percentage of voice and data revenues from iPhone subscribers on its partner operators) won’t go down too well with the established Japanese operators, but may be appealing for Disney as a way of launching its MVNO with a bang.
Meanwhile, beyond Mickey, Donald and the rest, Disney has plenty of movies and music which could be sold through Apple’s iTunes Store for iPhone users. WWJ says it has other evidence that such a deal is likely, but has buried it behind its subscription wall, so I can’t tell you what it is.
Realistic? Apple and Disney working together would be a formiddable partnership, but one with several titanic egos involved. Furthermore, I wonder if Disney would be happy to subsume its branding to Apple’s - the prospect of an iPhone with a Disney logo on it is near-unthinkable. Still, this is one rumour to watch in the coming months.
(via Wireless Watch Japan)
Apple is clearly pitching the iPhone as “Your New Primary Music Device”, with the idea being that you can junk your iPod and just use the iPhone for music and calls alike. Trouble is, there’s a few issues preventing me from doing that. For starters, at 8GB, the capacity is a bit on the small side if you’ve got a sizeable digital collection - 16GB would have hit the spot better, although that’s down to limitations of flash memory.
More annoying is the headphone jack, which is recessed, and thus doesn’t fit a lot of third-party headphones, including my two Sennheiser pairs. As a result, you’re left either stuck with the white earbuds that come with the iPhone, or you have to spend £8 or so on a special adapter from the Apple Store. Swizz, to say the least.
However, as far as I can make out, the sound quality is good, with a range of EQ settings available through the main Settings menu on the iPhone. Getting music onto the device could be easier though, since on iTunes you can’t just drag and drop songs across as you would with an iPod: you have to set up a playlist to be synced, and drag them into that. I’m not sure why.
Continue reading ‘UK iPhone Review Part 4: iPod and the iTunes Wi-Fi Store’
Enter the iPhone, then. After months of anticipation, last Friday’s UK iPhone launch went off a bit more quietly than the US one, which I’d put down to us Brits’ natural reluctance to whoop and queue round the block for any piece of new technology (that’s not a games console). Nevertheless, tens of thousands of iPhones were sold over the weekend, with Brits finally getting to grips with Apple’s handset.
Including us. Yes, Pocket Picks has an iPhone, which we’ll be using to cover new applications and services in the coming months, as well as giving our own detailed appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the device - both initially, and over time. We activated it yesterday, and it’s up and running smoothly.
Over the next week and a bit, we’ll be examining its key features and applications, but kicking off now with our first impressions…
Continue reading ‘iPhone UK review Part 1: First impressions and setup’
Apple has confirmed that its version 1.1.2 iPhone firmware update will be released internationally today, in time for new iPhone users in Europe.
According to Pocket-Link, new UK and European iPhone users who sync their devices with iTunes tomorrow in the starts, will be offered the chance to upgrade to the new firmware.
It will do a number of things, namely let UK owners access The Cloud wi-fi hotspots in the UK, and perhaps most controversially stop people using the TIFF exploit used to jailbreak and install third-party applications. There’s also wider language support for international keyboard and special character keys.
What Apple didn’t confirm was whether this update would re-lock any already unlocked iPhones.
[Via Pocket Lint]
As you may have already heard iTunes 7.5 dropped today. Although the update is seemingly nothing to start jumping up and down clapping your hands about, a MacRumors forum user going by the alias “FreeState” has uncovered some potentially exciting strings in the code.
There is one that asks if you are, “sure you want to manually manage your music on your iPhone?” Makes sense seeing as you can buy tunes direct from iTunes on the device; you are going to want to make sure that your new tracks are all in order.
Even more exciting however is the string that reads “The iPhone “^1″ contains new voice memos. Would you like to move these voice memos to your iTunes library?”. iPhone voice memo functionality anyone? We have a feeling you will only have to wait until the next firmware update is released for iPhone voice memo functionality but don’t quote us on that.
(Via Engadget)
If you’ve been living in a cave or on the moon for the past four months, then you probably don’t know about the iPhone. Apparently Apple has released it’s own handset which can play music from iTunes and do all sorts of other cool stuff that other mobile phones can do.
In which case, you’ll probably want to see what all the fuss is about before it’s launched on Friday and all your friends wave theirs around in your face and bang on about how fantastic it is, if only the internet browsing was faster.
Alternatively, you might have seen all the hype about the handset and might be thinking it sounds good but you’re not sure.
Luckily, ahead of the iPhone’s launch, Apple has kindly launched a micro-site with some videos of the iPhone in action, showing off its various features and capabilities.
If you want to see what the fuss is about, you can watch the videos here.
Now the sound checks are finished, Nokia’s Music Store goes live in the UK this week. Not live as in stadium-filling live, but you can now download tracks to your phone; kind of way.
From a single account, customers can access the Nokia Music Store from their PC or from certain Nokia devices. The first two such devices, the Nokia N81 (see pic) and the N95 8GB have, coincidently enough, also gone on sale from today.
The virtual store itself is a serious rival to iTunes, offering millions of tracks from major artists and independent record labels, as well as personal track recommendations and a favourite artist search feature.
Individual tracks from the store cost 80p each, and albums will cost £8 each. You can also stream unlimited tracks to your PC for a subscription of £8 a month.
If iTunes doesn’t rock you, then you can check out Nokia’s Music Store here.
Well regarded Mac blog TUAW has tried out the new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store for iPhone & iPod touch, and seems pretty impressed with what’s on offer. Here are a couple of quotes:
‘It feels much snappier than I expected. The album art is nice and big and everything is quite legible.’
‘This is a very nice piece of software: Speedy, simple and similar enough to the “full”version of the iTunes Store that there’s no learning curve at all.’
The review also describes the process of synching back to iTunes on your Mac or PC as ‘laughably easy’. You can read the whole shebang over on the TUAW site now.
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