Posts tagged with "music"

Rumor: iTunes In The Cloud Will Let You Backup Your Music Collection, Stream It

At a shareholders meeting yesterday, Apple clarified its position on the massive data center they’ve been building in Maiden, North Carolina confirming that launch is set for a Spring 2011 and it will to host the iTunes and MobileMe services. Many, however, have speculated in the past months whether the move of iTunes to the cloud would bring a new way of streaming songs and albums sold in the iTunes Store through a monthly subscription, or an easy-to-use way of uploading your personal media to the cloud.

According to a new report by the Financial Times, the iTunes online service will simply function as a backup solution for your music collection, which will be available over the internet on all Apple devices.

Apple, which rocked digital music services such as Pandora, Rdio and MOG last week by announcing plans to keep 30 per cent of all revenues from subscriptions taken out through its App Store, has clarified its plans for using remote storage, known as the cloud, according to several music industry executives.

More than a year after buying Lala, a cloud-based digital music service, Apple is now looking to use the cloud mainly to allow users of its iTunes store to back up their collections and access them from any Apple device.

One person with knowledge of Apple’s plans said the company did not want to undermine the market that it dominates for paid downloads, likening its plans for the cloud to “insurance”.

Rumors surfaced in the past weeks suggested Apple was working on a new version of MobileMe that would work as a “locker” for your personal media, stored in the cloud and accessible from all your Mac and iOS devices. Such a system would not compromise Apple’s lead in the digital music distribution market, but would let users upload their music to an online service always available. In the meantime, Google is rumored to be finalizing the details of its Google Music service for Android devices, and European company Spotify is reportedly nearing a U.S. launch after closing deals with major music labels. Spotify lets you stream any song available in the service’s online library through a monthly Premium subscription; it appears at this point that Apple is building the exact opposite, a cloud service that will let you backup / stream the songs and albums you already own.

References of a “MediaStream” service found in the iOS 4.3 SDK suggested Apple might be working on a new platform to allow users to stream their media from the cloud to iOS.

iPod Nano Software Update Lets You Control Music with Sleep Button

Earlier today Apple issued a software update for the iPod Nano 6th generation, which brings a useful feature to the device: you can now control music and radio playback using the Sleep / Wake button without looking at the screen.

With iPod software update version 1.1 for iPod nano (6th generation), you will be able to:

Completely turn off the iPod, rather than just put the device to sleep.

Control music or radio playback using the Sleep/Wake button without having to look at the device.

Another notes provided by Apple on the iPod Nano 1.1 update:

  • When the iPod nano is off, you will not hear or be alerted to any alarm or reminder set on the iPod. When you turn iPod nano back on, alarms or reminders that haven’t yet expired will occur as scheduled.
  • If you turn iPod nano back on within five minutes of when it was turned off, it will remember your music playlist and what was playing. However, if you turn iPod nano back on more than five minutes after it was turned off, the device will not remember what you were doing on the device or which application was active.

More information about the update available here.

Apple Looking To Improve Sound Quality of iTunes Store Songs?

According to the CNN (via MacRumors), Apple is in talks with music industry executives to improve the sound quality of songs offered in the iTunes Store, bringing them to high-fidelity standards of 24-bit instead of the current 16-bit offerings:

Professional music producers generally capture studio recordings in a 24-bit, high-fidelity audio format. Before the originals, or “masters” in industry parlance, are pressed onto CDs or distributed to digital sellers like Apple’s iTunes, they’re downgraded to 16-bit files.

From there, the audio can be compressed further in order to minimize the time the music will take to download or to allow it to be streamed on-the-fly over the internet.

CNN reports Apple might as well offer these high-quality versions as separate “premium” purchases available as an option next to the existing iTunes Store 16-bit files. The move to 24-bit, however, would bring some issues with compatible hardware – considering that iTunes also works on Windows PCs:

Many models of Mac computers can play 24-bit sound, and the iTunes program is capable of handling such files. But most portable electronics, and many computers, don’t support 24-bit audio.

To make the jump to higher-quality music attractive for Apple, the Cupertino, California, company would have to retool future versions of iPods and iPhones so they can play higher-quality files.

In 2009, Apple made the first steps to increase the quality of iTunes digital downloads by offering “Plus” – a selection of albums and songs encoded at 256 kbps without digital rights management (DRM) protection copy. Regular iTunes downloads used to be encoded at 128 kbps with DRM enabled by default. Shifting to higher quality song downloads also rises some questions on Apple’s rumored streaming service for music and data center in North Carolina: will a section of the data center be dedicated to these rumored 24-bit songs? And if the rumors of “iTunes in the cloud” are to be believed, will Apple allow users to stream 24-bit audio files to their mobile devices?

As far as kbps stats are concerned, Spotify’s current Premium subscription enables users to stream 320 kbps songs from the cloud onto their computers and iPhones, offering an option to decrease quality on slower 3G connections.

Last.fm Updates iPhone App with Retina Graphics, Recommendations

In spite of the lack of appreciation for Apple’s new subscription system from Last.fm’s co-founder Richard Jones, the popular music service released an update to their official iPhone client today – and it’s a rather big update. Version 3.0 of the app, available here, adds the much requested Retina Display graphics with an improved interface design (about time, considering the iPhone 4 was released 8 months ago), Last.fm music recommendations for artists and new albums you might like, possibility to (finally) check your profile on the go, including top charts, friends and recently played tracks.

Last.fm 3.0 for iPhone, however, comes with other features, too. First, a menu to check on concerts available in your area (sadly, no one wants to play here in Viterbo) and the events your friends are attending. This is pretty cool and adds another layer of social interactivity to Last.fm, and it’s also something Apple has been rumored to be willing to implement in iTunes for a long time. You can now listen to two new radio stations or, alternatively, edit existing ones directly from your device to restrict them to a specific tag. Two weeks ago, Last.fm announced the Radio functionality would soon become a subscriber-only feature (thus the issues with Apple’s new policies).

Last.fm 3.0 for iPhone is available for free here.

Last.fm Co-Founder Doesn’t Like Apple’s Subscriptions

Just about everyone on the Internet now knows that some folks are really upset over Apple’s recently announced subscriptions for iOS apps. In case you missed the news, Apple is now allowing publishers to implement subscriptions for content-based apps using the same iTunes payment method customers rely on for their App Store purchases, but Apple keeps a 30% cut off every recurring subscription. As you can guess, several publishers think a 30% cut off a minimal monthly (or yearly) fee is too much, making it impossible to break even. In fact, music service Rhapsody has already announced it won’t offer subscriptions for iOS devices. And it looks like other publishers will follow if they think a business model can’t be built upon Apple taking its 30% on every transaction.

While the fact that Apple takes a cut on purchases made through its App Store doesn’t come as a total surprise, the 30% number does as many, including yours truly, initially thought subscriptions would feature a lower cut from Apple. Still, this is happening right now and what we can do is wait and see what publishers and content providers like Amazon and Netflix will do. But in the meantime, it appears that Last.fm co-founder Richard Jones isn’t really excited about these subscriptions, either. “Excited” is actually an euphemism, considering that in a private IRC chat posted by GigaOM he says “Apple just f****** over online music subs for the iPhone”.

While we can’t verify on the authenticity of IRC chat, there’s more coming from Mr. Jones. He suggests Apple might have come up with these high terms to leave room for its own music streaming service later in the year, which will surely make some companies like Spotify and Rdio struggle to find their way between affordable consumer prices and Apple’s cut on subscriptions. Oh, and what about Last.fm? They announced their very own subscription-based service two weeks ago, and now if they want to keep their app in the Store it looks like they’re going to have to rethink the whole strategy. Or perhaps Last.fm will simply pull the app from App Store, as Jones believes “people on the iPhone will *always* subscribe using iTunes” because it’s easier.

So far, Apple’s subscription service hasn’t been a popularity success among publishers. But we believe we’ll hear the actual results of this new functionality in a few weeks, when customers will get used to the advantages of iTunes-based subscriptions and some publishers will (likely) see the first promising numbers coming in. If Apple will have to change its stance on subscriptions, you can bet they will. Now, we wait and see how the publishing industry reacts in the App Store.

Sony Will Stay On iTunes, “Music Unlimited” Service Launching Today

Last week, Sony PlayStation’s Australian group chief Michael Ephraim hinted that Sony might soon remove its music content from the iTunes Store as, according to him, publishers were “held ransom” by Apple’s terms and lead in the digital music industry. The statement, picked by all major Apple-related publications, quickly made the rounds of the Internet as proof that Sony, disappointed by the rejection of their ebook reader application for iOS, was aiming at leaving Apple’s infrastructure altogether to focus on its Music Unlimited service.

Today, Sony Network Entertainment COO Brandon Layden says the company has no intention of leaving iTunes, although, in fact, Music Unlimited is launching today in the US, Australia and New Zealand:

Sony Music as I understand it has no intention of withdrawing from iTunes, they’re one of our biggest partners in the digital domain. I think those words were either taken out of context or the person who spoke them was unclear on the circumstances.

Layden is not directly involved with Sony’s music business but he sure would know if the company (one of the biggest iTunes music publishers) was planning on ditching the iTunes Music Store. Admittedly, Sony would be crazy to remove its catalogue from the iTunes Store – which is still the most successful online distribution service for music and movies. In the meantime, Sony is launching their music streaming platform today (for $10 a month), but it won’t work on iPhones and iPods. And i likely never will, unless Sony will agree on Apple’s 30% cut on subscriptions offered through the App Store.

Shazam’s Music Sourcers Add Jobs To Music Industry, Give Music Lovers Their Ultimate Job

Shazam the popular music-identifying app on mobile phones is giving some music aficionados their ultimate job, listening to new music all day as a ‘music sourcer’. The New York Times spoke to one such person working for Shazam, Charles Slomovitz whose job requires him to hunt down new music and artists to ensure Shazam’s music-identifying engine can identify song that its users may hear.

Shazam has grown to a user base of over 100 million users who ping the service 3 million times a day, and Andrew Fisher, Shazam’s chief executive says that “when people use a service like Shazam, they expect it to work all the time”. As a result Mr. Slomovitz and others around the world who find new music are vital to ensure the accuracy of Shazam, which is available in over 200 countries. Similarly Pandora has also created new jobs in the music industry with its so called ‘musicologists’ who analyze songs on the basis of numerous characteristics to give users the ability to find similar music.

Read more

Replacing Flash Storage With The Cloud→

Replacing Flash Storage With The Cloud

Speaking of streaming for media through MobileMe, Chris Foreman at Ars Technica makes a good point:

Relying solely on the cloud, whatever the particular method, ignores the reality of wireless networks. Even in major cities, wireless data connections are not 100 percent ubiquitous. There are areas where connections are tenuous or nonexistent—suddenly, if you have zero bars, you would have zero data. As frustrating as it might be when you drop a data connection when trying to access a webpage, we believe the experience would be far more frustrating if your device became effectively useless anytime you went deep inside a large building, down into a basement, or on the subway.

While WiFi can help mitigate the problem somewhat, there’s still the issue of how quickly data usage rates would skyrocket if a potential iPhone nano streams all its data from the cloud. Part of the alleged reasoning behind Apple releasing an iPhone nano is the ability to offer a lower-priced device, possibly without a contract. But what benefit would this lower-cost device offer consumers if it required them to pay yet higher monthly data bills?

Ars’ report is more geared towards the recent rumors of an iPhone nano with no internal storage at all (which is incorrect anyway, as a minimum storage for the OS must be provided – you can’t “stream” iOS), but the problem remains: if Apple is moving to the cloud, then we’re all becoming dependent on always-available, reliable and “fast enough” internet connections. That’s why I believe a caching system for offline access will be needed in order for this to work properly for everyone.

The Spotify apps already do this and it’s great. You stream music, but you can save songs in your device’s cache for when you don’t have a 3G or WiFi connection available. Sure, cache can grow huge in size and waste space, but at least you’re sure you always have full access to your files.

Permalink

MobileMe Music Streaming: Keep It Simple

According to recent speculation, Apple is launching a complete overhaul of MobileMe this summer that will include a streaming option for media like music, movies, photos and videos recorded through an iPhone. Steve Jobs himself said in an email from last year that MobileMe would get “a lot better” in 2011. The fact that Apple is working on making MobileMe free in more sections, and more powerful and feature-rich when it comes to cloud-based access to files and media, seems pretty much obvious at this point.

The problem is “how”. With the rumors floating around, all kinds of speculation have arisen lately: cloud storage for your entire iTunes library, through a subscription à la Dropbox; cloud storage through the existing MobileMe plans; cloud storage for free. The list of possible implementations goes on and on. Yesterday, The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple weighed in with an interesting theory about a user’s Mac as a the actual cloud behind MobileMe’s streaming:

Instead of trying to provide everyone with cloud storage, I believe Apple will use MobileMe as the brain of the cloud service. The actual storage will be on our individual machines. In effect, in the cloud.

MobileMe would handle the settings and streaming settings, the files would reside on our Macs. Jim further explains:

Here’s the thing — those songs won’t actually be on my iPhone until I tap to play them. As soon as I tap to play, it will download to my phone. You can scroll through your music library and choose something else and it will download and play.

In effect, what Apple’s doing is setting up a streaming service that you host. By using advanced caching and MobileMe as the brain behind the operation, you will always have access to your media.

Read more