Search Results for: apple music

In a rare open letter from CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday, Apple urged record companies to abandon digital rights management technologies. The letter, posted on Apple’s Web site and titled “Thoughts on Music,” is a long examination of Apple’s iTunes and what the future may hold for the online distribution of copy-protected music. In the letter, Jobs says Apple was forced to create a DRM system to get the world’s four largest record companies on board with the iTunes Store. But there are alternatives, Jobs wrote. Apple and the rest of the online music distributors could continue down a DRM… Read more »

Washington – Congress is toying with the idea of mandating one standard for all online music platforms. Thanks but no thanks – the industry can figure it out, said music industry and consumer groups at a congressional hearing about the plan Wednesday. During a hearing to discuss mandating interoperability standards between competing music platforms such as Apple’s iTunes and RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, lawmakers sounded off on the lament of some hipsters frustrated by playback snafus when they try to transfer music files from other platforms to their iPods. Although Real and Apple support Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), a compression format defined… Read more »

The Apple iTunes store has been selling a million tracks a day, it was announced recently. And no, that is not a misprint: a million a day. This will come as no surprise to readers of this column. Quite why the music industry didn’t spot the opportunity will be the subject of innumerable MBA dissertations in the years to come. But for now the significant thing to note is that it was a computer manufacturer and not a record company that cracked the problem of providing legal music downloads. On a global scale, you might say that the inadequacies of… Read more »

Apple Computer Inc. will make a slimmed-down version of its iTunes jukebox software that No. 2 cell phone maker Motorola Inc. will install on some wireless phones it will start selling in the first half of 2005, the companies said on Monday. The world’s second-largest cell phone maker also introduced seven new wireless telephones that will be available in the second half of the year, including products aimed at helping corporate customers cut costs. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs made the announcement via video conference at an event the night before Motorola’s annual analyst meeting in the Chicago suburb of… Read more »

Computer audio equipment maker Creative Technology Ltd and online music service Soundbuzz.Com launched an alliance on Tuesday aimed at capturing Asia’s infant fee-based online music market. The two companies are setting up online music stores in Singapore, Hong Kong and India – regions where knock-off CDs burned by sophisticated piracy syndicates or downloaded off the Internet for free are hammering sales of recorded music. Soundbuzz.Com and Creative launched the first of their online stores in Singapore on Tuesday, offering 250,000 songs at $1.16 each in a format designed for quick downloading into Creative’s digital music players. “We’ve all been through… Read more »

Apple and Napster, two of the world’s leading online music providers, are this week announcing separate initiatives to expand their distribution services internationally. Apple, the US computer maker, is expected to launch its popular internet music store in Europe tomorrow, in an attempt to build on the company’s considerable success in the US online music market. Napster, a subsidiary of US media company Roxio, will today unveil a partnership with NTL to offer music subscriptions to the UK cable group’s 1m broadband customers. The two initiatives follow agreement with music publishers over complex distribution rights in Europe. Apple, whose iTunes… Read more »

Apple Computer Inc. on Friday flatly denied a report that the computer maker was planning to raise prices for songs bought on its popular iTunes online music store. “These rumors aren’t true,” said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Sequeira. “We have multiyear agreements with the labels and our prices remain 99 cents a track.” Apple’s statement came after the New York Post reported on Friday, citing one unnamed source, that music fans may have to start paying more for some songs on Apple’s music store following contract renegotiations with the record labels ahead of the one-year anniversary of the store. Since the… Read more »

What’s up with iTunes? At the ripe age of 1, the innovative market solution for legal music downloads has brought almost $70 million into Apple Computer’s coffers while reinventing commercial music choices for consumers. Other music retailers, including the behemoth known as Wal-Mart, have taken notice and followed suit. CDs? So yesterday, Dude. Before iTunes, the mushrooming problem of illegal downloads seemed, at least to the music industry, a challenge to its existence that could only be addressed by going after downloaders – like the University of Minnesota students last week – still being pursued. The iTunes bridge hasn’t ended… Read more »

In its first year, Apple Computer Inc.’s online music store has sold more than 70 million songs and the computer maker is offering a free song to customers for the next eight days to mark the store’s anniversary, the company said Wednesday. Apple, maker of the Macintosh computer and the wildly popular iPod digital music players, also upgraded its iTunes digital jukebox software with new features such as “iMix,” which lets customers publish their playlists on the iTunes online music store which other customers can then purchase. “We’re very, very excited about the results from the first year,” Steve Jobs,… Read more »

Apple Computer apparently doesn’t want to sing the same tune as its Internet music rival RealNetworks. Seattle-based RealNetworks said Thursday that Apple chairman Steve Jobs had rebuffed an offer by RealNetworks’ chief executive Rob Glaser to meet and discuss forming an online music alliance involving Apple’s best-selling iPod portable players. Executives at Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple declined to comment Thursday. In an interview earlier this week with The Wall Street Journal, Jobs said Apple has little incentive to open its popular digital music player to others. “The iPod already works with the No. 1 music service in the world, and the… Read more »