Pinboard (guardiantech)

Questions for Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi >> Asymco

guardiantech — 2014-05-28T10:28:06+00:00

Cue and Federighi are appearing at the Re/Code conference this week, and Horace Dediu has some questions. Such as:

Why is there no app store for Apple TV? Even though the product is running essentially the same hardware and software as the iPhone and iPad and iPod touch and even though it connects to the iTunes stores, there is no option for developers to build apps for it or for consumers to use their TVs to run iOS apps. I might add that it’s been seven years since the platform launched and that’s a long time to wait.

and

YouTube is becoming the TV of choice for millions. Before it becomes that choice for billions, what are you doing to encourage user-generated video content distribution through your ecosystem?

Let's hope these get asked, and answered.

Why radio and music should take the iTunes/Beats deal seriously >> Edison Research

guardiantech — 2014-05-12T21:27:17+00:00

Edison Research’s “The Infinite Dial 2014,” released when iTunes Radio was four months old and fielded as Beats Music debuted, had signs of encouragement for both. Awareness of Beats was already 9%. Meanwhile, iTunes Radio had been listened to by 8% of respondents in the previous month, making it third to Pandora and almost tied with iHeartRadio (9%). The rumoured deal in which Apple will buy Beats for $3.2bn has been characterised in one report already as a sign of Apple’s desperation to stay relevant in a streaming world. Some broadcasters will try to minimise the story by positioning it as the combination of two underwhelming entities. And some don’t see this as a streaming music play at all. Whatever Apple’s intent, there are still significant implications here for broadcasters and labels. Besides giving Apple a subscription streaming music operation without building one from scratch, Beats Music and iTunes Radio very nicely fill in each other’s vulnerabilities, not just by putting iTunes on Android, but from a radio/audio programming standpoint.

Will iTunes Radio Pay Off? >> Billboard

guardiantech — 2013-06-17T20:11:33+00:00

Ed Christman:

On the recorded-music side, sources say Apple has agreed to carve out two buckets of revenue and whichever is higher will be where payments come from. In one bucket, Apple will store 10%-20% of ad revenue to cover its costs in lining up advertising and then split the remainder evenly with the labels. In the other bucket, Apple will pay slightly more than the pure-play rate that Pandora pays, which is $0.0012 per song stream. Some sources peg that number at $0.00125-$0.0013 per stream, but that bucket will also have a sliver of an undisclosed amount of ad revenue added to it.

In the US, paying out more than Pandora is a big deal within the music industry, especially as that company is trying to lower its royalty commitments. The great unknown: is iTunes Radio the missing ingredient that will make Apple's iAds a winner with more big brands?

What’s an Apple user worth? >> Asymco

guardiantech — 2013-06-16T16:33:44+00:00

Horace Dediu:

This can be read as: “Each of the current 575 million accounts generates about half the revenue of the 100 million accounts of 2009.” One would expect such a decline as an user base expands and this approximate 50% decline in revenues per account seems reasonable for a six-fold base increase. In absolute terms the graph shows that an iTunes account generates about $3.2/month in transactions. Put another way, during the last year, an average of $40/yr of economic value is generated by every iTunes account.

Can't monetise more, my ass! As Phil Schiller might put it.

Microsoft: Don't expect a Windows 8 iTunes app soon >> CNN

guardiantech — 2013-05-14T20:55:57+00:00

Microsoft believes nearly all major apps that can be found in Apple's iTunes store will also be available on Windows 8 by the fall, but it expects one glaring hole to remain.
"You shouldn't expect an iTunes app on Windows 8 any time soon," said Tami Reller, chief financial officer of Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) Windows division. "ITunes is in high demand. The welcome mat has been laid out. It's not for lack of trying."

Only available in Desktop mode. Don't hold your breath for the Metro (or RT) version.

The iTunes Value Structure >> asymco

guardiantech — 2013-02-26T22:12:29+00:00

Note 2: My estimate for the iTunes Music payments to publishers is equivalent to about 60% of total [recorded] industry revenues.

How you turn music Into money in 2012 (spoiler: mostly iTunes) >> The Atlantic

guardiantech — 2013-01-18T20:24:47+00:00

Just taking a first look at these data, it becomes clear that buying music from artists directly - through iTunes, Amazon or Bandcamp - is the best thing you can do to support their music-making. [The cellist Zoe] Keating made 97% of her revenue through people just buying her music, whether through physical sales or digital download. Spotify subscribers pay their ten bucks a month for the service, and that even feels like a healthy little monthly gift to music-making. But it's not nearly as helpful to the artists as buying an album or a song from iTunes, Bandcamp or Amazon.

The comparison of radio income with that from Pandora is surprising too.

Apple delays iTunes refresh until November >> AllThingsD

guardiantech — 2012-10-31T22:07:11+00:00

Here’s a smaller bit of unexpected news: [Apple] is delaying the update of its iTunes software. Back in September, Apple said an iTunes overhaul would be out in October. Now it’s pushing that back a month.
Here’s spokesman Tom Neumayr’s take: “The new iTunes is taking longer than expected and we wanted to take a little extra time to get it right. We look forward to releasing this new version of iTunes with its dramatically simpler and cleaner interface and seamless integration with iCloud before the end of November.”

To get rid of the skeuomorphisms?

Apple looking to launch iTunes Store, App Store overhauls later this year >> 9to5Mac

guardiantech — 2012-06-28T21:34:15+00:00

The redesign of the iTunes Store that runs on both the iTunes application for the Mac and the PC is a top priority for Apple. The work on the redesign comes soon after the launch of new services in the United States such as the Spotify music streaming service and the growing popularity of Amazon’s online music store. Apple dominates the majority of the digital music market, and it will continue to bet on an in-application download store and not an online store found only in a web browser.

Rejoice?

The Towson Hack: The mystery of vanishing iTunes credit >> Macworld

guardiantech — 2012-03-18T21:45:18+00:00

September 2011, but possibly still going on:

Many customers whose store credit was stolen noted that the purchases centered on a handful of apps from specific developers. One of those developers was “gao jing,” the name behind apps like Expert Guide for Black Ops, Cheats Guide for Black Ops, Weapons Guide for Black Ops, and Game Guide for New Vegas. Notably, none of those apps remain in the App Store as of this writing; however, Apple declined to comment on the reason for their removal from the store. Other customers noted that the purchased apps on their accounts were all from other developers, including “Hongbin Suo,” “lane ma,” “Yang Yun,” “KAMAGAMES,” and “Lakoo.” Many of the purchased apps, or the companies behind them, appeared to be Chinese in origin.

Why won't iTunes display files by path? >> William Vambenepe

guardiantech — 2011-12-07T06:48:37+00:00

He bought himself a Mac. (Interesting that even Oracle engineers are buying Macs.) He has lots of music files. "The next issue is that, within iTunes, you cannot organize your music based on the directory structure. All it cares about is the various metadata fields. You can’t even display the file name or the file path in the main iTunes window. "Leave it to Apple to create a Unix operating system which hates files." This is like arranging your music based on the colour of the album covers. Fair enough, but how would you deal with the customer support complaint from this user? Happily, though he flirted with writing a Python script to solve it, he wrote an Automator task (high-level scripting) to do it. Including a shell script with regex. He's not impressed with iTunes, though.

Apple TV Effort Said to Be Led By ITunes Creator >> Bloomberg

guardiantech — 2011-10-25T07:36:35+00:00

"Jeff Robbin, who helped create the iPod in addition to the iTunes media store, is now guiding Apple’s internal development of the new TV effort, said the people, who declined to be identified because his role isn’t public."

Massachusetts Attorney General, victim of an iTunes scam, says she'll demand answers >> threatpost

guardiantech — 2011-09-22T20:25:03+00:00

"Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said on Tuesday that her office would be inquiring into long-standing complaints about fraudulent purchases that leverage Apple's popular online music store.
"In a lunchtime address to business and technology leaders in Massachusetts, Coakley said she was a victim of identity theft in recent months, and that her stolen credit card information was used to make fraudulent iTunes purchases. When asked (by Threatpost) about whether such fraud constitutes a reportable event under the Bay State's strict data breach notification law, Coakley said that her office would be looking into that question and demanding answers from Cupertino, California based Apple, which has steadfastly refused to comment, or report the breaches to Massachusetts regulators."

Why is the identity theft Apple's fault?

Apple's iTunes Match service uses downloads, not streaming >> AllThingsD

guardiantech — 2011-08-30T21:42:08+00:00

Well, it isn't streaming, except that you can listen to it while it's downloading. And it's only sort of downloaded, as it might be in a cache. Anyhow.

Richard Dreyfuss reads the iTunes EULA >> CNET Blogs

guardiantech — 2011-06-09T14:48:33+00:00

"You're gonna need a bigger remote." Next: Shakespeare rendered as an EULA?

10 Major Apple iTunes Annoyances >> PCWorld

guardiantech — 2011-05-09T21:12:53+00:00

Can't speak to the performance on Windows (some people in the comments say it's fine, others don't) but some of the 'annoyances' seem to rank so low it's puzzling. Syncing automatically is more annoying than drag and drop? You can't delete a file in a 'smart playlist' (which is essentially a list of symlinks, so - obviously)?

Does Spotify Really Want To Be An iTunes Killer? >> Forrester Blogs

guardiantech — 2011-05-04T20:40:37+00:00

Music analyst Mark Mulligan: "The iTunes app is outdated and bloated. It’s long overdue competitive disruption. Spotify’s music app is clean and elegant, just like iTunes used to be. With Facebook integration, a celestial jukebox, music management and even device syncing (of sorts) Spotify may actually stand a half-decent chance of getting many of its iTunes-using customers to start using Spotify as their main music app.
"But despite the PR, Spotify is not actually trying to be an iTunes Killer at all. They’re trying to learn how to co-exist, using the iTunes ecosystem as their habitat. Almost a parasitical co-existence: if the host dies the parasite dies too. The fate of iPods, iPhones and iPads is inextricably linked with iTunes."