Search results matching tag 'iTunes'

Is Apple finally ready to welcome The Beatles to iTunes?

2371004 — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:37:00 GMT

Can you hear it? The nothingness? The strange and gratifying silence that only comes once a year. The unnatural calm that precipitates out of every Apple September event?

Everyone is holding their breath, mouthing the same wordless question: Just what the hell are Jobs and Co going to drop on Wednesday?

For digital journalists, the stream of news has been reduced to a noticeable trickle. No one is moving, there's no shaking - it's a dry creek-bed and Apple's hand is on the faucet.

Any company, especially a plucky young start-up, would be wise to wait a couple days, maybe even a week to make a major announcement, lest Apple shows up and turns the industry on its head once more.

Apple enthusiasts have been sifting through rumours, gossip, hearsay, patent logs and their wildest dreams - for months - in anticipation of Wednesday, questioning every subtle nuance, inspecting every detail, like a jealous, embittered spouse.

For those in the know, a glaring peculiarity precludes Apple's event. It's as simple as the days of the week.

Specifically, Wednesday. Why Wednesday?

Historically, Apple events have been on Tuesdays.

Yet, Wednesday also happens to be the day MTV Games releases 'The Beatles: Rock Band'. It also marks the day the band's remastered albums hit store shelves.

Is Apple finally ready to welcome The Beatles to iTunes?

Deciphering clues is like a reliving the 'Paul is Dead' hysterics.

For instance, take Wednesday again - or 09/09/09. Nine, a famous Beatles number, as in 'Revolution 9'.

The invite to the event reads "It's only rock and roll, but we like it" - which is, well, a Rolling Stones reference - or rather a 'red herring', according to Mac Rumours, to throw us off the track of the likely Beatles announcement.

Beatles on iTunes has been rumoured for the past two years, with negotiations very much ongoing between the Beatles Apple Corp, Jobs' Apple Inc and EMI, specifically the $0.99-per-track pricing scheme that has irritated music labels since its inception.

Apple and Apple Records have a prickly history, going as far back as 1978 regarding a trademark dispute, which was settled in 2007, yet just last year Macca described the 'Beatles on iTunes' proceedings as "stalled".

Have the two sides finally buried the hatchet?

Is Apple going to launch a new iPod on Wednesday, with Beatles tracks preloaded (like it did with U2 a while back), much to the delight of millions of Apple and Fab Four fans the world around?

Sure.

But what else might happen?

iPods with cameras? This seems likely. iPods always play in the September events in one way or another, but as sales stall, how long can Apple depend these ubiquitous devices in the lead up to the holiday season. An in-house camera could certainly have Christmas shoppers clamouring for a replacement.

New iTunes? Almost certain. iTunes 9 (Number 9!), is expected to be integrated with Facebook and Twitter, marking Apple's descent into the murky depths of social networking. Perhaps a subscription package is in the works, much like Spotify has had success with, because if you can't beat 'em, just rip them off.

The iTablet? You wish, and so does everyone else, but it simply not going to happen. Not on Wednesday at least...

Apple getting social with iTunes

2371004 — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:25:00 GMT

A new month, and a new salvo of Apple rumours to wade through - this time concerning iTunes, with the web salivating over the prospect of an iTunes/Twitter/Facebook/Last.fm partnership.

Thing is, it ain't gonna happen.

It certainly looks like Apple is planning some sort of social networking integration with iTunes, and soon, but don't expect Twitter or Last.fm to be involved.

Those in the know have probably seen a couple of screengrabs from the purported iTunes 9, which curiously followed rumours that the newest version of Apple's music player would integrated with Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm.

The photos have since been debunked as a hasty Photoshop job, by someone with far too much time on their hands.

But even with photographic evidence, a rumour such as this just doesn't make sense.

The idea is that iTunes would broadcast what songs its users are listening too, to Twitter and Facebook profiles, which would be simply, annoying - especially those among us to keep music playing several hours of the day.

Furthermore, Apple has never been a company to jump on a bandwagon, especially concerning a faddish little microblogging website with major operational issues.

A partnership with Last.fm makes less sense. The two companies work in a similar vein, and Last.fm (as much as I love it) is far from an established brand, Apple would have nothing to gain. Many of the features that makes Last.fm shine, such as it's 'similar artists' tab, are available on iTunes anyways (iLike).

But Facebook. Maybe, just maybe. The two companies established a partnership a while back, by allowing iPhoto users to publish their pictures to their Facebook profiles.

Looking at the big picture, the rumours generally deduce that Apple is planning to push a social networking strategy through its iTunes platform, even though the details might have been mixed up.

Digging deeper into the rumour pile, it appears Apple is preparing to launch some sort of social media app, whether for iTunes, its OS desktop, or the iPhone, that would consolidate various streams into one juicy platform.

Sound suspiciously like FriendFeed - rather a FriendFeed killer, which gives this rumour (some) legs and puts some more weight behind the companies surprise sell-out to Facebook this week.

Better late than never, it looks like Apple is ready to embrace social networking, but likely on its own terms - a sort of "social media browser", which would allow users to search and share content with their friends.

Perhaps this will be part of Apple's plans to 'reinvent' the digital album, by including loads of additional content with iTunes purchases.

Apple rumours, as per usual, are common and vague, but this one is keeping an eye on. Speaking of which, where's my iTablet?

Taking out the Trash

2517973 — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:10:00 GMT

With spring apparently just around the corner, I have the sudden urge to sling out loads of all junk and make things shiny and fresh for the new season.

Of course I could spend hours going through the attic and taking old carpet squares, dried up paint and more to the tip, but a much easier form of spring-cleaning is going through my old apps from when the AppStore was just a novelty, and seeing what horrors have managed to survive on my phone since then.

Over time I have lovingly streamlined my phone so that I have one page of core iPhone functions, and my most cherished apps, then a page of stuff I use a lot myself or for demo purposes, another page of branded apps, and then 6 more pages of apps of highly questionable utility or quality.

Pinch Media's recent excellent study into app usage over time shows that the vast majority of apps, even paid ones, are unused just 30 days after they're first downloaded, so of the 800 million or so that have been downloaded since the AppStore launched, there are an awful lot sat in people's recycle bins... In reality this is a process that millions of users go through every day and apps hit the dust based on a range of different criteria.

Anyway here goes:

Personal favourite keepers
My favourite apps are generally music ones, so the brilliant DigiDrummer, Bebot, iShred and IR-909 all keep their prize positions, as do top-selling racers Banjo Kazooie and Cro-Mag Rally. Then there are the totally useful ones: TubeDeluxe, Facebook, Twitterfon, Lastminute's FoneFood (better than UrbanSpoon!) and Vicinity.

Great brand apps I demo alot
Walkers Flavour Racing is a great app that integrates perfectly into a great overall campaign, and I also like both the VW Polo Challenge for its awesome graphics and the BMW Z4 app I wrote about last week. BA Flights is also a great example of a brand delivering a tool of real value to its customers.

Less good brand apps to get rid of
Coke's approach is to create small throwaway apps based on simple well-known ideas. However, their Magic Bottle (it's an 8-ball but with very unsatisfying answers) and Spin The Coke are just that - throwaway. That can also be said for the Recycle For London ‘Evil Bin' game. While the cheap'n'cheerful look and feel matches the light-hearted branding of the overall campaign, any game worth its salt should really have more than 2 minutes or so of gameplay before the novelty wears off. Still, at least I can feel good about recycling it... And finally I can get rid of the Audi A4 app, which with its impossible to control car, questionable design (a black car on a black background?) and rejection of most of the basic features of a driving experience, is a classic example of an iPhone project gone wrong.

Stuff I had to download for work...
I'm no fitness fanatic, but my phone is jammed full of health and fitness apps such as BMI calculator, iPosture, RunKeeper and, erm... FMC... Another client looking at the racier end of the market means I also have the oh-so-classy Bikini Blast, iWobble, and the disturbing iGirl...

Crazy sports apps to get rid of
Much is made of the iPhone's accelerometer, and in some cases - too much! SGN Golf and iBowl are hopelessly optimistic in trying to recreate the action of the sport, while Soccer Kick-off, Vegas Pool (you can win every time!) and the woeful Darts should really be on the Wii to succeed at all...

iPhone ‘classics' I just don't like
Tap Tap Revenge - it's such a hit that in the future albums may be released purely as Tap Tap updates, and Coldplay's bank-manager rock seems a perfect first target. Bubblewrap has surely passed its sell-by date, while I could never get JellyCar to stay the right way up, despite its awesome physics and perky soundtrack.

Movie apps for films I will never see
There's nothing particularly good or bad about the apps, but Fast&Furious, Aliens v Monsters and The Unborn clearly have a limited lifespan, especially as international movie houses seem to be filling their apps with ‘Buy Tickets Now' links that only work in the US... Surely it isn't so difficult to remove these links for overseas users?

Quite apart from these I have shed another two pages of apps in total. I hope this shows a couple of things:

- With over 25,000 apps in the store there is a lot of competition, but a lot of it is rubbish, so focus on quality

- The dream is to provide something so cool or useful that it will live on users devices indefinitely

- Failing that, there's still a lot of benefit in providing an app with just a few minutes of pleasure. This still applies to TV creative so why not digital?

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Coming up soon on Beyond SMS: What's the Media play for the AppStore, and a look at the COI's recent application to combat Knife Crime.

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Tim Dunn is the head of marketing services at Mobile Interactive Group. Tim has been the architect of many successful marketing campaigns, helping brands and the public sector exploit the unique properties of mobile.

Apple drops DRM, what does it mean for you?

2371004 — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:08:00 GMT

Probably a decent hit to your wallet.

The anticipated "one more thing" announcement made at the annual spectacle known as Macworld was Apple's decision to (finally) remove digital rights management from its iTunes store.

This means that songs purchased from the iTunes store won't be tied solely to an iPod device. Not that that must have been a huge concern for Apple as I believe they more than have the mp3 player market cornered.

These DRM-free tracks are also in the higher quality AAC format, compared to outdated mp3s.

The stink seems to have come from the music labels themselves, the big four EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music and Universal.

Well, not EMI, it has been offering DRM-free tracks through iTunes for about a year, known as iTunes Plus tracks.

The four labels together have offered their tracks to Amazon's music store as DRM-free for a year.

Before the Macworld announcement about 3m tracks were available as iTunes Plus, mostly from EMI.

Finally, the three remaining labels conceded, but it seems to come as a cost to the consumer.

iTunes will now offer more than 8m of its 10m tracks at DRM-free as iTunes Plus, however they twisted Apple's arm in creating a staggered pricing scheme for the new tracks.

On April Fools Day (natch) Apple will adopt the three-tiered pricing structure (in the US) at $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29 accordingly.

iTunes Plus tracks presently cost $0.99, however, Macworld keynote speaker Phil Schiller pinky-swore that more songs will cost $0.69 rather than $1.29 after the April 1 passover.

Another, rather unreported clause comes in the iTunes Plus upgrade option. Users can choose to upgrade their non-DRM-free tracks to iTunes Plus for a nominal fee of $0.30.

However, there's a catch.

It's an all or nothing sort of deal. Users can not choose which tracks they want to upgrade, it's either the entire library, or nothing.

Peculiar.

However, not all songs are available for upgrade, meaning Apple will scour your library for all your upgradable tracks and throw you an offer for the whole deal.

An average music library can vary, but lets diagram a user with 2,000 songs, who could look at shelling out $700 for the DRM-free upgrade. And that number would increase on a daily basis as Apple includes new tracks available for upgrade.

It's evil no doubt, but who's to blame, Apple or those ill-fated music labels?

Does MacDonald’s advertising corrupt our children?

322703 — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:23:00 GMT

In North London a small minority of the local community is demanding that McDonalds takes down an ad on a railway bridge because, “they feel they don’t want their children exposed to advertising for McDonalds.” There’s no rational reasoning for this, if there was they’d see that McDonald's food is way down the list of bad things a parent can give a kid.

I doubt those over emotive parents had stopped to think about what they are giving their kids as an alternative. Crisps, biscuits, cakes, chocolates, sweets, pasties, pies, ice cream or fish & chips. Shock horror, Britain’s traditional fast food is really bad for you. Then add Indian, Chinese, pizza and kebabs – all highly calorific and full of dubious processed food, additives and saturated fats. Compared to that list, McDonalds is a healthy option. The real irony of this local groups demand to rip down a McDonald’s ad on a train bridge is that the road is full of kebab shops.

Of course they don’t consider all the benefits McDonalds provides – fair wages for local people, they buy all their beef and milk (and most of their eggs) from British & Irish farmers, they have strong eco policies – the list goes on. Compare that to any local café, bar or take-a-way. Pity over emotive parents can’t get their facts right before they complain. KFC Naked women running through the streets with a banner declaring ‘NAKED TRUTH: KFC TORTURES CHICKS’ is not a bad way to get attention. PETA has launched a ‘boycott KFC’ campaign against it’s unethical treatment of chickens.

PETA claim that “More than 850 million chickens are tortured and killed each year for KFC“ and have produced a horror video, though they quote just 750 million chickens in it (not sure what happened to the other 100m). In Canada KFC has backed down and agreed to more humane treatment of chickens and to provide vegan chicken – seems a bit odd that a vegan would even go into a KFC. Bottle your own water I’ve written a lot about bottled water and tap water in my blogs, but now you can package up your own. This is already going on in the food services industry but now Belu have launched a ‘do it yourself kit of labels’.

The elegantly designed labels are the work of the ethical design & communications agency Provokateur and is short listed in the Green Awards, as is their very fun ACME website. Their own website is one of the nicest I’ve see in a while, check it out. Channel 4 new series. Having got involved in the new Channel 4 series, Battlefront (along with a few other people from the ad business) I’d recommend people have a look at their website 20 young campaigners with 20 campaigns.

This is one of Channel 4’s first multi platform programmes and is also being run on Facebook and Bebo. One of the campaigns wants to promote the use of a coffee cup for life option (like the carrier bags) Starbucks already offer a discount if you bring in your own cup. Another wants to promote ‘random acts of kindness’. The Esquires chain of fair trade coffee houses have came up with a clever solution to the loyalty card, they have adapted the cardboard sleeves into one. It’s the usual deal, buy 9 get one free. A bit big to put in your wallet though, but a worthy idea (http://www.esquirescoffee.co.uk/). Nutella Seems Ferrero, producers of Nutella (who also make Ferrero Rocher ) are the latest brand to get criticized for using palm oil which is responsible for deforestation in south-east Asia.

Unilever were attacked earlier this year when a group of protestors sat outside the Unilver office dressed as Orangutans. Greenpeace have launched a cyber action against Nutella. In February A TV ad for Nutella promoting the spread as good for children for breakfast was banned following 53 complaints to the ASA, arguing that it was misleading to say Nutella was a slow-release energy product because it had high sugar and oil content.

After Greenpeace whipped up a lot of support, Ferrero has now agreed to support the Unilever led moratorium on converting forest and peatland into oil palm plantations. Canadians ban ‘green’ and ‘eco’ words. Feed up with greenwash, the Canadians have banned labels and ads that use ‘green’ and ‘eco’ unless the company can prove it. Something we desperately need in the UK as complaints increase. Meanwhile in Australia, Goodyear has been condemned for claiming their Eagle tyres had little environmental impact. Well they do.

When will brands learn that greenwashing is a one way ticket to public condemnation. Worse for Goodyear, they actually had to pay out compensation to customer who were misled. Och! Tune in Finally, seems according to a survey in the States we are tuning back into radio and tuning out of iTunes. Consumers are getting bored listening to their current collection and in desperation to seek new material going back to good old radio. Much of this listening is taking place while surfing the web. For a really good radio station I recommend (digital and web only)

Passion for the Planet. Great music, no DJs and lots of really interesting interviews around health, ethics and the environment.

LimeWire the Music Store?

255762 — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:02:00 GMT

I must have been sleeping while this happened. Most people know LimeWire as software used to illegally download software, but it also has a legitimate music store and it just added 1.2m tracks beginning at $0.27.

It's so new its "still in beta", but it already has thousands of tracks and albums there and even plenty you would have heard of. A quick look and I saw some Marvin Gaye, Kimya Dawson, Tindersticks, Josh Rouse Lloyd Cole and The Streets and much more.

LimeWire software is apparently still installed on as many as 18% of all PCs worldwide. That is a huge amount of machines downloading music although it has slipped from its heyday on the back of the success of BitTorrent.

The good news is that the LimeWire store has teamed with indie digital distribution firm The Orchard, which distributes more than 1.2 million songs, from the likes of Big Star, Bob Marley, Damien Jurado, The Fall, Keane and The Pet Shop Boys among thousands of others.

It is never going to compete with iTunes, but it does offer somewhere else to go and it does offer savings on some of its subscription packages offering 75 download credits for $19.99 a month, which works out to $0.27 per track.

Interestingly the LimeWire store is linked to the illegal filesharing software so that users will be offered the chance to buy stuff...as they illegally download. Might work.

Does anyone use LimeWire?

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Re: What will be the next zeitgeist word for brands to seize?

1113291 — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:45:19 GMT

I don't think brand identity has caught up to the social network trend. When you think of the big digital brands, what comes to mind? MySpace, YouTube, even iTunes. I think we'll start seeing different prefixes: We, Our, Us - that connate a more collaborative concept.

I wrote about this a couple of months ago:

http://eyecube.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/forget-my-the-web-prefix-of-the-future-will-be-our/