Rhapsody has announced their music streaming service is now available in Germany and the UK via their Napster deal. A few months ago it was announced that Rhapsody acquired Napster, but that was for the US assets, thus they needed to signed a deal with the remaining Napster service in Europe.
Spotify is yet to launch in Germany to compete with Napster and Simfy, but this is expected to change very soon!
Ever wondered how Turntable.fm looked after their music licensing, well here is how they do it. Turntable.fm co-founder sat down with Techcrunch to talk about the basics of Turntable and how they are just focused on running their product only in the US.
Psonar has just launched their new pay-per-play streaming music service. The new service will charge users 1p (or 1 cent / Eurocent in the US and Europe) per play of tracks that they don’t own, streamed to their PC or mobile device. To pay, users will have a choice of charging the costs to their mobile bill using Bango billing, or using a credit card or PayPal.
The Pay Per Play elements will launch across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland and Scandinavia during the second quarter of this year, although no rollout in the UK and US has yet been confirmed.
Initially it will be available on PC and HTML5-capable mobile devices, with native iPhone and BlackBerry apps to be launched soon.
Spotify has received a huge amount of press since launch and it seems that the hype has been completely justified. Spotify is now about to pass 10 million users.
The company is holding a party in London later this month “to celebrate reaching 10 million users across Europe”, according to an invite sent out to press and partners.
It’s impressive growth, with Spotify still only available in seven countries: the UK, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, the Netherlands and Spain.
Disclosure: Spotify is partnered with RouteNote.
Grooveshark has been having a little trouble signing the major records labels to their service. It seems that the majors try suing Grooveshark first and then sign a license deal with them later. Merlin is the latest major music company to sign with Grooveshark. Thus, this concludes the Merlin litigation against Grooveshark, always a nice starting point for a fruitful renegotiation.
It just seems like these major music companies are using litigation as a means to gain better terms in the negotiations.
Merlin chief Charles Caldas offered some words of caution against further funny business. “We wish Grooveshark all the best going forward and hope that this will be an important reminder to other music services looking to launch soon,” Caldas said.
I really think Merlin should stop with the heavy handed tactics or soon they will lose some of the labels within their walls!
There are millions of users all over the world who are already using Spotify. If you dont already know, Spotify is a music streaming service, which allows users to create playlists and listen to tracks from millions of artists worldwide. Previously, it hasnt been very easy to get your music on Spotify and as they are about to launch in the USA it is now very important to join the leading music service.
RouteNote allows artists to get their music onto Spotify and other streaming music services for FREE. All artists need to do is head to RouteNote.com and signup for an account. Once you have signed up, you are able to upload your music and choose the partners you would like to send your music to. Its that easy!
There are so many other music distributors out there that charge artsits a lot of money for this service, plus most also charge per store. RouteNote is the ONLY distributor that doesnt charge any upfront fees!
Spotify and other streaming services are very important for artists. These services dont currently make artists huge amounts of revenues (unless you have millions of plays). These services are used more for promotion and as the internet progresses these service will make a lot more money and it will become the main revenue stream for artists (just my opinion).
Anyways, make sure you head to RouteNote.com and signup! Its that easy!
Spotify have just announced that their iPhone application will soon be able to multitask on the new iOS4 software for the iPhone. Users will now be able to listen to their music and use the other applications at the same time (no need for the iPod feature anymore!).
However, the company has just provided an answer in a blog post:
“We know that many of you have been waiting for an update to our iPhone app that supports the latest iOS 4 and background listening. We’re happy to say that an updated app has been submitted to Apple for review. Hopefully we’ll get a speedy approval and to make up for the extra little wait time we’ve added a nice little surprise to make Spotify mobile even more exciting for you, stay tuned!”
Even though Limewire is being sued by pretty much every major music corporation, they are planning a subscription based music service. Thats right, Limewire is going legit.
Limewire in essences is planning a direct Spotify competitor.
“Users will have complete and instant access to their entire library and catalog across their desktop, devices, and in the cloud,” a company executive relayed. “By syncing iTunes playlists and content to the cloud, users’ existing libraries are available to access and stream to a wide range of connected devices.”
Of course, major labels (and publishers) are suing this company with a passion. But according to LimeWire, label executives are also supporting the post-gavel initiative. ”We can confirm that in our ongoing dialogues with numerous industry executives, this service has been very well received,” another LimeWire source relayed.
The Limewire service is scheduled to launch late in 2010, but we will see if it works out.
It has been reported that streaming music service Spotify can now be accessed via TV. The service has launched its app for 120,000 of TeliaSonera’s digital TV customers in Sweden and Finland.
“Introducing Spotify into the living room is a major step forward in our continued efforts to make Spotify available wherever you are,” says CEO Daniel Ek.
The service can only be accessed by Spotify Premium subscribers, but now with access via PC, mobile and TV, the Premium service looks very attractive!
“Everybody loves music and even though many of us carry our favourite music with us, a lot of music consumption remains in the home. We believe that giving music fans the ability access Spotify directly through the TV and into the living room will attract even more users to the world’s hottest music service.” Stefan Trampus the TeliaSonera’s manager of broadband.
It is also rumoured that Spotify is planning their own range of mobile phones, but I would much rather see them get a deal with a few car manufacturers so I can access my music pretty much anywhere!
Disclosure: RouteNote is a Spotify partner.
Music subscription services are still yet to prove themselves in the market, but I really think they are the future of music online. Rdio is a very new player to this market, but they have already been making quite a huge stir. Rdio was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who previously started Skype, Kazaa and Joost.
Rdio is set to launch into an invitation only beta later this week, but only in the USA. Rdio is a streaming based cloud music service by which users will be able to access a library of millions of songs for a flat monthly fee. Desktop and mobile access via iPhones and BlackBerrys costs $10 monthly, while desktop-only customers pay $5.
There are already a lot of players in this space, such as MOG (in the USA) and Spotify (in Europe), Thumbplay (USA) and Rhapsody (USA). A lot of people are betting that this will be the type of music service that will win out in the end, but I think there are already to many players in this market and I think it is going to be a winners market (only a couple will survive).
Disclosure: Spotify, Thumbplay and MOG are all RouteNote partners. We hope Rdio will also be a partner very soon!
