Archive for: store
RouteNote partner Amazon has launched their ever popular music store Amazon Mp3 in the UK. Amazon Mp3 contains over 5 million DRM free tracks. On an individual track basis, the store has variable pricing, with songs starting at 59p, but other categories for tracks costing 60p-69p, 70p-79p, and over 80p. Albums are more variable, although £6.49 appears to be one popular price point for new albums. However, I have noticed at the moment they are pushing out major track downloads for only £0.29.
Amazon Mp3 for the UK was launched on Wednesday of last week without any press although British-based music blog MusicAlly was the first to spot it.
The increased competition brought about by a heavyweight like Amazon stepping into the ring may already have had an effect on music pricing in the United Kingdom. MusicAlly reports that as Amazon MP3 launched there, Apple dropped its prices on key albums in the British version of iTunes, including those by Oasis and Fleet Foxes, to under $6.
The anticipation is now over, as music fans everywhere can now pay more for their favorite tracks on the iTunes Store. On Tuesday morning the iTunes store switched over to a variable pricing scheme with price points now at $1.29, 99 cents and 69 cents. This pricing model is aimed at increase the price of the most popular tracks on the iTunes store while at the same time decreasing the tracks that arent so popular.
Unsurprisingly, a number of top-ranked songs are now saddled with $1.29 tags. That includes the top-three most-downloaded songs, specifically “Boom Boom Pow” by Black Eyed Peas, “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga, and “Right Round” by Flo Rida. But a large number of popular tracks are retaining their 99-cent stickers, at least upon initial inspection.
There have been a lot of reports over the weekend about the demise of SpiralFrog. SpiralFrog was an ad supported music streaming and download service that never really took off.
Having raised as much as $12 million in VC and debt funding, the company made a splash in August 2006 (after 2 years in operations) when Universal Music made their entire music catalog available for free download through SpiralFrog, joined by EMI a month after. About a year after, SpiralFrog started handing out private beta invitations (what took them so long?)
Attorneys representing defunct music service SpiralFrog have notified investors not to expect any returns. Whatever money comes from liquidating assets will go to a group that loaned the company an “amount exceeding $34 million.”
Is this going to be the start of more ad supported music download and streaming services moving towards the deadpool? I can see Qtrax is going to now have a lot of trouble is this economic environment and Im sure they will be the next to be closing.
Nokia has announced that it will be launching it “Comes with Music” offering in Italy, Sweden and Mexico in the coming months. Nokia initially launched their Comes With Music service in the UK and Singapore and its already announced it will launch in Australia later this month.
The company has also announced three new music phones in its XpressMusic range: the 5730, 5330 and 5030. The first two of those will be Comes With Music handsets in selected markets.
Over at MusicAlly they have pointed out that the new U2 album (No Line On The Horizon) is currently on Amazon’s US Mp3 store for only $3.99. However, because we are based in the UK there is nowhere we can get this album for so cheap, until now. Tesco has taken the step forward and is now selling the new U2 album in a week-long deal for ony £3.97.
This shows that the digital music store price wars are about to heat up! However, you will notice that iTunes never seems to get into these price wars.
Have you ever wondered how much iTunes account for digital sales online? One of our competitors CD Baby has published their 2008 results which shows that iTunes currently accounts for over 82% of their total digital revenues. This makes me wonder why artists are really keen to get their music in as many places as possible, instead of just focusing on the top retail points and building a base around them and their users.
If you have an iPhone or iPod touch you never need to worry about buying an expensive tuner every again. For £1.19 you can pick up eTuner from the iTunes App store.
eTuner is an interactive chromatic tuning application, which utilizes the quality audio and fine display capabilities of the iPhone or iPod touch to determine and display musical pitch information as you plan an instrument or sign a note.
eTuner works on a variety of instruments including wind, brass and string. Other instruments that produce a sustained tone will also work fine.
You can purchase the eTuner here – 
Lime Wire LLC (the company) has announced a deal with The Orchard, a large digital distributor for independent artists and small labels. The deal will effectively double the amount of music available in the LimeWire Store to more than 2 million tracks.
The LimeWire Store launched in the spring of 2008 selling 256kbps DRM-free MP3s from Redeye, Nettwerk Music Group, IRIS, RouteNote and others. The store also offers features exclusive releases and targeted marketing opportunities.
Here at RouteNote we haven’t found Limewire to be a successful partner at all and have since stop delivering content. They seem to not even respond to our emails, which is not a good sign.
