Report: Apple to Increase iTunes Song Previews to 90 Seconds

PC Mag

 

Apple will extend the song preview length on iTunes from 30 seconds to 90 seconds, according to Mashable.

The additional preview time will apply to songs that are longer than 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

Apple has informed music labels of its plans. "We are pleased to let you know that we are preparing to increase the length of music previews from 30 seconds to 90 seconds on the iTunes Store in the United States. We believe that giving potential customers more time to listen to your music will lead to more purchases," the company said in its letter.

Apple did not provide a timeline for when this might happen. As of Wednesday morning, the top songs on iTunes were still providing 30-second previews.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reports of extended Apple iTunes previews most recently made the rounds in August when the blogosphere was trying to nail down what Apple might announce at its September iPod event. At the time, CNet reported that Steve Jobs would extend iTunes previews from 30 seconds to 60 seconds, but that didn't happen. CNet later said that the National Music Publishers Association told Apple that it needed to negotiate with music publishers, not just record labels, if it wanted to implement such a feature.

A New Digital Battlefield

The Wall Street Journal

Amazon, Apple Rivalry Moves Beyond Music and E-Books Into TV Shows

 

TV shows are emerging as a new front in the war over digital media between Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., amid their ongoing battles over electronic books and online music.

Hours after Apple said Wednesday that it would begin renting some shows for 99 cents per episode, Amazon cut its price on a similar set of shows to 99 cents from $2.99. And unlike Apple, which rents the videos, Amazon lets its customers buy the shows.

"When we see a competitive product available elsewhere, we make sure to match or beat that price," said Bill Carr, Amazon's vice president of music and video, in a Thursday interview. "Things are evolving rapidly."

Apple declined to comment on Amazon's pricing.

A price battle between the tech titans could help drive consumer interest in the nascent market for paid on-demand video over the Internet. But it could also drive away the media giants that Apple and Amazon are counting on to feed them with TV content. Some media executives worry low prices could eventually undermine the existing TV business.


For the past several years, Amazon and Apple have both offered services that let consumers buy or rent films over the Internet on a one-by-one basis and watch them on TVs, game consoles or portable devices. It's part of a wider race among cable-TV and satellite-TV providers and tech companies, including Netflix Inc. and Google Inc., to dominate the digital delivery of TV and movies.

That race heated up on Wednesday when Apple introduced an updated Apple TV set-top box for $99 and said it reached deals to offer rentals for a selection of TV shows from News Corp.'s Fox and Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, ABC Family and Disney Channel, as well as BBC America.

TV networks haven't presented a united front when faced with Apple, Amazon and other tech companies that want to license their content. Already, some, such as Time Warner Inc., are aligning with cable and satellite TV operators to offer some shows on the Web only for their paying subscribers, while others such as General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal put episodes from a large number of their shows online for free viewing with ads. But even those positions are changing, with some media companies pulling back how much they offer free or working on paid subscription offerings of their own.

Apple has already discovered those divisions: While both News Corp. and Disney signed on to test its 99-cent TV-show rentals, other major media companies rejected the plan. Several executives said those rentals could be a step toward a world where people see less advertising or stop paying for cable subscriptions—two principal sources of revenue. (News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.)

The price war could lead at least some media companies to pull existing episodes sold at $1.99 from Apple, one media executive said.

"We're happy to sit back and see how it goes," said another media executive, who also suggested that competition between the two tech giants could be a boon. That executive said a major danger media companies face is allowing one player—like Apple—to gain too much power over the distribution of content, as it did with music. Amazon could provide a welcome challenge, the executive added.

Securing affordable video content is crucial in Apple's strategy to tout the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch as go-to multimedia devices.

The existing price of content—which can cost $2.99 apiece for a high definition TV show or $4.99 for a movie—is still a high barrier of entry when consumers can access many of the same shows free on websites such as Hulu, or as part of their Netflix subscription.

Amazon, the Web's largest retailer, has used aggressive price cuts on a variety of products to draw attention to its offerings and maintain its position as a low-price leader. The company today offers 75,000 movies and TV shows, which customers can watch on a variety of systems, from computers to TVs.

Mr. Carr declined to say what impact a price cut might have on adoption of digital video, and said it "remains to be seen" what an ideal price might be for video.

"The lower that they bring the cost, the more they will expand adoption," said David Krall, the chief operating officer of Roku Inc., a company that makes set-top boxes that play Amazon and other online content on TVs. "People compare the price to going to the DVD store to rent, and convenience of having to get in the car."

It remains to be seen whether the pricing rivalry will hurt Apple's dominate position in the space. According to Screen Digest, Apple accounts for 57% of transactions in Internet video-on-demand movies, on a number-of-sales basis, and 53% of the TV shows market, excluding sports. In contrast, Amazon is only 5% and 6% respectively.

Both Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp., through their videogame consoles, sell more online video than Amazon, according to Screen Digest. (The estimates exclude Netflix because it doesn't offer a-la-carte sales and rentals of movies and TV shows over the Internet.)

One advantage that Apple has in these early days is that it has many products through which consumers can view the content. By contrast, on the digital book front, the competition between Apple and the online retailer is more intense in part because Amazon had Kindle, an e-book reader that it had been selling long before the iPad. Mr. Carr declined to comment on whether Amazon was interested in making its own devices for watching digital video.

"We don't believe Amazon's price cutting on TV shows will materially affect Apple's overall market share," said Arash Amel, Screen Digest's digital media research director. "ITunes rarely gets sucked into a price-war, given their position as the market-leader."

Amazon has had mixed success with its past digital media efforts. Its digital music business, in which it also uses aggressive pricing, has what analysts estimate is about 12% of the digital music market.

Moreover, the TV discounting costs Amazon because the company will continue to pay the companies the same wholesale price per episode that it paid before the retail-price cut, said media executives.

In the short run, a price cut could help Disney and News Corp., if Amazon sells more episodes while paying them each the same wholesale price. But some media executives and analysts believe the proliferation of lower prices could start to devalue electronic TV shows more broadly.

"It further ingrains in the consumers' mind the idea that a TV show is only worth 99 cents," said Evercore media and entertainment analyst Alan Gould.

Amazon is also interested in challenging players such as Netflix with a subscription service that would deliver TV shows and movies over the Internet. In recent weeks, Amazon has pitched a Web-based subscription service to several major media companies.

Mr. Carr declined to comment on the idea of a subscription service.

The entire business of selling episodes of TV shows through services like Apple's and Amazon's is expected to generate only $407 million in 2010, according to Screen Digest. Meanwhile, U.S. consumers and advertisers will spend about $143 billion on traditional TV advertising and subscriptions in 2010, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Disney, Apple Near iTunes Deal

The Wall Street Journal

 

Apple Inc. is in discussions with major TV companies to offer 99-cent rentals of television episodes, according to people familiar with the situation, as the company tries to reshape the television business around its devices, including a new one for pushing Internet video onto TV sets.

Apple is nearing an agreement with Walt Disney Co. to offer such rentals for some ABC television shows through its iTunes content store, these people said, but the proposal is facing at least some resistance from big TV companies, including CBS Corp., General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, News Corp., and Viacom Inc., people briefed on Apple's proposal said.

The Cupertino, Calif., company is pushing to reach agreements for its television service—which would give viewers a 48-hour window to view an electronic version of the show—before the new television season starts in September, some of those people said.

At the same time, the company is working on a new device that would allow users to stream video, such as rentals, to their TV sets, according to a person with knowledge of Apple's plans. Unlike Apple's existing Apple TV hardware, which stores downloads users can access on their televisions, the new device would act as a conduit for streaming media more directly, and could be announced as early as September, the person said.

Apple declined to comment.

Lower prices for TV shows, along with the new TV-streaming device, could help Apple in the pitched battle to pipe content into American living rooms. Traditional cable- and satellite-TV providers are already facing competition from companies including Net flix Inc. and Hulu LLC. Google Inc. soon plans to roll out its own Web-TV service, too.

Media companies, however, have been wary of pumping too much content online, worried that they could encourage viewers to cancel their monthly TV subscriptions. The tens of billions of dollars media companies make each year from monthly bills are a key source of profits.

Through iTunes, customers currently can pay to download electronic copies of many cable and broadcast shows, often for $1.99 each for the standard version, to view on iPhones, the iPad tablet computer, Apple TV or other devices. Apple has told media companies that the entertainment offerings through iTunes are too costly, according to people familiar with the matter, and has said the media companies would make more money if prices were lower.

Media companies are weighing the potential revenue they would make if more people paid for TV shows on iTunes against the dangers of eroding their business on traditional TV. But they don't want to be left behind as viewers spend more time online. That has led some to offer some shows on their own websites, or through services like Hulu.

News Corp.'s Fox is receptive towards Apple's pitch of 99-cent TV-show rentals, according to people familiar with the matter, who cautioned that significant hurdles remain to any deal with Apple. News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal. Bloomberg News reported Apple's talks with News Corp. Tuesday.

CBS is mulling the Apple proposal, but is unlikely to agree to an Apple service of this type, according to a person familiar with the matter. NBC and MTV-owner Viacom don't currently intend to accept Apple's proposal, according to people familiar with the companies' positions.

The 99-cent rental plan is the latest of several pushes by Apple in the last year to boost consumption of TV shows through its iTunes content bazaar. Apple pushed to get TV companies to participate in a plan to offer television subscriptions over the Internet. Those plans met resistance from several media companies, as did a later proposal to sell TV episodes for 99-cents each, according to people briefed on the proposal.

Electronic rentals differ from sales, in part because they remain viewable for a limited time. But some media executives argue that they would still undercut online sales in iTunes because many people only watch episodes they buy only once. It is unclear which Disney programming would be available for viewers as part of the service. One person briefed on the Disney-Apple talks said a deal is not done yet, but that one is close.

Disney has been seen as a likely Apple collaborator in part because Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs sits on its board and is the Burbank, Calif., company's largest individual shareholder.

Tales of Brave Ulysses: Apple Re-Thinks Book-Banning

NY Times

 

Score one for “Ulysses” – Apple has decided that it is not obscene after all.

After the makers of a Web comic version of the epic novel said last week that Apple had rejected several images that contained nudity, Apple reversed its decision on Monday morning and asked that the panels be re-submitted, said Chad Rutkowski, the business manager for Throwaway Horse, the publisher of “Ulysses Seen.”

“They basically apologized,” Mr. Rutkowski said. “They said they gave it a second look and realized that it wasn’t obscene or anything like that. They’re clearly drawing a distinction now and they understand what we’re doing.”

The initial installments of the heavily annotated version of the book are available in the App Store and on a Web site, ulyssesseen.com.

Mr. Rutkowski said he was rushing to re-submit the original panels to Apple. “The sense that he gave me was that they were going to try to get it approved and up there as quickly as we can,” he said.

Apple's Next Disruption: Advertising

The Wall Street Journal

 

If anything is clear from the punches being thrown by Google at Apple over mobile advertising, it is that the search giant understands what is at stake.

As mobile advertising comes into its own, Google should be well-positioned to grab a big piece of it. Prospects for other large media companies, online or traditional, are less sure.

It is easy to underestimate the importance of mobile Internet and advertising. ComScore estimates 48 million people had smartphones in the U.S. in the three months to April, of whom only 5.4 million searched the Web on the devices on a near-daily basis. In contrast, the firm counted 214 million people searching the Web generally in April.

Estimates from eMarketer put mobile advertising at $593 million this year, compared with about $25 billion for total online advertising.

But eMarketer's numbers were issued last September, before the release of the iPad. The Apple tablet's strong sales so far confirm consumer demand for tablet computers and suggest consumers' online behavior is likely to become a lot more mobile. That is likely already the case for owners of smartphones with robust Web browsers like iPhones or Android-powered devices.

Android and iPhone devices commanded 37% of the smartphone market in the first quarter between them, according to Nielsen, against 35% for Research in Motion's BlackBerry. Nielsen's data also show that close to 90% of iPhone and Android owners used the mobile Internet in the previous 30 days, compared with 73% for all smartphones. Browsing the Web on a BlackBerry can be a frustrating experience. So as RIM's market share declines and iPhone, iPad and Android devices become more common, mobile Web use will take off.

Data are scarce on how mobile browsing affects online behavior at a PC. But the ability to do Web searches anywhere likely reduces those done at a desk. Searching could become less important as people rely on apps for certain functions.

All this should spark an ad shift to mobile, particularly to apps. Admittedly, advertisers can take years to respond to changes in consumer behavior. But Apple's plunge into the ad market with iAds, which serves advertising inside apps, is likely to accelerate the change. That it drew $60 million in second-half 2010 commitments from such marketers as General Electric, Unilever and Nissan Motor indicates mobile-ad estimates are too low.

Who will suffer from the advance of mobile advertising? TV networks, potentially, if the caliber of big-brand advertisers snagged by Apple continues. As the mobile audience is likely to fragment among applications, big Internet portals also may be at risk. Regardless, mobile likely will cause a bigger, faster disruption to the ad world than is generally appreciated.

Google's Open Video Standard Begins New Battle with Apple

San Francisco Chronicle

Google may have just entered a new battlefront with Apple at the "I/O" developers conference when it took the wraps off its plans for the VP8 video codec.

While this battle is not as transparent, or sexy, as Android versus iPhone, it's going to create yet another point of tension for the two companies.

Google's big open video plan is called the WebM project. It will make the VP8 video codec, which it acquired when it bought On2 for $133 million, an open source standard. It will also use the open source Vorbis codec for audio.

When Google announced the new open source project, it said it was partnering with Mozilla, Opera, Google Chrome, Adobe, and others to proliferate the standard across the web.

As John Gruber at Daring Fireball noted, there's a big name missing from the list: Apple. (Microsoft is also missing, but it has thrown some support VP8's way.)

Apple is missing because it put its full support behind another video codec, H.264. H.264 is not an open standard. H.264 is free to use for the next five years, but after that MPEG LA plans on charging a royalty for using it.

It is a proprietary standard, owned by a consortium of tech companies called MPEG LA. Apple and Microsoft have both contributed patents to MPEG LA, so they are part of the consortium.

Those patents are important. Steve Jobs has hinted he will be doing all he can to protect them. In an email to Hugo Roy of the Free Software Foundation, Steve Jobs wrote (our emphasis added):

All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other "open source" codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn't mean or guarantee that it doesn't infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.

We don't know, but we suspect that Steve Jobs knew Google was planning on open sourcing its video format when he wrote this. While he specifically mentions Ogg Theora, he also mentions "other 'open source' codecs," suggesting that Apple could be mulling plans to sue Google over the VP8 codec format.

This wouldn't be Apple's first patent lawsuit aimed at Google. Let's not forget it's also suing HTC, a big Android customer.

Aside from the possible patent issues, this codec bothers Apple for other reasons, according to web video experts.

We spoke with Peter Csathy, CEO of Sorenson Media and David Dudas, VP of product development about Google's VP8 announcement. Sorenson Media has been involved in video encoding and compression for over a decade.

Peter and David speculated that Apple doesn't like VP8 for the following reasons:

    * Apple is a control freak, and it doesn't like the idea of Google having control over a new video format, even if it is open source. Apple is closed, it likes its own quality control. With H.264, it has some of that.
    * Apple has been getting companies to commit to its H.264 format. That works well for transmitting video on iPads and iPhones. If another format comes along, it could mess that up.
    * Apple is battling with Google. Why would it help proliferate VP8? The new standard is only going to help Google. Peter and David think Google can monetize from this new format in a number of ways -- from advertising to cloud services. It will also help Android, Google TV, and Google's tablet efforts, they say. Conversly, it's unclear what Apple gains from it.

Admittedly, it's still early in whole messy codec-war. And as you probably noticed, it's also very complicated. It's entirely possible Apple will eventually announce support for WebM once it gets a better look at it.

Lately, though, Apple has not been in the mood to play nice with competitors. We've already mentioned its lawsuit against HTC. It's also in a lawsuit war with Nokia. Then there's also the nasty spat is has going with Adobe. Remember also, CNBC reported Steve Jobs hates Google CEO Eric Schmidt now.

If Google plans a new format that will give it more control over web video, possibly hurting Apple in anyway, we don't see any reason for Apple to let this one go. So, get ready for more fireworks between the two tech companies.

This time it could be over video codecs, of all things.

Is AT and T Losing It?

PC World

On the heels of AT&T's disastrous attempts to fight back against Verizon's clever "there's a map for that" ad campaign (Luke Wilson? Is that all you got?) comes more bad news for those who've hitched their smartphones to Ma Bell's wagon.

In a speech to a tech conference this week, AT&T suit Ralph de la Vega hinted that his employer is considering plans to bring home more bacon by  -- making its wireless subscribers (i.e., iPhone owners) pay by the megabyte or live with bandwidth caps.

"The first thing we need to do is educate customers about what represents a megabyte of data and...we're improving systems to give them real-time information about their data usage. Longer term, there's got to be some sort of pricing scheme that addresses the [heavy] users.... We are going to make sure incentives are in place to reduce or modify [data] uses so they don't crowd out others in the same cell sites."

So, to recap: The only reason to pick AT&T as your wireless provider is the iPhone. In virtually every consumer survey, it lands at the bottom of the heap. It already charges an arm, a leg, and other vital bodily parts for a mandatory "unlimited" data plan. Now it wants to charge by the megabyte and/or put in bandwidth caps.

Why is the world's largest telecom being such a total asshat? Apparently it's doing everything it can to win the Worst Company Ever award.

Meanwhile, things over in Ma Bell's landline division don't appear to be much better. AT&T is running a "Help Yourself and Win" sweepstakes that's not doing it any good in the PR department. Participants vie for Four Grand Prizes -- a gift card worth $2,500 for buying a computer from Apple, Dell, HP, Sony, or Best Buy -- plus another $8,000 worth of Amazon and Starbucks gift cards for 180 runners-up. Sounds good, right?

To win, you must visit AT&T's sweepstakes site, hand over your e-mail address and phone number, and take a brief "trivia" quiz consisting of three questions:

What can you do if you are hearing noise or static on your regular phone line?

You have dial tone, but you aren't getting any telephone calls. What can you do?

Your phone does not ring when you have incoming calls. What can you do to resolve this issue online?

Here's a hint: The correct answer in each instance is "Visit AT&T's customer support repair page to report your problem and troubleshoot online." (Not that answering the questions correctly means you win. Your name must still be pulled out of a hat.)

I don't know what you walk away with from this, but here's what I get: AT&T landlines are noisy and trouble prone, and they have problems accepting incoming calls. Also, AT&T would much rather shunt you off to a Web page than deal with you directly, and it thinks you are a complete and utter boob.

Nice.

It gets worse. Cringester A. H. swears he saw the words "You're a Loser" flash across his screen seconds before the official "Sorry; you're not an instant winner today" graphic displays. Sure enough, perusing that image's properties shows the alternate text that will appear if your browser can't display it: "You're a Loser."

I am not at all surprised. When you treat your customers with this much contempt, you can't think of them as anything but losers. I don't see how Apple can continue its exclusive relationship with AT&T for much longer. It's becoming an embarrassment.