In some ways, Sweden is the chilly laboratory of the global music industry. The local hero, Spotify, took over the country already at the end of 2011 as the cool animation by Digital Music News demonstrates. In 2009, streaming music was just 7% of music sales in Sweden. In 2013. streaming had exploded to 70% of the entire music industry sales. As the streaming revolution took off, something curious happened in Sweden: National music sales started growing robustly again, from $150 million in 2012 to nearly $170 million in 2013. More →
When Apple was engaged in long, protracted negotiations with record companies over terms for its iTunes Radio service, many assumed that the company was trying to get copyright owners to take less money per song play than competing Internet radio service Pandora. The Wall Street Journal reports that this is not the case, however, because Apple is paying out $0.13 per song play, or 1 cent more than what Pandora pays out. In addition to royalties paid per song played, Apple is also dishing out 15% of its advertising revenue over the first year of its contract and will bump that number up to 19% of advertising revenue in the second year of the deal. The Journal also says that Apple is also “offering music publishers more than twice as much in royalties than Pandora does,” so it seems that iTunes Radio has the potential to be much more lucrative for record companies going forward.
With entertainment companies growing increasingly frustrated in their fight against online piracy, both Sony and Disney have started rolling out a radical new plan in South Korea that could seriously upend the way movies get released. The Wall Street Journal reports that Disney and Sony have started letting viewers stream movies at home that are still playing in movie theaters, a move that other major studios are reportedly watching to see if it helps reduce the rate of piracy. The studios aren’t letting viewers stream movies at the same time they release in theaters, of course, but are instead letting them stream the films roughly a month after they launch in theaters. All the same, this gives viewers much shorter waits than they’re used to having for home movie rentals so it will be intriguing to see whether this helps the studios fight piracy.
Despite the rise of new competitors, Apple’s dominance of the market for digital songs remains the same. AllThingsD points out that new research from Asymco shows that Apple’s iTunes generates around $6.9 billion in revenue from digital music each year, which is 75% of the $9.3 billion that consumers spend on digital music annually. This means that while music streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify have shown rapid growth recently, they still can’t match the revenue generating powers of the iTunes store. iTunes’ popularity also shows us why Apple was able to successfully play hardball with music labels when negotiating a deal for iTunes Radio — its clout in the digital music realm means that record companies are willing to take less per-song revenue if it means they’ll be exposed to a much wider audience.
Netflix on Monday announced a blockbuster deal that will bring no less than 300 hours of original content from DreamWorks to its streaming video service. That means Netflix will have the rights to premier new series with characters from franchises that might include Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda and Casper the Friendly Ghost. A deal of this magnitude with a leading animation house could be extremely expensive and no details about actual programming have been divulged at this point. That’s why it’s fascinating that Netflix’s share price soared by as much as 8% on Monday. More →
Netflix has been helping cord-cutters save money for years, offering unlimited movie and TV show streaming for just $7.99 per month. Just because the service is affordable doesn’t mean it is immune to digital piracy, however, and newly available data shows that the service took a pretty big hit earlier this week. Early on Sunday morning, Netflix released the complete fourth season of cult comedy “Arrested Development,” the latest show in Netflix’s original programming lineup. Netflix has begun to develop its own shows in an effort to attract new subscribers of course, but according to paidContent, around 100,000 people downloaded season 4 illegally within the first 24 hours alone. Many of the downloads are said to have come from markets where Netflix is currently unavailable, though firm geographical data is not available.
It’s taken a while, but Microsoft’s big plan for conquering consumers’ living rooms is now finally coming together. For years, major tech companies have been obsessed with getting their software and applications onto television screens and have mostly employed a series of set-top boxes that have done little to spark consumer interest. But unlike Apple and Google, Microsoft has always had a secret weapon that it’s been waiting to deploy to make sure that its software becomes entrenched on users’ television sets: Namely, the Xbox. More →
Cult comedy “Arrested Development” has been revived by Netflix and fans of the show are waiting with bated breath for the first new season in seven years. As the streaming video giant turned production company gets ready to release 15 brand new episodes that will make up the show’s fourth season, Netflix has released the first trailer for the revived series. BGR sister site Deadline published the trailer on Sunday on its YouTube channel, and the full video can be watched below. More →
Netflix spent around $100 million to produce the first two seasons of House of Cards, the original drama that stars Kevin Spacey as a comically oily United States congressman. But while this may sound like a big investment for the hugely popular content distributor, analysis from The Atlantic Wire shows that it may just be a drop in the bucket in the bigger scheme of things. According to The Atlantic Wire’s calculations, Netflix has already earned its $100 million back “by adding more than 2 million U.S. subscribers this quarter and another 1 million elsewhere in the world,” thus giving Netflix a strong incentive to produce more original content going forward. Netflix posted impressive earnings on Monday and announced that its subscriber base in the United States had risen to over 29 million, thus giving it more American subscribers than HBO.
Sorry, Pandora — you won’t be able to escape Apple’s (AAPL) iRadio after all. CNET reports that Apple is close to signing a deal with two major record labels that would pay the labels half the per-song royalties that they receive from Pandora but would also add sweeteners to the deal that would give the labels added revenues. Among other things, CNET says that Apple will provide “a quick way for consumers to buy a song they hear, potentially boosting download sales from iTunes” and also give the record labels ”a revenue share of new audio ads Apple is planning to add to the free service.” Given that the service will be centered around iTunes and available on all iOS devices, it seems that the labels are willing to take less in per-song royalties in exchange for potentially much wider exposure than what they get from Pandora.
Various reports over the past few years have suggested that Facebook (FB) is developing its own smartphone, but nothing has materialized yet. Instead, Facebook continues to expand its mobile products across various mobile platforms, and we expect the company to further its efforts today. According to earlier reports, Facebook will unveil new “Facebook Home” Android software that features deep integration with several Facebook services. The software is expected to be available across a number of Android smartphones, and rumors suggest it will be showcased on the upcoming “HTC First” smartphone rather than an own-brand “Facebook Phone.” All will be revealed momentarily though, and our live coverage of Facebook’s press conference follows below.
Netflix (NFLX) just got an intriguing competitor this week now that Verizon (VZ) has brought its Redbox Instant video streaming service out of beta and has made it available to the general public. Redbox Instant, which is available to everyone regardless of whether they’re a Verizon customer, is initially offering a range of 7,500 “streaming and transactional movie titles” for $8 a month. The service works on Macs, PCs and the Xbox 360, which entered into a deal with Verizon earlier this year to become “the exclusive gaming and entertainment console launch partner for Redbox Instant.” Verizon is currently offering a free one-month trial for the new streaming service.