http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM
After watching the video, it inspired me wants to know more about people’s behaviors in using products. Using this insight to advertising, I think in branding we have to know the target consumer’s need and thought to position a brand correctly.
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_urges_designers_to_think_big.html
After seeing this presentation I’ve learned that design thinking is a great logic of finding insights. Designs recently are mostly sticking on the surface. We have to dig deep into humans life and know the real needs that people really want. and be creative.
Ashley Gong 02860069
Apple
After 6 weeks, I had gathered over 100 pieces of data to identify the new trends about music sharing, discovering and innovating.
This document presents 15 examples with brief descriptions to provide early guidance on the direction of our research.
User-Friendly Apps:
1. Pandora online music application:
This application is an Internet radio that you may listen on your phone and it plays the only music that you like! Pandora has been the top 1 music app of 2010. People may use this application daily in different occasions.
http://www.pandora.com/#/stations/create/
2. “Discovr”iPad app shows interactive maps of music.
This app shows connections between bands and you may see videos on Youtube and a lot more. It’s like a visual version of Pandora, and users may have connections of the kind of music they like. It’s a nice application about discovering music.
3. “Shapemix” app can let music lovers mix their own music on iPad.
Shapemix is a music mixing application that can be used on iPad. Music lovers such as Djs, music producers, and musicians can mix right away and have fun with this application. It’s a new innovative way to create music right away!
4. Shazam let people get involve into different types of music.
Shazam is also one of the most popular app in 2010. Its can listen to the music directly and identify the artist and the name of the song that is playing now. It is a useful app that could make people discover new music.
5. “Mystream” is to share music by using WIFI and Bluetooth, streaming audio with users.
Using Mystream you may view other users in network and see songs they are listening and sharing. This app is to arrange and share custom playlists with its private network. People may create, set permissions and share profiles with other users in the mobile streaming network.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mystream/id423918810?mt=8
Music subscription
6. MOG music network creates an all-you-can-stream service for music online.
MOG is an online music service and blog network, where users may listen to, read about and discover music through iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android platform. There are a 10$/month plan which allows access though the platform in mobile devices.
7. Rhapsody is an online music service that may download music.
This service is available in the US only and you may download music that you like after subscription. The download files come with restrictions on their use, enforced by Helix. The Rhapsody’s version of digital tights management enforced on AAC+ or WMA files. The service also sells individual MP3s without digital rights management restrictions.
http://www.rhapsody.com/welcome.html
8. eMusic subscription sells MP3 online. (Competitor)
eMusic was the first digital retailer to sell DRM-free downloadable audiobooks in the MP3 format beginning in 2007. They sell packages such as $10 credit for 20 up songs.
9. 7digital – A privately- held digital media offering downloadable music, videos and movies based on the European market. (Competitor)
People can get good deals in 7digital and unique albums here in the site. It’s a nice website like iTunes that may download different types of music around the word.
10. Last.fm - An online music player can identify your taste of music and also has a subscription for €3.00 per month after a 30 track free trial, but since October 2010 subscribers were offered a refund due to the removal of the custom stations.
Cloud service and Social networks
11. Spotify is a cloud service that may let people share, buy and search music.
Spotify offers unlimited streaming of selected music from different labels. The music could be browsed artists, labels, genre or playlist as well as by direct searches. Subscribers may register either by free or premium accounts for mobile devices.
12. mSpot – music cloud service that can share music 5GB for free.
A mobile media company based in Palo Alto, California. mSpot is rolling out a so-called “music locker” service on Monday. Users of the service can upload their music collections to the Web and stream their songs to any PC, Macintosh and soon, a variety of mobile devices (starting with Android; an iPhone app is on the way.) The first two gigabytes of storage (around 1600 songs) are free, and there’s a variety of fees for extra storage.
12. Thumbplay music – music, ring tones and games sharing cloud service.
This New York-based company is more widely known for selling ring tones and video games on mobile phones. Earlier this year, it introduced a mobile music service for BlackBerrys and Android phones; earlier this month, it added an iPhone application to the mix. The service costs $9.99 a month and entitles subscribers to unlimited access to over 9 million songs from all the major and independent music labels.
https://music.thumbplay.com/#/account/secure/signin/
13. Amazon cloud service – “Personal disk drive in the cloud”.
This service is a web-based music player. That’s right—Amazon Cloud Drive will be something like Google’s rumored digital music locker, a cloud-based storage system for all of your tunes. Not only can you upload and access your digital music collection from anywhere, but you can also upload “any other digital documents.” Amazon is giving its customers an initial 5GB of free cloud storage—and purchases from the Amazon MP3 store are stored for free and do not count toward customers’ storage quota.
14. Google cloud service - a digital download store and a cloud-based subscription service costing $25 per year.
The Google cloud service is like a locker, a place where subscribers will be able to store and access their music files and downloads, stream full tracks once prior to purchase, and share play lists with friends who would also be allowed to stream full tracks, free of charge, on their first listen.
http://www.thecloudplayer.com/
15. Qriocity – A new cloud service from SONY
This is a new service from SONY that you can create you own cloud playlist online and watch videos and listen to music on cloud. The music you want, when you want it. Qriocity™ offers access to millions of songs on a variety of Sony devices. Upload your personal library for access anytime, anywhere or discover new favorites with automatic recommendations based on your unique listening habits. Now it is 30 days for free.
http://musically.com/blog/2011/01/22/midemnet-2011-the-future-for-cloud-music/
Our very own Steve Mayall moderated a session at MidemNet today on cloud music, with a panel discussion featuring some of the key actors in the space. The panel featured Thomas Hesse from Sony Music Entertainment, Christophe Lange from streaming service simfy, Harry Maloney from platform provider Catch Media and Daren Tsui from music service mSpot. Mayall pointed out that cloud isn’t new – the industry was talking about ‘the celestial jukebox’ ten years ago – so why the excitement now? “The music lover has become much more important in the whole process,” said Maloney. “What we’re seeing is a shift in the power base away from the traditional record company models to what we now see is more cloud-based services that give access, and access on-demand, whenever a music lover wants that.” Maloney also said that “the download business will become redundant the way in the past audio cassettes and taping became redundant”, thanks to the cloud. Lange chimed in, saying that “the power of the cloud is that convenience factor” – people don’t have to worry about whether they can access a particular song or album. And Hesse agreed. “What makes the cloud possible is technology: having smartphones and connected TVs creates a platform that certainly wasn’t there before.” Which is why the celestial jukebox never came to pass when they were first talked about. He also said the new devices move music from a PC-centric world. “What will make the cloud ultimately successful is the user proposition of digital music suddenly being brain-dead easy. That’s the issue that is still holding up the file-based world of digital music: it’s very complicated… In the cloud, you do one little thing and as if by magic, it appears everywhere.” Tsui gave his opinion too: “There are smartphones that are connected, tablets and slates, TVs, set-top boxes, consoles… you name it… When you have these connected devices, cloud-based entertainment is the way to go.” Mayall brought up the example of Nokia’s Comes With Music, and Sky Songs in the UK – which both closed recently (although CWM stayed in selected emerging markets). Why didn’t those services work? “The market is just moving really, really fast,” said Lange. “Many of these services have lacked that speed to catch up with changing and more sophisticated consumer needs for accessing all that music… What Spotify did well, and what we are trying also to do, is getting users hooked to the service. There is still a gap when it comes to the business model… but the most important point is you need to have that user engagement, and then it’s a lot easier to monetise from that engagement.” Maloney focused on Comes With Music specifically, relating it to Catch Media’s own dealings with retailer Carphone Warehouse in the UK for the Music Anywhere cloud service. The trouble with retailers? “They’re not geared up and do not understand there’s a process for dealing with a service, and I think that’s what happened with Nokia.” “It’s actually really hard to do this well,” said Hesse. “The bar is pretty high. You’ve got to get consumers into your ecosystem. And consumers are very smart, and very demanding.” The key is persuading people that your service is better than what they have now – which in most cases will be iTunes. Hesse talked about the car and the living room as being key spaces for the cloud to bring music into. And he also talked about a new paradigm of interoperability across devices, thanks to the cloud. He predicted a handful of services will end up carving the world up between them. Mayall brought up the EMI/MP3tunes legal battle, focusing on how cloud services sit within the rightsholder licensing models. Tsui said he thinks a backup service like mSpot can tie in with a paid subscription service, where users want to listen to music they don’t own too. However, Maloney jumped in to talk about the “two years of pain” for Catch Media when it was licensing its service, when services like mSpot are not seeking licences. “I think there is proliferation of digital locker services coming through at the moment that haven’t been licensed, and are retrospectively going to try to obtain a licence.” Tsui declined the opportunity to get into a legal debate, “we do believe if someone owns music… it’s not our job to police how they get their music”. But he said this is an opportunity to convert people who didn’t pay for music into people who pay for music in other ways, via partnerships with labels.” mSpot is currently negotiating with the labels to figure that out. Hesse chimed in: “It’s not a great thing to start a business on very shady legal basis… We will do everything in our power to enforce our rights in those situations… You never make yourselves a lot of friends when you launch something without any licences, then get going and say ‘can we negotiate, we’ve already got so many users…’” How about Apple? If they launch an iTunes-in-the-cloud service, will that change the whole landscape and make things difficult for other cloud services. Mayall pointed out that Google are also waiting in the wings with their own cloud services. “Apple do actua.ly have a music cloud service through MobileMe,” pointed out Tsui, referring to the ability for Apple users to upload songs to the MobileMe locker than play them. “Apple and Google are individual businesses, and there is room for other businesses,” said Maloney, explaining that retailers and other companies wanting to launch their own services will not want to work with Apple or Google. Hesse wondered what these services will look like. “We are uncomfortable with a model in which you can just throw everything you own into the cloud and stream it – even to yourself, if not everything you own has been originally purchased. That’s going to be a big discussion going forward.” Tsui talked about extra features that cloud services are starting to offer: lyrics, artist biographies, recommendations. However, the final question focused on the difference between on-demand subscription models and cloud lockers. “You can have both models on a cloud-based version or not on a cloud-based version,” explained Hesse. “It can enable to stream to your devices what you already own, in which case it’s a locker, or everything in the world, in which case it’s a cloud-based subscription service. Those are different variants on the same idea.” And who’s the winner? “The winner’s the one who provides the best service ultimately,” said Hesse, before giving a surprising example. “If you’re an iTunes user now, wouldn’t it be nice if you could stream or re-download all the music you’d bought on that to all your devices. Wouldn’t that be fabulous? And we’d wholeheartedly endorse that.” Over to you, Apple. But the final question for the panel focused on where their services would be going. Tsui talked about mSpot taking advantage of the fact that it knows what music each user has uploaded. “We think we can take that information to provide very good discovery and recommendations,” said Tsui. “The big feature for us in the next few months is a discovery agent.” Meanwhile, Catch Media’s Maloney said it’s rolling out its Music ANywhere service in more countries, while simfy’s Lange said more devices are on the agenda for his service, along with discovery. “We think less is more in a way, so more personalised methods.” And Hesse? “The biggest thing is for services to have such excellent features and a great user interface that users flock to them in much greater numbers.”
By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY9Comments1Recommend A new breed to of subscription services think they’ve got the problems licked, with unlimited access to music, via mobile phones. The latest of the new services, Rdio, from the creators of Skypeand the now defunct Kazaa, launches to the public Tuesday. (Rdio has been available with an invitation only test since early June.) Like MOG and Europe’s Spotify, Rdio offers on-demand music to mobile devices, and stores the song on the hard drive of the device for offline listening. (Rdio has apps for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry.) Rdio (pronounced R-Dee-Oh) charges $4.95 monthly for listening on the desktop, and $9.95 for mobile access. Why yet another music subscription service? The founders were told the same thing when they started Skype, says Drew Larner, Rdio’s CEO, but they found a way to launch an Internet phone service that was easier to use than others. He hopes consumers respond the same way about Rdio. “The timing, with where mobile music platforms are going, told us that now was the time to get back into this,” says Larner. The struggles of subscription services doesn’t worry Larner. He says too much attention has been paid to desktop listening. “Now that the mobile networks are there, we’re seeing an explosion of compelling, comprehensive services.” Like MOG, Rdio allows for online and offline playback of songs, and instant search. Rdio plays up its social components — check in with your Facebook and Twitter friends to see what they’re listening to, and manage your music collection based on their tastes and interests. “The heartbeat of the service is your network of people,” he says. In fact. Carter Adamson, Rdio’s Chief Operating Officer, calls the service a “Twitter for music.” During the testing period, Adamson says execs learned that “this really works. People were amazed at how much music they discovered, both old and new stuff. They told us it made their music come alive. Instead of a static music collection, they were exposed to a powerful stream of music activity.” One bug Rdio hopes to get fixed for its mobile app soon: if you download single songs to a mobile device — instead of a complete album or playlist—you have to listen to each song one by one. There’s no “play all” button. But that will fixed shortly, we’re told.
CAPTIONBy rdioMusic subscription services have been around for years, but Rhapsody, Napster and Zune Pass have yet to make a dent with music lovers, who have balked at paying $14.95 a month to rent music and transfer it to non-iPod MP3 players.
CAPTIONBy rdio
http://www.macworld.com/article/154757/2010/10/music_subscription_compared.html
While many people continue to consume music by purchasing it—on CD or via electronic emporiums such as the iTunes Store and Amazon.com—some also use music subscription services to get their daily musical fix. Once confined to the Web, many of these services now make their tuneful content available via iOS apps. Among them are Mog, Napster, Rdio, and Rhapsody. But what—other than more music than you can listen to in a lifetime—do you get for your money? Tune in to find out. These U.S.-based services all stream within the United States. Rdio additionally offers service to Canada, and Napster has service in Canada, the UK, and Germany. (Napster offers far fewer tracks in Canada—2.5 million—than it does in the other countries.) All four services offer different levels of service and price plans, depending on whether you intend to stream only to a Web browser or hardware device (the Sonos Multi-Room Music System, various Roku boxes, or Logitech’s Squeezeboxproducts) or also to your iOS device. Mog, Napster, and Rdio offer $5-a-month plans for Web- and device-streaming. For $10 a month these services additionally offer streaming and downloads to their free iOS apps. If you’re willing to commit for an entire year, Napster also offers annual plans. For $50 a year you can have Web and device streaming; with mobile access and downloads included, the price is $96 per year. At one time Napster included five MP3 downloads per month with every subscription, but it has since discontinued that perk. Rhapsody no longer provides a streaming-only plan. Instead, for $10 a month you get Web and device streaming plus the ability to stream and download to one iOS device. For $15 a month you can stream to up to three iOS devices. Currently Mog streams to Roku devices. Sonos and Squeezebox devices support both Napster and Rhapsody. All of the services except Mog sell music as well as stream it. Purchased tracks from Rhapsody, Napster, and Rdio are DRM-free MP3 files encoded at 256 kbps. The quality of the services’ streams and downloads varies. Napster streams 128-kbps MP3 files to computers, 128-kbps WMA files to Sonos and Squeezebox, and provides 64-kbps AAC+ files for its mobile device downloads. Similarly Rhapsody streams 128-kbps MP3 files to computers and Sonos devices. The iPhone app streams and downloads 64-kbps AAC+ files. Mog provides 256- to 320-kbps MP3 streams to computers and Roku devices. The Web version will dial down to 128-kbps MP3 when it encounters a congested connection. iOS streams are 64-kbps AAC+. Normal iOS downloads are also 64-kbps AAC+ but you have the option to choose a High Quality setting that lets you download 256- to 320-kbps protected MP3 files.Four music subscription services compared
How Mog, Napster, Rdio, and Rhapsody stack up
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http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/03/apple-cloud-service-estimated-for-this-spring.html Apple plans to re-launch their MobileMe service in April, which will allow users to store music online and access it from any mobile device. To get ready for the event, Apple isreportedly pressuring major labels to be ready with their music licenses. Wayne Russo at The Music Void said Warner Music has already signed on, withUMG and EMI to soon follow. According to Russo, “Apple may actually get some pushback from Sony,” but with iTunes responsible for about 70% of digital revenue, Sony will probably not put up much of a fight. With Apple’s recent confirmation that their new data center in Maiden, N.C. will open later this spring, it is suspected the Apple cloud service will soon follow. Apple’s cloud service is expected to cost approximately $20 annually. Hypebot reports that a Google service will most likely launch soon after, and that this news places pressure on Slacker and Spotify to finalize their own deals.
The man credited with inventing the MP3 wasn’t trying to turn the music industry on its head. Karlheinz Brandenburg was just looking for a way to compress music into smaller files. The year was 1988. Brandenburg and his collaborators at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany thought they had come up with a pretty good system — until they tried it on the song “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega. Brandenburg estimates that he listened to the song more than 500 times while working on the audio technology that became the MP3. “Everything else sounded quite OK,” he says, “and Suzanne Vega’s voice was destroyed. So we had some work to do.” Brandenburg is a modest man, quick to share credit with his collaborators in the Moving Picture Experts Group, which gave its name to MPEG Audio Layer III — or MP3 for short. Brandenburg says he had no inkling of how popular the format would become until the mid-1990s, when he talked with an English entrepreneur. “He asked us, ‘Do you know that you will destroy the music industry?’ ” Brandenberg remembers. “So there was some writing in the wall.” The Legacy Of The CD: Innovation That Ate Itself Slow And Steady: Vinyl Survives Cassette Tapes Get A West Coast Rewind 8-Track Tapes Belong In A Museum It was a message the major record labels chose to ignore. Having spent years getting rich on the compact disc boom, record companies were in no hurry to start selling digital downloads. And so when the MP3 reared its head, for the first time, it was consumers — not the industry — who chose the new format. “We actually found out that what people wanted was access to content conveniently,” says Mark Mulligan atForrester Research, who studied the rise of the MP3. “What people opted for was, ‘I want something that works. Something that just does what I ask it to do.’ “ The MP3 played everywhere: on computers, at the gym, in the car. It didn’t hurt that MP3s were often free on file-sharing networks like Napster and its spawn. Even when you paid for them, they were cheaper than the $18 the labels used to charge for CDs. And if the sound quality of MP3s wasn’t great, only a few audiophiles seemed to care. Keith Holzman, who ran Nonesuch Records in the early 1980s, was one of those people. “The difference between listening to an MP3 and a CD is night and day to me,” says Holzman. “It’s like daylight — with a clear, crystalline sky — and a muddy, cloudy, overcast day. The MP3 is highly compressed, taking away a great deal of sonic quality.” There are signs that some fans are drifting away from the format, though not because of the quality. Instead of cluttering up their hard drives and iPods with MP3s, Mulligan says, lots of younger fans are listening to music online at a familiar website. “The killer app for digital music — guess what it is? YouTube. It is not something which the industry has chosen as being its cheerleader for digital music. It’s simply something [about] which consumers say, ‘Yes, that works,’ ” Mulligan says. YouTube is free and legal to use. Some modest revenue even flows back to labels and artists. And fans seem happy to use the site as a virtual jukebox. The question facing the music industry now is how to get those consumers to pay. One option is charging them a monthly fee for access to millions of tracks online that they don’t have to download. That’s what the subscription service Rhapsody has been doing for almost a decade, says CEO Jon Irwin. “For the average music fan, it just seems inefficient to me that you’re gonna have everyone with a hard drive filled up with 8 million songs,” Irwin says. “Why would you ever need to do that if you can actually listen to it and get enjoyment out of it at any time?” Services like Rhapsody allow listeners to access music stored online, in what tech geeks like to call the cloud. The popular European company Spotify is expected to launch its own cloud music service in the U.S. — maybe this year. Google and Apple are rumored to be working on offerings of their own. And the sound quality may get better. But for now, Mulligan says the MP3 is what consumers want. “Let me tell you an ugly truth: Most people don’t care about quality,” he says. “It’s a bitter to pill to swallow, but that is the simple fact.” More than 1 billion MP3s were sold in the U.S. last year. Billions more traded hands free on peer-to-peer networks. When you mention this to Brandenburg, the inventor of the MP3 still seems a little surprised. “In 1988 somebody asked me, ‘What could become of this technology you’re working on?’ And my answer was, ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it might be used by millions of people,’ ” Brandenburg remembers. “And millions sounded like a very big number. So that it literally would be billions — that was beyond the dream.”More In This Series
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Later today, Apple will be holding a press conference. As with all things Apple, there is little advance word on what it’s about. But it appears to be music-related, judging from the big guitar on the press release. That’s fueling speculation that a major overhaul of the iTunes music store is imminent — one that could take advantage of advances in so-called cloud computing. When Apple launched its first iPod, the selling point was how many songs it could hold. As the ubiquitous ad said, “1000 songs, in your pocket.” Now the Next Big Thing in digital music is getting those songs back out of your pocket. Why bother storing music on an MP3 player when you can listen instantly to millions of songs over any phone, computer, tablet, car, TV — or any other device that’s connected to the Internet. “Rather than buying songs for 99 cents and downloading them and managing them and moving them between your devices, you just log in from anything and your music is right there,” says Eliot Van Buskirk, a blogger for Wired. Ever since Apple bought the music-streaming company Lala last year, Van Buskirk and others figured it was only a matter of time before Apple switched from selling individual downloads to offering access to a stream of music over the Internet — a so-called cloud-based music service. “The smart money is on this cloud-based iTunes,” says Van Buskirk. “Whether it’s what’s being announced now or later, it seems to be in the pipeline for sure.” But for now at least, there is no cheap, cloud-based music service in the U.S. that gives you access to almost any song you want, from any device you want. Sure there’s Rhapsody but it costs 10 bucks a month. Napster has a 5 dollar plan but it won’t stream on your iPhone. Neither offers a free service. For that, you have to go to Europe, where there is Spotify. It allows you to listen to music for free from your Web browser. Well, not entirely free. The service is supported by ads that occasionally interrupt the music. If you want to turn the ads off, or listen on your phone, you have to pay a monthly fee. Mark Mulligan of Forrester Research says Spotify’s users love it. “It’s a huge success as a free, advertising-supported music service. So successful at getting people to get free music. Not so great at convincing them to pay 9.99 a month in order to upgrade to the premium offering,” Mulligan says. For months, Spotify has been trying to negotiate licensing deals with the major record labels to make the service available in the U.S. None of the labels would grant an on-the-record interview for this story. Neither would Spotify. Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk says the main sticking point in negotiations is exactly what you’d expect. “Money, as usual,” Van Buskirk laughs. “For the industry, they only have one shot to sort of get it right in the biggest market in the world for music.” Van Buskirk says record labels are focused on getting the highest revenue they can, for as long as they can. And they’re wary of letting Spotify offer the free version of its product in the US. But without it, Van Buskirk says Spotify would have a hard time distinguishing itself from the other streaming services that have been on the market for years. “Without the free unlimited version, Spotify is just Rhapsody’s good-looking Swedish cousin. And we’ve had Rhapsody here in the states for years. Their membership’s actually declining,” says Van Buskirk. CD sales are also falling. And paid MP3 downloads seem to be leveling off, too, according to Mark Mulligan at Forrester Research. “So the record labels are beginning to realize it is absolutely time for a plan B. They don’t know what plan B is yet.” But Mulligan has a guess. Eventually, he thinks record labels will have to cut their prices. And when the price of a cloud based-music service drops to a few dollars a month, it’ll be a lot easier to fold that charge into one of the bills you’re already getting from your phone or Internet provider. “Music stops being something that you ever pay for. It becomes something you get free with your iPod, or free with your Verizon subscription. Or as in the case of Spotify, free in exchange for listening to a few adverts.” Mulligan says ‘free’ is a bitter pill for record labels to swallow. Which is why it may be a while before Spotify, Apple — or anyone else — unveils a cloud music service in the U.S.
Now that Spotify and We7 have taken music streaming to the masses, the next shift in our listening habits is expected to be towards a new breed of “cloud services”. These allow users to upload their digital music library from their computer to a website, then access it from any computer or mobile device. Both iTunes and Google are strongly rumoured to be launching services in the coming months. Until then, you can give this latest technological new dawn a whirl with mSpot.com. Sign up for a free mSpot account and you can easily sync parts or all of your PC or Mac’s music collection with the site – although it can take around 90 seconds for each song to upload. Once your music is there, access your account through any computer’s browser, and you can play, search and make playlists. In the US, there’s already a free Android mobile app, which allows you to play your mSpot library on the go, with an iPhone app expected to follow. With mSpot, free users aren’t subjected to any adverts. We7 and Spotify use their ad revenue to pay their hefty streaming royalty bills. But mSpot argues that if you already own an MP3, you have the right to play it on your own devices, without the need for further royalties. So, you can upload up to 2GB of music to mSpot for free. It’s an impressive service, but it seems likely that mSpot’s outlook on royalties will be challenged by the big four labels before very long. Plus, the launch of those higher-profile cloud music rivals is looming. The big question, though, is whether any service built solely on music that a user “owns” can compete against the streaming sites that allow people to hear whatever they like, without having to purchase it first. Apple, of course, would prefer people to keep buying music from its iTunes store. But even they have been offering some impressive free streaming this week. The shows taking place at this month’s iTunes Festival in London are being webcast live via both MySpace.comand the free iTunes Live iPhone/iPad app. So far, Scissor Sisters, Tony Bennett and N-Dubz have appeared. On-demand highlights should soon begin to appear at itunesfestival.co.uk, where you can also check the full lineup. But, if you’re staying in tonight, the folkpop double bill from Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling should be well worth catching live.
Hi this is Ashley.
Academy of Art Advertising student.
I'm working on the music business for APPLE !:-)
