How Apple Is Playing Fair With Podcasting… For Now
It might not be easy to see, but Apple’s exclusive podcast still uses open standards and isn’t locked into iCloud.
Tag: itunes
Who is buying new albums?
My family tends to stream far more music from the mainstream than buying albums thanks to an Apple Music family subscription . My album purchases tend to be either ‘asking the band after the gig’ or physical orders from personal websites because iTunes doesn’t have a lot of Finnish new-age female-fronted power punk bands. Turns out that we’re not alone, with Chartattack reporting that 2015 saw ‘new’ US album sales beaten by back catalogue tracks. The term “catalogue” refers to albums released more than 18 months ago. According to Nielsen’s annual year end music report, catalogue albums outsold current releases
Don’t forget to listen to Edinburgh Nights every week!
You might recall that after this year’s radio broadcast of the Edinburgh Fringe chat show came to the end, I decided to keep the format alive and showcase all the fun things in Edinburgh each week (that would have been the moment for a David Tennant-esque “I don’t want to go…”). It’s three months later, and Edinburgh Nights is still on the air, at 3pm every Friday, with a podcast available to listen again to the show (if you’re in Edinburgh), or to listen fresh to the whole hour if you are further afield. It’s a show that continues to evolve,
The changing value of the average Apple user
Horace Deidu looks at the average spend of an Apple user, which is dropping as the user base increases (with my emphasis). This can be read as: “Each of the current 575 million accounts generates about half the revenue of the 100 million accounts of 2009.” One would expect such a decline as an user base expands and this approximate 50% decline in revenues per account seems reasonable for a six-fold base increase. In absolute terms the graph shows that an iTunes account generates about $3.2/month in transactions. Put another way, during the last year, an average of $40/yr of
UPDATE: It will be eligible! ‘Ding-dong, The Witch Is Dead’ is too short to be a Top 40 Single
Update: From the Official Charts website. Three versions of the song are currently figuring in the Top 200 – Judy Garland’s version at 54, Ella Fitzgerald’s 1961 cover is at 146 and the Munchkins‘ version at 183. Contrary to some reports, all three versions qualify under industry chart rules. At 51 seconds, Judy Garland’s version of ‘Ding-dong, The Witch Is Dead’, currently at #11 in the iTunes Singles Chart in the UK, is too short to be eligible for the Official Top 40 this weekend. Short of some sort of rule bending, the number one is going to be a
Stand by for Hollywood vs the App Developers
For many studios and other content providers, mobile apps are a new source of income and a powerful way to engage audiences, sell games and merchandise. But these revenues are threatened if developers do not pay licensing fees. Pop quiz: Do you think the studios will have a reasonable definition of ‘fair use’, licence the images of their latest blockbuster movie to app developers for a workable fee, or squelch every app with a flood of DMCA takedowns to the mobile stores so they can control the entire marketing message of said movie?
