Code name "Cocktail: Apple discloses new information about ITunes

Apple is making use of another technique that will excite mp3 buying customers. The Celebrity Café reports.

iTunes will introduce a way to purchase music under the code name of “cocktail.” Users, when buying whole albums on iTunes, will be able to access artwork and liner notes that would normally be part of a CD purchase, as well as possible ringtones.

Apple executives hope this new addition will encourage customers to spend more on an entire album instead of just buying singular songs—it is hoped to launch in September, along with a new tablet edition of a MAC computer. Reuters states that Apple has further projects in mind, even promoting the idea that the new tablet will be able to connect to a iPod touch. The music companies on board for project Cocktail are EMI, Warner Music, and Sony Music.

Orange offers legal music service with Universal Music

Orange and Universal Music are looking to attract subscribers and reduce piracy with the launch of a music streaming service available to pre-pay consumers. NMA reports.

Pay-as-you-go customers of the new Monkey package who top up £10 each month will receive 600 minutes of music streaming, accessed by calling 247 from their phone.

Wired U.S. Exclusive: Hands-On with the Spotify iPhone App

Spotify is set to take America by storm, and the streaming music service could soon do the same to the iPhone platform — but only if Apple approves Spotify’s iPhone app, which shows real potential to threaten iTunes on Apple’s own iPhone platform. Wired reports.

This slick app grants instant access to over six million on-demand tracks and your customized Spotify playlists, and it sounds great even on planes, subways, and other places where you can’t get a decent cell signal thanks to an offline playback feature.

Spotify is currently only available in Europe but the company plans to roll out in America by the end of the year.

“It’s going to be very interesting to see if Apple lets this through or sees us as competition — fingers crossed,” explained Spotify communications manager Jim Butcher. It certainly won’t help that unlike some other apps, Spotify’s does not include “buy” links to the iTunes music store. However, Apple would could take a percentage of Spotify’s iPhone-related revenue, and might not care what people use to listen to music, so long as they keep buying Apple hardware to play it on.

Read full article.

Ringtones Ringing Sales Relate to Celeb Gossip, Deaths, & Marriages

According to Wireless and Mobile News, ringtone sales are effected by celebrity news and gossip. For example, when it was announced that the Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch had cancer, his ringtone sales jumped 64 percent.

Zed, a leading digital entertainment company, analyzed sales of ringtones from a number of its carrier partners and found that celebrity gossip does influence fans' purchasing decisions:

-- when Michael Jackson died, his ringtone sales soared more than 9,544 percent!
-- when T.I. went to jail, his ringtone sales jumped up 19 percent week over week.
-- when Fergie got married and Kevin Jonas got engaged, ringtone sales dropped 10 percent and 16 percent respectively.
-- when Chris Brown and Rihanna suffered domestic issues, ringtones dropped 18 percent and 28 percent respectively.

Palm Pre reconnects with estranged iTunes

Palm Inc. says the Pre can again connect to iTunes — only a week after Apple Inc. shut it out. A software update delivered automatically to the phones re-enables the transfer of music, photos and video from iTunes, according to a Palm blog post made late Thursday.

[via Cellular News]

Gracenote debuts MusicID app for iPhone

Sony-owned content and data solutions provider Gracenote's Gravity Mobile unit announced the launch of its MusicID application for Apple's iPhone and iPod touch, promising a comprehensive music discovery guide enabling consumers to identify music, search lyrics and view artist biographies as well as purchase songs via iTunes.

Users can search MusicID by inputting the artist or track name, lyrics or holding their mobile device to a nearby audio source--from there, Gravity Mobile supplies recommendations and links directly into the iTunes catalog, also delivering related content and information including YouTube video clips.

[FierceMobile Content and Press Release]

Music Industry Lures ‘Casual’ Pirates to Legal Sites

Over the past year, however, as sales of CDs have continued to fall and paid-for downloads from services like Apple’s iTunes have fallen short of hopes, record companies have moved to embrace casual file-sharers. Legal services offering free, unlimited streaming of music, rather than downloads, are proliferating. According to a survey published last week, they are taking some of the wind out of the pirates’ sails.

Read full article in The New York Times.

Phone Booth Cell Phone comes with God Save the Queen ringtone

Spotted on engadget via Pocket-Lint, The London Calling Mobile Phone, a fully-functional handset, packing a color LCD, SMS and MMS functionality, tri-band GSM connectivity and pre-programmed ringtones that include "Rule Britannia" and "God Save the Queen."

Google patents Ringback advertizing

A patent assigned to Google describes how the search giant can monetize its Voice service: play ads while a call is dialing or placed on hold. arstechnica reports.

The patent application, called "Ringback Advertising," is assigned to Google. In general terms, it describes a system for delivering ads to any sort of phone system, including IP, cellular, or landline phones. The idea is to place software somewhere within the flow of telephony data that can identify when a given call is not active, then request audio ads for delivery during that time. Although this obviously pairs nicely with Google's Voice service, there's no reason it couldn't be rolled out to telcos that choose to partner with the search giant.

Read full article.

Kazaa to return as subscription service

One of the most recognizable brands in the history of illegal downloading is due to officially resurface, perhaps as early as next week, sources close to the company told CNET News. Only this time the name Kazaa will be part of a legal music service.

Altnet and parent company Brilliant Digital Entertainment attached the Kazaa brand to a subscription service that will offer songs and ringtones from all four of the major recording companies. For the past few months, a beta version has been available.

The site will open with over 1 million tracks. According to the blog TorrentFreak, the new Kazaa will offer unlimited downloads for $20 a month.

Microsoft Sues Mobile Ringtone Company for Phishing, Spam

Microsoft has sued a Hong Kong seller of mobile ringtones, saying the company used phishing techniques to flood Microsoft Live Messenger users with spam messages. PC World reports.

The lawsuit accuses a company called Funmobile of sending out thousands of spam instant messages over the past four months. The case was filed last month in King County Superior Court in Seattle, but Microsoft did not name the company involved until Thursday. Microsoft is seeking a court injunction to stop the spam, as well as monetary damages.

According to court filings, Funmobile and its U.S. subsidiary, Mobilefundster, have sent out instant messages that included links to phishing sites controlled by the company.

Read full article .

Room to Grow for Ringbacks

Carriers and others in the wireless ecosystem might be craving killer entertainment content beyond ringtones, but RealNetworks says there’s still plenty of room for growth, especially when it comes to ringbacks. Wireless Week reports.

Awareness remains the No. 1 challenge for ringback tones, says Analisa Roberts, senior director, Global Product Management and Marketing at RealNetworks. Part of the problem is people hear ringback tones when they’re calling someone else, so it’s not as if the whole world can hear it.

In the United States, ringback tone penetration is about 9 percent, so it has a lot of room to grow. Ringtone penetration is harder to gauge than ringbacks because ringbacks reside on the carrier network, which is not the case with ringtones.

Roberts says she can’t reveal specifics, but RealNetworks is working with its carrier partners on some programs to help drive ringback awareness. Most carriers have fairly extensive ringback catalogs.

... According to IDC, ringback tones will overtake ringtones in 2010 and are poised to become the single largest revenue source for mobile entertainment.

Blackberry Storm gets a Shazam app

Shazam has launched its mobile music discovery application on the BlackBerry Storm. The app features full SurePress touchscreen support and is available to BlackBerry Storm users in the UK, US and Canada at The Blackberry App store.

[via Mobile Marketing Magazine]

Collapse in illegal sharing and boom in streaming brings music to executives' ears

New research shows that the number of teenagers illegally sharing music has fallen dramatically in the past year - in favor of streaming. The Guardian reports.

The survey of 1,000 fans also shows that many14 to 18 year olds are now streaming music regularly online using services such as YouTube and Spotify..

The research revealed that many teenagers (65%) are streaming music regularly, with more 14 to 18 year olds (31%) listening to streamed music on their computer every day compared with music fans overall (18%).

Read full article.

Machine gun ringtone

Spotted on The Cell Freak. a machine gun ringtone. Not a good idea.

BlackBerry users to be able to pick up tunes on impulse

According to The FT, BlackBerry owners will soon be able to download music wirelessly thanks to an application that will help the smartphone compete with those made by Apple and Nokia.

A UK-based music download provider, 7Digital,, will in September launch a service that lets owners buy songs and albums direct from their handsets.

About 6m songs will be available to download in the US, UK, Canada, France, Italy, Germany and Spain.

China Mobile to Centralize Wireless Music Operations

According to TMC News, China Mobile Ltd. has set up centralized music, video, and mobile payment centers around the country.

Starting from January 1, 2010, it will centralize all its wireless music operations by storing all ringtones in a repository centerd in Sichuan province. From next year provincial China Mobile operators will not be allowed to offer their own ringtones.

... The new business model of the telecom carrier's wireless music will be applied to its video, gaming, and mobile payment units.

The Sichuan music center by far has a selection of more than 1.1 million songs. And the wireless music club under the center has recorded over 90 million members.

U2 releasing 'mobile album' for BlackBerry

Soon, BlackBerry fans will be able to get in on the iPhone music app fun. Research In Motion, which is sponsoring the U2 360 tour, has posted a page on its Web site declaring the imminent arrival of the U2 "mobile album." News.com reports.

Although the video teaser is fairly cryptic, it looks like the app will let users listen to the latest U2 album "No Line on the Horizon," watch videos, and read news updates. A more interesting twist: it also looks like users will be able to share video clips from U2 concerts--a map will let you pick among BlackBerry-toting audience members with different stage angles.

U2 fans with BlackBerries can sign up here to be informed when the app's released.

Group Sues AT&T Over Ringtones Heard In Public

Already ringtones are more expensive than a full-length song-and pay a higher royalty to the artist than a normal track-but the music industry is trying to make them even more profitable by arguing that someone should pay even more when the 30-second snippet plays in public. The Washington Post reports.

IDG News Service reports (via MacWorld) that AT&T, in particular, has been sued by ASCAP, asserting that ringtones qualify "as a public performance under the Copyright Act." The group wants mobile operators to pay royalties, not individual consumers.

The fight is playing out in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In the operator's defense the Electronic Frontier Foundation, joined by the CDT, argued that copyright law exempts performances that are conducted without a commercial purpose, such as ringtones in a restaurant.

Read Already ringtones are more expensive than a full-length song-and pay a higher royalty to the artist than a normal track-but the music industry is trying to make them even more profitable by arguing that someone should pay even more when the 30-second snippet plays in public.

Read full article.

Related:

-- ASCAP and Copyright Doublespeak

-- ASCAP Wants To Be Paid When Your Phone Rings

Verizon launches 4th of July ringtone catalogue

Verizon Wireless customers can choose from hundreds of patriotic tunes to customize their phones for the Fourth of July, including:

-- "Stars and Stripes Forever"
-- "God Bless The U.S.A.,"
-- "American Pie," by Don McLean
-- "R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A.," by John Mellencamp
-- "Born In The U.S.A.," by Bruce Springsteen
-- "American Girl," by Taylor Swift
-- "Summertime," by Herbie Hancock

Press release