Ecommerce Blog

As Apple (APPL) and Amazon (AMZN) duke it out in the MP3 price war, music publishers are still trying to figure out how to cash in on a crowd that will go to great lengths to get its music for free.

Imeem, a San Francisco-based music discovery startup, said it has signed a content agreement with Sony BMG Music Entertainment that gives users access to the Sony(SNE)-Bertelsmann joint venture’s digital catalog of music and video for ad-supported, “free” streaming of these files.

The company, which competes with Project Playlist, makes a customizable music playlist that can be embedded into MySpace and Facebook profiles. This is its second deal with a major label; it inked a similar partnership with Warner Music Group (WMG) earlier this summer.

SpiralFrog, which has a partnership with Vivendi’s (V) Universal Music Group, also offers free music downloads, but of course there’s a catch (actually there’s about 20 catches).

Launched earlier this month after lengthy delays, SpiralFrog makes money through site ads, and then splits these profits with the music publisher.

The good: Users have access to over 800,000 MP3s from popular and lesser-known artists available for free download.

The bad: To keep these files playable, the user needs to sign in to the site once every 30 days. Downloading takes about 90 seconds per song, and SpiralFrog forces users to download songs one at a time so the user stays on the site awhile and has time to view all of those lovely ads.

The really bad: While SpiralFrog supports portable players, it doesn’t support iTunes (or Macs at all, for that matter) at this time.

Meanwhile, LTDnetwork’s legal peer-to-peer (P2P) service QTrax, which has yet to launch, has already signed deals with Universal, Sony/ATV, Warner Music Group, The Orchard, EMI Music Publishing and EMI Music, TVT Records, Go Digital, ASCAP and BMI. They plan to make money through advertising in a P2P client that helps users find legal content.

As Apple (APPL) and Amazon (AMZN) duke it out in the MP3 price war, music publishers are still trying to figure out how to cash in on a crowd that will go to great lengths to get its music for free.

Imeem, a San Francisco-based music discovery startup, said it has signed a content agreement with Sony BMG Music Entertainment that gives users access to the Sony(SNE)-Bertelsmann joint venture’s digital catalog of music and video for ad-supported, “free” streaming of these files.

The company, which competes with Project Playlist, makes a customizable music playlist that can be embedded into MySpace and Facebook profiles. This is its second deal with a major label; it inked a similar partnership with Warner Music Group (WMG) earlier this summer.

SpiralFrog, which has a partnership with Vivendi’s (V) Universal Music Group, also offers free music downloads, but of course there’s a catch (actually there’s about 20 catches).

Launched earlier this month after lengthy delays, SpiralFrog makes money through site ads, and then splits these profits with the music publisher.

The good: Users have access to over 800,000 MP3s from popular and lesser-known artists available for free download.

The bad: To keep these files playable, the user needs to sign in to the site once every 30 days. Downloading takes about 90 seconds per song, and SpiralFrog forces users to download songs one at a time so the user stays on the site awhile and has time to view all of those lovely ads.

The really bad: While SpiralFrog supports portable players, it doesn’t support iTunes (or Macs at all, for that matter) at this time.

Meanwhile, LTDnetwork’s legal peer-to-peer (P2P) service QTrax, which has yet to launch, has already signed deals with Universal, Sony/ATV, Warner Music Group, The Orchard, EMI Music Publishing and EMI Music, TVT Records, Go Digital, ASCAP and BMI. They plan to make money through advertising in a P2P client that helps users find legal content.

There is supposed to be a big meeting today at Yahoo (YHOO) headquarters today, where the entire management will meet and discuss the company’s “grand plan.”

About 300-odd folks with titles that say vice president or something equally elevated will get into a room and listen to Jerry Yang (CEO and co-founder) talk about the future and how it will impact 14,000 Yahooligans. Kara Swisher predicts the meeting will be a snoozefest, and suggests turning it into “Survivor: The Sunnyvale Edition.”

Since June 18, when Yang took over as CEO, the company has spent around $700 million on new companies, shut down some minor projects, shaken up the sales staff, and gotten rid of Lloyd Braun and a bunch of other folks.

The actions thus far are muddled, and while there are high expectations from this meeting, I wouldn’t count on it. How do you rate Yahoo and Yang’s performance so far?

There is supposed to be a big meeting today at Yahoo (YHOO) headquarters today, where the entire management will meet and discuss the company’s “grand plan.”

About 300-odd folks with titles that say vice president or something equally elevated will get into a room and listen to Jerry Yang (CEO and co-founder) talk about the future and how it will impact 14,000 Yahooligans. Kara Swisher predicts the meeting will be a snoozefest, and suggests turning it into “Survivor: The Sunnyvale Edition.”

Since June 18, when Yang took over as CEO, the company has spent around $700 million on new companies, shut down some minor projects, shaken up the sales staff, and gotten rid of Lloyd Braun and a bunch of other folks.

The actions thus far are muddled, and while there are high expectations from this meeting, I wouldn’t count on it. How do you rate Yahoo and Yang’s performance so far?

When I visited Carnegie Mellon I met Randy Pausch. He was inspirational then (developed a new programming language, Alice, which was aimed at helping kids learn to program). But now, he’s even more inspirational. You gotta watch this video (WMV format). It’s his last lecture. Has pancreatic cancer.

More about this talk and Randy over on Metafilter.

Google (GOOG) is acquiring certain assets and technology of Zingku, a mobile social network startup that helps users organize their social life via the web and text messaging. Zingku wrote about the deal on its site, and a Google spokesperson confirmed the plans. Zingku, a Boston-based startup was co-founded by Sami Shalabi. The service has been in private beta and new user accounts are currently frozen.

What is Google’s motivation to acquire this little known company? One explanation would be to get talented engineers, but we suspect it would be to bolster their Orkut social network. Zingku is an SMS-turbocharger of sort. While Google lost out to the king and queen of social networking in the U.S. (that’d be MySpace and Facebook), their Orkut is extremely popular in Brazil and India.

These are two countries, where basic phones and text messaging reign supreme and wireless broadband options are less common. Furthermore, Google has plans to roll out a mobile phone that takes true advantage of the mobile web, as rumor has it. But if the phone relies too heavily on wireless broadband, it won’t get much traction in fast growing markets where mobile broadband is still in infancy.

The total number of mobile subscribers worldwide is set to cross three billion in late 2007, and worldwide mobile penetration will pass 50 percent in 2008, according to UK-based research firm Portio Research. The firm notes the number of SMS messages will spike from 967.7 billion in 2006 to over 2070 billion messages by 2012 in Asia Pacific. Meanwhile, SMS accounts for approximately 75 to 80 percent of non-voice service revenues worldwide.

Tons of people on Twitter are reporting problems with their iPhones. Including my son. Including Jeff Clavier. Anyone else having this problem? These are people who have not unlocked their iPhones. I’m about to update mine and will report what happens. A bunch more reports are over on TechMeme and Dave Winer is tracking them too.

How about you? How did your update of your iPhone go?

Oh, and Patrick’s iPhone lost all of its data. Made worse because his Mac had a bunch more problems (this is the second time it’s been in the shop) and so he’s praying now that Apple didn’t delete everything off of his hard drive.

UPDATE: My iPhone update seems to have gone well. New icon on home screen says “iTunes.” Meanwhile the Twitters from people with updates that didn’t go well continue to come in. Here’s another one.

Tons of people on Twitter are reporting problems with their iPhones. Including my son. Including Jeff Clavier. Anyone else having this problem? These are people who have not unlocked their iPhones. I’m about to update mine and will report what happens. A bunch more reports are over on TechMeme and Dave Winer is tracking them too.

How about you? How did your update of your iPhone go?

Oh, and Patrick’s iPhone lost all of its data. Made worse because his Mac had a bunch more problems (this is the second time it’s been in the shop) and so he’s praying now that Apple didn’t delete everything off of his hard drive.

UPDATE: My iPhone update seems to have gone well. New icon on home screen says “iTunes.” Meanwhile the Twitters from people with updates that didn’t go well continue to come in. Here’s another one.