iLounge

Electronics giant Samsung said it will take aim at Apple this year with several new portable products and large ad campaigns. A Samsung executive claims that Apple’s lead in digital music and video can be attributed to only marketing.

“What’s the difference between how they have gone to market and how we have gone to market? It’s real simple. They spent $165 million last year to advertise Apple MP3 products. We spent $1 million,” said Peter Weedfald, senior vice president of consumer electronics for Samsung’s North American division. “We are going to break the code. In 2006, we are going to over-invest in advertising and marketing around these really hot new digital video and digital audio products, and we will spend tens of millions of dollars.”

Sonos has released a software update for its wireless multi-room music systems. Sonos software version 1.3 includes support for the Apple Lossless codec, Audible.com content, full-screen album art, detailed track information, and German language support.

Sonos has also introduced a new ZonePlayer to complement the Sonos Digital Music System. The ZonePlayer ZP80 “allows music lovers to play all their digital music, all over their house, on all of their favorite audio equipment—a home theater system, powered speakers, a premium table top radio such as a Bose Wave Radio, and more.” It will ship this spring for $350.

The four major record companies are being investigated by New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer over whether they have violated antitrust laws in the pricing of songs sold by digital music services such as the iTunes Music Store.

“Spitzer’s office recently began serving subpoenas on the major record companies—the Universal Music Group, a unit of Vivendi Universal; Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture of Sony and Bertelsmann; the EMI Group; and the Warner Music Group, according to people involved,” reports The New York Times. “Some major record companies have been pushing to introduce flexible pricing, charging more for hit songs and less for oldies, for example. But some executives say that a more complex price structure would turn off buyers and hurt industry efforts to woo music listeners away from free, unauthorized file-swapping networks.”

In what could be the stiffest competition yet for the iTunes Music Store, MTV Networks and Microsoft announced today that they have joined forces to develop a new digital music service called URGE. Set to launch next year, the service will be integrated into a forthcoming version of Microsoft Windows Media Player. Music pricing was not announced.

“The collaboration unites MTV Networks’ music DNA, marketing strengths and powerful MTV, VH1 and CMT brands with the technology leadership and consumer reach of Microsoft,” the companies said. “URGE will offer rich entertainment programming and innovative tools designed to guide musical discovery and connect fans to the artists and music they love. Offering more than 2 million songs from the major labels and thousands of independents, URGE will encompass all musical genres, from alt-country to zydeco. In addition to a broad catalogue of music choices, URGE will deliver a deep well of exclusive MTV Networks programming and original, hand-crafted content.”

The Think Different Store has announced the launch of its new CD ripping service. “Designed to provide iPod owners with a fast path to a complete digital music library, the service converts music on CDs into high-quality MP3 files suitable for importing into iTunes and the iPod,” according to the store. Conversions start at $55 plus shipping and require approximately 5 days to complete. The service is available online at 1-800-iPod.com, and also at the 1-800-iPod.com retail location in Selden, New York. Customers purchasing the service in person will save shipping fees.

AOL confirmed today that it has bought Circuit City’s MusicNow digital music service. Financial terms were not disclosed, but insiders said AOL paid less than $25 million. MusicNow will offer 99-cent song downloads and monthly subscriptions for $9.95 for unlimited downloading. Like services from Napster and Yahoo, users can download songs to a compatible music player for an additional fee.

AOL entered into a partnership with Apple in 2003 to promote the iTunes Music Store through its internet service. AOL members can also sign in to the iTunes Music Store using their AOL screen name and password to buy tracks. The company said its purchase of MusicNow will not immediately affect its relationship with Apple. “AOL’s partnership with iTunes is strong, has been fruitful for both companies, and will continue,” said AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham.

Despite the increasing popularity of the iPod and iTunes Music Store, digital music sales in the U.S. have plateaued in recent months. According to Nielsen SoundScan, sales of digital tracks almost tripled to 6.6 million downloads a week in the year through May, and were at only 6.7 million in the last week of October.

“The download numbers suggest that the iPod’s iconic success, which has driven up Apple’s share price almost sixfold since 2001, isn’t translating into new music sales the way the evolution from vinyl albums to cassettes and then CDs did,” says Bloomberg’s Charles Goldsmith. “For many users, the portable devices are just another way of stocking and listening to music, not an incentive to buy new music,” he says.

BusinessWeek reports that Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and Cingular will introduce new services for downloading digital music directly to mobile phones later this year, and that the first two companies have already turned down carrying the Motorola iTunes phone because of their upcoming offerings. The wireless carriers want to be able to charge customers to download songs over the air, instead of allowing them to freely transfer music from their computer to their phone.

“The two sides also have very different perspectives on how digital music stores should work,” notes BusinessWeek. “Verizon, Sprint, and Cingular are expected to charge about $2 for wireless downloads when they introduce their services, or twice the 99 cents per song on iTunes. They figure they can charge a premium for the convenience of getting songs anytime, even though customers most likely won’t be able to listen to those songs anywhere but on their phones, at least initially. One knowledgeable source close to Apple says the operators are simply being unrealistic if they expect customers to pay $2 or $3 for a song, especially with restrictions.”

At the Musikmesse show in Frankfurt, Numark showed off an early prototype of an iPod DJ mixer. Little is known about what features the company aims to include in a final product, but German hip hop site WebBeatz was able to acquire a prototype rendering and a prototype photo of the actual device.

Create Digital Music reports: “In one of the photos of the actual prototype, the iPods aren’t even plugged in. Conceptually, though, the idea is interesting, and aside from allowing basic DJ mixing and crossfading, a buffer could grab audio from the audio for brief scratching. Apparently pitch control is possible, too, though limited, and it’s not clear how they might fix iPod cueing; in other words, all the normal limitations of the iPod for DJing apply. Don’t expect this to ship any time soon.”

Slim Devices today introduced Squeezebox2, an updated version of its network audio device that streams music from your computer to another room where it can be played through your stereo. Squeezebox2, together with SlimServer 6, supports a large number of audio formats, including AAC (unprotected), MP3, FLAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WMA, WAV, and Ogg Vorbis.

Features include: a 24-bit Burr-Brown digital-to-analog converter; optical and coaxial S/PDIF outputs; built-in support for 802.11g; a larger 320 x 32 vacuum fluorescent display; an improved search feature; the ability to connect to SqueezeNetwork for “always-on” access to Internet radio streams; and an option to automatically import existing playlists from iTunes.

The Squeezebox2 is available in two colors--Basic Black and Triple Platinum--and will ship on March 31. The Wireless version will sell for $299, while the Squeezebox2 Wired will be priced at $249.

Sonos today announced that its Sonos Digital Music System is now shipping. The multi-zone system features a wireless, full-color LCD controller and accesses music--MP3, WMA, AAC and WAV--from a Mac, PC or Network Attached Storage (NAS). The Sonos Digital Music System is comprised of two components: the ZonePlayer, a networked audio player that distributes, plays and amplifies music in any “zone” in the home, and the Sonos Controller, a wireless handheld device with a color screen and iPod-like touch-sensitive scroll wheel that allows the user to control the music from anywhere.

Sonos offers an introductory bundle of two Sonos ZonePlayers and a Sonos Controller for $1,199. Since the system is scalable to up to 32 zones, additional ZonePlayers retail for $499 and additional Controllers cost $399. Speakers are not included with any system.

MacMinute reports “The MP3 music format is losing ground to rival technologies backed by Apple and Microsoft, according to researchers at the NPD Group’s MusicWatch Digital who track the contents of people’s hard drives. The researchers said that the percentage of MP3s in digital music collections has steadily declined in recent months, down to 72 percent of collections from 82 percent a year ago. The AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) format, which Apple’s iTunes Music Store uses, and Microsoft’s WMA (Windows Media Audio) format has each gained about 5 percent of the ‘hard-drive share’ in the past year.”

The Vice Presidential debate between Republican incumbent Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic challenger Senator John Edwards is now available as a free download in the iTunes Music Store and Audible.com.

eMusic is set to relaunch their MP3 subscription service to make it easier to find independent artists and their songs. “As in its previous incarnation, the service will offer unprotected MP3 files from independent labels, a sharp contrast from services such as Apple Computer’s iTunes or Microsoft’s new MSN Music store, all of which wrap their songs in copy protection.” And unlike services such as MSN Music Store and Napster, eMusic MP3s can be played on the iPod. Subscription prices are set at varying tiers, 40 songs a month for $10, 65 songs for $15, or 90 songs for $20 a month.

Update: In an effort to thwart negative comments, Real has started a new petition without public comments available. The freedomofchoicemusic.org site now points to a new URL. This new petition currently has 35 signatures.

Yesterday Real Network’s launched the “Freedom of Choice” anti-Apple ad campaign, website and online petition in its efforts to stop Apple from keeping the iPod a “locked” platform. Today, the campaign has backfired with over 500 mostly anti-Real comments appearing on the petition’s website resulting in Real removing the link to freedomofmusicchoice.org on its website.