iLounge

In an interview with Reuters concerning its announcement that it will be bringing its On Demand Internet-based video rental service to TiVo users, a Blockbuster executive said the company plans to do the same for other media devices. “You will see us in a large number of other devices going forward,” said Kevin Lewis, senior vice president of digital entertainment at Blockbuster, adding that the company intends to make its system available to Apple’s products, saying, “We need to be in the normal places that consumers want to watch movies.” Despite the statement, the proliferation of Blockbuster’s service across Apple’s device lineup seems unlikely given the company’s current iTunes Movie Sales and Rentals, which were recently expanded to include more HD offerings. [via MDN]

Kris Rinne, AT&T’s senior vice president of architecture and planning, said the company hopes to have its Long Term Evolution (LTE) fourth-generation network available by 2011. AT&T had previously said it stay with current HSPA technology for as long as possible, but Rinne, speaking at the Mobile World Congress, said the company is currently looking for LTE vendors. It plans LTE trials in 2010, and hopes to have services commercially available by mid-2011. Verizon is already conducting limited trials of LTE technology.

Google decided against implementing multi-touch in its mobile device operating system Android after Apple requested they refrain from using the technology, according to a new report. VentureBeat, citing a member of the Android team, says the search giant acquiesced to Apple’s request in order to avoid putting strain on the relationship between the two companies; it is unknown whether the threat of legal action relating to iPhone patents also played a role in the decision. Google has been a leading partner of Apple’s in recent iPhone and Mac software releases, providing the backend for the iPhone’s Maps application and the Places functionality of iPhoto ‘09, as well as releasing iPhone apps of its own, one of which openly violated App Store rules but has been allowed anyway. In addition, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on Apple’s board of directors. Interestingly, recent demonstrations by Android developers have shown that the hardware of the T-Mobile G1, the first Android-based phone, is indeed capable of handling multi-touch, meaning the decision against implementation was made in software instead of hardware.

Amazon has introduced the Kindle 2, the second iteration of its E-Ink based portable book reader. The new device features a slimmer design with rounded edges and a tapered back, much like Apple’s iPhone 3G and second-generation iPod touch. It weighs 10.2 ounces, is .36 inches thick, and features 25 percent more battery life than the original, allowing for two weeks of reading on one charge. Additional storage gives it seven times the book capacity of the original—1,500 books, Amazon estimates—while an improved 6-inch display features 16 shades of grey, and other UI improvements have been made: a new five-way controller enables 20 percent faster page turning, the full QWERTY keyboard has been redesigned, audiobook support and a 3.5mm headphone jack have been added, a new Text-to-Speech feature is included to let printed books be read to users, along with basic web browsing and MP3 player capabilities, and the same Sprint-powered 3G wireless connectivity as the original. While not a direct competitor to Apple’s portable devices, the proliferation of book reading applications for the iPhone and iPod touch has made comparisons between them increasingly common. The Amazon Kindle 2 is available for pre-order now and will begin shipping on February 24 for $360.

YouTube has begun to offer a click to download option on select videos. The downloaded mp4 videos are encoded in the iTunes-friendly H.264 format, and are sized with a maximum width of 480 pixels to maintain compatibility with most portable media players, such as the iPod and iPhone. The feature mirrors a prior download feature offered on Google Video, which had not been brought over to YouTube. Currently, the most obvious source of downloadable videos appears to be President-Elect Barack Obama’s Change.gov channel. It is unknown whether YouTube plans a more expansive rollout of the download option.

The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it is planning to end its tactics of suing individual users who are caught sharing music online. According to the Wall Street journal, the RIAA has opened legal proceedings against roughly 35,000 people since 2003, which has done little to stop the illegal downloading of music over the Internet. Instead of lawsuits, the group has instead made preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which users caught uploading music illegally will receive emails from the service provider asking them to stop, possibly accompanied by a degradation in connection speed. Should the user continue to illegally upload music, the ISP could eventually decide to cut off their access altogether. The ISPs with which the RIAA has already reached agreements have not yet been named.

Microsoft has announced that it will be dropping the prices of its Flash-based Zune players ahead of the holiday shopping season, increasing their competitiveness with Apple’s iPod nanos. The price cuts will see the company’s 4GB Zune drop to $99, the 8GB model cut from $149 to $139, and the 16GB model drop from $199 to $179. Despite the fact that these price cuts put the 8GB and 16GB models lower than their iPod nano counterparts, Zune marketing director Adam Sohn said the cuts were not meant as a direct challenge to Apple, but instead to “ensure hopefully we have a good holiday season.” The price cuts will take effect Wednesday in the U.S. and Friday in Canada.

Piper Jaffray has released the results of its 16th bi-annual Teen Survey, which asks a sampling of high school students about their interest and buying patterns in the realms of MP3 players, online music stores, and music-playing cellphones. When asked about the iPhone 8 percent of the 769 participants said they already owned one, with another 22 percent saying they planned on purchasing an iPhone in the next 6 months. Those responses are up from Jaffray’s April survey, in which only 6 percent of students said they had an iPhone, and only 9 percent said they planned on purchasing one in the next half-year.

When asked about MP3 players, 87 percent of students said they owned at least one, with 84 percent of those owning an iPod — down from 86 percent in the April survey. Perhaps more interesting is the question of planned purchases; only 34% of respondents said they plan on purchasing a MP3 player in the next 12 months, and while 79 percent of those said they planned on purchasing an iPod (down from 80% in April), another 15 percent said they were planning to purchase a Microsoft Zune, the highest response for that player since its initial release.

Finally, when asked about online music stores, only 40 percent of students said they purchased music online, while 60 percent said they uses P2P file sharing networks to get their music. Out of the 40 percent who do purchase music online, however, 93 percent said they use iTunes, up from 81 percent in the April survey and 79 percent from a year ago. Interestingly, while 18 percent of respondents said they would consider paying $0.99 per song to purchase music, more than twice that many (37 percent) said they would consider paying $15 a month for a subscription service. According to Piper, the average age of students participating in the survey was 16.2 years old, with 53 percent males and 47 percent females.

Twentieth Century Fox, the first studio to offer an iTunes Digital Copy on select DVD and Blu-Ray releases, has announced 20 upcoming Digital Copy releases. “Our research shows that when given the option, consumers recognize the incredible value proposition that Digital Copy provides as a simple, fast way to move content to a portable device,” noted Mary Daily, Executive Vice President, North America Marketing, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. “Digital Copy puts the disc at the center of the digital revolution happening in households nationwide and meets the entertainment needs of the entire family from the TV, to the computer to an iPod.” Fox titles Napoleon Dynamite, Office Space, The Girl Next Door, Grandma’s Boy, There’s Something About Mary, Dodgeball, Super Troopers, Behind Enemy Lines, The Day After Tomorrow, Die Hard, Fantastic Four, Hide & Seek, I, Robot, Independence Day, Speed, The Transporter, X-Men, X2: X-Men United, X3: The Last Stand, and Reno 911!: Miami - More Busted Than Ever Unrated Cut will all be released on September 23 for $20 each, with an iTunes Digital Copy included.

Japanese officials have said they will stop pushing for a tax that would have allowed about 1 percent to 3 percent of the price of portable media players such as the iPod to go to recording companies, songwriters and artists. Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs had hoped to submit legislation to Parliament as early as this fall, but recent talks of the panel studying the proposal failed to reach any agreement amid strong criticism from electronics companies. “At this point, there is virtually no hope for getting the legislation passed,” said agency official Masafumi Kiyota. Kiyota added that the panel has agreed to continue the discussion, although no date has been set.

RealNetworks has announced the launch of a new iPod-compatible, DRM-free MP3 version of its Rhapsody music store. With a catalog of more than five million songs from all four major music labels as well as a number of independents, the Rhapsody music store will offer most albums for $9.99 and tracks for $0.99, and will offer full-length previews of songs, compared to the 30-second samples found on competing services such as iTunes and Amazon MP3. As part of a promotion to raise awareness of the new music store, Rhapsody is giving away a free album to the first 100,000 people who sign up for the store. The Rhapsody music store can be accessed at rhapsody.com/mp3.

Napster has launched the world’s biggest DRM-free MP3 download store with a catalog of more than 6 million songs. Most of the songs available on the store sell for $0.99 each, with most albums selling for $9.95. “We’re now moving from under the DRM cloud,” said Chris Gorog, Napster chief executive. “Now consumers can use Napster with any device.” The move makes Napster the latest high-profile DRM-free music download store to have the blessing of the major labels, which Reuters says have been hoping to use the services to lessen Apple’s dominant position in the industry. Despite the success of the download-to-own model, Napster will still support its subscription service, which it believes will grow as people become more aware of it. Said Gorog, “We believe ultimately that consumers will be moving to an unlimited music model.”

FlyTunes, a free mobile Internet radio service with a dedicated streaming interface for the iPhone and iPod touch, has announced a partnership with AccuRadio.com that will bring the latter’s 320-plus radio channels to iPhone and iPod touch users. FlyTunes will power the new AccuRadio iPhone portal, which will offer stations for rock, pop, jazz, country, classical music, Broadway, and more. “The move to the mobile Internet has been a big question in the broadcasting industry in the past few years,” said FlyTunes CEO Sam Abadir. “Today’s announcement that AccuRadio is bringing over 320 stations to millions of iPhone and iPod Touch owners proves that mobile Internet radio is now ready for prime time—and I expect terrestrial broadcasters to follow this trend shortly.” The new service is available immediately and can be accessed from any iPhone or iPod touch by visiting accuradio.com.

FlyTunes, a free mobile Internet radio service with a dedicated streaming interface for the iPhone and iPod touch, has announced it has expanded its offerings to over 160 channels that cover “all genres of music, as well as talk, sports, and local weather.” Music channels added to the service include top rated Radio Paradise, SmoothJazz.com, RauteMusik.fm, and 53 music channels from 181.fm. In the talk category, FlyTunes has added NPR, TheScore.com, and local weather in the top 15 U.S. markets. Launched in January, FlyTunes claims to have signed up “hundreds of thousands” of iPhone and iPod touch users, with the average user listening for eight hours every month. “We’re quite proud that FlyTunes has been so well accepted by iPhone users,” said Sam Abadir, FlyTunes CEO. “In the near future, we’re going to continue to sweeten the experience by adding more great content, new features like time shifting and station personalization, and support for other internet-enabled mobile devices.” FlyTunes is available as a free service for Mac and PC users, as well as for the iPhone and iPod touch. The service is available at flytunes.fm.

Amazon’s MP3 store has become the number two digital music retailer, according to USA Today. The newspaper’s report claims that much of Amazon’s success is attributable to cooperation from the four major record labels, all of which gave Amazon permission to sell their music without DRM, while some have denied Apple the same opportunity. Apple has stated that it hoped to offer 50% of its catalog in DRM-free format by the end of last year, but failed to meet the number. “The labels think Apple has too much influence,” said Phil Leigh, an analyst at Inside Digital Media. Ted Cohen, former EMI executive and managing partner of the Tag Strategic consulting firm, said Amazon’s store “removed some of the stranglehold iTunes had on the market.” iTunes currently offers 2 million songs available without DRM, according to the report, while Amazon offers roughly 4.5 million DRM-free tracks. Despite the labels’ prior claims that DRM-free music sales would encourage piracy, the new offerings do not appear to be hurting online music sales, which are up 26% so far this year, according to Neilsen SoundScan. Pete Baltaxe, director of digital music with Amazon, said “Songs sold without DRM, at high quality, with album art, that’s the best way to get people to buy music instead of stealing it.”

Speaking with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sony BMG Music Entertainment CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz has said that the company is developing an online music subscription service that would give users unlimited access to its music and would be compatible with all digital music players, including the iPod. Although he did not offer a timeline for the service’s roll out, Schmidt-Holtz did say that the simplest way to charge for the service would be a flat rate fee of $9 to $12 per month, and that it was “even possible that clients could keep some songs indefinitely, that they would own them even after the subscription expired.” Schmidt-Holtz also said the company was in talks with other music distributors but did not clarify with whom, adding that it is possible that mobile phone operators might also be considered as partners, letting their users download songs to their phones. Last week, it was reported that Apple was negotiating with major music labels to offer an unlimited music rental service.

European Union Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has said that singers and musicians should earn royalty fees for a longer period of time. McCreevy suggested that the artists should receive royalties for 95 years, nearly double the current 50-year limit, and on par with the royalty period for U.S. artists. “If nothing is done, thousands of European performers who recorded in the late 1950s and 1960s will lose all of their airplay royalties over the next ten years,” said McCreevy, the union’s internal market chief. “These royalties are often their sole pension.” McCreevy also said that the group wants to again look at reforming copyright levies charged on blank discs, data storage, and portable media players. 19 of the EU’s 25 nations charge copyright levies, including Finland, France, and Germany.

Starbucks and AT&T have announced plans to offer AT&T Wi-Fi service at more than 7,000 company-operated Starbucks locations in the U.S. The partnership will result in a mix of free and paid Wi-Fi services at Starbucks stores, including two free hours of Wi-Fi access per day for Starbucks Card holders. Starbucks Cards are the company’s refillable gift cards, which are available in various denominations, and cost nothing except for the amount of currency added to the card. AT&T broadband and U-verse internet customers will have unlimited free Wi-Fi access, and AT&T’s remote access services business customers will be able to access the service as well. According to the announcement, AT&T will “soon extend the benefits of Wi-Fi at Starbucks to its wireless customers.”

“People want to stay connected to their world 24/7, and Wi-Fi hot spots, broadband and wireless make that mobility possible,” said Rick Welday, AT&T chief marketing officer, Consumer. “Laptops and smartphones give us the online mobility we crave, and now millions of AT&T and Starbucks customers will get Internet access free from the comfort of their neighborhood Starbucks.”

“Our new relationship with AT&T gives us the opportunity to expand and enhance the range of digital entertainment experiences for our customers as well as our partners, including the continued rollout of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store at Starbucks,” said Ken Lombard, president, Starbucks Entertainment.

In addition to the free access for qualifying AT&T customers and Starbucks Card holders, tiered access to the AT&T Wi-Fi network will also be offered. Two hours of Wi-Fi access will cost $3.99, while a monthly membership will be available for $19.99, and will include access to any of AT&T’s 70,000 hot spots in 89 countries around the world. AT&T Wi-Fi access at Starbucks will be rolled out on a market-by-market basis, with implementation beginning this spring and finishing by the end of 2008.

Amazon.com has announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Audible Inc. for approximately $300 million. Audible.com is the leading online provider of digital spoken word content, and is the preeminent provider of audiobooks for the iTunes Store. “Audible.com offers the best customer experience, the widest content selection and the broadest device compatibility in the industry,” said Steve Kessel, Amazon.com’s senior vice president for worldwide digital media. “Working together, we can introduce more innovations and bring this format to an even wider audience.” “This deal brings together two pioneering companies that share a long history of ceaseless focus on improving the customer experience,” said Donald Katz, founder and chief executive of Audible.com. “We are very excited to be joining a company as innovative as Amazon.com.” Under terms of the agreement, Amazon will make a cash tender offer to purchase all of the outstanding shares of Audible.com for $11.50 per share.

Amazon has announced it will begin an international rollout of its Amazon MP3 DRM-free MP3 digital music store sometime in 2008. Recently, the company announced the addition of music from Sony BMG to Amazon MP3, making it the first digital music store to offer DRM-free songs from all four of the major music labels. “We have received thousands of e-mails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the U.S. They can’t wait to choose from the biggest selection of high-quality, low-priced DRM-free MP3 music downloads which play on virtually any music device they own today or will own in the future,” said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President of Digital Music. “We are excited to tell those customers today that Amazon MP3 is going international this year.” Amazon did not disclose a specific launch timeline for its individual international sites.