Technology News

$1.29 Pricing Infects iTunes. Others to Follow.

Source: HypeBot
April 8, 2009

Variable pricing including hundreds of hits tracks at $1.29 debuted this morning on iTunes. And while it's track prices remained at $.99 or less early this morning, Amazon and other services are expected to mimic the rise shortly.

Record labels, for the most part, determine download pricing. But sources tell Hypebot that no clear strategy has yet emerged despite several years of label pressure forcing variable pricing. Sony, Universal and EMI are said to be raising the price of hundreds ...

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Two Artists Find Success by Asking for It

Source: HypeBot
April 8, 2009

GUEST POST BY IAN ROGERS: On a recent road trip, Topspin's Ian Rogers came across two distinctly different artists who are finding success by combining a lot of hands-on grassroots marketing with a dash new technologies.

I met a band called Halestorm through the magix of the Interwebz. They were in LA making their record with Howard Benson when they saw word of one of the Topspin meetups on Twitter. They came out, introduced themselves, and we talked the future ...

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Google: Google News Doesn't Violate AP Rules

Source: PC Magazine
April 8, 2009

Google on Tuesday denied that its News section will be in violation of recently announced content rules from the Associated Press. The news service on Monday announced that it would offer rate cuts to struggling papers but would also sue Web sites that used its content without permission. “Since then, some readers, users, and journalists have asked us if the AP's plan is about Google since we host complete AP articles," Alexander Macgillivray, associate general counsel for products and intellectual ...

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Eu Winamp Player Integrates 7digital Downloads

Source: HypeBot
April 8, 2009

7digital is now being incorporated into AOL's Winamp media player in Europe allowing users to purchase tracks within the application and on Winamp.com. The two companies are partnering in ten regions including the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Ireland..

Winamp is using 7digital's API to pull data including artist, track and album information to create a built-in music store. Open source media player Songbird added 7Digital several weeks ago and Spotify recently began utilizing 7Digital's API to ...

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Google Makes Searches Local

Source: PC Magazine
April 8, 2009

You can run, but you can't hide from Google. The search engine giant this week completed a worldwide rollout of local search results in Maps. You can now type in a generic name such as “bank" or “pharmacy" without specifying a location, and Google will return results in your area. “How do we guess your location? In most cases, we match your IP address to a broad geographical location," Google engineers Jenn Taylor and Jim Muller wrote in a blog ...

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Twitter Use Continues to Soar

Source: PC Magazine
April 8, 2009

The endless stream of Twitter news appears to have paid off for the micro-blogging site. Global visits to Twitter approached 10 million in February, up 700 percent from the same time last year, according to comScore. Of that, about 4 million visitors were in the U.S.--a 1,000-percent increase. In the past two months alone, global Twitter traffic jumped by more than 5 million. But while one might expect that it's the tweens and college kids Tweeting the day away, it's ...

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Now on YouTube: First Movie Ever Made

Source: All About Jazz
April 8, 2009

In the latest effort to bridge the disconnect between the government and new media, the Library of Congress officially launched its YouTube channel Tuesday.

The debut includes 70 historical videos from its vast collection, such as the first-ever movie (a man sneezing), 100-year-old films from the Thomas Edison studio and industrial films from Westinghouse factories.

The launch follows a collaboration last year with Flickr's “The Commons," when the Library of Congress released thousands of non-copyright images to the photo sharing ...

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Yahoo! Music Adds Artist Pages

Source: HypeBot
April 8, 2009

Yahoo! Music has launched Artist Pages which aggregate music, services and info from across the Web for 500,000 artists. The goal is to become “the ultimate starting point for music fans" and given Yahoo's reach, some pages may soon surpass artist Wikipedia and official pages at the top of search engines.

Fans have the ability to create their own pages of content and commerce offerings selecting among modules from iTunes, Amazon, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Pandora, YouTube and Yahoo!. In the ...

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