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Do the Size of Mobile App Stores Still Matter?

cgseo — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:34:21 +0000

According to Mplayit CEO Michael Powers, the size of a mobile platform's app store is now mostly irrelevant. Facebook-based mobile app store Mplayit took a close look at the most popular apps for Android, BlackBerry and the iPhone and found that the most popular apps on all three platforms tend to be very similar. As the popular app stores continue to grow, users on all the major platforms also drift towards the same known brands and hits like EverNote and Pandora. Sponsor Mplayit also found that one of the fastest growing app categories across all the major platforms are barcode scanners. Apps like ShopSavvy and RedLaser have clearly hit upon an unfulfilled need. Size Doesn't Matter According to Powers, asking how many apps exist for a given platform is now a moot question. All the major platforms now offer more than enough apps and as long as people can find the apps they are looking for - and as long as these apps are good - most consumers will be happy. Most users simply don't need 50 different apps to write their grocery lists. Looking at Mplayit's list of the most popular apps across the top platforms, it also becomes clear that quite a few of these categories are being dominated by known brands like Shazam, Pandora, Evernote and Facebook. Mplayit, of course, is in the business of giving app recommendations across platforms and doesn't fail to note that it's own store is a good alternative for finding apps outside of the standard top 20 charts. Or Does It? To some degree, Powers' comments about the size of today's app stores rings true. Maybe it really doesn't matter that the Android store only features about 20,000 apps and that the Apple App Store now holds more than 100,000. Maybe it is true that consumers tend to gravitate towards the same brands on all platforms. At the same time, though, having more apps in the store also means that there is a more active developer ecosystem around a given platform. While iPhone developers rightly gripe about Apple's approval process, we've seen a lot more innovative apps for the iPhone than for Android. Is the size of the Android market holding you back from making the switch? Do you think Android has enough good apps that make up for the smaller app store? Do you think the quality of today's BlackBerry apps is good enough? Feel free to let us know in the comments. Discuss

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Do the Size of Mobile App Stores Still Matter?

Going Mainstream: eMusic Signs Deal with Warner Music

cgseo — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:30:04 +0000

EMusic , the popular subscription-based music service, just announced that it has signed a deal with Warner Music, the world's third largest music company. This is eMusic's second deal with a major record label. In its early days, eMusic mostly focused on featuring music from independent labels. Since the middle of 2009, however, eMusic has worked on expanding its reach by bringing more mainstream music to its catalog. The company announced a deal with Sony Music in June 2008. Sponsor Today's deal with Warner Music allows the company to add 10,000 additional albums from Warner labels like Atlantic Records and Rhino Records. Thanks to this, eMusic will now be able to feature music from artists like Eric Clapton, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Depeche Mode. EMusic has about 400,000 paying subscribers. From Quirky to Mainstream For eMusic, this transition towards featuring a catalog that focuses more on mainstream tastes has been rocky. When eMusic added the Sony Music catalog to its repertoire, the company also had to raise its subscription prices. Quite a few of eMusic's most loyal users were unhappy with the direction the service was going in and left the service. So far, however, eMusic's users have reacted positively about the Warner deal. Streaming Coming Soon? According to eMusic CEO Danny Stein, the company also wants to offer a streaming music service in the near future. Stein told Reuters that the company still has to work out deals with the respective rights holders, though. Given that Apple just bought streaming music service LaLa, it probably doesn't come as a surprise that eMusic is also looking at streaming music. As consumers warm up to services like Pandora and LaLa, download services like LaLa and Apple's iTunes have to react to this trend. Discuss

Does Pandora for Cars Spell Death for Deejays?

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:20:35 +0000

The only reason streaming web music hasn't completely killed all other forms of music distribution is the fact that it's not available when you're traveling across wireless networks - say, in a car. Well hold on to your hats and start canceling your satellite radio subscriptions, Pandora is taking to the road. Sponsor According to a recent Paid Content article, Pandora announced a partnership with Pioneer at the Consumer Electronics Show. The speaker manufacturer will begin selling a device in March that detects users' Pandora settings via their iPhones. While the $1200 dollar price tag for the connection device is high, the fact that the service is free will theoretically save consumers from paying monthly radio subscription fees. However, if Pioneer manages to partner with other music providers like Microsoft with Zune Marketplace , Spotify or MOG , then web subscriptions will simply be cross-platform music accounts. While Paid Content suggests that we're looking at the end for satellite radio companies like Sirius XM, we think the greater effect of web-enabled cars might be the end of professionally curated music. Does web music spell death for disc jockeys? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Photo Credit: Michael Ruiz Discuss

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Does Pandora for Cars Spell Death for Deejays?

10 Years After Napster, Musicians Are Still Getting Screwed

cgseo — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:00:00 +0000

Ten years ago, Napster revolutionized commercial music by - we're all grownups, let's call a spade a spade - democratizing piracy. Without doubt, consumers in 1999 needed better access to music. They needed the opportunity to preview full tracks, to pick and choose songs from an album and to have instant gratification through online downloads. And 10 years later, consumers still have all those lovely perks. Napster ate it (thanks, Metallica !), but Kazaa sprang from its ashes. Then there was Limewire and its cadre. Due props to Apple for monetizing the system as it stood when the iTunes store came on the scene, but users are now ridiculously entitled about what kinds of readily available (a.k.a. easily stolen) files they are willing to pay for and their justifications for stealing media. Yet musicians, as much as they've tried to adapt, are still getting screwed by the Internet and their fans. Sponsor Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb! Napster CEO Says Consumers Needed Free Music, Control On the Napster blog CEO, Chris Gorog, wrote yesterday , "The original Napster hadn't thought through how to protect artists' rights... Napster was about putting the control into consumers' hands so they could find virtually any song they could think of." That kind of thinking makes me twitch. I love users. I am a user. And yes, I've illegally downloaded my fair share of tunes over the years. (Sorry, Journey, but the road trip karaoke sessions would've been meaningless without "Don't Stop Believing".) However, consumers neither need nor deserve control over content they did not create. Illegal downloads have been said by many to stimulate sales; the Radiohead album Kid A is often cited as a case in point. But when users are downloading media as a substitute for actually purchasing it, the paradigm hurts musicians far more than it helps. I would venture to speculate that in P2P ecosystems, users get the glory and commercial musicians get the hard knocks. Users have dozens of ways - P2P, YouTube, a bajillion file-sharing sites - to share music that profit the musicians themselves little or not at all. But where are the online tool kits for the thousands of working musicians - often independent of record labels' heavy duty promotional machines - who live and die by their ability to promote and sell their songs? Napster introduced a single-edged paradigm: free content for users at musicians' and labels' expense. What has the Internet done for musicians and labels lately? Napster Worked Actively Against Musicians, and No One Worked (Well) With Them Napster spent the first part of this decade showing complete disregard for the promotional and sales needs and wants of musicians. Can you imagine what the musical online landscape would look like if they had seen the copyright wars as an opportunity rather than a legal problem? What would have happened if they had invested that time and money in creating a workable solution for getting users to pay for content? If they'd worked with bands to create and market non-audio, extracurricular content for fans? If they'd been creative instead of passive-aggressively litigious ? Here's what happened to musicians working online since 1999: MySpace. MySpace, a tragic tale of clunky interfaces, slow fan-finding, spammy marketing tools, confusing events organization, bad media players and no revenue. While consumers were rejoicing in the newfound glut of free tracks, working musicians (as distinguished from lolling-about-in-the-Playboy-Mansion-grotto musicians), especially the independent ones, had to struggle with the most time-consuming, noisy promotional channel possible. And when a challenger sprung up (Facebook, duh) to take that channel's place, the musicians were homeless because the challenger included no music-related tools. What's the Future Look Like from the Napster P.O.V.? Currently, our musician friends are struggling to craft cohesive online marketing and sales strategies from a patchwork of odds and ends. And Napster? Gorog examines the current landscape of a la carte online music stores (such as iTunes) and streaming media sites (such as Pandora), concluding, "No service has cracked the nut and figured out how to create a profitable business model." What's his company's solution? "With Napster's new offering introduced on May 18, we believe we bring the best of both worlds together. Five bucks each month gets you 5 MP3s" plus streaming audio. Let us introduce a long, thoughtful pause in honor of Napster's $5-for-5 subscription plan, which is as unoriginal as it is a bad deal. It's a mashup of two models that Gorgog just stated didn't work, and when compared to Emusic 's and other sites' subscription plans (about $12 a month gets you about 30 MP3s) and Last.fm/Imeem/Pandora's free streaming offerings, it seems very financially stupid - especially considering that Napster introduced the now commonly held expectation that all this media should be free. Gorog states he sees a future of subscription plans for unlimited, on-demand music. But again, this is a probably not a paradigm that will profit bands . It used to be that record labels were in charge of screwing musicians over (click the link for a classic article by producer Steve Albini). Now, that task has passed to the fans themselves, with special thanks to the developers who focus on illegal file-sharing over usable platforms for musicians and consumers alike. In the coming days, we'd like to address the concerns of and online tools for working/commercial musicians. We're aware of a few good ones, but we encourage you brilliant RWW commenter-types to leave your thoughts - and pointers to musician-friendly startups - below. We've got a cabal of techie-musician-hybrid dudes just waiting to beta test them. Discuss

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10 Years After Napster, Musicians Are Still Getting Screwed

SoundHound: A Music App That Could Change Mobile Search

cgseo — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:55:00 +0000

Larry Marcus is one investor with the ability to turn good core technology into consumer success. Five years ago he helped change the mathematical algorithm of the Music Genome Project into music sensation Pandora . Today, Marcus' work with Melodis' Sound2Sound Search Science is already celebrating market success with music identifying application SoundHound . ReadWriteWeb caught up with Marcus to hear about his latest project. Sponsor At first glance, Melodis' SoundHound is a Shazam Encore competitor with faster search functionality. Both services are among the top paid iPhone applications, both cost $5 dollars and both allow users to find songs, scan lyrics and read artist bios. Nevertheless, in addition to allowing users to identify songs from ambient background music, sung lyrics, spoken word and text-based search, SoundHound also lets you listen to music through your own iTunes library or Pandora account. With SoundHound you can capture FM radio, identify a song and create a Pandora internet radio station within seconds. And while each of these features are impressive, what we're really excited about is SoundHound's plans for the future. The Underlying Technology Explains Marcus, "Most sound recognition technology converts speech to text in order to identify similarities. Sound2Sound (SoundHound's core technology) converts text and speech to phonic representations and cross references those. " The same underlying sound recognition technology that powers SoundHound also makes Melodis' Voice Dialer application possible. What's more, Marcus suggests that the technology can have even broader applications. "Music is just one way we're bringing this core technology to a mass market. It's a passion project that brings joy to users, but we can expand even further. To start, we believe that the best user interface ever is search." Meanwhile, Shazam's core technology is no longer its own. The company sold its search assets to BMI more than 4 years ago to track audio files and enforce royalties for rights owners. While both Shazam and Melodis' SoundHound remain some of the App Store's most downloaded products, Shazam's product expansion is limited by BMI's control. Marcus believes that SoundHound may just be the tip of the iceberg for Melodis. From bird call recognition, to driver assistance, to voice-activated emergency response, Sound2Sound can expand as far as its engineers can carry it. Given the attention to voice recognition in yesterday's Bing iPhone application release and the fact that mobile search has become increasingly competitive, we may find Sound2Sound integrated in some unlikely places. To check out SoundHound, download it here. Discuss

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SoundHound: A Music App That Could Change Mobile Search

MySpace Kills Streaming Music Apps Powered by iMeem’s API

cgseo — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:00:36 +0000

In a move of ninja swiftness, MySpace has acquired and subsequently shuttered iMeem in its entirety, even trashing the streaming/sharing music startup's API, which had heretofore supplied much-needed resources to a small but vibrant ecosystem of apps. The acquisition was announced just yesterday, and developers were given no warning that their creations would become useless digital paperweights overnight. Among the detrius of the deal is twt.fm , a popular Twitter music-sharing app created by web dev Lee Martin, who tipped us off to his plight today in a blog post . UPDATE: Users are also reporting problems with blip.fm, a popular music-streaming site that integrated results from iMeem. Sponsor Calling iMeem "one of the best API platforms," Martin, who works primarily in the music space, said that the startup was also "leagues ahead" of similar sites and services in terms of technology and openness. "They represented the music business of the future. Now they are a forced hyperlink to a... MySpace landing page making false promises and giving no guidance or help for the developer community they just destroyed. "Maybe MySpace will return my open streaming API platform... Until then, I'll be brushing the dust off my 1999 Dell computer and getting ready to program music websites like I did 10 years ago." If indeed MySpace doesn't give developers back their iMeem API, will another streaming music service step in to fill that void? Pandora CEO Tim Westergren revealed in a recent interview that because of licensing issues, Pandora is nowhere close to releasing an open API. Last.fm has an API that allows for web, desktop and mobile development - and it's ironic that Last might have the last API for music mashup developers. While we wait for comment from MySpace HQ, let us know in the comments what you think of this news, especially if you're a developer who has been using iMeem's API. Discuss

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MySpace Kills Streaming Music Apps Powered by iMeem's API

Don’t Tell Your Boss: Dell Made $6.5m on Twitter

cgseo — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:37:34 +0000

Dell Computers announced today that it has now sold more than $6.5 million in product through links broadcast out to its Twitter followers. The company has more than 1 million followers on Twitter, a handy gift from Twitter Inc. via prominent placement of Dell on the Suggested Users List shown to all new Twitter users. The news will no doubt be celebrated by social media marketers all the world over but I believe there's reason to be very skeptical of this tidbit of information. Sponsor Specifically, such celebration of sales through social media broadcast is unrealistic for most firms, it's overstated in Dell's case (if all $6.5m was made in one year that would mean 1 million people opted-in to get these ads and only delivered .015% of the company's annual revenue) and most importantly: such seductive facts detract from the real, much larger value of social media. That's listening. We offer below our article written in June, when Dell was heralding the number $3m. Much of the research is based on interviews we did for our ReadWriteWeb Guide to Online Community Management . Social Media ROI: Dell's $3m on Twitter and Four Better Examples Dell Computers announced last night that it has surpassed $3 million in sales via links from one of its Twitter accounts, making one of the most high profile examples of social media Return on Investment (ROI) all the more juicy. Telling your reluctant boss that social media is worth using because Dell made $3 million on Twitter, however, runs the risk of encouraging e-commerce broadcast as the model for engagement in conversation. Other, more conversational, examples of ROI make important additions to c The @DellOutlet account has more than 600k followers on Twitter and frequently posts links to discounted computer hardware. Revenue from those links is great to be able to point to, but there is a risk of reinforcing traditional business thinking where it is not fully appropriate. New media is a new world and while the ultimate bottom line is important, many participants argue that the greatest benefits of engagement do not draw a straight line to the cash register. Building a strong community of customer advocates, listening to community concerns and discovering new business and product developement opportunities are softer benefits of social media engagement that skeptics often don't see when they presume that old-school methods of pushing calls to buy is what should be done on these new channels. Hard and soft ROI are matters we focused on extensively in the ReadWriteWeb Guide to Online Community Management , our first premium report for businesses. Dell itself does a lot of listening and conversation from this same Twitter account. The public benefits of that conversation have been all but lost now that Twitter has changed its policies regarding the visibility of public @replies . Dell followers no longer see public replies sent to other followers they themselves aren't following. That's a major lost opportunity for public education and good will. As Pandora community manager, Lucia Willow, told us in an interview for the Guide: "I intentionally respond to most customer service messages with private direct messages. If it's a question that a lot of people have, then I answer back publicly with an @ message." Shhh...those public conversations are now invisible, for Pandora, for Dell and for all the rest of us. Though Dell reports good results from Twitter over the last two years, changed policies over the last two months may require a change in the way the company uses Twitter if it wants to keep seeing those kinds of results. Four Better Examples of Social Media ROI That Dell has made $3m from Twitter links is cool, and it's a good arrow to have in your social media advocacy quiver, but here are a number of examples we think better capture both the bottom line and some of the soft benefits of conversation. Joe Cothrel, Chief Community Officer at enterprise online community vendor Lithium , gathered these numbers in 2007 and we included them among other resources in the RWW Community Management Guide. These examples reference older related forms of online social interaction, but they also concern far greater sums of money than $3m. A Cisco study in 2004 found that 43% of visits to online support forum are in lieu of opening up a support case through standard methods. Cost per interaction in customer support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options. (Forrester, 2006) Jupiter Research (now Forrester) reported in 2006 that customers report good experiences in forums more than twice as often as they do via calls or mail. Ebay found in 2006 that participants in online communities spend 54% more than non-community users. Better customer experiences, far lower support costs and more buying activity in the long run. Those are observations that can help provide context to the high-profile example of Dell pushing e-commerce links out over Twitter. Dell is clearly doing a lot of the same kind of customer service via social media that the companies above cite, but watch out for falling into the trap of telling your reluctant boss that Twitter is important because Dell bagged $3 million there. Interested in learning more best practices for online community? Check out the ReadWriteWeb Guide to Online Community Management . Thanks to Ben Parr for sharing the Dell Community announcement link. Discuss

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Don't Tell Your Boss: Dell Made $6.5m on Twitter