Comparison of Digital Music Retailers in Europe

August 11, 2009 — Damien

Comment: There are a number of digital music retailers working around Europe, here is Damien Saunders’ summary of a few of the bigger services (catalogue greater than 1 million tracks).

Name Countries MP3 to buy Subscription Catalogue Size 3rd Party API PC Software
7Digital UK Yes No 3.5m Yes No
eMusic EU Yes Annual 2m No No
Saturn DE Yes No 1m No No
Amazon MP3 UK & USA Yes Annual 5m No Yes
Spotify UK, select EU Yes – via partner Monthly 1m Yes Yes
Napster EU Yes Monthly 1m No Yes
iTunes EU Yes No 1m Yes Yes
Vodafone EU Yes Monthly 1m No Yes
Nokia CWM UK, select EU No Annual 1m No Yes
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Pandora to block UK music streaming services

January 8, 2008 — Damien

Comment: Pandora has been around for some time and grown in reputation as a free music discovery service. This is becoming a niche space because of the impact of internet radio or streaming licencing costs.

In an email to users, Pandora founder Tim Westergren wrote:

“After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.”

Source:  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/08/pandora_uk_closes/

Posted in Internet, Music. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

200000 iPhones to be sold by O2 UK by end of year

November 5, 2007 — Damien

O2 UK expects to sell around 200,000 iPhones by the start of the New Year. Sales will start on 9 November, and Matthew Key, CEO of O2’s UK business, told the Financial Times he expected “a couple of hundred thousand” iPhones to be sold in the first two months.

O2 has ordered “hundreds of thousands” of iPhones from Apple for its stores and online outlets as well as shops run by Carphone Warehouse. After the June launch in the US, 1 million iPhones were sold in just under two and a half months.

The iPhone will sell for GBP 269 in the UK, and customers will have to take out an O2 contract for at least GBP 35 per month for 18 months.

Posted in Internet, Mobile, Networks, handsets, mobile internet, operators. Leave a Comment »

Google and others to open social networks taking on Facebook

October 31, 2007 — Damien

The New York Times writes that an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning. Facebook opened up its network for 3rd parties to develop their own applications earlier this year and this has resulted in a mass of new developments for everything from ’super-poke’ to free sms. This would be seen as a move to ‘compete’ with Facebook on the level of integration 3rd parties have with websites.The New York Times learned of the alliance’s plan from people briefed on the matter. Google, which had planned to introduce the alliance at a party on Thursday evening, later confirmed the plan.

Facebook calls the integration of 3rd parties applications, they added to peoples profiles by users or by recommendation from their friend. One of the most popular Facebook applications is iLike a music sharing service. iLike was a minor music internet website until it developed a plug-in for Facebook allowing people to share their playlists, dedicate songs via messages to their friends or buy music.

Posted in Internet, social networking, social networks, web2.0. Leave a Comment »

Facebook valued at $15 billion – thanks Microsoft

October 25, 2007 — Damien

Today WSJ writes that Microsoft has brought a minority stake in Facebook that would value the social network site at $15 billion. This ends month of speculation if it would be Google or Microsoft that would get a share.

Read/Write/Web goes on to suggest this will be a plus for the Microsoft adnetwork to help spread its presence in key sites.

Posted in Google, Internet, social networking, social networks, web2.0. Leave a Comment »

Turkey’s Avea Mobile Operator Goes 2.0?

June 8, 2007 — Damien

In the last week new media marketing sites reported on a portal being developed Avea in Turkey. Secretly named GenCinSan (young people in Turkish) the site was launched this week as www.patlican.com.tr (patlican is eggplant/aubergine and a play on ‘it will explode’)

The new site is a reminder of early telco portals from the dotcom error and features include news, reviews, video, with a mix of traditional telco products and services. Tacked on to this is a 1/2 mix of web2.0 services – create your own profile and you can have a personal webpage or find other users with shared interests.

You have to join to be able to view almost anything on the site and be a customer of Avea if you want to participate …. which is all bad news for anyone checking the site. And to register, you have to give them your mobile number … funny stuff?

You can’t call this a web2.0 site as it is not driven by user generated content instead the focus is on a range of editorial content taken from other sites. Looking behind the scene its been developed by VSP/news portal e-kolay.net with support from azbuz and gayet.net. What all these sites have in common is the involvement of a leading media communications player in Turkey, Dogan Grou. Pretty powerful stuff

It might prove a nice new edition in the portal market for Turkey and relevant to Avea customers. Vodafone already offers a similar portal at netbul.com and other similar portals are mynet.com and previously mentioned e-kolay. Thats before you start looking at the long news and media sites.

Posted in Internet, Mobile, operators, web2.0. Leave a Comment »

Telsim Vodafone Network campaign & Turkcell Internet ad

March 19, 2007 — Damien

Here’s a couple of ads from competing networks in Turkey currently being aired around the country.

Turkcell’s internet ad features the ‘cellbuddy’ with crazy head gear and a yellow suit demonstrating search to a child doing her homework in the dark as there is no power.

The Cellbuddies feature in all their campaigns some times as kids in bumblebee costumes othewise drawn as a bug with funny antenna … most people don’t seem sure what they are? But the kids in costumes are cool.

Telsim Vodafone’s advert features a lady making a call to her boyfriend and with the support of the team, is carried all the way to where he is working on a construction site.

Posted in Internet, Mobile, operators. Leave a Comment »

Can a Brand improve the handset user experience?

January 3, 2007 — Damien

Comment: Terminal manufacturers are developing new applications and intergrating the user experience of other brands. Can this be a harmonious relationship with operators own portals?

With a selection of mobile phones from Christmas 2006 sitting on my desk from several big names its apparent that 3rd parties are now working with the terminal suppliers directly to port their web experience to phone apps. You can see this happening in Europe primarily with Google for blogging and search, but in the US, Helio has had success with its brand phone and social-networking tools.

Since the early days of mobile, it was primarly the reponsibility of the operator and terminal manufacturer to develop phone applications or new services for customers. Traditionally this has been in 3 areas -

  • Native phone firmware or apps which includes the terminal settings, pictures and themes an operator installs, and
  • Shell Apps like Java, flash or other applications developed and ported across phones, and
  • Web/wap apps which are quickest to develop and are used in portals like Docomo and Vodafone live! as well as any third party.

Its the native apps that the 3rd parties are now working to integrate. Sony Ericsson camera phones now come with ‘Send to Blogger’ and blogging clients on the phone and some devices come with a static internet jump page that already has an internet search box.

The handset manufacturers are installing these applications in their part of the firmware. This is now a new area for operators to test and check these apps work or alternatively, to block from working (such as those operators still with walled gardens or child-blocking technology). Interestingly how can this be commercialised for the benefit for customers? without a direct billing relationship, customers are still going to be paying data charges for these searches which are not included in their on-net portal browsing.

Its certainly a reason for customers to argue for simpler pricing models like the flat rate xseries from 3 UK. More likely, these apps will stay in the 3rd party or expensive off-net browsing section with its per kb or timed data charges (opps revenue)

Posted in Google, Internet, Mobile, Telephone, mobile internet, operators. Leave a Comment »

Soonr: Your mobile PC application

September 11, 2006 — Damien

Up until now getting access to documents, music files or photos or your calendar when you are away from your office or home PC has been limited to a mess of cables, WIFI or datacards. SoonR seems to have hit the nail on the head, with a smooth interface and more features than you can throw a dog at.

While not all the word is as mass mobile as I am, and it could be a long way before many want this service, which Soonr has solved already …

Want to transfer music to your phone from your home pc? Soonr can Transfer pictures? or any file you want … Soonr can do that too

Want to check your outlook calendar at work? or book that meeting with your boss … Soonr can … or read that email you missed before you shut down … yes Soonr can.

And want to check this from your Mobile or from any ol PC? Soonr can … and you have complete control of what files are shared and accessible by you … or you can setup a shared folder for this.

I guess there are many reasons I like this – from the web2.0 styling to the speed in which it was setup. I was up and running in 2 mins – after it asked for my proxy settings on the office firewall … and took no time at all to install on my home PC. Now the little server client is loaded all the time.

So what about the competition – having checked out whats out there, I tried using the client from http://www.orb.com … which according to the blurb lets you watch tv from your phone … groan … why would you want to do that?? when I have a great 3G phone already? Oh and you need a TV Card in your home PC. Put to the test, it failed – when I discovered that you can’t set the web proxy so the server app couldn’t get outside the office network. From my home PC with its tangle of wi-fi, routers with ’solid’ firewalls and NATing I didn’t even try to set it up. Scared off by the first experience.

What I’m convinced is a good feature on Orb is the integrated streaming app – so you can listen to music on your home PC without downloading the full thing to your phone – saves you data and starts playing quicker than a download. If Soonr doesn’t do this soon (sorry for the crap english) then it will do it some time because its users are already requesting this.

Soonr just seems downright friendly, in a Flickr or any web2.0 softwar without the letter ‘e’ seems right. Put to the test, I emailed orb support to find out what I had to do to amend the proxy settings – contact my IT helpdesk and get them to open a port on the firewall … now why would I want that??

Posted in 3G, Internet, Mobile, mobile internet, software. Leave a Comment »

RSS to SMS for your mobile

December 12, 2005 — Damien

Think about this carefully – any RSS stream sent free to your mobile by SMS … you’ve got your blackberry, you’ve got your live news alerts and weekly MMS updates – but who tells you about that other stuff you’re really really interested in? Talk about giving away the baby and the bath water – but maybe this is just a crazy idea with some sense behind it.

As part of an update to its alerts feature, Yahoo added a feature that allows users to get RSS results via SMS. The free service will send a message to your phone with every new item posted to an RSS feed.

The feature works with any RSS feed, but is likely most useful for feeds used to connect small groups of people (group projects, clubs, etc) where volume will be lower than on a news site. Since normal text messaging fees apply (though there is no fee from Yahoo) make sure to use this feature wisely.

Source Russell Beattie

Posted in Internet, Networks, content. Leave a Comment »
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