February 2012
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Amazon Blows Q4, Stock Plunges 9% After Hours |...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/yzKnUA on January 31, 2012 at 04:08PM
Earlier today, Amazon reported earnings of $0.38 per share on revenue of $17.4 billion.
Analysts were expecting $0.19 per share on revenue of $18.21 billion. Even the lowest revenue estimates were $17.6 billion.
On its earnings call, Amazon blamed the shortfall on slowing sales in North America, particularly in video games.
...
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How To Fix The Entertainment Industry Without...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/zHJf5B on January 31, 2012 at 03:08PM
All of the recent anti-piracy legislation’s seem to have put the tech community at odds with the content community.
Major entertainment industries like Hollywood and the music industry have a right to protect their content and profit off of it.
However suing your customer is not a winning business strategy and suing the...
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EU investigating Samsung's 3G patent licensing...
Reposted from http://lat.ms/AfP0S7 on January 31, 2012 at 09:07PM
Samsung’s patent lawsuits with Apple and other rivals are bringing the South Korean tech giant a bit of regulatory scrutiny in the European Union.
On Tuesday, the European Commission, the E.U.’s antitrust agency, said it had formally launched an investigation into whether Samsung had broken any competition laws by...
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Will Lifeline guarantee high-speed Internet access...
Reposted from http://lat.ms/yfU8e0 on January 31, 2012 at 07:31PM
Life, liberty and high-speed Internet access for all?
Under the Lifeline program, low-income Americans were guaranteed affordable access to basic phone services for the last 25 years. Soon, the program might also help subsidize their access to high-speed Internet as well.
On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission, which...
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Facebook charging 'stratospheric' attorney fees,...
Reposted from http://lat.ms/x4eVHE on January 31, 2012 at 05:31PM
Paul Ceglia, fined last month for failing to turn over evidence in his case against Facebook, is protesting the “stratospheric” legal fees from Facebook’s lawyers.
Ceglia, who contends he’s entitled to half of Mark Zuckerberg’s multibillion-dollar stake in Facebook, said he should not have to pay as...
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Broadcom fourth-quarter profit, revenue top...
Reposted from http://lat.ms/AykhVu on January 31, 2012 at 05:15PM
Apple Inc. sold 37 million iPhones and 15 million iPads during its record holiday quarter. Those are also happy numbers for Irvine-based Broadcom Corp., which makes microchips for the popular Apple devices and many others.
Broadcom reported a better-than-expected fourth quarter Tuesday, beating Wall Street estimates for...
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Despite strong Kindle sales, Amazon's...
Reposted from http://lat.ms/xr7V3J on January 31, 2012 at 04:55PM
Despite strong sales of its Kindle devices during the holidays, Amazon.com’s fourth-quarter earnings report missed expectations Tuesday, sending the online retail giant’s shares plunging in after-hours trading.
The Seattle e-commerce company said its sales rose 35% year over year, to $17.4 billion for the three months...
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Gingrich vs. Romney: Whose website got the most...
Reposted from http://lat.ms/zRUMi4 on January 31, 2012 at 04:26PM
Does the number of people who click on a political candidate’s website have any correlation to how many votes he or she receives?
On Tuesday night, we might find out.
Experian Hitwise, an online measurement company, has released some data on how many people have visited Mitt Romney’s website versus how many people...
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Apple vs. Samsung: Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales ban...
Reposted from http://lat.ms/AfqE2l on January 31, 2012 at 04:49PM
Samsung was dealt a loss in its ongoing patent battle with Apple as the South Korean electronics maker’s request to overturn a ban on the sale of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Germany was denied.
A Dusseldorf regional appeals court upheld the August 2011 sales injunction of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and said that Samsung’s...
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Google defends new privacy policy to Congress | LA...
Reposted from http://lat.ms/xVcYRf on January 31, 2012 at 02:53PM
Google has been facing a barrage of questions about changes it plans to make to its privacy policy that affects how it handles the voluminous data it collects from hundreds of millions of people around the globe.
Some of those questions have come from members of Congress who question if Google is sacrificing its users to boost...
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Apple hires John Browett, of UK's Dixons, to head...
Reposted from http://lat.ms/yzBS7j on January 31, 2012 at 02:46PM For Apple Inc.’s newly appointed head of retail, the Genius Bar is high.
The company said on Tuesday it had hired John Browett, chief executive of European technology retailer Dixons, to head Apple’s global fleet of 361 stores, starting in April. Apple’s fast-growing chain of stores pulled in $6.1 billion in...
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Neil Young is right — piracy is the new radio |...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/wxTMCj on January 31, 2012 at 06:01PM
As an artist who probably makes a substantial income from licensing his music, you might think Neil Young would frown on piracy and file-sharing, but that appears not to be the case, according to an interview he gave at the Dive Into Media conference in Los Angeles. Instead of railing against file-sharers, Young called piracy...
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Bronfman: Spotify is a real and growing revenue...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/xllxPT on January 31, 2012 at 05:01PM Warner Music Group Chairman Edgar Bronfman, Jr. is a big fan of Spotify. In fact, at the D:Dive Into Media conference, the music mogul touted the music streaming service as a complementary service on top of other sales channels.
In what is likely his final interview before leaving Warner Music, Bronfman defended Spotify’s ability...
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Why International Travel Still Sucks for Streaming...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/wro6GG on January 31, 2012 at 09:57PM
It’s sad, but if you’re planning a big overseas trip, streaming music still basically sucks. And from the perspective of an American, here’s reason number one.
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Video: Wes Anderson “From Above” | the listenerd
Reposted from http://bit.ly/AxhQfY on January 31, 2012 at 09:24PM
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Top 10 Most Downloaded Movies on BitTorrent | P2P...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/ystRd4 on January 31, 2012 at 09:20PM TorrentFreak has published the data they collected with the top 10 most shared movies on BitTorrent for the week ended January 29. All the films included in this chart are DVDrips (unless mentioned otherwise).
The new leader of the chart is a Hollywood remake after the successful Swedish ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ (‘Män...
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AVSEQ: Engaging gem-matching fails to mesh with...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/wcOyLs on January 31, 2012 at 09:02PM
AVSEQ (pronounced ay-vee-seck, I’m told) stands for Audiovisual Sequencer, putting it in a class of abstract, interactive audiovisual experiments that runs from Simon all the way through and past Electroplankton. It’s a tough game to evaluate as a whole, though, because the...
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[Kickshufle Exclusive] A Conversation with Solo...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/zamvUV on January 28, 2012 at 11:47PM
Jeff Aug is Founder of MAXIMUM Booking as well as an accomplished solo artist. In 2009, Aug set the world record for “Most Concerts Performed in Different Countries in 24 Hours,” and is out to take his record back. MAXIMUM Booking’s artist roster includes Anne Clark, Allan Holdsworth, moe., Chumbawumba, Floating Stone, and many...
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For the Future of YouTube Ads, It’s All About...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/wvUN4o on January 31, 2012 at 07:44PM YouTube SVP Salar Kamangar speaks about the future of YouTube at the AllThingsD media conference. Photo: Asa Mathat/AllThingsD
LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. — It must have been frightening to be among the first advertisers for YouTube. Since the site’s inception it’s been seen as the wild west of digital content platforms, with millions...
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Kindling the Fire: Will Amazon’s Bet On Revenue...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/AdRZJ4 on January 31, 2012 at 07:10PM Jeff Bezos introducing the Kindle Fire on Sept. 28, 2011. CREDIT: Victor J. Blue/ Wired.com
Tuesday’s earnings report is good news / bad news for Amazon and its shareholders: The retailer is taking in more money than ever, but at lower profit margins than it did a year ago. Analysts expected Amazon’s fourth-quarter revenue to grow...
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For Those About To Rock, WooThemes Launches A...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/yf0ll1 on January 31, 2012 at 03:43PM WooThemes has just announced a new theme for musicians called Unsigned. To build the theme, the company worked with band managers and promoters as well as real, actual musicians in order to make a “rockin’” theme that is both “classical” and “jazzy” with a little but of “afro-beat” thrown in.
The theme includes modules for events,...
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Good DRM Makes Bad Neighbors: This Is The Content...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/y9AhjV on January 31, 2012 at 02:42PM For people who have been doing just one thing for a long, long time, it’s amazing how many content distributors get things so catastrophically wrong.
These last few weeks brought us quite a few unique situations, including the launch of Apple’s iBook Author software as well as a number of announcements from the studios to withhold...
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Cassette Tape Documentary Gets Rolling | MTV Hive...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/xIaFQp on January 31, 2012 at 04:53PM Image courtesy of Flickr, kumar303Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s the “WTF?!” factor, maybe people just miss fondling their tunes, but it seems that growing interest in the cassette tape is a real and burgeoning phenomenon. The proof? Well, a Kickstarter-funded documentary about the anachronistic format has just pulled in more...
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Pro-SOPA Folks Push Fact-Challenged Op-Eds |...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/wMrH2C on January 31, 2012 at 03:38PM
It seems that, in the wake of the big protests that helped shelve (for now, at least) SOPA and PIPA, the pro-SOPA folks have started pushing people to write op-eds in various publications about how important SOPA/PIPA are — while simultaneously dismissing the concerns of those who opposed the bills. I keep seeing more of...
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"Global Jukebox" envisioned by folklorist,...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/xiDwfL on January 31, 2012 at 07:35PM
(Alan Lomax, via Wikipedia) American folklorist, ethnomusicologist, and traditional music collector Alan Lomax envisioned a “global jukebox” with which to share and analyze recordings he gathered over decades of fieldwork. This week, that dream comes to life. From an article in today’s New York Times: A decade after his death...
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RIM's cartoon superheroes inspire caustic...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/w8eZMd on January 31, 2012 at 06:44PM Just ‘a bit of fun’, responds beleaguered BlackBerry biz RIM’s latest marketing stunt has succeeded in attracting a high degree of attention – but not necessarily of the type that the struggling company may have intended.…
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An Exit Interview With Warner Music Group Chairman...
Reposted from http://dthin.gs/AcUVaO on January 31, 2012 at 04:35PM Today is a big day for Edgar Bronfman Jr. — his last as chairman of Warner Music Group.
A fixture in the music industry since the mid-1990s, Bronfman led WMG during a period of profound tumult, navigating a rough transition from CD to the digital download, and grappling with a generation of younger consumers who don’t always...
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Neil Young's Music Rescue Mission (Video) |...
Reposted from http://dthin.gs/wpwp98 on January 31, 2012 at 04:19PM Neil Young is on a quest to improve upon the MP3 file that dominates digital music.
Young isn’t opposed to the fact music is going digital, but he says the sound of today’s files isn’t good enough, with audio quality at just 5 percent of traditional recordings.
“My goal is to try to rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing...
January 2012
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Pirating the Oscars 2012: Ten Years of Data |...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/xx8U2Y on January 31, 2012 at 03:20PM Every year, the MPAA tries desperately to stop Oscar screeners — the review copies sent to Academy voters — from leaking online. And every year, teenage boys battling for street cred always seem to defeat whatever obstacles Hollywood throws at them.
For the last 10 years, I’ve tracked the online distribution of...
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There's Now an Effort to Recover Millions of Legal...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/xH84sk on January 31, 2012 at 06:35PM
The RIAA likes to say that stealing an MP3 is like stealing a CD from a store. So, what happens when the FBI deletes your perfectly legal files on MegaUpload?
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Surprise: Neil Young still hates digital music |...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/zS2RKS on January 31, 2012 at 06:30PM ‘Piracy is the new radio’ Neil Young, who a few years back famously described Apple as the “Fisher-Price” of sound quality, is giving his “I hate digital music” can another kick, claiming that even the late Steve Jobs listened to vinyl rather than his own company’s inventions.…
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Coming Soon To A City, Conference or News Feed...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/AEbgPO on January 31, 2012 at 05:22PM
If you haven’t heard from us in a while, you must have been living under a rock… In addition to being all over Twitter and Facebook, we here at The Orchard have had a great many newsworthy things going on, and we just can’t keep quiet about it! It’s one thing …
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SoundCtrl Seeking Interns | SoundCtrl
Reposted from http://bit.ly/w2i9P9 on January 31, 2012 at 05:31PM
A SoundCtrl internship offers students a unique hands-on experience in music and technology convergence
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Cyberlocker Burden of Proof Should Be Reversed,...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/yqYwam on January 31, 2012 at 04:54PM As previously reported, the Megaupload shutdown sent shockwaves right around the world and prompted a huge rethink by many cyberlocker file-hosting services.
The Megaupload indictment focused on several issues including alleged payments of cash rewards to known uploaders of infringing material. This prompted some rival services to...
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Mark Zuckerberg Wanted To Sacrifice Facebook for a...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/wSOket on January 31, 2012 at 01:08PM
It might be built on science, but Silicon Valley can be as fickle and fashion conscious as any Paris couturier. Back in 2004, for example, social networking looked trivial and grubby; truly cool programmers worked on swapping copyrighted music and movies. Even robotic Facebook founder Mark...
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Hierarchy Of Power | Lefsetz Letter
Reposted from http://bit.ly/yVYdr2 on January 31, 2012 at 05:26PM
1. The Act
We’re returning to the classic rock era. Wherein the acts dictated to the labels as opposed to vice versa. But the story here now is there are no labels. Sure, there are a bunch of Top Forty acts that are essentially employees of the major labels, in everything but benefits (they’re independent contractors!), […]
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Quickflix adds Android with Samsung | The Register...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/za7Rzm on January 31, 2012 at 05:15PM A Galaxy of mobile TV Samsung Galaxy slab-fondlers will soon get access to movies and TV shows, with IPTV aspirant Quickflix inking a deal with Samsung Australia.…
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Neil Young: Steve Jobs listened to vinyl | USA...
Reposted from http://usat.ly/wupJso on January 31, 2012 at 04:18PM
Jobs might have been a digital music pioneer, but he still listened to vinyl records.
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Neil Young and the Sound of Music (John...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/w74QOZ on January 31, 2012 at 03:00PM
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD: Neil Young and the Sound of Music — You know what the biggest problem with music today is? — Sound quality. — That’s Neil Young’s take on the issue, anyway. For years, the musician has been obsessed with improving the way modern music sounds, sonically speaking.
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Future of Music Coalition's Artist Revenue Study...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/xYgOOK on January 31, 2012 at 09:02AM
A “first look” white paper on Future of Music Coalition’s Artist Revenue Stream project was prepared and released at MIDEM. The study showed musicians get more income from fans and grants than merchandise and corporate sponsorships. The median gross income of respondents was $55,561 — higher than U.S....
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Mark Ronson On 'Move To The Beat,' His Olympic...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/zy65f4 on January 31, 2012 at 07:40AM
If K’naan’s “Wavin’ Flag” created for the 2010 FIFA World Cup set the template for what Coca-Cola could do with music, brace yourself for Mark Ronson’s “Move to the Beat” campaign. Ronson, along with Topspin’s Ian Rogers and Coca Cola senior VP Wendy Clark, discussed the track, its different versions (including one with...
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Grammy's Ken Ehrlich on Adele Appearance, Paul...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/wq7iWl on January 31, 2012 at 03:30AM
The Recording Academy uses the two weeks prior to the Grammy Awards to announce performers and presenters, and executive producer Ken Ehrlich says Thursday should yield a “major interesting” announcement. Ehrlich also discussed the possibility of an Adele appearance, the Paul Simon snub and Paul McCartney’s...
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The Future of Cloud Music Debated by Publishers,...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/yb5OQq on January 31, 2012 at 06:49AM
Over the past year, cloud-based music lockers have begun entering the mainstream, embraced by major players like Apple, Amazon and Google. But as was obvious Tuesday during a MIDEM panel discussion on the topic — featuring reps from BMI, Rdio, SACEM, PRS, Nokia and others — there are still many questions about what...
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Facebook's Dan Rose Talks Music, App Economy,...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/xyzPxc on January 31, 2012 at 03:23AM
Dan Rose, Facebook’s VP of partnerships, spoke with Billboard editorial director Bill Werde at MIDEM’s keynote Q&A about Facebook Music’s five billion songs shared since September, its early-adoption of Skrillex, the app economy and more.
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German Politicians @MIDEM Weigh in on Music Biz;...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/xbluee on January 31, 2012 at 02:45AM
A gaggle of German politicians and leaders, including the Parliamentary Secretary to the Federal Minister of Economics and Technology (natch), weighed in on the state of the music biz in Germany at MIDEM. Meanwhile, GEMA announced it has inked a licensing agreement with French streeming service Deezer.
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Webdoc Now Integrates SoundCloud, Songkick And...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/zSOwDU on January 31, 2012 at 04:47PM Webdoc, described as “the most expressive way to share your passions online through the creation of rich media posts,” has announced integrations with SoundCloud, Songkick, and Topspin. First revealed at Midem 2012 this past weekend, the trio of new services provide a significant boost to Webdoc’s audio and music offering.
Since...
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Music Funding Already Up 27% In 2012... | Digital...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/x3o8ua on January 31, 2012 at 04:26PM
Music-related financing collapsed during the second-half of 2011, though maybe that was just a temporary tank.
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Neil Young Trumpets High-Quality Digital Music,...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/wC6cjt on January 31, 2012 at 03:03PM Legendary artist Neil Young at the AllThingsD media conference. Photo: Asa Mathat/AllThingsD
LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. — “Steve Jobs was a digital pioneer, but when he went home, he listened to vinyl.”
This is not popular mythology. This is not rumor. This is legendary recording artist Neil Young, sharing his thoughts on the state of...
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Like Clockwork: Copyright Holders Mistakenly Freak...
Reposted from http://bit.ly/xtGU8a on January 31, 2012 at 01:16PM
This seems to happen every four years like clockwork during Presidential elections. Some musician gets upset about a politician he or she disagrees with, making use of his or her music during campaign rallies. This time around the candidate is Newt Gingrich, and the upset musician is songwriter and member of the band Survivor,...
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Copying Is Not Theft, But Censorship Is | Techdirt
Reposted from http://bit.ly/A4s29D on January 31, 2012 at 11:59AM
This morning a friend shared with me some amusing American Sign Language videos, and in return I wanted to share with him my favorite ASL video of all time: B. Storm’s interpretation of the Gnarls Barkley song Crazy. Only I couldn’t because it was gone. Why? Because “This video contains content from WMG (Warner...