Find tech advice for business hereApple has just put out a feature in the iTunes Store, called Rewind, that shows off the best and best-selling music, movies, TV shows, and apps from 2009. This year's edition is crammed full of information and I encourage you to browse through (iTunes link). The results are pretty interesting, although there are no real shockers. iTunes didn't provide download figures; it simply ranked the top-sellers. Here is a quick rundown of what stands out.
Not surprisingly, in the music category, iTunes staff picked Michael Jackson as artist of the year, with Kings of Leon taking home album of the year for their 2009 release, "Only By the Night." The top-selling single of the year was the Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow." They also checked in at No. 4 with "I Gotta Feeling," giving them two songs in the top 5.
iTunes' best-selling games of 2009.
The apps category is particularly interesting. The top 5 best-selling games of 2009 are dominated by Electronic Arts. Four out of the five top games are made by EA, including The Sims 3 in the No. 1 spot, followed by Need for Speed Undercover, Madden 10, and Tiger Woods in the Nos. 3, 4, and 5 spots. Gameloft's The Oregon Trail breaks up the EA love fest by sneaking in at No. 2.
As far as other apps go, Navigon's Mobile Navigator grabs the top spot in best-sellers, followed by MLB.com At Bat, Textfree Unlimited, TomTom, Golfshot: Golf GPS, and SlingPlayer Mobile. Unfortunately iTunes doesn't give a combined list, so we don't know what app is really at the top of the pile.
Although the iTunes list is probably not representative of the most popular movies of 2009, due to its limited catalog available for viewing, we'll take a look at it nonetheless. It should be no surprise that punching in at No. 1 for most sales and rentals is "Twilight." Rounding out the top three, we have the stoner comedy/action movie "Pineapple Express" and Bond flick "Quantum of Solace."
iTunes also lists "Up," "Star Trek," "The Hangover," and "Adventureland" as some of the best movies of 2009.
Finally, we have the TV shows category. Yes, iTunes did make some TV episode sales in 2009, despite the existence of alternatives like DVRs, Hulu, and Netflix. The top-selling seasons were "Mad Men" (season 3), "Lost" (season 5), and "24" (season 7). "Family Guy" claims the best-selling episode with "Stew-Roids," followed by "Gossip Girl" with "In the Realm of the Basses," and "Lost" with "Because You Left."
2009 was a good year for content on iTunes. What were some of your favorites in music, movies, TV, and iPhone apps from last year (on iTunes or otherwise)? Let us know in the comments.
As we speak, the Foo Fighters are playing a live show on Facebook, live from their own Studio 606, for their fans on the site. The concert is utilizing the same live-stream module we have seen in used in a variety of situations in the past, including CNN's live stream of Barack Obama's inauguration. This is combined with a live video module from Livestream to complete the experience.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)
This is a really cool thing for the band to do for its fans and something I hope we see more of in the future. As the Foo Fighters play, they are keeping an eye on the stream of status updates coming in, sometimes responding to comments and taking song requests.
There is an undeniable trend of live events moving online. The potential audience that can be reached is fairly significant and the costs are low. As shown by the Foo Fighters, a band can just broadcast a live show for their fans, from their own studio. The social element of Facebook, combined with this event, only enhances the experience.
If you want to check out the show, we have embedded the Livestream widget below (while the show lasts).
... Read more
Pandora, with new Facebook, Twitter, and Gift sharing features.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)Pandora on Wednesday announced the arrival of some new sharing features for the service. In the past, you have been able to share Pandora stations, but you were forced to do it via e-mail instead of taking advantage of one of the modern social networks. Now, Pandora is enabling station and song sharing via much more efficient means: Facebook and Twitter.
These features work pretty much exactly how you would think they would. Clicking on the Facebook icon pops out a Facebook window, allowing you to share either the current song or station. The Twitter integration works in much the same way, enabling you to tweet out a link to the current song or station. When you click on the station link that someone has shared, it whisks you away to their Pandora station and lets you listen. However, the song links only go to a landing page that gives you a 30-second preview and an option to create a station based on that song. Oddly, this page does not give the user the "Buy from Amazon/iTunes" option that Pandora's main app features.
In addition, Pandora is bringing more attention to its station-gifting feature. This feature basically allows users to create an entirely new station, pair it with an eCard and send it off to someone. Pandora is essentially trying to create the modern version of the mixtape. This feature has been around for a little while, but it has gained little attention to this point. The more prominent placing in Pandora's music player may change that.
These new sharing features should boost usage of Pandora. Tapping into the previously untouched power of Facebook's social graph and Twitter can only be a good thing. Pandora is just coming off of reaching an agreement on new royalty rates for music this summer and it's working toward its goal of being profitable by the end of the year. They're also facing some stiff competition from companies like Slacker. Pandora still has a long road ahead, but opening up its service to sharing on Facebook and Twitter is definitely a step in the right direction.
Radiohead is now notorious for innovative distribution after their "pay what you want" initial sale of their last LP, In Rainbows, breaking from the traditional label system. In many ways, they are leading the fight against major music labels. All this adds up to some interesting speculation on the leak of a new Radiohead song, entitled "These Are My Twisted Words."
Last night, the song leaked on a torrent site and was quickly picked up by Radiohead fan forum ateaseweb. While it's not 100% confirmed to be Radiohead, there seems to be a consensus that the musical style is undeniably theirs. Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, so the discussion quickly turned to suggest that Radiohead themselves had leaked the track. Much of that speculation lends itself to the included nfo file (reproduced here) that includes elaborate ASCII art, which displays the song title and the text "Wall of Ice," along with a Thom Yorke-esque poem. The seemingly anti-music label poem reads:
"i just wanted to reassure readers
that following representations
seeking confirmation
that before your very eyes
behind the wall of ice
that the box is not under threat
however they are set to remove
other boxes
in fact i have the list in front of me
i went to a briefing on their plans
and challenged them to tell me
exactly what the cost would be
they spoke in broad terms"
To cap it all off, the file contains a release date of 8/17/2009 (Monday). Combining this with the news coming yesterday that Radiohead won't be releasing any more full length albums, but rather focusing on singles and EP's, fans are expecting the "Wall of Ice EP" to drop on Monday.
I wouldn't put it past Radiohead to intentionally leak their own song in this fashion to generate buzz about an upcoming EP. They've been at the forefront of innovative distribution methods and have proven to be internet savvy in the past. If successful, this release would be another smack in the face to the record labels and a step towards more direct distribution from bands to music fans. Whether or not this conspiracy theory ends up being true, all eyes will be on Radiohead Monday for another sudden release like they had with In Rainbows.
The jury is still out on whether Thom Yorke is geeky enough to read xkcd and name their EP after this anti-RIAA comic (also seen below), but we can hope.
As if being the No. 1 free iPhone app of 2008 wasn't enough for Pandora, it has launched version 2.0 of its app just six days into 2009.
New features in this release include a progress bar for songs (finally!), 30-second previews for bookmarked songs, the ability to create a new station from a song or artist, artist information, cover-flow view for song history, and some sharing features.
While this update isn't anything revolutionary, it certainly rounds out the cool features in the app, like embedded iTunes purchasing. With Tuesday's Macworld announcement of iTunes downloads, now being possible over 3G, this could prove to be a very useful feature.
Creating new stations from artists or songs will add a lot to the capability and usefulness of this app as well. The new cover-flow view for song history behaves almost exactly like Apple's. The album covers flip over to reveal information on the artist and why that song was played. One annoyance here is that you cannot bookmark or purchase songs from this view. I suspect that this is an easily correctable issue.
The 2.0 update for Pandora improves upon an already killer and must-have application for the iPhone. It's available in the iTunes store.
There are a few different ways to view music in Contrastream. The first and default view is called "Fresh Albums." This contains new albums that are very active on the site. "Top Hype" contains the albums that are getting the most votes and activity on the site. "Upcoming" and "New Releases" are self explanatory.
Contrastream places an emphasis on keeping the site filled with true indie music. As a result, it has introduced a feature called "Flag as Sell-out." If you think that a band on the site has screwed their fans out of money or has gone too mainstream, then you can flag them as sellouts. If a band/album gets enough of these votes, then they will be taken off of the site. Contrastream's about page details its philosophy, "With a group opinion, those artists won't receive the promotion when other artists deserve it."
Contrastream goes live to the public on September 3, according to TechCrunch, but you can put your e-mail in now and hope for an invite if you just can't wait.
Today, I'm taking a look at Fairtilizer, a potential new haven for indie musicians. Fairtilizer bills itself as a "trusted filter" for new music. If you are familiar with the concept behind Digg, this is going to be really easy to understand.
Anyone can submit a song (in MP3 format) to Fairtilizer as long as they hold the rights to that song. Unlike Digg, where once you submit a story the public starts reviewing it right away, Fairtilizer requires their editorial board to review every song submission to ensure that it is good enough for the site. I am not exactly sure whether this editorial board judges songs based on their musical merit or if they are just weeding out bad quality recordings and other junk that floats in, but that is definitely an important distinction. Tracks then make their way to the front page of the site, or "The Charts" as they call it, if they have enough user votes and listens in the Upcoming section.
I am not sure whether or not Fairtilizer is attempting to take on the wildly successful MySpace Music, but it certainly does appear that they are taking a much different approach to MySpace. Although there is a profile page for people who are submitting music, it is nowhere near as robust as what MySpace Music offers. The focus is more on individual tracks and music than bands here, and that's not a bad thing.
One thing that I really like about Fairtilizer is their integration of RSS feeds. You can subscribe to a feed of tracks from all over the site. For example, if I wanted to subscribe to someone's feed of submitted tracks in iTunes, I can just grab the URL, put it in iTunes, and it will automatically grab new tracks from that person whenever they submit them.
... Read moreIf there was any doubt as to how MSN would pull off the live internet broadcast of the Live Earth concert series today, it has been cleared. Powered by MSN's Soapbox, the broadcast comes off really well.
As you can see above, the video is nestled nicely among a slider of all of the different concerts, information about the venue that you are watching and links on how you can help the cause. The slider on the bottom also contains live updating information on what is happening on each stage, along with what act is next. The video can also be expanded to occupy the entire area beneath the sponsors' logos. The streaming has been flawless, even on my less than blazing DSL connection.
It is huge to be able to pull off something like this at all, so I give major kudos to Microsoft for being able to do it perfectly. It's a Saturday, so relax, check out some great music, and learn a little about global warming!
We have been hearing some grumblings recently from the record labels about iTunes' strong hold on the online music industry. Apparently some of them are complaining about the uniform pricing across all songs and some are unhappy with the use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) on their songs. Well, today we are seeing some of those grumblings take center stage. The New York Times has the scoop that Universal Music Group has decided to not renew their annual contract with Apple to serve up their music on iTunes. Although the article does say that Universal may still offer music on iTunes on a per-artist basis, they won't offer their whole catalog and they can pull out whenever they want since they are no longer under contract.
iTunes is the largest online music retailer.
This is going to be a huge blow to Apple, Universal, and most of all, the consumers. Apple will lose a lot of the business that Universal Music brings in (Universal Music accounts for about a quarter of all music sales). Universal will lose the business that selling their music on iTunes brings. Universal's current estimates are that 15 percent of all of their sales come from online music. Lastly, the consumers will no longer be able to buy Universal's music on iTunes and put it on their iPods. Since the iPod is not compatible with any other online music service, they have nowhere else to turn.
Pulling Universal's entire catalog from iTunes (which I doubt will end up happening) would leave a pretty large void in iTunes' offerings. Universal Music represents artists ranging from Eric Clapton to Nirvana, Hendrix, and Jay-Z. You can check out some of their more notable artists here. This would be really unfortunate for everyone involved. A lot of money would be lost and a lot of music would not be available to those loyal iPod users. Oh and one more thing...one of the bands that launched the iPod and iTunes to new heights with their Vertigo commercial, U2, is also under Universal's label.
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