Audio and video

YouTube is clearly eyeing paid subscriptions, though it won't reveal if such an option has gotten the green light.

Speaking with reporters in Los Angeles yesterday, Robert Kyncl, a YouTube vice president, said that paid subscription channels are "incredibly important" in order to create "additional revenue streams" for content creators, the Wall Street Journal reported today. YouTube has reportedly already been chatting with producers about offering channels that would require a fee.

Possibly debuting as soon as next quarter, the first of such channels would charge users between $1 and $5 a month and initially … Read more

Pandora has tuned up a Windows Phone 8 app that's both free and ad-free.

Available as of today in the Windows Phone store, the app offers all the standard features for Pandora listeners.

You can create up to 100 different stations based on your tastes in music. You can tell Pandora what you like and don't like by giving each song a thumb's up or thumb's down.

You can filter certain songs that you won't want to hear and flip on a switch for higher-quality audio. Existing Pandora users can log in with their current … Read more

Want to sell that movie you bought on iTunes but never watch? You may be able to one day if a new Apple patent filing ever comes to life.

Published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and filed last June, an Apple patent application named "Managing Access To Digital Content Items" conjures up a system for legally selling or loaning iTunes items to another person.

The method involves transferring digital access rights from the original owner to someone else. Once those rights are transferred, the new owner would gain access to the content while the … Read more

YouTube may tune in to the online music world this year with its own streaming service.

The service would likely offer free music streaming paid for by ads as well as an ad-free subscription option, according to Fortune, which says it was briefed by sources in the record industry and by an unnamed person at Google.

A YouTube representative told CNET that "while we don't comment on rumor or speculation, there are some content creators that think they would benefit from a subscription revenue stream in addition to ads, so we're looking at that."

YouTube's … Read more

Fewer people are illegally downloading and sharing music, NPD Group said in a report today.

Among those surveyed for NPD's "Annual Music Study 2012," 40 percent who illegally downloaded music via peer-to-peer services in 2011 said they had stopped or decreased their illegal downloads in 2012.

Overall, the number of illegally downloaded songs from P2P services dropped by 26 percent in 2012 from 2011.

Part of that was due to an overall decline in the use of P2P services. At the 2005 peek of P2P file sharing networks, 33 million people used them. For 2012, that number … Read more

Billboard's charts, the gold standard for assessing the most popular music, now have a new metric.

YouTube streaming data is now being incorporated into those charts, Billboard announced yesterday. YouTube viewership will now join digital and physical singles sales, terrestrial radio airplay, and streaming as the metrics that determine Billboard's chart order.

Since there are often thousands of clips of a single music video, Billboard's YouTube data is limited to "all official videos," Vevo clips, and user-generated videos that are using "authorized audio." In other words, only legitimately used songs can be included … Read more

Opera Software is acquiring Skyfire Labs and its technology for squeezing video onto congested mobile-phone networks in a deal worth up to $155 million, the Norwegian browser maker said tonight.

Opera, the fifth-ranked browser maker in terms of global usage, gets paid for adapting its browser for mobile network operators and for driving searches to sites like Yandex and Google. It's been gradually expanding its business into domains such as advertising, though, and the Skyfire deal adds a new dimension to its business selling technology to operators.

"Both companies have evolved far beyond their browser roots," said … Read more

Amazon has scored the rights to stream a new CBS TV series called "Under the Dome."

Based on a Stephen King novel and produced by CBS and Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television, the new show will air on CBS TV starting June 24. And just four days after that, the series will be available for streaming to Amazon Prime members.

The deal between Amazon and CBS (which is also the parent company of CNET) means that Amazon Prime Instant Video will be the exclusive online home for "Under the Dome." Amazon Prime subscribers will be able … Read more

YouTube might soon invest some cash in Vevo, according to a new report.

Google's video site may be investing $50 million in Vevo, a joint-venture music-video site established by Universal Music and Sony Music Entertainment for music videos, according to a Bloomberg report today, citing people who claim to have knowledge of the negotiations. In return for the $50 million, YouTube would acquire less than 10 percent of the company, indicating Vevo might be valued at over $500 million.

Perhaps more importantly for Google, the deal would also ensure that Vevo's music videos stay on YouTube, according to … Read more