rhapsody

Rhapsody International is breaking radio silence on Napster.

Since Rhapsody bought it in 2011, not much has been heard of the once high-flying peer-to-peer service that transformed public assumptions about consuming music. Now an above-board streaming service with more than 20 million songs in its global catalog, Napster will expand into 14 European countries from its current U.K. and German markets.

The move will triple Napster's potential base of users.

But it comes as a monolith in digital music industry is casting a wide shadow over Rhapsody and competitors like Pandora. Apple is widely expected to unveil a long-awaited iRadio streaming service … Read more

The music industry is still in rough shape, based on data released today by the Recording Industry Association of America. But U.S. digital revenues continue to climb, helped by the growth of so-called "access services" such as Spotify, YouTube, and Vevo.

And the bigger picture shows that the beaten-down industry is stabilizing. Recorded music sales slipped 0.9 percent from 2011 to 2012, totaling $7.1 billion. That's roughly in line with the total sales for the last few years.

Sales from digital formats, meantime, rose 14 percent from 2011 and last year surpassed $4 billion … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- From Peter Ha: What it was like launching The Daily.

- The importance of album track order in the Digital Age.

- Psy estimated to receive only $61,000 from Korean digital sales revenue for "Gangnam Style."

- Pizza Hut gives back with pizza-scented perfume.

- Verizon patents DVR box with camera in it.

- PA High School's "Gangnam Style" parody dubbed "Worst Video on the Entire Internet."… Read more

Music-streaming service Rhapsody has announced it will be available on Smart TVs from LG, Panasonic, and Samsung starting today, with Sharp and Xbox available in coming months.

Although the announcement came today, the service has been available on Panasonic and LG for a few months. Samsung is new with today's announcement. A Rhapsody app has also been available on Vizio TVs for the last two years. We're not surprised that Sony's Smart TVs, which support the competing Sony Entertainment Network's music service, aren't on the list of supporting TVs.

The new app appears to be … Read more

One of the creators of Skype has announced a new addition to his digital music service Rdio.

Janus Friis says the Rdio Artist Program is designed to give musicians a better alternative to iTunes Match or Spotify, where some complain that commission rates based on the number of times a song is streamed leaves an artist with almost nothing.

With Rdio, uploaders earn $10 for every new subscriber they lure to the service. The platform pays artists to share both music and recommendations on social-networking sites including Facebook and Twitter -- promoting the company as well as themselves.

San Francisco-based … Read more

Music-streaming services are big business for labels and even the companies that offer them. But for artists, they're not so great.

Josh Davison, a member of the band Parks and Gardens, yesterday took to Twitter to divulge the exceedingly small amount he and his fellow musicians make from streaming on iTunes Match and Spotify. According to Davison, each time one of his songs streams on iTunes Match, the band makes $0.00330526797710. When that same song plays on Spotify, the band makes $0.00966947678815. In other words, if Davison wants to make just one cent off a song play, … Read more

Here's a message that Spotify and Rhapsody will surely forward to the handlers of Adele, Coldplay, Tom Waits, Paul McCartney, and especially those guys in The Black Keys: Subscription music services saw revenue increase 13.5 percent last year, while the number of the sector's paying customers climbed 18 percent.

That's according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which yesterday released year-end music shipment statistics for 2011. The RIAA reported that subscription revenue went from $212 million in 2010 to $241 million last year. The number of users rose from 1.5 million to 1.8 … Read more

If Beats Electronics acquires Mog, the maker of the popular headphones has plans that go way beyond subscription music.

CNET broke the news three weeks ago that Mog, an also-ran subscription music service, was for sale and AllThingsD yesterday reported that Beats intends to acquire Mog, but the deal has yet to close.

A Mog spokesperson did not respond to an interview request. A Beats representative wasn't immediately available.

Sources close to Beats say managers intend to build a Web store that will sell music, headphones, and numerous other products. Apparently, the idea is to cash in on the … Read more

Turntable.fm, the music-sharing service that took music fans by storm last summer, has signed licensing agreements with all four of the top recording companies.

Last week, CNET reported that the company was very near to becoming a licensed operation. Turntable.fm is a little bit Napster and a little bit online radio. Users can become DJs and share music within virtual "rooms."

Billy Chasen, the company's founder, made the announcement at the South by Southwest conference. According to a report in Billboard, Chasen gave some credit to the labels for making the deals.

"Our model … Read more