Time Warner Cable has signed a new deal with Disney this week, giving their subscribers free access to the sports site ESPN3.
Because of the deal, 12.7 million Time Warner subscribers and 2.4 million Bright House subscribers will get free access to the site, and the ability to stream full games.
During the recent World Cup, ESPN says almost 8 million people tuned into the site at one point during the tournament.
The cable companies had long held out on ESPN3, citing excessive fees from Disney.
Additionally, the agreement will allow TW and BH to continue carrying the Disney Channel, ABC Family, Disney XD and ESPN 3D.
Result for: free access
Spotify, the popular music streaming service available in Europe, has announced today the launch of two new variations of the service, Spotify Open and Spotify Unlimited.
“Unlimited” gives users “round-the-clock,” ad-free access to Spotify for €5 a month. Unlike the more expensive “Premium” version, you will not be able to move files to your smartphone or play in offline mode at all. You will need to be connected to the Internet at all times to play the tracks.
Premium is £9.99 per month, however.
“Open” is completely free, but also lacks most of the options of the other variations, including some that are even included in Spotify “Free,” which is free but requires an invite to sign up.
Spotify Open lets anyone sign up and receive 20 hours of streaming per month, with no other obligations. You will hear ads, just like in the Free version, however.
You can see the full comparison sheet here:
Result for: free access
According to the New York Post, Facebook is reportedly considering adding music to its popular social networking site, either as streaming to compete with MySpace or as a pay-per-download site such as iTunes.
MySpace recently launched their streaming MySpace Music service and promptly hit 1 billion plays within 3 days.
Facebook would be joining up with either Rhapsody.com, iMeem.com, iLike.com or Lala.com, says the report and also notes that Facebook is in talks with the Big 4 labels.
“Facebook is a serious challenger to MySpace and they would certainly want to do anything that record labels would allow them to do with advertising-supported music,” said Phil Leigh, senior analyst at Inside Digital Media. “Advertising-supported revenue would be good for Facebook and certainly free access to recorded music would be good for Facebook members. It would be good for the labels, too. If the MySpace deal is working out well, then the labels would probably want to replicate that on Facebook.”
We will keep you updated with any developments.
