Despite a gigantic lead in the online MP3 market, Apple appears to be playing dirty against Amazon MP3, using its clout with the record labels to try to snuff out Amazon’s popular “Daily Deal” promotion.
In 2008, when Amazon MP3 first launched, the Daily Deal was paid for by Amazon, out of their own pockets, as a way to get traffic to the service. In 2009 however, says a label exec, “that promotion morphed into something where the labels make arrangements to provide an exclusive selling window with Amazon for a big release expected to do a lot of business on street date.”
In exchange for the Daily Deal promotion, Amazon gets a one-day exclusive window for sales before street date, as long as digital marketing support through the artist’s Web sites, or MySpace pages.
The same executive said about that situation (via Billboard): “When that happened, iTunes said, ‘Enough of that s**t.’ “
Since then, Apple has been “urging” labels to rethink the Daily Deal, while at the same time withdrawing marketing support for acts that were featured as Daily Deals.
Says another exec: “[Apple] are . . . diverting their energy from ‘let’s make this machine better’ to ‘let’s protect what we got,’”.
Apple, Amazon, Warner, EMI and Sony have not responded to the story yet.
Result for: itunes
The Financial Times is reporting today that Apple has negotiated with content providers to sell standard definition TV shows for $1 an episode, 50 percent cheaper than usual, when the iPad launches.
High definition media will likely remain the same price, although that is still unclear.
It is also unclear what shows will cost $1, and how widespread the availability of the episodes are.
Additionally, the same report is saying that Apple has so far not given up on the idea of an iTunes subscription model, which would cost $30-a-month for unlimited TV episodes.
Result for: itunes
Electronista is reporting today that Syabas, the company behind the Popcorn Hour media hub, will be showing off the newly dubbed Popbox at the upcoming CES event, a media hub that should surpass the Popcorn Hour in every way thanks to a newly finished user interface overhaul.
The new interface includes “infopops” which show off the weather, Twitter feeds, and other data. The interface also includes a cover-flow-esque visual thumbnails selection for videos, music and other data, as well as universal search.
More notably, the interface can handle Flash, Java and QT meaning Netflix is now available. Also available is Hulu, CBS and ABC content, which can now include the in-video ads required for playback. Facebook, Twitter, Shoutcast MP3, Revision3 and other Popcorn Hour content will rollover to the new box.
For video, full 1080p at 100Mbps is now supported, along with the standard MPEG formats, H.264, VC-1, WMV, MKV, XviD and other containers. The player can also support most subtitle files, including Microsoft’s proprietary one. For streaming, the Popbox can recognize iTunes via Bonjour, and DLNA and UPnP sources.
The device has no built-in storage but has USB ports and an SD slot.
The Popbox should be available in March and will cost just $130 USD.
Pics via Electronista:
