Opinion and analysis of the day’s music news.
Apple Loses Lawsuit
— Apple has lost a patent lawsuit brought by Mirror Worlds LLC and is challenging the verdict that could cost the company as much as $625 million. If Apple pays that amount, it wouldn’t hurt too much. As of June 26, Apple’s balance sheet had $9.7 billion of cash and cash equivalents and $14.6 billion of short-term marketable securities. Mirror Worlds had claimed that Apple has infringed its patents for displaying documents on a computer screen in a particular manner. One of the Apple products at the heart of the trial is Coverflow, which displays album art in a tiled manner so users can view the covers by scrolling through the imaginary stack of titles. The other Apple
products in the lawsuit are Time Machine, which automatically saves copies of files, and Spotlight, a desktop search feature of Apple’s OS X operating system. (Bloomberg)
Warner Bros. Studio Taps Video Game Exec
— Film and TV studio Warner Bros. has hired video game industry veteran Greg Ballard as senior VP of digital games. Previously he has been chief executive at both mobile video ad network Transpera and mobile games company Glu Mobile. (VentureBeat)
Pandora On Its Google TV App
— Pandora talks about its Google TV app, which was announced on Monday. “We’re excited about what the Google TV platform means for the future of the Consumer Electronics device industry and for the last few months we’ve been working together with the Google TV team to deliver a Pandora experience that was built to take full advantage of the TV experience.With Pandora for Google TV you can easily tune in to the personalized stations you’ve created on the web or on your phone, listen, and rate songs with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. You can even create new stations right on Google TV.” (Pandora blog)
Spotify Adds Cool Feature
— Spotify has added inbox messaging, a great new feature. Previously you could send a track to a friend in your Spotify network. But that track did not come with a message. Now, a user can send a track to a friend and include a short message. It’s a small improvement but a good one for an already good feature. Spotify also improved the sharing functions. Of course, all of this means nothing to U.S. consumers who can’t yet get their hands on the service. That should change by the end of the year, according to many public statements by Spotify executives. (Spotify blog)
New Social Media Dashboard Launches
— Data tracking company Trendrr has launched a social media dashboard called V3. The tool tracks real-time data from Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Klout and Collecta. Plans with this new set of tools start at $499 per month. (VentureBeat)
Ringback-tones Slip
— Ringback-tones are going the way of ringtones – down. Broadcast Music, Inc. has put the value of the 2010 retail ringback-tone market at $181 million, down slightly from the 2009 estimate of $195 million. From the press release: “BMI first saw a fall-off in wireless-carrier ringback revenues in the second quarter of 2010. BMI’s analysis reveals that pre-pay services have held strong in the market, significantly outperforming traditional monthly billing-based services in ringback sales on average-revenue-per-unit (ARPU) basis. Pre-pay service sold between 2.75 and 3.5 ringback-tone units per subscriber in the first quarter of 2010, as opposed to traditional monthly billed services, which sold .25 to .5 units per subscriber in the same period.”
