Tag Archives: streaming

Nvidia’s Shield handheld console is now available for preorder

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The Nvidia shield, now available for pre-order and set to launch next month.

The preorder date for Nvidia’s handheld gaming console entry has been moved up to today, May 17, per an announcement on Nvidia’s site. Originally the Shield, a portable console with a flip-open screen, was going to be available to preorder starting Monday, May 20, but Nvidia seems to have decided to allow customers to strike while the console is on their minds.

Nvidia unveiled the unexpected Project Shield at CES in January as console running Android 4.2.2 on a Tegra 4 processor. Nvidia said the system would have a 5-inch 720p display, two analog sticks, four face buttons, four shoulder buttons, HDMI output, 2GB RAM, 16GB of storage, and stereo speakers. When not playing its own games the Shield can also be used as a controller for other consoles, said Nvidia, and can stream games to a desktop computer.

The company announced on Wednesday that the device will sell for $349 will be released sometime in June. The handheld will be sold online by retailers like Newegg as well as at physical retail stores including GameStop, Micro Center, and Canada Computers.

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Indie Music Agency Merlin: iTunes Remains Biggest Digital Destination; Spotify And Amazon 2nd And 3rd; Streaming Still Just An Opening Act

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Merlin logo

On the heels of Google wading into the music streaming waters with its Google Play Music All Access service, with a $10 fee for all-you-can-eat streamed tracks, the indie music agency Merlin has today published some results of a recent survey of its 20,000-label member group, plus an analysis of 6.5 billion music streams over the last year, which spell out where the money is coming from today. It notes that streaming services are making increasing headway as a revenue driver for musicians, but that digital downloads — specifically Apple’s iTunes — are still ruling the roost.

Worldwide, iTunes has held on to its spot as the single-biggest source of revenues for Merlin’s independent label members, both across key markets like the U.S. and UK, as well across Europe and globally. Interestingly, Spotify is securely in second position, underscoring just how popular both Spotify and streaming services  have become — second has been a place held by Amazon for some time prior to this. Amazon’s MP3 download service subsequently slipped down to third place across the board, while Deezer and eMusic are split regionally in terms of their influence and in grabbing fourth place.

We’re reaching out to Merlin to see if we can get a specific percentage breakdown here. Typically iTunes has been estimated to hold around 60% of the digital music market by revenues. (Update: A Merlin spokesperson says those breakdowns are not being disclosed.)

“The new generation of digital services has created a new dynamic of consumer freedom, limitless choice and myriad paths to discovery,” Charles Caldas, the chief executive of Merlin, said today in a speech at the Great Escape conference in Brighton. “Our numbers illustrate that this dynamic is bringing incremental value to the market, and the demand from music fans for the music being released by our independent members is higher than ever before.” However, in what might be a swipe not just at big labels but big players like Google jumping deeper into the market, he also cautioned against companies that might be trying to apply legacy music royalty concepts to digital.

“The ecosystem is fragile: power is more concentrated than ever, and we are seeing an attempted land grab by the largest companies for digital market share as they try to recreate the old-market advantages they are clearly losing in the digital space,” he noted.

It will be interesting to see whether Spotify’s (and streaming’s) rise are eating into that 60% marketshare for iTunes. But the research from Merlin suggests that if this is the case it’s not a watershed moment quite yet: both formats appear to still be growing, even if streaming is growing more.

Some 92% of respondents in the survey said that streaming and subscription revenues (based on streaming) grew in 2012 compared to a year ago. One-third said the rise was as much as 100%.

The rise in downloads was less pronounced: around 66% said a-la-carte download sales grew alongside that streaming rise. Only 8.4% said the rise in download revenues increased by 100%.

In terms of what the growth in streaming means for actual businesses, the takeaway is still marginal.

Merlin’s members say that they expect royalties of $65 million or more for 2013 from streaming services, but if you just do the math and divide that among 20,000 members, that works out to only $3,250 per label. Considering that Merlin claims that its members’ share of streaming services is typically 12-20% higher than those of other major labels — included in Merlin’s counts are acts like The National, Grizzly Bear and Bon Iver, as well as labels like Domino and Beggars Group — it sounds like streaming, despite all the advances and popularity, remains for now just an opening act, and not the main event.

Full results of the report below.

YouTube announces paid subscriptions with TV show partners

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The UFC channel, which includes full fight replays, is $6 a month with no ads.

Per recent rumors, YouTube has announced its intent to provide paid subscription channels, according to a blog post Thursday. The company is doing a pilot program for the subscriptions with a handful of partners and will start subscriptions at 99 cents per month.

The two most recognizable names attached to the program so far are Sesame Street and Ultimate Fighting Champion, which will both offer shows via paid subscription. Other experimental paid shows include JusticeCentral.TV, PGA Digital Golf Academy, and a channel for the educational TV show Franklin.

YouTube states that once users are subscribed to a channel, they will be able to view the content on computers, smartphones, tablets, and TVs. The blog post also says that “soon you’ll be able to subscribe to them from more devices.”

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Netflix loses 1,794 videos from its streaming catalog

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The Netflix competition heats up, for the 55+ demographic.

An expiring contract for Netflix means the streaming video service will lose 1,794 pieces of content, according to Mashable. Netflix’s agreement with Warner Bros., MGM, and Universal expired Wednesday, meaning customers will lose the ability to watch such morsels as Cruel Intentions and Big Daddy.

The contents of Netflix’s instant streaming catalog wax and wane all the time, but it’s rare that there is such a mass exodus from the service. Starz let its own contract with Netflix expire in February 2012, which resulted in the loss of titles like Amélie and around a thousand others.

Warner Bros. Is taking its business to its own streaming service, WB Archive Instant, which is priced at $9.99 per month. If the service’s best offerings are placed front and center on the home page, shown above, we’re not entirely sold.

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Netflix to add “family” streaming plan with four simultaneous streams

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Netflix announced plans to introduce a “family” tier of the streaming service that will allow up to four devices to play video from one account simultaneously, according to a letter to shareholders released Monday. Netflix stated that large “families” are often cramped by the two-simultaneous-stream limit, so the company will add an expanded plan to better serve the groups of people who are trying to watch three or more things at once and are definitely blood relations of one another.

Netflix experienced a small dust-up in the fall of 2011 when some users hit a glitch that seemed to limit them to a single stream at a time. The actual limit for a regular $7.99 plan is two simultaneous streams.

While Netflix claims that it expects “fewer than one percent” of its members to take advantage of the plan, clearly enough of its customer base has run afoul of the streaming limit to merit a new plan in Netflix’s arsenal.

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As Apple Reportedly Nears Streaming Licensing Agreements For iRadio, Competitors Should Circle The Wagons

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iradio

Apple is said to be getting very close to nailing down streaming licensing agreements with Universal Music Group and Warner Music, according to sources speaking to The Verge. The report follows news from the NY Post that claimed Apple was well under where labels were expecting in terms of its streaming rates, and now says that Apple’s service will pay fees pretty much on par with those paid by Pandora. If Apple does launch this service, it’s about to become a lot harder to operate as a competitor in this space.

The so-called iRadio service, as it’s often referred to, has on-demand streaming as well as radio style play, according to the report, which means that it could compete not only with Pandora and Last.fm but also with Spotify and Rdio. Those companies have a first-mover advantage in the streaming market, and one that has helped Pandora pass the 200 million user mark just this week. But Apple has over 400 million active iTunes accounts, according to data that’s now over a year old, with credit cards on file. That’s more than double Pandora’s numbers, and it represents an active population, not just total registered users.

Apple has yet to make as much progress with Sony Music Entertainment, but once that piece of the puzzle falls into place it reportedly hopes to launch a service as early as later this year. It’s an eventuality streaming services have likely been anticipating and preparing for anyway, but it’s hard to overstate the impact of the single largest force in digital online music sales getting into the streaming business – Apple recently announced that it had sold its 25th billion song through the iTunes Store, which translates to a lot of consumer influence.

Apple could also have a big advantage in terms of international market reach. Other streaming music companies have been slow to expand, and reach only a fraction of the markets that Apple can on a global scale. There’s no guarantee that Apple would be able to launch an iRadio product in all the markets where it currently offers the iTunes music store, but it did a good job of rolling out iTunes Match quickly to international locations, so it’s reasonable to expect it could do the same for streaming services.

For startups and streaming music companies, this means looking closely at the competitive advantages offered by their own platforms and decided how best to position their own services. A key advantage, and one that will likely get emphasized by virtually everyone challenged by an iRadio, is cross-platform compatibility. Apple will likely be able to offer something along those lines through iTunes on Windows, but for the most part it’ll be a strictly iOS/Mac affair. That, combined with personalization and recommendation engines, along with other value add features, will be the way to combat an iTunes streaming service, but no matter what, an Apple product will change the face of this market.

Roku Hits 5M Streaming Players Sold In The U.S., Has Streamed 8B Videos And Music Tracks

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Roku-3-with-Headphones

Roku just announced via its blog that it has sold 5 million of its streaming Internet media players since its launch back in 2008. The devices have managed to stream a total of 8 billion pieces of content in that time, impressive for a device that started out as essentially a dedicated Netflix box. Roku recently introduced its third-generation hardware to market with the Roku 3, which went on sale in March.

The milestone is significant, since it indicates that there’s a very real and growing market out there for a device that essentially just acts as a service layer for bringing web-based content to televisions, independent of what TV manufacturers themselves are doing with their own built-in Smart TV services. Roku announced that it reached 2.5 million streaming devices in sales back in January of 2012, after having sold 1.5 million during all of 2011. That means it managed to sell somewhere close to 2.5 million devices in the U.S. between then and now, which is a marked increase from its previous yearly high.

We’ve seen how this 5 million milestone compares with Roku’s performance to date, but how about vs. the rest of the market? Despite the fact that Apple still isn’t driving massive amounts of sales with its Apple TV products (especially when compared to its iOS devices), it still sold 2 million in total during the holiday quarter last year, up from 1.3 million in the quarter before that, and up from 1.4 million year over year.

Apple’s sale totals are global, but that still adds up to more than 10 million sales since the device’s introduction, and it sold as many devices as the Roku did in a whole year at home in the U.S. in a single quarter. Still, for a company without Apple’s marketing clout and ecosystem of devices, Roku is definitely holding its own.

The Roku 3 is receiving high praise so far, and has simplified things on the product side, as well as narrowed Roku’s product line to a single device, which is probably best in terms of helping it focus its marketing efforts and avoid consumer confusion. But it will face new competition from Panasonic, which introduced two new streaming media players this week, both of which plug into the popular new Miracast tech, essentially AirPlay for Android, being built into many of today’s smartphones.

Apple’s “iRadio” reportedly close to launch, yet labels still have to sign

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The “iRadio” rumor is back, and there are new details on how Apple hopes to generate more revenue for music studios than competing services. According to sources who spoke to CNET, Apple’s rumored streaming service would offer users a quick way to buy songs through iTunes, “potentially boosting download sales,” in addition to offering a revenue share on audio ads.

CNET’s report claims that Apple is close to striking a deal with two of the four major music labels, Warner Music and Universal Music Group. That suggests EMI and Sony Music are apparently not close to a deal with Apple, despite the fact that the company has supposedly informed the labels that it wants to have an agreement hammered out in time for a summer launch. The report notes that Apple would also need to get the music publishers on board before launching its Pandora-like streaming service.

The element that appears to be holding back the labels is Apple’s decision to weigh its payment structure on ad revenue instead of the more traditional per-play rate. “The only thing concrete in the contract is the per-play rate,” one unnamed source told CNET. “If you end up having no ad revenue, that’s still zero. And we won’t know what the buying habits will be. Will people streaming still take the time to buy from iTunes?”

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