ENTRIES TAGGED "itunes"
"E pluribus tunum: Uniform prices for online music are no way to maximise profit"
This research suggest maximum value in a digital media market like iTunes (for both producer and consumer) comes from a combination of subscription/membership fee and per-item purchase: "Charging an "entry fee" for use of the service and then a small, fixed per-song cost for downloads turned out to benefit both the seller and the buyer. The most revenue, according to…
iPhone App Outperforms Most Print (Computer) Books This Holiday Season
Conventional wisdom suggests that when choosing pilot projects, you pick ones with a high likelihood of success. It's hard to argue that iPhone: The Missing Manual was a reasonable choice for testing the iPhone App waters. But while we knew it would do well, we've been quite pleased with just how well: If the iPhone App by itself had been…
History Repeating with Book Publishing's Mobile Efforts
A Computerworld blog post from Mike Elgan looks at recent mobile announcements from book publishers. From the perspective of technology, watching book publishers slowly grapple with the tentative migration of books to mobile platforms is painful. Interestingly, the comments attached to the piece are almost all more conservative. The music industry was holding on to physical CD sales so tightly…
Open Question: Digital Ownership vs. Digital Subscriptions
Two tips in Dear Author's recent post "10 Things Epublishers Should Do for Readers" caught my attention: 1. Eternal Bookshelf. An eternal bookshelf means that every purchase you have bought can be downloaded at any time. Most of the larger etailers have this feature but not all. 2. Mass Downloads. Along with the eternal bookshelf should be the ability to…
Amazon and Google Challenging iTunes through Mobile
T-Mobile's Android-based mobile phone will include a connection to Amazon's MP3 store. From Wired's Listening Post: Owners of the device will be able to browse, search, preview and purchase music on the Amazon MP3 store using the phone's cellular connection. In order for purchased MP3s to download, the phone must be connected via Wi-Fi. (The mobile iTunes store, on…
Rhapsody Courts Apple Crowd with DRM-Free MP3s
Rhapsody, a digital music subscription service, is now offering MP3 downloads with no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions. Rhapsody's subscription service remains under digital rights protection, but Reuters says the company is looking to expand its reach into the Apple-dominated music sector by making its downloads compatible with iPods. Amazon, Wal-Mart and Napster also offer DRM-free MP3 downloads, but…
Ease of Use as Anti-Piracy Tool
Simon Juden, CEO of the Publishers Association, says uniform ebook standards — and the resulting ease of use — can deter piracy. From The Bookseller: Licensing must be intuitive, simple and straightforward at the user level or the user will look for ways to circumvent them. On a related note: Itunes, noted in the past for its ease of…