Google Plus continues to get more open bit by bit, and just today made the service available to teens age 13 and up. Previously, Google Plus was restricted to people 18 and up. Along with the wave of new teenagers, Google Plus is also getting new privacy and security features--a fairly important thing if the service is to become something parents encourage their children to use.
Google is probably doing the slow rollout on purpose. This is their third or fourth wave of opening the service up. Each time it's followed by new statistics on membership, and this time will be no different. Millions of teens are going to sign up in the near future.
Google Plus Opens To Teens
Google Plus is now open to everyone 13 and up, and I'm guessing there will be plenty of takers.
This kind of news should be music to a video marketer's ears, because teenagers are among the most avid video consumers. They're also much more prone to social activity, with most of today's teenagers having grown up with mobile devices, Facebook, and Twitter.
The influx of teenagers 13 and up to Google Plus means the demographic will change almost overnight. It should also make Google Plus a more attractive social video marketing tool for brands and businesses--particularly those that create content known to appeal to teenagers: I'm thinking about action-oriented brands like Go Pro and Red Bull, music videos and music industry brands, movie trailers, etc.
Although a developer first thought that the music industry forced his Amazon Cloud Player app out of the App Store, it seems that wasn't the situation after all. In a statement to Evolver.fm, James Clancey, identified as an iPhone app maker at Interactive Innovative Solutions (IIS), first said that aMusic, a $1.99 iOS app that allows users to play music from their Amazon Cloud Drive, was punted from the App Store due to "legal issues with the music industry."
The app, aMusic, is now missing in action from the App Store. IIS has a similar program, gMusic, which works with Google's Music Beta service, another cloud music locker. That program, also $1.99 in the App Store, wasn't affected. However, an update to the program has been delayed. Here's what Clancy said:
"There are some legal issues with the music industry. The aMusic [app] is down temporarily. It will be back. Unfortunately I do not have a specific date when it will be back.
"Also, Apple has been delaying my gMusic update. I submitted it 2 weeks ago. Every other update I have submitted within the 2 weeks has been approved in under 8 hours. So not sure what the deal is."
Both Amazon.com's Cloud Player (via Amazon.com's MP3 app) and Google's Music Beta (via Google's aptly named Music app) already have native Android support. In terms of iOS support, neither firm has put forth an app. Thus IIS' apps are / were the best bet for end users.
Things turned in the direction of conspiracy theories since it is well-known that both the Amazon.com Cloud Drive and Cloud Player and the Google Music Beta launched without licenses from the music industry. It's also known that the music industry was a bit peeved, to put it mildly, about the launches.
It's also known that Google is closing in on licenses, but more for an upcoming music store than for its cloud-based Music Beta.
Conspiracy theories aside, however, it turned out it was not the "music industry" per se, but Amazon.com, that forced aMusic out of the App Store. That explains why gMusic hasn't been booted.
Clancy updated his original comments: "aMusic was actually pulled by me at the request of Amazon, not Apple. Apple never seemed to have a problem with aMusic."
The reason for the removal of aMusic, it turns out, is because Amazon.com hasn’t signed all the agreements that is required in order for the company to allow its API for Cloud Player to be used by third-party vendors. Presumably, once the i's are dotted and the t's crossed, aMusic will return to the App Store.
Clancy hasn't heard negatively from Google in terms of gMusic, so that app is probably safe. That doesn't explain the delay in the update to gMusic, though.
All you conspiracy theorists can go back to watching "The X-Files," now. Though we certainly admit, it was a good "theory."
Snoop Dogg daughter Cori B. follow the footsteps of his father by going into the music industry. The 12-year-old girl has premiered a music video in support of her debut single "Do My Thang." In it she shares the screen with their brothers and famous father.
Snoop is a rapper, but the owner of an ice cream shop in this clip. One day, he suspects his daughter looking a little uneasy, so he tries to persuade her to tell him what the problem is. Cori B., daughter of Snoop Dogg, has released its first official music video. The video is the song "Do My Thang" and has a special appearance by her famous father.......
Samantha Marq first scored success with his single "Supergirl" and do it again with, "I like to party." An heir to the SC Johnson company and the daughter of a flock of seagulls drummer Michael Marquart, Samantha grew up around the music industry and decided at an early age to make it her career.
TPG PR Samantha Marq first scored success with his single "Supergirl" and do it again with, "I like to party." Samantha Marq Interview are age to make it her career.
Spotify will land in the U.S. this week, if the latest rumors are correct. However, it looks like the service will execute a slow launch, with pre-existing members given invitations to distribute.
Spotify has been signing deals with the music industry, with the its most recent signing being that of Universal Music Group, the largest of the big 4 music labels. It's also signed deals with EMI and Sony. Sources say that Warner Music Group still hasn't signed, however, but that a deal appears near.
Additionally, last week Spotify posted a landing page which stated that “The award-winning music service that’s taken Europe by storm will soon be landing on US shores. Millions of tracks ready to play instantly, on your computer and your phone.”
Spotify has provided a cloud-based streaming music service in Europe for some time, but hasn't been able to make the deals necessary to make a U.S. debut. In Europe, the service offers three tiers of service: a free, ad-supported version that allows 10 free hours of streaming per month; an unlimited subscription for €4.99 (about $7.22) a month, and a premium service, which lets customers access music on their mobile devices and costs €9.99 (about $14.46) a month.
U.S. customers have been clamoring Spotify for some time. If it makes it, will you opt in immediately? The landing page has an email sign-up field, by the way.
Name: Phạm Thanh Tâm / Tâm Tít Date of Birth: Oct 16, 1990 Height: 165 cm Weight: 47 kg About: Pham Thanh Tam or better known as Tam Tit, is a popular figure among the Vietnamese youth community. With such a lovely, sweet and cute face, Tam Tit was first spotted when she appeared online in a white Vietnamese "áo dài" long dress. Ever since gaining an online following and popularity, Tam Tit has appeared in advertisements, music videos and as a representative for various online games in Vietnam. Currently, Tam Tit is pursuing her career in the music industry and has made a good impression from her songs such as "Như Một Thói Quen" and "Nhắc Lại Trong Nỗi Nhớ". Anyway, only the best of Tam Tit available here, all filtered by http://dailylenglui.blogspot.com. Contributed By:Thung lũng ngàn hoa
Google is about to pull an Amazon.com. It is expected to announce a beta cloud-based music service on Tuesday at Google I/O, one very similar to Amazon.com's Cloud Drive / Cloud Player services, particularly in one respect: it will launch, just as Amazon.com's services, sans any deals with the music industry.
Google, like Amazon.com, hasn't managed to secure licenses from the four major music labels (Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI, and Warner Music Group). Jamie Rosenberg, who oversees digital content and strategy for Android told All Things D:
“Unfortunately, a couple of the major labels were less focused on the innovative vision that we put forward, and more interested in in an unreasonable and unsustainable set of business terms.”
Google's move may have been made as it sees rival Apple close to a deal with the music labels. Apple has deals in place with at least two of the four major labels, and could launch its own cloud-based service at any time.
If Google or Amazon.com had been able to secure licensing deals, users would not have had to upload music to the a digital locker. Instead, the services could have scanned their computers, matched the songs users' owned to a central server, and paid content owners for each stream. Reportedly, the two holdouts were Sony Music Group and Universal Music Group.
Despite the fact that both Amazon.com and Google will have beaten Apple out of the gate, most sources expect that the Apple version will have more feature-rich than its competitors'.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, among the details that are expected to be unveiled today are:
The service will be called Music Beta by Google.
Google’s service will offer more free storage than Amazon.com's: users will be able to store up to 20,000 songs for free. Amazon.com's service launched with 5GB of free storage (roughly 2,000 songs). Cloud Drive users can pay fees for greater storage. 50GB, or the equivalent of about 20,000 songs, would cost $50 per year.
The initial rollout will be invite-only. Users will have to sign up at a link (which just went live), but reportedly, those with Motorola Xooms will have priority but although originally it was stated that those with Motorola Xooms would have priority, there appears to be no way to input that info at the beta request site. It's possible that Google can extract that information from its records of a user's Android devices [which they know, as seen when you login to the web-based Android Market].
Users who manage to get into the beta will get some free music added. Google managed to successfully negotiated rights for at least this much.
Any Web-enabled device with a browser that supports Flash (sorry iOS users) can stream music from the locker. Android-powered devices can install an app to download and play cached streams. [This disagrees with a WSJ report that says Google has skipped this feature, perhaps as a way to make up for the fact it has not negotiated any deals]
The app is optimized for Honeycomb (Android 3.0), but any Android device with Android 2.2 or higher can support it.
For now, without licenses, Google has no way to sell music, unlike Amazon.com.
Google director of content partnerships Zahavah Levine added:
"A large segment of the music industry worked cooperatively and was extremely helpful sorting out the issues of online licensing. We certainly remain open to partnerships with the music industry for new features and functionality. This is the beginning of what we hope will be a long relationship with music and users and helping users engage with music and artist and fans."
Google has posted a video on Music Beta by Google, shown below.
The rumored Amazon.com Android table has just gotten more real (it was already pretty real). The website DigiTimes, which gets its info from Asian upstream component makers, and is thus, usually very accurate, says it's coming, and coming in 2H 2011.
The OEM that Amazon.com is going to use is reportedly Taiwan-based notebook maker Quanta Computer. Quanta is already the tablet PC OEM partner for RIM (BlackBerry PlayBook( and Sony. At the same time, Quanta has been reportedly attempting to land the same duty from Lenovo for its second-generation LePad.
Peak orders are supposed to hit 700,000 - 800,000 a month. In addition, DigiTimes sources stated that since the Kindle has been unable to grow into markets outside of North America and Europe, Amazon.com plans to reduce still further the Kindle's market price, while at the same time pushing the "tablet PC using its advantage in software and content resources to challenge iPad2."
That statement about "its advantage in software and content" alludes to the evidence we've already seen of Amazon.com moving in an Android-centric direction. It has:
Opened the Amazon Appstore, full of curated Android apps
Started its own Cloud Drive digital locker service
Started the controversial Cloud Player service which, even sans licenses from the music industry, allows
users to play music from their Cloud Locker
Has a number of Kindle apps, including Android and a Honeycomb-optimized version
These steps were already indicative of Amazon.com releasing an Android tablet eventually.
One of the "players" in the music industry that has signed up for Apple's cloud-based music service has been confirmed to C|Net. It's Warner Music Group, the third largest of the big 4 music labels.
Earlier, a report had stated that Apple had signed deals with two of the major labels (in order of size, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Group, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group). The report added that Apple's VP Eddy Cue was heading for New York on Friday to try to sew up the other labels; it's unclear if Warner was one of the two already signed or if Warner is newly signed.
Amazon.com beat both Apple and Google into the cloud with its Cloud Drive and Cloud Player services. However, it did so without signing any additional licenses with the music industry.
From a high level, Apple's service will work the same way that it has been reported that Apple's service will. Users will upload their music into a music locker, and then play from there directly while on the go. Purchases from Amazon MP3 can automatically be loaded into Cloud Drive, and the assumption is that purchases from iTunes will automatically be placed into Apple's locker, as well.
It's possible, however, that with licenses Apple can optimize its service. For example, if Apple licenses the right to deliver a copy of a song to all users over the Web, it will not have to store a copy for each user. Instead, Apple could scan users' hard drives, ensure they own the song, and then simply stream the same copy of the same song to all the owners of the track.
However, it is unclear if Apple will allow any music that the user owns to be uploaded, as Amazon.com does, or only iTunes-purchased music.
And while Apple seems near a deal with all the major labels, Google, frustrated by failed negotiations, has reportedly told the music industry that it is considering the option of entering the cloud music segment by partnering with existing services, perhaps even Spotify.
Although Amazon.com was first, it's clear the Apple's cloud service is coming, and perhaps very soon. Although the basics will be the same, sources that that both Google and Apple's feature sets will be much richer than Amazon.com's. Either way, excitement over an iTunes in the cloud is bound to be huge, when it launches.
The second company to store and play music from the cloud will be Apple, according to reports. The first company to do so was Amazon.com, which surprised both Google and Apple by beating them out of the gate with its player-agnostic Cloud Drive / Cloud Player service.
The Apple service is very similar to Amazon.com's. iTunes customers will be able to store their music on a remote server, as well as access them anywhere they have Internet connectivity. Just as with Amazon.com's service, however, Apple has not managed to arrange any new licenses with the music industry over music stored in the cloud.
The difference, however, is that Apple is trying to arrange those licenses. When Amazon.com launched its service, it did so, reportedly, without attempting to negotiate the licenses beforehand. In fact, Amazon.com was almost defiant, with Amazon.com's director of music, Craig Pape, saying, "We don't need a license to store music. The functionality is the same as an external hard drive."
Despite it's defiance, in a later letter to the industry, Amazon.com said that it foresaw "potential enhancements to Cloud Drive and Cloud Player that would require licenses." Reportedly, the company spoke last week to possible industry partners about a "more sophisticated [music] locker service."
However, Reuters' sources say that Apple is in discussion with music labels. The company has not told its music partners when it plans to launch the service. It's possible that Apple could proceed sans licenses, as Amazon.com did.
MediaMemo said that sources said that Apple is halfway home. It has, they said, already managed to sign deals with at least two of the big four labels (Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony and EMI). One source said that Apple Vice President of Internet Services Eddy Cue, who also runs iTunes, will be in New York on Friday to try to finalize any remaining deals.
Meanwhile, Google's efforts in the cloud-based music arena is stalled, and has been known to have been stalled for some time. Google is allegedly stuck at the bargaining table with music labels, and one source said that Google has changed its proposals numerous times, from an iTunes-like service with a digital locker service to a subscription service with a recurring fee.
It's unclear why Google is vacillating, but it's theorized that the recent change at the top, with Eric Schmidt out and Sergey Brin in at CEO, has something to do with it.
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