The mobile music space moved forward this week with several launches and developments. Bell Canada
and Telecom New Zealand
both unveiled full-track, over-the-air (OTA) services, powered by Groove Mobile. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless is expected to deliver its own music store in January at CES.
Yahoo posted strong numbers following its coverage of the Howard Stern exit from terrestrial radio. The leading destination grabbed 4.4 million total stream requests over the multi-hour event, including a peak simultaneous load of 214,000 streams.
Some interesting search rankings came to light this week. Searches for "music lyrics" topped the list for meta-search engine Dogpile.com, while music celebrities dominated the top ten list for Yahoo.
A new bill attempting to plug the "analog hole" was introduced in the US House of Representatives, though consumer electronics manufacturers have already shown some skepticism. Meanwhile, an amendment to a copyright bill calling for the legalization of P2P-based downloads passed the lower house of parliament in France
, potentially paving the way for a licensed P2P architecture.
Starbucks expanded its Hear Music Coffeehouse concept by opening a store in San Antonio
this week. Like the Santa Monica
,
CA
frontrunner, the installation will include digital kiosks that allow customers to select tracks and burn customized CDs. A South Beach, FL location will debut in early 2006.
Publishing giant Warner Chappell apologized to lyrics search engine pearLyrics, following a legal challenge from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The EFF defended pearLyrics, noting that the application did not actually host the lyric content.
Independent online music retailer eMusic now offers one million tracks, all of which are available in an open, MP3 format.
iPod sales appear robust, and the 1GB shuffle is already out-of-stock on the Apple website. Meanwhile, the Consumer Electronics Association estimates that 10 million portable MP3 players will be sold during the holiday season.
And Google offered an investment of $1 billion in Time Warner property America Online this week, approximately a 5 percent stake. The investment, which edged out a partnership play by Microsoft, was approved by the Time Warner board shortly thereafter.
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