Spotify has received plenty of attention for its app platform, and rightfully so. Rdio also has an app platform, offering access to the same songs, more or less. Evolver.fm caught up with Rdio vice president of engineering Todd Berman to discuss the one-year anniversary of Rdio’s developer API; the service’s approach to third-party apps; and his belief…
AUSTIN, TEXAS — Spotify might get more of the press these days, but the veteran Rhapsody recently broke the one-million-subscribers mark, due in part to its acquisition of Napster and Facebook integration that lets people try Rhapsody without whipping out their credit card for a free trial. Unlike Spotify, tThe Rhapsody app lets people try…
CANNES, FRANCE — Spotify gets a lot of attention, especially since its U.S. launch last year, but Rhapsody chief Jon Irwin didn’t appear fazed about that when Evolver.fm sat down with him at the Midem conference for an update on his music subscription service. According to him, despite Spotify’s current lead (with 2.5 million paying…
On the heels of its purchase of Napster, Rhapsody announced on Thursday that it now has one million subscribers in the United States, which it says makes it the most popular premium (i.e. paid) unlimited music service in the country. Not all of these one million Rhapsody listeners pay for their music by entering a…
Tired of listening to music on your lonesome? Facebook might have the answer. About a month ago, the social network built some “connective tissue” between music fans and the services they use to listen. At its most basic level, Facebook now lets you A) let your friends know what you’re listening to on supported music services, and…
Facebook’s big push into digital music could be a boon to music services, artists, and the fans, because it can provide the “connective tissue” that has been sorely missing from the industry for well over 10 years. Microsoft’s Zune promised us “The Social,” but nobody bought the hardware and now it’s gone. With Facebook music,…
On September 22, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (above) announced sixteen music partners ranging from almost-unheard-of to the incredibly popular. Of those, eight (updated) have completed their integration with Facebook, meaning that they can automatically send users’ listening activity to their friends’ Facebook tickers and Music sections, and to their own Facebook Timelines. Here’s the full list in…
Music subscription services have generated more interest than ever this year, as Spotify launched in the U.S., Facebook offered all of them a life-line in the form of deep feed integration, and the proliferation connected devices like smartphones made them more attractive than they were when you could only use Microsoft-DRM-enabled hardware to play the…
Facebook wants to be the “connective tissue” desperately needed by music fans and the music industry alike, so that, at long last, people would be able to share music with each other without friction — and without breaking the law. However, despite all the other neat stuff Facebook unveiled today, it mostly failed in that…
It might be longer in the tooth than any of the other “big five” music subscription services, but Rhapsody, with its 800,000 claimed subscribers, is still going strong. Now, it’s doing something it probably should have done a long time ago: integrating more closely with Facebook and Twitter, the way most other things do now,…
As details emerge about Facebook’s plan to integrate with music services to let friends share their listening experience, one thing is abundantly clear: Music fans and the music industry desperately need this — or something like it — to happen. Here’s the core of the problem. When music fans use an online music service, whether…
You have to hand it to Apple… or do you? The company’s demand that companies offering subscriptions to everything from magazines to music services through iOS hand over 30 percent of resulting revenue to the company could be backfiring already. Apple’s projected revenue from other companies’ sale of iTunes apps is a big reason its stock price is…
Turmoil surrounds the important issue of how iOS developers can sell products and subscriptions within apps. Apple dictates that if you sell stuff within your app, you have to give it a 30 percent cut [although at least now developers can charge whatever they want elsewhere]. Apple also bars developers from linking to places where users can…
Google’s social network, Google+, is late. Facebook has a big lead, having ousted MySpace, which in turn deposed Friendster, the site that started us all on this path towards recreating our social fabric as a network of connected personal nodes. Facebook is an excellent tool for sharing music — usually in the form of Google’s…
Marshall McLuhan’s assertion that “the medium is the message” may not have stood the test of time entirely, but the one-time futurist would probably agree that the same app can feel different depending on where you encounter it. Why are we thinking about this? Evolver.fm reviewed Slacker’s web and mobile apps in May, likening the…
