My thoughts about Amazon’s cloud service for music
Posted: March 29, 2011 Filed under: Gadgets, Music | Tags: Amazon, clouds, Music, streaming 1 Comment »I love the idea and how amazon started cloud service before anyone else but it failed to achieve In many ways.
First, how does it work?
It let’s you upload your own music, movies, and etc. to cloud and let you stream through your Android app or computer’s web browsers.
It sounds pretty good, isn’t it? But why is it a failure to be a great service?
1. It won’t let you find new music and purchase them, it only plays music you already own.
2. What about iOS, BlackBerry, and other devices??
I’ll give it a go for now but I’ll wait and see how Google or Apple will launch better service. Oh maybe and hopefully Amazon will improve it’s service next few days/weeks.
What is the right price for music?
Posted: September 29, 2010 Filed under: Music | Tags: Amazon, iTunes, Music, music industry, price Leave a comment »Source: Digital Music News
What is the right price for music? It is a great question to ask everyone who are in the recording industry and consumers who listens to them. It is sad to see when everything else is getting more expensive as time goes, music gets cheaper and cheaper. It is even to a point cheaper than a cup of coffee.
Amazon.com often offers a special daily deals of an album right below $3 for digital downloads, Best Buy and many other retailers sell new release CD right below $10, and I think new LP with free digital download of the album is around $20. In a letter from Sufjan Stevens from Asthmatic Kitty Records (follow the source link) wrote
we personally feel that physical products like EPs should sell for around $7 and full-length CDs for around $10-12 We think digital EPs should sell for around $5 and full-length digital albums for something like $8.
It sounds about right with the pricing, but i personally think whether it is digital or a physical CD the price should be same at $7 for EP, $10 for a CD, and $12 for a special edition. In order to push this price plans, individual song sale price needs to be raised too. $2.99 for feature songs and $1.99 for any other songs. It may sound too expensive, but in reality there are millions of purchase a day in app stores and they don’t complain much about price they pay. Eventually record labels need to turn into marketing companies as technology develops and easy of release albums through many different formats. They dont’ need this giant distributors but they still need a company to market them. When consumers know purchasing an album doesn’t really help artists they loves to listen to, $2.99 a song will sound too much but let’s say 30% go to iTuens/Amazon, 30% record label, and 40% to the artist should be enough to encourage fans to purchase albums and songs.
Yeah, instead of a giant advances paying money for recording and all, but spend a lot of money in marketing only. Since artist’s portion of royalty at 40% is great enough to recoup the costs of marketing easily and after all fans will purchase music they like, record labels make money without too much of risks, and artists don’t have to only look for a giant advanced but enjoy writing new songs and engaging with fans.
Kindle for Mac
Posted: June 3, 2010 Filed under: Gadgets | Tags: Adroid, Amazon, eBook, iPad, Kindle 2 Comments »I finally entered into the world of Kindle. I’m not much of a reader. So when I first saw the Kindle and idea behind of it, I was excited as a geek and gadget nerd but I really didn’t bother to try it for my own personal leisure.
I totally forgot, actually didn’t care, one of my summer class is meeting this Saturday first time. Of course my professor emailed us what I need to get done before the first class. Being who I am, I completely forgot about it and panicked when I saw a reminder yesterday. I have to read a entire book by saturday? I don’t even purchased one yet!
I originally planned to go to school early today and purchase one at the bookstore. I was also checking the availability at Borders and Barns and Nobel, I saw the Barns and Nobel’s Nook advertisement and remembered Kindle has an app for Mac. I quickly searched the title of the book and purchased it!
After reading about 15% of my first reading on Kindle, I’m somewhat disappointed. This is more of computer’s fault, I find myself not liking reading wide screen at all. This is really annoying, I wish I can change my screen’s orientation. I wish I can highlight what I want to highlight and ability to write a note. I wonder how my reading experience would improve on Android platform once Amazon releases Kindle for Android. I think if I use my phone, I’d complain that screen is little too small. Maybe not, since I read a lot of PDFs on my phone anyway.
I think to get the best experience out of kindle I need to purchase actual Kindle or get an iPad. Possibly another reason to justify myself to purchase an iPad that I kept refusing to purchase. Anyhow, I got to get back to reading and finish it sigh. Hopefully by end of this reading, I like the idea of reading books on computer or any portable device that will make me a bookworm!
eBook on BlackBerry?
Posted: February 18, 2010 Filed under: Gadgets | Tags: Amazon, BlackBerry, eBook, Kindle, RIM Leave a comment »
Amazon released its Kindle app for BlackBerry today. Link
What a great idea for storm and storm 2 owners but I can’t seem this will be useful to other devices with a small screen. Can anyone tell me how easy it is to read on small screens???
Amazon, what about Android devices???
Apple and Music Industry.
Posted: February 11, 2010 Filed under: Music | Tags: Amazon, apple, eBook, iPad, Music Leave a comment »Apple iPad – it has been a buzz word since Apple announced it back on January 27th. Without question, Apple’s iPod and iTunes shook up and changed the music industry. Likewise, the iPad is already generating a lot of changes in the eBook industry. Three major publishers left Amazon due to Amazon’s fixed price policy and are now in process of renegotiation. Why? Apple simply worked with them to decide the price on eBooks. Apple lets publishers dictate their own contents’ price… but why not for music?
Apple sells 3 out of 4 songs that are sold digitally. Apple had complete domination over digital music sales since the launching of the iTunes store and the iPod. Prices were fixed – $.99 per song and $9.99 for an album. Recently Apple allowed the music industry to have fluctuating prices ranging from $.69~$1.29 per song. Currently, the result of this pricing is the decline in sales. My personal theory in the pricing of music is that a CD should be around $9 so anyone can purchase one within $10. When it comes to a single, it should been priced around $2.99. Every album has at least 2~3 songs that grabs people’s attention. I’m pretty sure people can justify purchasing the whole album if they plan to purchase 2~3 songs – it’s only fraction more. However, my theory seems too late and probably ineffective judging by the decline of sales at $1.29. To Apple contents sales are just additional revenue. Apple would never distribute part of revenue generated from its device to content providers. I believe Apple should listen to the music industry about pricing like they are doing with the publishers for eBooks when thinking of the future.
