Apple has announced a deal with HBO to offer some of the cable channel's premium content through the iTunes store. Normally this wouldn't be all that noteworthy, but this is no ordinary content partnership. Apple has agreed to price some of the TV shows at $2.99, which is the first time the company has been willing to deviate from its standard pricing of $0.99 per song, $1.99 per TV show, and $9.99 to $14.99 per movie.
In fact, it was a squabble over standardized pricing that led NBC to stop distributing its shows through iTunes last year. not every HBO program will cost $2.99. The network is offering up Sex and the City, The Wire, and Flight of the Conchords for $1.99 per download, while The Sopranos, Deadwood, and Rome will set you back $2.99.
The move makes sense when you consider the fact that HBO charges $50 or so for 1 season of these shows on DVD, even though there are typically fewer episodes per season of an HBO show than you get from a broadcast network program. So we're hoping this isn't going to lead to a pricing free-for-all, with networks charging more for popular shows like Lost and less for shows nobody was going to pay for anyway like 'Til Death.
TuneUP is an an application designed to help keep your iTunes library more organized. While a library of only iTunes Store music will be tidy indeed, if you have acquired music from many different sources, the ID3 tags might be a bit confusing.
TuneUP works by comparing the unique sound print of each song to a database, and if new information is available, TuneUP will fix the metadata and rename your songs. It's sort of like having a genius put your books on your shelf for you. Not only does it help with naming, but the software also is able to download album art automatically with a few clicks.
While the design of this software is superb and visually appealing, it doesn't quite deliver in the area of organization. It does indeed make more coherent ID3 tags for songs, but we had hoped that it would properly shelve everything into one album each, rather than the usual album fragments, (with track 1 and 4 in one album, 2 and 8 in another, etc). Hopefully this will be refined in the final release.
TuneUP is in private beta, but we've got 100 invites to give away. Just click the link after the jump.
There's no question that it's faster to purchase a movie from the iTunes store than your local video store -- assuming you have a speedy internet connection. But if you want to get the latest releases as son as they're out on video, you're probably better off making the trek to the video store. Or at least that's what we would have told you yesterday, when it could take weeks or months longer for movies to show up on iTunes. But now Apple has announced that many movies will be available on iTunes the same day as they are released n DVD.
Apple has reached deals with Fox, Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Universal, Sony, Lionsgate, Image, and First Look. That covers a lot of territory. New releases will typically set you back $14.99. The press release doesn't make it clear whether this applies to the $2.99 movie rentals, so if you want to rent a video for just a few bucks, you might still better off using Netflix or walking to a bricks and mortar store.
We'd never, ever turn down a good ghost story. Aliens, even the abducting kind (especially the abducting kind!) are incredibly cool. Still, we are pretty sure that T. Rex existed and didn't use those huge incisors for gnashing hellaciously into cantaloupes and mangoes. And we have enough acquaintances who act a little too similarly to lower primates to believe Darwin was too terribly far off.
We really dig people who can talk about the Drake Equation. We dig people who can speak articulately about science, sound extra intelligent, and still be accessible enough that we are able to follow along.
Scientific podcasts are a funny thing. There are many out there that remind us way too much of our college days when we sat for two or three hours in a hot lecture hall listening to a professor full of even hotter air drone on about weather patterns. But there are gems like The Skeptic's Guide, which feel much more like you're sitting a table in a restaurant having a conversation with your smartest friends.
And these guys (and girls!) are smart. The host, Dr. Stephen Novella, is a neurologist teaching at Yale Medical School. Rebecca Watson is the resident Skepchick on the panel, and has the unique claim to fame that there's an asteroid named after her. Jay and Robert Novella are regular contributors and leaders in the New England Skeptical Society. And the weekly guest, James Randi, is the most interesting of the bunch: He's a magician. He's a world famous escape artist. And he's ready to expose, explain, and share with the layman the very scientific explanations for the magical things that go on in the paranormal and pseudoscientific world.
The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is available from their site, or through iTunes.
The nearly unpronounceable but endlessly creative Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich turn their microscope towards the podcast with this excellent series from New York's WYNC. Tackling issues as diverse as Laughter, Sleep, Time and 'Who Am I?' these uber-geeks play on the fringes of radio documentary, journalism and sound art. Abumrad comes to the series with a pedigree that includes composing music for films and television and extensive radio documentary work while Krulwich comes to Radiolab as the much lauded Science Correspondent for the US National Public Radio network.
Radiolab takes on themes relating to science, nature or culture and examines them through a prism filtered by scientific method, social history, personal experience and sound production methods. Produced in series of 5 parts at a time, with its innovative subject matter, high quality production, creative writing and detailed research Radiolab is one of the most innovative podcasts available for download online.
Click here to subscribe to the Radio Lab RSS Feed.
P2P music community site Grooveshark has entered a new phase with the launch of Grooveshark Lite, a Web based application to allow community users to share and purchase tracks. Grooveshark differentiates itself from other music Webtailers by giving community members credits every time a fellow user purchases a track from their music library.
Grooveshark lite allows you to organize your music and build playlists or makes recommendations on top tracks from other users to build playlists if you can't be bothered to build your own. Grooveshark also lets you stream entire tracks from other users before you make your purchasing decisions.
The Web site is the latest incarnation of a service that launched in beta as a P2P application that maps your music library and then allows you to share it with fellow community users, as Download Squad wrote last year. Music that is then made available through Grooveshark can be purchased by other users, and community members are rewarded with credits each time purchases are made from their library.
As much as Amazon mp3 would like to be a thorn in the side of iTunes, the data indicates that the service has had little effect on iTunes' dominance in digital music sales.
According to a new study by The NPD Group, only 10 percent of all purchasers at Amazon mp3 are converts from Apple's service, while the rest are switching from other services or new to the whole direct-download music scene.
While 10 percent may sound like a lot to us ordinary folks, it wasn't worth the eyebrow raise of a single analyst.
The bottom line is, if Amazon mp3 sees itself as the David to iTunes' Goliath, then their work is definitely cut out for them. Amazon currently sits in fourth place in US music sales, with iTunes and Wal-Mart fighting it out for the top spot, and Best Buy in third.
The troubling statistic for Amazon is that only a tenth of their music sales come from Amazon mp3. The rest come from those archaic compact discs; if you don't know what we're talking about, check out your parent's music collection-maybe they have some laying around.
The question is, my friends, what is keeping Amazon mp3 from biting into sales on iTunes? Is it the poor browsing experience? Is it because Amazon is seen as outside of the iTunes-iPod ecosystem? Are people willing to part with 10 cents more, and put up with DRM, for the sake of iTunes simplicity?
MySpace, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, and Universal Music have announced plans to launch an online music web site called MySpace Music (not to be confused with the existing web site called MySpace Music, rather the new site will be a spinoff of MySpace's existing service).
The music companies wil be making their complete content libraries available. Users will be able to stream ad-supported audio and video for free, or pay to download files includign songs and ringtones. MySpace Music will also sell concert tickets and artis merchandise.
EMI hasn't signed onto the project yet, but the New York Times reports that sources say the 4th major label will probably join up soon.
The music labels will own a minority stake in the business, which will compete with Apple's iTunes. Of course, the labels are making money through iTunes sales as well, but they've been complaining for a while that as the dominant online music retailer, Apple has too much control over the pricing and distribution of digital music.
There's a rumor floating around this morning that Apple has surpassed Wal-Mart to become the top music retailer in the US. Ars Technica reports that Apple has sent a memo to employees showing the results of an NPD MusicWatch survey in January. There's just one problem. In February, Apple publicly stated that it was now the number two music seller in the US.
As Engadget points out, there may have been a spike in January because a whole bunch of people picked up new iPods and iPod gift cards for the holidays in Decemeber. Suffice it to say, if Apple was really the top music retailer in the country right now, they wouldn't be passing around an internal memo. They'd be sending out press releases with pictures of Steve Jobs stepping on a smiley face with blood poring out of its nose. Wait, smiley faces don't usually have noses, do they? We're fairly certain that digital music will surpass physical media sales one day. That day just doesn't happen to be today.
Update: Nope, apparently that day is today. Apple has issued a press release stating that NPD's numbers show the company was the top music retailer in January and March.
Apple's iTunes customers have the option of buying TV shows for $1.99 per episode, or paying a flat fee for a full season. Now, most of the time, you save a few bucks by paying for the whole season at once. But there was this little writer's strike thingamajig this year, which kind of threw a monkey wrench into that equation. Some television series, like NBC's Heroes had just a handful of new episodes this season, which means iTunes season pass holders got the short end of the stick.
But Apple is apparently trying to remedy the situation. The company is sending emails to customers who have purchased season passes to shows with abbreviated seasons. In a nutshell, Apple says that any show that's still producing episodes for this season even after the season would normally have ended will be sent along to customers. Additionally, if there are fewer episodes of the show at the end of the season than you'd been expecting when you bought the season pass, you'll get a refund for the difference.
Apple is also giving at least some customers free credits that can be used to download 2 TV shows, music videos, or short films from the iTunes store.
Breakaway is the kind of tool that begs the question, "why didn't anyone think of this before?"
Simply stated, Breakaway will automatically pause your iTunes music anytime your headphones are unplugged.
We can see this as useful in two ways:
One, you won't have to suffer any more embarrassment when your headphones come unplugged and everyone becomes privy to the Rocky 3 soundtrack (we don't know about you, but "Eye of the Tiger" really gets our creative juices flowing).
Two, well, hmm...
Okay, so Breakaway is a one-trick pony. But it's a handy trick.
Breakaway is a free download, and requires Mac OS X.
When Apple released the latest generation of iPods, the company also caused a great deal of pain for Linux users. While Linux developers had an easy time getting every other iPod in the past to work with Linux distributions like Ubuntu and SUSE, the latest iPods are different. In their infinite wisdom, Apple redesigned the iPod music database in such a way that it is encrypted with a hash key. Not only does this make it difficult to develop third party software that can access that database, but if you try to sync your 6th gen iPod with Ubuntu 7.10, it will destroy the database, making your music unplayable on the iPod (but still accessible in disk mode).
Of course, the Linux community being what it was, it took just a few days before a highly technical solution started making the rounds. But how does Joe Six-pack use this to sync his shiny new iPod? Download Squad delivers. Read on for step by step instructions!
Been spending the week gearing up for SXSW and then realized that you forgot to book tickets to Austin? Worry not, Download Squad will be bringing you blow by blow coverage from SXSW Interactive over the next few days. In the meantime, sit back, relax, and check out some of the top stories from the week that was.
Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8 beta
Microsoft released the first beta version of IE8 this week, and while it's explicitly for developers and not early adopters, we rushed out to test it, and were severely disappointed with its performance. Sure, it renders the Acid2 test properly -- sometimes, but it does a pretty poor job with many other sites, including Download Squad. And many of you told us you were having even bigger problems. Check out the IE8 reviews and comments left by Download Squad readers. Microsoft launches Office Live Workspace beta
IE8 wasn't the only Microsoft beta to launch this week. The company also pushed the first public version of Office Live Workspace out the door. And while the service does provide users with a way to store and share Office documents online, we can't help but wonder whether people who have gotten used to actually being able to create and edit documents online with services like Zoho and Google Docs are going to care.
Linux users aren't exactly known as big fans of proprietary software, but sometimes a big commercial app comes in handy. iTunes has been up and running on Linux for a while now, but it was missing one big reason to choose it over an open source music player: iPod Touch and iPhone syncing. These two Apple gadgets need to be unlocked to work with a third-party music player.
But now iTunes on Linux is reportedly able to recognize and sync all iPod models, including the Touch and the iPhone. Maarten Lankhorst recently alerted the wine-devel mailing list that he got iPod-iTunes syncing to work on a Linux system with Wine, iTunes 7.6, and minimal patches. Good news for anyone whose 'Pod wasn't supported by the available open source apps.
There's still a little more work to be done before this will work on unpatched Wine: direct access to the device in explorer is not supported, although it should be coming soon. For now, at least there's a solution for Windows users who also want to keep their iPhones and iTouches locked - even if it's still proprietary.
In case you didn't get the message, the format wars are over. No, not HD-DVD v. Blu-Ray, but physical media versus digital media. Whether you get your music or video on discs or online, the truth is, the folks who preferred analog recordings on vinyl lost their war long ago. If you need any further proof, check this out: Apple's iTunes Store now sells more music than any other retailer in the US except for Wal-Mart.
How much music are we talking about? Apple has sold over 4 billion songs to over 50 million customers.
While Apple's press release mentions the fact that you can also buy and rent movies from iTunes, noticeably absent are any major video milestones. While we're pretty confident that video downloads will be as popular as music downloads any day now, Apple doesn't dominate the field yet. In fact, nobody does at the moment. There's still no good place to go for all of your movie ant TV show needs, aside from The Pirate Bay and other BitTorrent trackers.
When Apple released the latest generation of iPods, the company also 
Been spending the week gearing up for 
