SubscriptionServices
Latest
Lose It! announces a premium service
Lose It! is one of the most popular calorie-counting/weight loss apps on the App Store. It arrived back in the early days of iOS, but consistent updates and a big user base have kept it high up on the charts for a long time. And today, the app's developers, FitNow, have announced that they're expanding the app's functionality and introducing a premium subscription service for Lose It! users. As you'd expect, everything currently available in the app will remain free. But the premium service will add more functionality, including the ability to track things like sleep, nutrients and more. The service also features tie-ins with other popular health and fitness apps and the ability to create groups and challenges for the app's social circles. The subscription will be available for US$39.99 a year, though there's currently a launch special price of just $29.99. And FitNow says it's not a recurring subscription, so users will have the option every year to decide whether they want to renew, or just let the service end. Lose It! is a very popular and exceptional way to track your health and weight on iOS, and it'll be interesting to see how this new option does for them among their already substantial user base.
Youzee: Spain's streaming startup answer to Netflix
A new streaming service has shed its beta cloak, only this one isn't made for U.S. eyes. Youzee, a Madrid-based start-up, aims to offer Spaniards the best of both pay models, offering up a monthly subscription service alongside separate à la carte pricing. According to the company's site, its catalog of films and TV shows will be made available in a range of dubbed and subtitled versions to suite language and viewing preferences. You'll have to pony up 6.99 Euros (about $9 USD) monthly for access to those selections, but for any titles -- new releases or otherwise -- that reside outside of its collection, there's a one-time fee required, ranging from either 2.99 Euros (about $4 USD) for 480p DVD-quality or 4.99 Euros (about $7 USD) for 720p HD. Plans are also on deck to grow the outfit's content library of paid content with an assortment of free exclusives. So, if you call the Iberian peninsula home and the return of the Bluths on Netflix just isn't enough to tide you over, well, now you have an alternative online video fix.
Poll: What's the most important feature for a Netflix competitor?
The rumor mill indicates we can expect serious competition for Netflix's Watch Instantly service sometime soon, so we're wondering what features anyone else diving into the game may want to focus on in order to get your attention. Given the service's wide reach we figure you're probably a subscriber or at least gave it a shot whether by word of mouth or through one of those annoying pop under ads (why do they still run those?) and have seen some room for improvement. We've put a few of our ideas as options in the poll below, let us know what you'd like to see most in the comments below. %Poll-63017%
Big cable loses 500,000 subscribers in Q3, we neglect to send flowers
Last quarter was the first time ever that US pay TV subscription rates were down. Now, according to GigaOM's calculations, big cable suffered another set back in Q3, waving goodbye to over 500,000 subscribers in total. Comcast was saddled with over half of the carnage and lost 275,000 customers, while Time Warner took a 155,000 subscriber hit. Charter Communications and Cablevision fared slightly better, but still added 63,800 and 24,500 respectively to the industry pit of despair. Naturally, the blame game for the poor numbers was aimed squarely at the weak economy and increased competition from over-the-top video providers. Before you call the undertaker away from his wrestling day job, though, remember that cable's traditional backstop is to raise prices for remaining customers -- vicious cycle, anyone? In fact, Comcast shared on its Q3 earnings call that average customer revenue rose by ten percent year over year to $136 a month. Charter's similarly jumped by nine percent to $126, and while Cablevision's didn't increase by the same rate, monthly revenue per customer still amounted to a whopping $149 a month. So whether the reason is cord cutting or simply hard times, it's hard to get worked up over self-inflicted wounds.
Switched On: ZuneForSure
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. The moon has only four major phases, but as the Zune -- that satellite around Microsoft's gravitational pull -- enters a familiar fifth phase, what some consider a pale reflection of the iPod has made few waves despite inspiring its share of romantics. Zune began as a new salvo against the iPod as Microsoft grew frustrated in its attempts to make inroads versus Apple's soaring digital media device with its abysmally named and convoluted PlaysForSure rights management scheme. PlaysForSure had actually achieved some level of acceptance on digital music players and even handsets, but as Steve Ballmer has explained, devices that sell in the tens of millions of units per year -- as opposed to hundreds of millions like PCs and handsets (Kin notwithstanding) -- can be a good opportunity for vertical integration of hardware and software. And so was born Zune, welcoming us to the social with its chunky profile, brown color option, "double shot" facade and the quirky and later abandoned WiFi-based song-squirting sharing feature. Its next major iteration introduced the "squircle" -- a rounded square clickable trackpad that surpassed the click wheel just as Apple was gearing up for the game-changing iPod touch: strike two.
RealNetworks to spin off Rhapsody, give up control
Seems like times are tough in the streaming music game -- Warner is making noise about dropping free streaming rights to its catalog, and now RealNetworks and Viacom have announced plans to spin off the Rhapsody subscription service. The new company will obviously be known as Rhapsody, and both Real and Viacom will hold a sub-50 percent stake in the outfit and remain on the board of directors. Real's also contributing $18m in cash to the cause, while Viacom's committed to providing $33m in advertising -- we'll see if Rhapsody can make it on its own once that all runs out.
Report: Nokia's Comes With Music not selling very well in the UK
After hearing initial reports that Nokia's Comes With Music subscription service was doing "okay," word on the streets is now... even less good. According to estimates released by Music Ally at an Association of Independent Music conference in London, Nokia's gotten about 23,000 subscribers to the service since it launched last October. That's not a great number, if it's anywhere near accurate... though Nokia has "refused to confirm" whether or not it is. Tim Grimsditch, head of Nokia's product marketing division added that it's "a very new business model, we're live in five markets and the numbers only mention one. We're going to continue to develop the model and fine tune how we market it." That said, the report can't be terribly heartening either way you slice it, and is rather reminiscent of N-Gage's niche market status if you ask us.
Switched On: The DAP, the Frap, the pap and the gap
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: The iPod and iTunes haven't ostensibly suffered for (and have arguably gained from the) lack of a subscription music service. However, while such services have proven a tough sell to consumers at large, they have their benefits. One is the general liberation from the 30-second sample, a tiny prison of time that makes it difficult to engage in meaningful music discovery, the silver lining in the digital cloud that has been raining on the music industry for so many years. In contrast to Rhapsody, Napster and Microsoft's Zune Pass, which offer several ways within their software for subscribers to hear full tracks in which they might be interested, Apple has recently turned "out of band" for music discovery. The high-profile announcement with Starbucks at the introduction of Apple's latest round of iPods brings the portable devices to where the free music is rather than vice versa. Among Apple's portable music players, the automatic track identification works only with the iPod touch and the iPhone. However, the flat-panel televisions in New York City Starbucks locations also note PCs and Macs as suitable (and prevalent) clients for purchasing music played at the popular coffee retailer. An encouraging aspect of the collaboration between Starbucks and Apple is that the right company is making the brown product. However, one hot spot of trouble brewing in this Half-n-Half is that one can listen to the music only at a Starbucks location. This begs whether Apple would continue such a partnership when the iPhone finally gets access to 3G (perhaps to the scandalous exclusion of AT&T) or whether it or another device such as the iPod touch embrace WiMAX. But extending access to Starbucks' percolated playlists need not wait for such wireless advances. The two companies could enable access via a simple option in iTunes that would stream Starbucks' Hear Music XM station -- or an equivalent -- via any broadband connection.
Napster Japan goes live
After making big plays in North America and Western Europe, former P2P piracy powerhouse and current legitimate download service Napster has finally set up shop in Asia, bringing its war with iTunes to the world's second-largest music market: Japan. Although the Japanese store is actually owned more by Tower Records Japan than Napster itself (53.5% versus 31.5%, but considering that Tower.com/Digital hasn't exactly made a huge splash, the branding choice seems to be right on), the services offered are distinctly Napster, with the tried-and-true basic, Napster To Go, and a la carte models having been ported over for this implementation. The initial cache of 1.9 million tracks will come from a mix of Japanese and foreign artists, with domestic tunes costing 200 yen ($1.70) and Western songs going for 150 yen ($1.27) -- the same price that Apple charges for its wares. Besides the all-you-can-eat PlaysForSure subscription option not available from iTunes, the real draw here will supposedly come from Napster's partnership with NTT DoCoMo, which will eventually result in direct-to-mobile downloads (hear that, Apple / Softbank?). Overall the move seems like a good one for Napster -- which may or may not be seeking suitors to help buoy its stock price -- and for fans of Japanese music as well, because now we know that our Kahimi Karie and Pizzicato Five albums deserve to fetch much more on eBay than the usual crap we try to unload.
College students shunning free music subscription services
It's the rare college student who will turn down free anything -- free food, free booze, and free love are all top priorities for the modern scholar -- so we were more than a little surprised to learn that those online music subscriptions being offered gratis by a number of colleges haven't really taken off like one would assume. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, the services from Napster and company have proven so unpopular that many schools are dropping the program altogether after only a year or two, although the RIAA claims that the number of participating campuses will actually increase "pretty significantly" this fall. Even if that's true, it's not clear why students at newly-subscribed schools would behave any differently than ones who already have access to the free tunes and still choose alternative distribution methods -- most notably the iTunes music store and the still-popular P2P networks. Ultimately it seems to be the services' many restrictions that are turning off the college crowd -- tracks can't always be burned to disc or transferred to a DAP, and they also disappear after four years -- and the fact that students today treasure their iPods even more than their precious cans of beer only makes non-FairPlay content that much more undesirable.[Via TechDirt]
