Well it didn’t happen on September 1 as some had been anticipating, but it looks like Apple is indeed extending iTunes song preview times. And while initial reports suggested they would up the previews from the current 30 seconds to 60 seconds, they’re actually tripling many of them, to 90 full seconds, the blog Symphonic Distribution reports.
MacRumors, meanwhile, snagged a copy of the iTunes Connect letter apparently being sent to label representatives that has all the details. iPad to Mac Transfer can also back up iPad videos and music to your Mac, as well as copy files from iPad to iTunes library. They can be summarized as such:
* If a song is longer than 2 minutes and 30 seconds, the song preview clips may now be up to 90 seconds long.
* If a song is shorter than 2 minutes and 30 seconds, the song preview clips will remain at the 30 second length.
* If you don’t like this policy change, get out. iPad to iTunes transfer is specially designed for Mac users to fast transfer, rip, copy and manage your music, video, photo, ePub, pdf, audiobook, podcast and TV Show files from iPad to Mac, iPad to iTunes.
It’s sort of humorous to think that this is the letter Apple is sending around to label which begins with “we are pleased to let you know”. Most of the labels probably aren’t too pleased about that. But you have to assume that Apple was negotiating this change with the big boys, and that’s why it took so long.
We should note that nothing has been signed yet, and that the discussions with Apple and Google are at an early stage, so there’s a chance for any deal to ultimately fall through. But at the very least these talks suggests that both companies are exploring how to become more serious about mobile payments.
But since this change is opt-out rather than opt-in, any label who really doesn’t like this change will be forced to pull their music from iTunes if they don’t wish to participate. Considering that iTunes is largest music retailer in the world, will any dare do that? Probably not.
Apple says that this change will lead to more purchases since customers will have longer to listen and decide that they like a song. It’s a nice bump. Still, it’s even more of a tease for what we should have: streaming music from the cloud. You know, what Spotify does and Lala did before Apple bought them and shut them down.
If Apple can stream 90 seconds of just about every song out there, you know they can stream the entire thing. It’s just a matter of when they’ll start doing that.
This change appears to be happening in the U.S. iTunes store only for now. And it should be happening shortly.
BOKU President and CEO Mark Britto and co-founder Ron Hirson have held multiple meetings with executives at the helm of Apple’s iPhone business in the course of the past 3 weeks. Neither one would comment on the rumors.
Furthermore, BOKU has also engaged in high-level meetings with Google, namely with Director of Engineering Michael Morrissey, who oversees developments for Google Mobile Services for Android (which includes the Android Market app store). Android Video Converter Pro is a professional android video converter for converting any video including HD videos to android phone, and rip DVD including ripping protected dvd to android phone. BOKU already can be used for in-app purchases for Android apps.
Our sources are unable to confirm whether Google is also exploring an outright acquisition of the mobile payments startup at this point, like its Cupertino-based rival is, but there’s clearly some serious sniffing going on here from both the Apple and Google camps. Could these talks be a prelude to an AdMob-style bidding war between the pair?It’s too early to tell. But like the AdMob purchase, a potential M&A deal would involve a transaction for a nine-digit sum according to one source. We are unable to pinpoint an exact price at this stage of the negotiations, but our source says Apple, for one, could end up spending at least $250 million (and up to $450 million) to acquire BOKU.
BOKU competes with startups such as Zong and Fortumo in the burgeoning mobile payments space. Armed with $38 million in funding from a slew of big-name investors such as Benchmark Capital, Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures, DAG Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, the company aims to allow tens of millions of people across the globe to pay for digital goods and social experiences across the Web using their mobile phones.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/01/apple-google-boku/