Here at Crenk we have already reported about Myspace and their new music offering several times. It seems now that the launch is imminent. The LA Times has reported that Myspace will be launching their music offering as early as tomorrow. The new service will compete directly with iTunes and will be offering music downloads, streams, videos and mobile phone ring tones, along with related items, such as merchandise and concert tickets.
Stay tuned for more coverage about the launch in coming days.
Audioholics has commemorated their 10th anniversary with a bang and has launched their own online store front. This is a big step for the home theater review publication, the store will be the first of its kind to be built on the back of an industry-leading magazine.
Audioholics currently has an existing base of over 1 million readers per month and to leaverage this readership into purchasing some of the leading electronics brand should be a simple process that will lead to great success.
The Audioholics store is a partnership between Audioholics and Woodland Venture Holdings LLC. Funding for the project was lead by an undisclosed CEO of a large asset management company. Woodland Ventures operates some of the top e-commerce stores online in which currently serve a customer base of over 50 thousand customers per year. This is a great match for Audioholics because Woodland have ventures based in this online store market and they know how the industry works and operates. The store itself lists premium brands from all over the electronics industry, including Yamaha, VizionWare and APC.
Apart from the basics of an online store the Audioholics store will also included added features such as an email client, forum and a customi`ed help support. However, the key features to this new Audioholics online store is that it provides lifetime product support, free 3-year extended warranties, free shipping on most of it product lines, and all products carry a 30-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.
There is a real opportunity for Audioholics to leverage on either its strong readership numbers, great partnership with professionals in leading the industry (Woodland Ventures), or even on the decent amount of traffic to their website. Which ever way they approach this opportunity I always like seeing new companies in the online sales market, who can provide com®®petitive price, premium brands and great customer service. If you are a bit of a techie and like to equip your home or workplace with high end electronics then make sure you check out the new Audioholics store.
U.S. music sales dropped another 9.5% last year compared to 2006 despite a 44% increase in digital track sales according to Nielson Soundscan.
500.5 million albums sold in various formats last year down 15% from 2006. Only 10% of album sales were digital. But the drop re-calculates to 9.5% when sales of digital singles are counted as 10-track equivalent albums. 844.2 million digital tracks were sold in 2007 compared to 588.2 million in 2006.
iTunes became the third-largest music retailer in the U.S. in 2007.
I have been reading various articles this week about CDBaby and how they broke their deal with Snocap. I have actually seen all of the CDBaby figures on how much their artist were selling on Snocap and the figures weren’t too bad. However if you are a music aggregator and trying to work with Snocap it is a little more difficult than just providing distribution to online stores. The issues with Snocap is the amount of time it takes to implement a widget store and which songs will need to be selected.
CDBaby is now offering for their artists to sign up with Snocap individually and receive the first year free. If however this doesn’t work for you then make sure you head over to RouteNote which will be launching in a few months and already has Snocap signed as a founding partner. RouteNote will also not charge any signup fees and can license your music for TV, Radio and Advertising at the same time.
I was read ShoeMoney yesterday and he reviewed a new advertising product that I had to mention on here.
Welcome to the Rubicon Project. The Rubicon Project is a new product that has already received $6 million in funding and is based around the very competitive market of online advertising. About a year ago I had an idea of starting an advertising network based around an open marketplace, since then this has been done several times over and it seems when someone comes up with a new idea it is only a month or so before there are 10 of them in the market.
The Rubicon Project however is a unique advertising model that actually has ties with over 300 ad networks, including the big boys like Google, Yahoo and ValueClick.
The Rubicon Project ensures your website is making as much money as possible by optimizing it for not only the highest paying advertising company but also for demographic/geographical data.
Now unlike a few selected people I am still waiting for my Invite to their private beta. However in the mean time make sure you head over to the Rubicon Project and have a look at their 3 min. video.
The word around the blogosphere today is the launch of Adsense Video units. Problogger broke the news last week and it is slowly starting to happen. The Google blog has said you can log into your Adsense account and then select Video Units, but I’m yet to see that option. Below I have added what the Video Unit will look like.
Much the same as every other Adsense unit in the market it looks like crap. The poor quality of banners and what they are promoting just makes the ad look pathetic. I have never understood why anyone would click on one of these ads.
RouteNote has just signed a deal to provide our content on Audio Lunchbox. Audio Lunchbox will sell our content on their sites and services for the next three years. Audio Lunchbox has a licensed catalog of over 2 million songs in 79 sub-genres. Audio Lunchbox is the only service on the web to offer both a la carte and permanent subscription downloads side by side. Well thats what they claim.
