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According to AllFacebook.com, “An extremely reliable anonymous source has informed me about Facebook launching an iTunes competitor within their company. Over the past months Facebook has been searching for a CEO to head up this new subdivision. Facebook has been pursuing agreements with a number of record labels. The target market was supposedly college students but unfortunately details are limited.One thing is for sure though. If Facbook decides to launch an iTunes competitor the existing music applications on the platform are not going to be happy (unless of course they are granted permission to become a lead generation tool for Facebook). This may be a little late on the timing though if downloadable music is eventually going to become free. Regardless, Facebook has been working on this project for many months now. I heard rumors of this back in March but none had been substantiated.
My most recent informant knows one of the people being interviewed for the position. The only thing under question at this point is how are they going to integrate this properly. Also, is this a tangent to their primary business model? Would you buy music from Facebook?”
Now Amazon.com offers music on CDs or as instant MP3 downloads through our Amazon MP3 store. Amazon MP3 offers music lovers these great benefits:
As one of the first to shop Amazon MP3, you get to see new features and content updated daily. We’ve launched Amazon MP3 as a public Beta, and we look forward to receiving feedback from you and using your input to refine the service.
If you have ideas about how we can improve Amazon MP3, we want to hear from you. Email us your tips at amazonmp3-feedback@amazon.com.
CNNmoney is reporting the following: “Apple is in talks with major Hollywood studios about launching a movie rental service from its popular iTunes store, according to a report Tuesday.
Apple (down $0.78 to $135.93, Charts, Fortune 500) is believed to be working towards starting the new service some time in the fall which would offer a 30-day rental for $2.99, according to the Financial Times.
A deal would allow iPod users to watch movies during the rental period without purchasing the entire film, which could be a very popular service for the millions of users of the video-enabled version of the device.
iTunes rentals could mount a serious challenge to cable and satellite TV providers who are working on offering a large library of on-demand films from the major studios, said the report.
Video on demand has been lucrative so far for cable companies like Comcast (Charts) and satellite operators like DirecTV (Charts, Fortune 500), but none of the cable operators has as many customers as Apple does.
Rights management software would allow the movies to be viewed on an iPod or iPhone, but would prevent them from being copied, according to Financial Times…”
Hack via TUAW: “iTunes 7.4 makes it especially easy to add and sync ringtones with your iPhone–without having to pay for a third-party installer. TUAW reader Arnold Kim passed along a link to this fabulous MacRumors post with a method attributed to “Cleverboy” and Nicholas “Drudge” Penree sent me additional instructions.
It goes basically like this: iTunes uses the m4r file extension for Ringtones. If you copy an AAC file from your library and rename it from .m4a to .m4r and then add it back to iTunes, the program reads it back in as a ringtone rather than a normal library track. You can then sync it to your iPhone. I’ve tested this with both an MP3 that I converted to AAC and with a track I purchased from the iTunes store. They both worked.
The secret lies in making sure the name change happens properly. This isn’t a big problem on Windows. On the Mac though there are protections in place to keep you from renaming the file extension–this isn’t to keep you from making ringtones. It’s to keep you from hurting your files. So either do the rename in Terminal or select the file you want to rename and open the Info window. Scroll down to the Name & Extension field and change the extension to m4r there.
At this time, the m4r items do not appear in your Library. You can only see them when you select an iPhone in the sources list and then click on the Ringtones tab.
Update: Use this technique only for tracks you’ve copied from your personal CD collection.”
SEATTLE, Wash. & ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., Sep 04, 2007 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and NBC Universal today announced that a wealth of quality TV content from NBC Universal is now available on Amazon Unbox (http://unbox.amazon.com), Amazon.com’s digital video download service. Amazon Unbox and NBC Universal are offering customers a variety of content packages, including up to 30 percent off when purchasing full seasons of their
favorite TV series.Popular NBC shows now available on Amazon Unbox include the Emmy(R) Award-winning series The Office, the critically acclaimed drama Heroes, and Emmy(R)-nominated comedy 30 Rock. Beginning on September 10, Amazon Unbox customers can download for free — in advance of their network premieres — the pilot episodes of NBC’s new shows Bionic Woman, Chuck, Journeyman and Life. New episodes will be available on Amazon Unbox the day after they air on TV…
The New York Times has reported that NBC will not renew its iTunes contract–which ends in December. Surprisingly, NBC accounts for 40% of all iTunes’ downloads. Rumored reasons include NBC’s want to increase prices on their content via bundled content offers or NBC’s venture partnership with News Corp’s (NWS) YouTube competitor, Hulu.com - currently in private beta. Is this purely a negotiation tactic or will the following shows not be available on iTunes next year: 30 Rock, Heroes, The Office, Scrubs, My Name is Earl, SNL, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
