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Kazaa aside, some surfers are apparently willing to pay for their music. Last Monday, the launch day of Apple’s new online music store, 250,000 tunes were downloaded at 99 cents per title. Considering the service is available exclusively to Mac users, analysts called the early results a success for the company. Roughly 200,000 songs are available on the site, which is integrated with Apple’s iTunes music software. Apple has distribution deals with the five major record labels, and the company was rumored to be in talks to acquire Vivendi’s Universal Music. Jobs said last week that such a deal won’t be happening. Apple’s major competitors in the paid music download business, the industry-backed Pressplay, Musicnet and Rhapsody, have struggled in the face of free file-sharing sites Kazaa and Morpheus. Based on launch-day sales, analysts predict that Apple’s music site could generate annual sales of $90 million.
Spam set to conquer new frontier: cell phones
Soon there will be no escaping spam, even when you’re away from the computer. During last week’s industry-wide forum on unsolicited emails, experts warned of a new potential target: the cell phone. Though text messaging has not caught on in the United States to the degree that it has in Europe, many American cell phones are capable of receiving text messages. Even though telemarketers are forbidden from calling cell numbers outright, spammers with text messaging abilities can target telephone numbers via cell phone carriers. Phone companies worry that people will be scared off from adding the text messaging feature to their plans because of spam worries. In Japan, for instance, where text messaging is quite popular, NTT DoCoMo customers receive up to 30 spam messages per day.
Study: Sports fans switching to broadband
Broadband may be the best sports development since the addition of the three-point line. New research from Screen Digest and ArkSports Limited finds that the number of broadband users switching specifically for sports access will rocket in the next five years, as will online revenue from sports sites. Broadband has presented new opportunities for the major sports to deliver streaming content. Washington Redskins fans who live on the West Coast, for example, no longer have to fret when their game isn’t on TV. They can simply log on and watch or listen to the game in real time. The new report finds that by the end of 2005 the number of sports broadband users globally will reach 113 million. By 2008 that number will nearly triple to 309 million. Roughly $6.4 billion in revenue will be generated from sports content in that year alone. The U.S., China, Japan, Germany and South Korea are the biggest consumers of such services, accounting for nearly $350 million in services last year. The study does find that sports fans will shell out for content only if it is not available elsewhere for free and it is not too expensive.
U.K. tests e-voting, but apathy still remains
Can voter apathy be erased through an easy online voting system? Or are voters too lazy to even cast ballots from their homes? The British government is in the midst of an electronic election pilot program that has recorded a 21 percent increase in e-votes during local elections. At a cost of 18.5 million pounds across 17 localities, e-voting allowed users to cast their lots via the internet, interactive television, text messaging or the telephone. The Brits hope to have an entirely electronic voting system in place after 2006. In some areas up to 25 percent of all voters used the system, now in its second year of trials.
No clear answer on net's best discount travel site
Which is best, Expedia, Orbitz or Hotels.com? There’s no definitive answer, according to Consumer WebWatch, which recently released the results of an in-house survey. Though the group did say that cheap prices are certainly available online, especially when compared with going the travel agent route, the annoyances of discount travel sites also are considerable. WebWatch could not find a one-click way to the cheapest hotel rates. Although the group rated Travelocity as offering generally the lowest hotel deals, its prices weren’t consistently lower than those of Expedia, Hotels.com, Lodging.com or Orbitz. The survey recommended consulting at least two or three sites to ensure that the lowest rate was being offered. The report also found that roughly one-third of the time the hotels’ web pages themselves offered the best prices.
May 5, 2003© 2003 Media Life
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