Simfy announced that they now connect to Facebook as well – just in time for the Facebook Timeline roll out. The feature, which is already used by Spotify, connects to Facebook’s Open Graph, which has been introduced in September 2011 on the f8 conference, and automatically shares songs in the Facebook Ticker on the Facebook news feed. Simfy →
Facebook launches ‘Listen with Friends’ Feature
Facebook announced on their blog a new real-time group music listening feature called “Listen with Friends”:
Look for the music note in the chat sidebar to see which of your friends are listening to music. To listen with a friend, hover over their name, and click the Listen With button. The music will play through the service your friend is using. (source)
Judging from the screenshots among the first services to make us of this are Spotify and Rdio.
Rdio to launch in Germany
It’s getting cozy in the German online music streaming market: After the recent launches of Deezer and Rara.com, US based Rdio now announced their Germany launch starting January 12, 2012 (blog.rdio.com).
Spotify, any news?
4 Reasons Rara.com is worth checking out
Recently I mentioned the new streaming service Rara.com. Here are a couple of things about them that are quite interesting (the following is all based on their launch press conference video and their press release):
1) Innovative User Interface
Instead of a “boring” Excel spreadsheet look, Rara.com wants to give users a more visual user experience. So instead of typing in your artist and listening by album, as you would do with for services such as Spotify or Simfy, Rara.com presents a colourful interface where the user can browse playlists by the three categories moods (e.g., “Chilling out”, “Sunday Morning”), genres (e.g., “Pop”, “Rock”) and Best of (e.g., “Best of 90s”, “Best of 80s”):
2) Curated Playlists
The playlists on Rara.com are not user generated, or put together by some algorithm, but instead they are curated playlists:
rara.com also features a wide selection of expertly curated music channels to suit your every mood at the touch of a button making playing music online with rara.com as easy as switching on your radio or CD player.
One of these experts will be Imogen Heap, who is joining rara.com as associate editor, and also had an impact on the design of the service. According to Rara.com “many more respected artists [are] joining [the] Rara.com team”.
3) Introductory Pricing Strategy
While the monthly fee is the standard $/€/£ 4.99 per month for web-only and $/€/£ 9.99 for web + mobile access, Rara.com comes with an introductory price of 99 p/ct per month for the first 3 months. In contrast to Spotify et al. there is no ad-supported version of Rara.com.
4) Cooperation with Hewlett Packard
To get their feet off the ground Rara.com has entered a “global partnership” with Hewlett Packard to give them “instant scale”. The world’s largest computer manufacturer will have Rara.com “preloaded on all their devices” (whatever that may mean, a link to the website?), and allow “instant access to music” for their customers, introducing the Rara.com to an estimated 60m users a year.
Finally: GEMA and BITKOM reach agreement for online music services
Good news for the German online music market: After years of negotiations GEMA and the industry association BITKOM have finally reached an agreement on online music services. As announced in a press release on Dec 8, the agreement covers the compensation for authors, that music services have to pay to the GEMA, and allows for flat licence fees for streaming services.
In a follow-up press release on Dec 21 the GEMA (apparently without having a definitive an agreement with BITKOM, heise) further announced a new set of tariffs that apply to ad-supported services.
Spotify apps go live for general public
As posted the other day, with the release of v0.8.0 Spotify apps now go live for the general public.
New music streaming service Rara.com
A new music streaming service called Rara.com (that’s “Lala” in Chinese I believe) launches in the US and 15 European countries. Check it out on Rara.com.
I do wonder though: With 10 Million songs at their fingertips – THAT’S the one they pick for their promotional video?!
Deezer expands to 200 countries; Germany launches Dec 15
Today Deezer (“the world’s leading music streaming service”) released details of its world-wide launch plan: Starting on 8th December, 2011 their ambitious goal is to be in 200 countries by June 2012. This is their launch schedule:
- December 8th, 2011: Ireland, The Netherlands
- By December 31st, 2011: Greater Europe: 45 countries including Spain (Dec. 13th), Italy (Dec. 14th), Germany (Dec. 15th) & Russia (Dec.19th)
- By January 31st, 2012: Canada and Latin America (38 countries)
- By February 28th, 2012: Australasia and Africa (41 countries)
- By June 30th, 2012 : Rest of the world (81 countries)
Notably this does not include the US. Says Deezer:
“Deezer strongly believes in the globalisation of music and has chosen not to focus on the USA and Japan, which only represent 25% of global music consumption, due to market saturation and low growth forecasts.” (source)
Spotify introduces Apps
Spotify announced that they are introducing Apps within Spotify. Basically little add-ons similar to what you know from your Firefox or Chrome. As of now apps are only available for the beta version of Spotify.
The list of apps so far includes well-known players such Last.fm, Songkick as well as music reviews from Rolling Stone or The Guardian.
Looking forward to seeing what developers come up with!
Simfy launches in Belgium
Previously only available in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Simfy announced earlier this week that they are now available in Belgium as well. According to Gerrit Schumann, CEO of Simfy, the Belgium launch marks the starting point of a more aggressive expansion strategy.