An app for your phone that recognizes a song playing in the background isn’t exactly a new idea. But Rhapsody hopes that instant playback and an ad-free app will nonetheless help to get more people excited about its music subscription service. Read more at GigaOM »
Netflix doesn’t just want to compete with traditional pay TV networks like HBO, Showtime and Starz – it wants to change television forever. The company envisions a future for TV in which old-fashioned things like ratings, schedule and recaps simply don’t matter anymore. Read more »
Redbox Instant by Verixon has nixed its plans to launch before the end of this year, and is now targeting a launch next spring, according to Verizon’s CEO Lowell McAdams. This comes days after we broke the news about key pricing details of the service. Read more »
Pop Secret just launched a year-long marketing campaign that will include apps meant to help people get more value out of services like Netflix, and have more fun with movie night at home. The reason? Orville Redenbacher’s has a tight grip on the theater popcorn biz. Read more »
We’ve got some exclusive details about Redbox Instant by Verizon, the yet-to-be-launched Netflix competitor with the complicated name: The service will charge consumers as little as $6 per month, launch with apps for Android, iOS and Xbox 360 and open up as early as December 17. Read more »
Some of the most prominent critics of the war on drugs are taking to YouTube to promote a new documentary called Breaking the Taboo that will be released for free on the site next week. So far, their bid for attention seems to be working. Read more »
Just when you thought Chill.com had tried everything, it evloves egain: The former Turntable.fm for videos turned social video curation platform launched a self-serve content marketplace for indie creators Thursday, allowing anyone to sell their flicks as streams and DRM-free downloads. Read more »
Just two months after winning an Emmy for its interactive web content, Los Angeles-based production company Fourth Wall Studios had to let most of its staff go and move away from content production. The company is instead going to focus on its technology assets. Read more »
Janus Friis is slowly taking the wraps off his new service Vdio – and it turns out that it’s not a Netflix killer at all: The company just launched a private beta test in the U.K. and the U.S., offering iTunes-like movie and TV show consumption. Read more »
Food Network wants to partner with YouTube to produce exclusive content for the site as part of its professional channels initiative. For the cable network, it’s part of a bigger initiative of embracing online content. But can Food Network find an audience on YouTube? Read more »
Want a coke with that $3 billion valuation? Spotify apparently does: The company just raised an additional $100 million in funding, with Coca-Cola being one of the more notable new investors. Coke has been experimenting with digital music for some time. Read more at GigaOM »
Vimeo plans to open up its pay-per-view platform to content producer early next year. This week, it debuted the platform with six select movies to showcase some of its features, including flexible viewing windows and additional content not found elsewhere. Read more »
YouTube is renewing less than 40 percent of its original content channels, giving them millions more dollars to produce shows for the site. That’s very much in line with the renewal rates of the TV worlds, where 65 percent new of shows get axed. Read more »
SpongeBob SquarePants has a new home: Hulu just opened up a dedicated kids section on its website as well as within the Hulu Plus app on the PS3. That comes after Netflix launched its own kids section on the web and devices last year. Read more »
There are few shows on public radio that have a fan base as devoted as the listeners of This American Life. So it makes only sense that the show would circumvent the middlemen and directly go to its fans to sell its most recent video. Read more »
Netflix accounts for 33 percent of all of North America’s peak residential downstream traffic, which makes it much bigger than any of its direct competitors: Based on those traffic numbers alone, Netflix sees more than 60 times as much usage as HBO Go. Read more »
Hulu Plus subscribers will get access to a number of CBS shows starting January 2013 — but don’t expect this to include last night’s CSI:Miami episode: The deal only includes episodes from previous seasons, and most of that will also just be made available to paying subscribers. Read more »
Who knew Brazil and Japan had so much in common: Not only are 1.5 million of Brazils residents of Japanese descent – both countries also share a love for Anime. That’s why San Francisco-based Anime streaming service Crunchyroll is now expanding to the South American country. Read more »
Google Play users won’t have to upload every single song to their music locker anymore. Google just introduced its own version of iTunes Match, which identifies songs on a user’s hard drive and then unlocks them in the cloud. The main difference: Google’s version is free. Read more at GigaOM »
Asia is a tough market for Western companies, which is why Netflix is considering to partner with a local player as it looks for further international expansion options. The revelation was made during Tuesday’s Q3 earnings call, which had a somewhat sobering tone. Read more »
Netflix’s own goal of reaching seven million subscribers of its streaming service by the end of 2012 may have been a bit too optimistic: The company’s Q3 earnings reveal that it is going to miss that target unless some sort of miracle happens in Q4. Read more »
Boxee is back with a new devices that focused squarely on broadcast content: The new Boxee TV comes with two tuners for over-the-air content and unlimited DVR recording space in the cloud. The company’s existing Boxee Box will be put into maintenance mode. Read more »
Netflix currently has closed captions for 82 percent of all the videos it is streaming. By October 2014, this number will go up to 100 percent, according to a consent decree the company entered to settle a lawsuit with disability rights advocates. Read more »
Found a broadcast program on YouTube that doesn’t come with closed captions? Then you can now use a special complaints form to tell on the publisher, who should have supplied subtitles according to new regulations that came into effect earlier this month. Read more »
How about this for good timing: Last week, news broke that Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara is going to produce the Hollywood version of the Argentina’s hit TV drama Mujeres Asesinas. Starting this week, DramaFever.com is bringing the original to U.S. audiences. Read more »
The Washington Post’s new daily news show The Fold is interesting for a number of reasons: It debuts on Google TV and was made specifically to be viewed on connected TVs, and its target audience are cord cutters who don’t watch cable news anymore. Read more »
YouTube just added some additional recourse for users that feel like they’ve been wrongly targeted for the alleged upload of unlicensed content: The site added an appels process to its Content ID program that defaults to the DMCA if the dispute isn’t resolved. Read more »
Can a virtual stock exchange for content curation, combined with Reddit-style voting, lead to better online video discovery? Turkey-based media curation startup Woisio thinks so, and it is trying to prove its theory with a private beta test of its new platform. Read more »
Jon Stewart’s Daily Show could soon be available live on the internet, if Dish Network has its way. The pay TV operator is reportedly in talks with Viacom about making its live feeds available online. The question is: how much would you pay for it? Read more »
YouTube wants to give mobile phone users a chance to find music video content by artist, discography and genre, with the goal of bringing music content to hundreds of millions of its users. These plans could be an answer to Vevo’s mobile music initiatives. Read more »
Stocking stuffers anyone? I know, it’s only September, but Redbox and Verizon are already looking forward to the holiday season, when they plan to launch their Netflix competitor. The service, dubbed Redbox Instant by Verizon, also wants to offer pay-per-view streaming on its website. Read more »
TV’s most action-packed willful suspension of disbelief is coming to Hulu Plus: Hulu has signed an exclusive agreement with WWE to distribute its TV content, including shows like Raw and Smackdown the day after they air on networks like USA and Syfy. Read more »
Seth McFarlane’s performance on Saturday Night Live became available on Hulu Japan just hours after it aired on NBC in the U.S., and upcoming episodes will be released in the country just as fast. But don’t expect Hollywood to give up on international windows altogether. Read more »
Nintendo’s Wii U won’t just come with Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant video. It will also tap into your TiVo library and even deliver game stats, tweets and other info to the second screen while watching a sports event on live TV. Read more »
Apple is updating its iTunes desktop software with a new UI that makes it look more like an iOS app. iTunes comes with wall-to-wall browsing, a new mini player, cloud integration and the ability for artists to share photos with fans. Read more »
Bye-bye, crummy old iOS YouTube app: YouTube just launched a brand-new app on the iPhone and iPod touch that comes with a much-improved UI, social sharing and access to thousands of major label music videos. However, users of the new app also have to endure ads. Read more »
Access to four out of five Anime shows that air on TV in Japan, in HD, and on the same day they’re available to Japanese audiences: These kinds of perks have helped Crunchyroll to get to 100,000 paying subscribers. Now it’s looking to expand its focus. Read more »
Remember that Hugo Awards live stream that got yanked off Ustream earlier this week just as author Neil Gaiman was delivering his acceptance speech? Ustream blamed Vobile’s content filters for the incident. Now Vobile is shooting back and saying it was all Ustream’s fault. Read more »
Many cable TV operators still argue that cord cutting doesn’t exist, but Verizon’s FIOS TV director Maitreyi Krishnaswamy thinks it’s real, and growing. But that’s not all: Krishnaswamy is also arguing that it might change the industry by putting pressure on studios. Read more »
