Majorca’s Playspace takes Miami money to build social games
Another European startup is trying to be a Zynga or a Playfish in its local language. Spain’s Playfish is raising money for the effort, seven months after formation. Read more »
Out of frying pan, HMV’s Fox picked to stoke Trinity Mirror’s fire
Simon Fox may be exiting a traditional company plagued by declining analogue content, but that will remain his top challenge, after news publisher Trinity Mirror named him its new CEO. Read more »
B&N announces 3 more retailers for UK Nook, including two bookstores
photo: Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble announced three more partners for its Nook UK launch this fall: Academic bookseller Blackwell’s, independent bookseller Foyles and general retail chain Argos. B&N also announced John Lewis as a retail partner earlier this week. Read more »
Amazon Appstore opens for business in Europe
photo: Amazon
Amazon is taking its Appstore for Android abroad for the first time, launching it in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The move was expected, and its eems to pave the way for an international launch of the Kindle Fire. Read more »
Spotify gets a leg-up in Germany from Deutsche Telekom bundling
photo: Spotify
Carrier bundling will help grow music subscription income by 46 percent a year, one analyst forecasts. Spotify continues on that road by allying with Deutsche Telekom in Germany. Read more »
Hey Hollywood, forget SOPA, ACTA & TPP. Embrace Netflix instead
Here’s a novel idea for Hollywood: Instead of forcing other countries to adopt ever tougher copyright laws, help services like Netflix and Hulu to launch operations overseas. And forcing U.S. consumers to authenticate before they can watch TV online might not be the smartest idea either. Read more »
Chart: What next for Spotify, as expansion losses mount?
photo: Spotify
The trailblazing firm may need more VC cash to cover its losses as it builds a global streaming behemoth, a disclosure reveals. So who gets what value from Spotify, and how could that change after another investment? Read more »
Nook’s UK odyssey starts at John Lewis, ink only
photo: Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble’s first overseas retailer for its Nook e-reader will be the respected UK department store John Lewis. But shoppers won’t find Nook Color nor Nook Tablet on British shelves yet. Read more »
YouTube scores more soccer, but still misses EPL goal
photo: Shutterstock / creativedoxfoto
Google is offering viewers more and more sports content, seemingly without having to shell out money on direct licenses. Now it has highlights from seven more tournaments, but is still lacking the world’s most-watched club soccer contest. Read more »
Prince Harry’s brush with radical transparency: you can’t stop the web
When the British royal family asked UK newspapers not to publish pictures of Prince Harry frolicking nude in Las Vegas, it seemed like a ludicrous request. But even though the media largely complied, the reality of internet life meant the pictures were impossible to suppress. Read more »
Deezer is going slow against Spotify
France-based unlimited-music service Deezer is fast expanding in to new global markets. But the expansion doesn’t yet appear to have upgraded its subscriber count. Read more »
Grocers’ digital dreams: Sainsbury’s launching VOD, Tesco ending MP3
Supermarkets already dominate much of physical entertainment retail – now they are arming themselves to compete on internet screens. In the latest chapter, Sainsbury’s is tapping Rovi to fight Tesco’s Blinkbox, while Tesco cans music downloads for We7′s streams. Read more »
Chart: TV still trounces web for advertising impact
Online advertising is now a multi-billion dollar industry. But it still languishes far behind ye olde television commercials for effectiveness, consumers say in a new survey. Read more »
Google lashes out at German copyright ‘threat’
photo: VIPDesignUSA / Shutterstock
The company doesn’t think it’s a great idea for search engines to have to pay to reproduce headlines and story summaries in their results. But that’s nothing on the crazy earlier draft of this proposed law. Read more »
Axel Springer buying local portal meinestadt.de to court local classifieds
Local is hot, at least for Axel Springer. The German publisher is buying a local portal, meinestadt.de, as a vehicle to gain exposure for local online classified advertising. Read more »
Netflix will need deep pockets to raid BSkyB’s movie locker
The company has free rein to repeat its bullish declarations that it will out-bid incumbent BSkyB for UK movie rights. But what exactly will that take? Let’s compare the two outfits’ abilities to spend on premium digital content as they vie for European customers. Read more »
B&N’s Nook will finally launch in the UK (but who’s going to sell it?)
photo: Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble will sell its Nook e-readers in the UK starting this October, but at the beginning they will only be available through a website, nook.co.uk. B&N says it will announce partnerships with “leading retailers” soon. Read more »
Much Ado about Digital Theatre’s streaming of Shakespeare
Whether you spell it “theatre” or “theater,” any fan of classic or contemporary theatrical works ought to check out the full-length productions available through VOD site Digital Theatre. Though, while the pricing is equivalent to iTunes, the user experience is not. Read more »
It’s too late for gambling to save Zynga
Game-maker Zynga is on the ropes and some think online gambling will give it a means to survive. But given that it’s late to the game and the messy laws governing American gambling, Zynga may have to fold its cards instead. Read more at GigaOM »
UK’s internet video regulator is here to stay
A new agency that charges “TV-like” internet services to have their content standards regulated has proved controversial in the industry. But ATVOD has been given wholehearted backing to continue its work. Read more »
Netflix chasing down Amazon’s Lovefilm to Scandinavia
Buoyed by better results than expected from its first European foray, Netflix will head north this winter – a move which means it now competes with Lovefilm in a majority of the Amazon brand’s markets. Read more »
NYT’s new CEO: BBC’s Thompson is custodian and curator, not digital creator
photo: AP Images
The New York Times is looking to BBC director-general Mark Thompson to steer it toward a digital news future. But who is Thompson, and what do his eight years’ UK public service leadership say about the man coming to Manhattan? Read more »
Four years jail for man who linked to TV streams
A 38-year-old Englishman becomes the first to be jailed for linking to illegally-hosted movies and TV shows. The method of his prosecution troubles piracy campaigners but delights entertainment owners. Read more »
VOD liability in flux as UK regulators disagree
photo: AP Images
Distributors are passing the buck and regulators are openly contradicting each other. UK VOD services may take heart as another regulator decision is overturned. But the rulings and counter-rulings leave liability for internet video in flux. Read more »
Official Olympics numbers: online engagement was mostly mobile
photo: London 2012, LOCOG
More data suggests these were the “mobile games”. London 2012′s organising committee says most digital engagement was via mobile devices, as it closes the lid on the Olympics with an end-of-games stats dump. Read more »
BBC’s ‘multi-platform Games’ reveals new appetite for live video, mobile browsing
photo: Nick J Webb
The BBC’s celebrated ‘four-screen’ London 2012 output has revealed a late-night iPad fetish and new high water marks for live video and mobile content consumption. ‘This has really been the multi-platform Games,’ the corporation says. Read more »
YouTube’s sports plans: Scottish soccer highlights, English next?
photo: Shutterstock / creativedoxfoto
A bid for full live English Premier League soccer rights may have been out of Google’s league. But could YouTube yet bid for online highlights? Read more »
Berlin start-ups seen ripe for money as GP Bullhound moves in
Tech start-up buzz is bringing Berlin to the attention of suits who broker company investments and sales. That means many more German outfits are likely to see money sloshing around, just like SoundCloud did. Read more »
News Corp writes $2.8 billion off its publishing activities
photo: Sirian Soosay
Just how poor is the outlook for publishing? News Corp has answered that question by devaluing its own activities before splitting them from its TV businesses. To blame? Restructuring costs, diminishing advertising and the gap left by the News Of The World, the company says. Read more »
“50 Shades of Grey” apparently UK’s bestselling book ever (sorry, Harry)
photo: 50 Shades of Grey
Random House UK announced that E.L. James’ erotic novel “50 Shades of Grey,” which started out as self-published Twilight fan fiction, is now the bestselling book of all time in the country — apparently beating out any single Harry Potter title. Read more »
Welsh broadcaster S4C’s £4 million digital fund is open for business
Struggling to finance its core TV channel amid funding cutbacks, Welsh-language broadcaster S4C is re-committing up to £1 million per year to producers it hopes can give an overdue lift to its online ambitions. Read more »
Social gambling could boost Facebook’s flagging Payments
As Facebook Payments revenue through Zynga games slows up, the social network is turning to gambling for more direct user money. How will the social network balance responsible behaviour with the need to impress investors? Read more »
Worst-ever game sales spook studios toward digital migration
In the video game industry, power and money is moving away from high street retailers. But how will development studios adapt to an ecosystem of new platform power brokers? Read more »
Ebooks now outselling print on Amazon UK
A little over a year after Amazon announced that it was selling more ebooks than print books in the U.S., the company has hit the same milestone in the UK. Another surprise: “50 Shades” author E.L. James has sold more books than J.K. Rowling on Amazon.co.uk. Read more »
BBC’s super-served Olympics shows how narrowcast can go large
photo: DCMS
UK TV viewers are gobbling up 24 simultaneous live Olympics streams the BBC is taking from web to TV. First-week data shows a big appetite for viewing of all kinds. Read more »
Learning the hard way: music service Wahwah.fm killed by license costs
Wahwah.fm was trying to bring personal radio into the social age, while doing it all legally. It failed – at least for now – and CEO Philipp Eibach has a very cautionary tale for startups planning to take on the music business. Read more »
France will cut funding to its piracy police
France’s Hadopi piracy agency has warned hundreds of thousands accused of piracy. But it’s become frowned upon by the country’s new government. First step in reform is to cut the agency’s budget. Read more »
Former Lovefilm boss: Netflix could have stormed Europe years ago
As it takes a hammering at home, Netflix is pinning its hopes on getting traction in Europe. But Adam Valkin, the founding CEO of rival video service Lovefilm, says that the US company could have owned the market if it hadn’t pulled out of a European launch in 2004. Read more »
Xyologic takes funding as latest to improve mobile app discovery
The Berlin startup, which has been quietly developing its technology duirng a bootstrapped first couple of years, has gone into closed beta while revealing funding from VCs and SoundCloud and GameForge co-founders Read more »
Phorm raising millions more for ad targeting in Turkey
Somewhere over the rainbow for Phorm is a land where it gets to target brands’ ads to users based on their every web browsing habit. After UK controversy, the latest emerging market in its sights is Turkey. Read more »
