Spotify’s conversion rate isn’t bad: Out of 15 million active users, more than 4 million are paying subscribers. That number may soon increase thanks to Android support for Spotify radio, which is ad-supported and offers unlimited playback of Spotify’s entire digital music catalog. Read more »
The long-running lawsuit over Google’s decision to scan millions of books could be nearing the end game. Google’s latest filing, in a case poised to redefine copyright law, cites everything from Mad Men to minority rights to argue that book scanning is “fair use.” Read more »
A long-running dance between the European Commission and Google over antitrust allegations is finally coming to an end amidst reports that the two sides have reached an “understanding.” Read more at GigaOM »
Amazon is expected to introduce up to 6 new tablets, including a 10-inch model. Why not? Few besides Amazon have the consumer data, shopping experience and content to make multiple screen sized tablets, proving that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to mobile devices. Read more »
Google offered few details about search advertising on cell phones even while noting that 400 million people are now using mobile devices that use its Android software. Meanwhile, Google’s CEO was unable to speak about the topic at all. Read more at GigaOM »
Thousands of people are now making six figures on YouTube, the company revealed during its Q2 earnings call Thursday. YouTube had previously put that number in the hundreds. Google’s Chief Business Officer, Nikesh Arora, said that the company has found its model for YouTube. Read more »
YouTube is sending golden play buttons to any partner that has surpassed one million subscriber on his YouTube channel. The company is also honoring partners with more than 100,000 subscribers, and released some interesting new stats about these audience magnets. Read more »
Former Google executive Marissa Mayer looks to some like the savior Yahoo and its shareholders have been waiting for. But her focus in the past has been on technology and product development, and that may not be what a media company like Yahoo really needs. Read more at GigaOM »
Yahoo’s drawn-out search for a CEO has taken an unexpected turn with the company stealing away Marissa Mayer, Google’s first female engineer and the head of its location and local services, as its new chief Yahoo. Mayer takes over as president and CEO Tuesday. Read more »
Another day, another privacy payout. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Federal Trade Commission has assessed Google with a $22.5 million fine to settle claims that it hacked users’ iPhones in order to serve ads to them. Read more at GigaOM »
A new study from Google and the UK copyright collection society PRS for Music finds that live TV is the fastest-growing segment of copyright infringement — and a large presence on social networking sites. Read more »
Although both Google and Facebook have so far had little success with mobile advertising, Twitter says that its mobile ads are seeing huge levels of engagement. Is there something about the real-time information network that could make it a superior medium for mobile ads? Read more at GigaOM »
Google now activates one million Android devices per day and has 400 million devices in the wild, but its media store efforts have lagged. Google Play now has more digital content types, so here’s a look at how it compares to iTunes and Amazon’s digital store. Read more »
Google and Amazon have applied for dozens of new top-level domains — including .blog and .book, as well as .search and .cloud — and many of these will be for the exclusive use of the two companies, which critics say is bad for the web. Read more at GigaOM »
Google is ending the affiliate program that allows independent bookstores to sell e-books through their websites, but the American Booksellers Association says it will have a new solution in place “well in advance” of the end of the Google program in January 2013. Read more »
Flipboard, Apple’s 2010 iPad app of the year, is finally launching on Android phones worldwide and will also be available on the Kindle Fire and on Nook tablets. The personalized news magazine app will also incorporate Google+ and YouTube for the first time. Read more »
New data released by Google shows that US government requests to remove search results, YouTube videos and other content has increased by 103 percent. Information from around the world show countries targeting everything from social network profiles to a citizen peeing on a passport. Read more at GigaOM »
Conservative media icon Matt Drudge has long had a regular cast of villains — from global warming to the Obama administration — that appear on his website. In the last year, Google appears to have joined the ranks of these in-house bugbears. Read more »
Amazon is selling at least two Amazon Publishing titles in other digital bookstores. Until now, it has sold its e-books exclusively through the Kindle Store. Read more »
Google may be poised to help bridge mobile monetization gap with the biggest integration of its AdMob acquisition to date. AdWords’ more than 1 million advertisers will now be able to extend their campaigns to AdMob’s network of 300,000 mobile apps. Read more at GigaOM »
Facebook better hurry up with that search engine it’s reportedly building. A new survey of the mobile market shows that search ads are outstripping display ads by a wide margin in every region of the world. Read more »
Google is gearing up to bring fiber-fast broadband to Kansas City, and a device that could be key to these efforts just popped up the FCC’s website. The set-top box GFHD100 comes with a Google fiber logo – and looks very much like a Google TV device. Read more »
According to new research by Twitter’s data science team, Twitter search is used often as a tool for finding breaking news in real time, which makes it difficult for Twitter to assign relevance to any given tweet or topic in the long run. Read more »
BookExpo America, the U.S. book industry’s largest trade event, hits NYC next week. Look out for discoverability questions, startups and “Hunger Games” wannabes — and don’t miss the two elephants in the room. Read more »
ICANN, the organization that assigns names for websites, will unveil hundreds of new top level domains on June 13 that join familiar suffixes like “.com” or “.org” It appears that some of the names will be run by Google. Read more »
The judge in the notorious trial between Oracle and Google over Java software declared at the outset that the case was the “World Series” of intellectual property. And no wonder. The two sides have already spent nearly the annual payroll of the San Diego Padres. Read more at GigaOM »
Flipboard for Android launched exclusively on Samsung’s Galaxy S III. The reading app is an iOS fave due to its intuitive page flipping interface, many news sources and connectivity to social networking sites. Here’s how to register and get Flipboard for Android beta on your phone. Read more »
Since Google bought Zagat last September for a reported $125 million, the company hasn’t done much with Zagat’s local content. That changes today with the rollout of Google+ Local, which incorporates Zagat scores and summaries into its listings — and makes Zagat free. Read more »
Arizona man David Elliott wants a court to declare that “google” is a word that means “search on the internet” and to cancel Google’s trademarks for the term. Read more »
Philip DeFranco’s new YouTube channel Sourcefed clocked 100 million views since it launched three months ago as part of YouTube’s new channel roll-out. But with YouTube focusing on professional content, smaller producers could be left behind. That’s why DeFranco wants to share the stage with them. Read more »
Sanford Bernstein senior analyst Todd Juenger doesn’t believe digital media companies like YouTube, Yahoo and AOL can entice advertisers into committing huge portions of dollars all in one buying session, a la TV’s traditional upfront market. Read more »
Kickstarter is not just a startup– it’s part of an important shift away from the industrial manufacturing era & toward the maker economy. In this wide-ranging interview, founder Perry Chen talks about how society is reaching a new ‘bursting point of creativity,’ & where Kickstarter goes from here. Read more at GigaOM »
Popular YouTube video channel Machinima.com has landed a $35M round of funding, with Google leading the round. While Google has given its video content partners seed money in the past, this is the first time it’s given big-time VC dollars to one of them. Read more »
The European Commission today announced it had found four possible “abuses of dominance” by Google, and suggested the search giant propose a package of “remedies” in coming weeks. Read more »
Aggressive investments into professional-grade (and semi-professional-grade) video content have dramatically increased the average amount of time viewers on YouTube and Yahoo spend watching shows each month. The competition, meanwhile, has seen its usage decline in a big way. We crunch the comScore video numbers. Read more »
This weekly feature tells the backstory of how one e-book became a bestseller, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print. This week: Crashing a book about the financial crash. Read more »
Two weeks after the digital media giants stormed Madison Avenue with their Newfront blitz, television’s indigenous programmers showed up in Manhattan to defend their turf. For now, their share of ad dollars appears to be safe. Read more »
With the rise of social platforms and emergence of new mobile and connected devices, we have entered the post-search world and companies are finding ways to organize information around “knowledge” and “interests.” Today, Twitter is introducing a way to follow others based on interests. Read more »
Facebook’s advertising woes, including the highly publicized departure of General Motors, reinforce the fact that while Facebook may function like a social network, on the business side it looks almost exactly like a media company — and that is going to be a major challenge. Read more at GigaOM »
The appointment of Ross Levinsohn as CEO is a sign Yahoo wants to focus on media as the core of its rebirth, but does the company have what it takes to succeed as a new-media entity? There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. Read more at GigaOM »
