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Apple's push into subscription TV--a tough sell

Apple is in talks with CBS and Disney to offer television programming using a subscription model, The Wall Street Journal reported late Monday but suggested that the venture could face a pretty steep uphill battle.

There's an understatement.

Apple has been incredibly successful with iTunes. It's almost become bad business to not play ball with Apple. But at this point, things are also very different. Consider the following:

• Hollywood has become more tech savvy.

• iTunes largely still uses a pay-per-view model.

• Limited subscriptions offer limited value.

• It's the content, not the network.

• … Read more

MOG entering the music subscription game

If free ad-supported music services aren't going to make it financially, what about paid subscription services? Rhapsody and RealNetworks continue to soldier along, but RealNetworks is apparently looking for investors to take some portion of the Rhapsody business off its hands, and we haven't heard much about Napster since Best Buy, which acquired it a little over a year ago, slashed subscription prices in May in a bid to build membership.

Soon, there will be another competitor in the market: MOG. The company has offered a kind of music blog site with a social-networking spin for a couple … Read more

Music biz expert Passman: Subscriptions can save us

If you work in the music business, you probably already know the name Donald Passman. For the uninitiated, his book "All You Need to Know About the Music Business," which was first released in 1991 and comes out in a seventh edition today, is the book on how the music industry works. If you ever wanted to know how major and indie label deals are structured, the different types of royalties that musicians can earn and how they're calculated, what a personal manager does for a band, how much money artists make on tour, where your ticket … Read more

Mobile payment service Zong expands to subscriptions

Mobile payment start-up Zong is extending its product to include subscription-based services, the company announced Tuesday.

Gaming site OMGPOP and News Corp.-owned photo-sharing site Photobucket have signed on as launch partners.

So here's what this means: instead of entering credit card billing information, subscribers to OMGPOP and Photobucket can bill their subscriptions directly to their phone bills by entering their cell phone numbers and then responding to a confirmation code. Previously, the Zong service could only be used for one-at-a-time micropayments rather than subscription-based services.

With Zong's new development, which is currently available only on U.S. … Read more

MySpace, Hulu working on new video service

Rupert Murdoch said in July he wanted to reshape MySpace into an entertainment hub, and sources say the site now plans to launch a new video service sometime in the next several months with the help of sister site Hulu, CNET News has learned.

The big question is whether MySpace's service will offer downloads or a subscription service.

Murdoch, the chairman of media conglomerate News Corp., intends to overhaul MySpace Video by bringing in a larger number of feature films, TV shows, and music videos. The social network's new video area will be given a major face lift, … Read more

Accounting rule change could boost Apple revenue

Though not yet a done deal, a tentative change in accounting rules could have a dramatic effect on the earnings reports of tech companies, and in particular, Apple.

Apple stands to gain a lot from a new draft of rules that governs how companies recognize revenue from subscriptions, as Fortune noted. Though it still needs final approval from the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the change could mean that Apple will stop recognizing revenue for its highly successful iPhone over a two-year period, the length of a standard wireless contract, and instead recognize it as soon as a phone is sold. … Read more

Spotify gets Apple's blessing...who's next?

Spotify's much-hyped streaming-music service has been given the green light by Apple's iPhone app approval board, according to a report from U.K.'s Paid Content. Though the Spotify app has yet to officially surface in the iTunes App Store, an Apple spokesman made it clear that the app would be available "very soon."

While the news is sure to excite Spotify's current user base in Europe and the U.K., music fans in the U.S. have yet to experience what all the fuss is about, since the service is currently blocked on this side of the pond. Rumors abound that Spotify plans to open its doors to America before the year is though, but until then, the availability of an iPhone app isn't doing us much good.

Beyond fanning the flames of American curiosity over Spotify, news of the app's approval demonstrates an intriguing change of tactics for Apple.… Read more

Rhapsody tries music subscription iPhone app

Subscription music service Rhapsody, a division of Real Networks, has announced plans to port its service to Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. In a blog post Sunday, the company said it will submit the application (demonstrated on the video below) this week to Apple for review.

Historically, Apple has steered clear of subscription music, making it impossible for services such as Napster or Rhapsody to work with the iPod, fearing competition with its own iTunes music service. But the success of iPhone music applications such as Pandora, Last.fm, and Slacker, may have opened the door for subscription services … Read more

Red Hat celebrates its 10-year IPO anniversary

Ten years ago today, on August 11, 1999, Red Hat saw its shares triple in an initial public offering that ushered in a new era of commercial open-source prosperity.

Iain Gray, then a Sun employee and now Red Hat's vice president of Global Support, writes nostalgically: "I remember sitting in the Sun office in UK watching the stock skyrocket, thinking the world had gone mad."

Indeed it had. Soon Red Hat's stock was to plummet to earth but not before the company learned a valuable lesson: there must be more than hype to make open source … Read more