RIM rallies on song service, Apple founder's exit (Reuters)

TORONTO (Reuters) – Shares of Research in Motion rose more than 2 percent on Thursday, after the BlackBerry maker unveiled a new cloud-based music service that allows users to share songs with other subscribers.

RIM hopes the feature, which is not available on Apple's ubiquitous iTunes, will help its BBM Music service to compete with iTunes and other established brands.

The stock rose the day after Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs stepped down, leaving the company to face the future without its founder and visionary. The news sent Apple shares lower.

RIM shares rose as much as 2.8 percent to C$29.04 on Thursday morning, before slipping to C$28.25.

Shares have risen more than 30 percent in the last 14 days, but are still well below a year high of C$69.30 in February.

(Reporting by Julie Gordon)

Yahoo! News

iTunes to stream London fest on Apple devices (AP)

NEW YORK – Music fans can watch performances from the iTunes Festival in London without buying a ticket.

Apple announced Tuesday that performances from the festival will be streamed on Apple devices including the iPad.

The festival runs from July 1-31 at the Roundhouse in London, with acts ranging from Coldplay to Linkin Park.

Apple said it will stream performances in high definition on the iPad, the iPhone, the iPod touch and on iTunes via its free app for the festival.

Fans also can purchase live performances from artists on iTunes.

The iTunes festival is now in its fifth year.

___

Online:

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_en_mu/storytext/us_music_itunes_fest/41949647/SIG=10vmnkrh2/*http://www.itunesfestival.com

Yahoo! News

Apple reportedly pays $100 million to music companies (Appolicious)

Apple reportedly has cut a deal with the largest of the four major music companies, securing the rights to its songs for Apple’s coming iCloud music streaming service.

According to a story from CNet, making a deal with Universal Music was the last of the obstacles Apple (AAPL) needed to clear for iCloud, and it can now offer music on the service from all four of the companies. A separate story from The New York Post states that sources claim Apple will make somewhere between $100 and $150 million in advance payments to the music companies as part of the deal. That shakes out to $25 million to $50 million for each company as an incentive to get them on-board with iCloud before it is released.

Apple is set to announce the details of its iCloud service on Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. So far, the company hasn’t released any details – including remaining mum on whether a music service is part of the iCloud deal – but it has become common knowledge that Apple managers have been negotiating with music companies and attempting to bring a music-streaming component to the company’s services. Two major Apple rivals, Google (GOOG) and Amazon (AMZN), also just released streaming music services, and neither sought the approval of the music companies.

CNet’s sources had few details about the music company deals, but those anonymous sources did explain the revenue split for iCloud: 58 percent will go to the labels and another 12 percent to music publishers. Apple gets the remaining 30 percent – its standard rate, it seems. The New York Post writes that Apple is considering a $25-per-year subscription fee, with an initial free offering to customers who purchased their music through iTunes (not unlike Amazon’s current freebie model).

According to CNet’s sources, streaming won’t be available on Monday when iCloud is announced, but will drop “soon” (The New York Post puts the service’s start date in September). It also says that iCloud will include a “digital locker” service that will allow users to upload their music tracks to Apple’s cloud servers to be streamed from anywhere, but the locker will only be available for music purchased on iTunes, which sounds like a compromise worked out with the music companies. From what we’re hearing, with other tracks, iCloud will mirror them on its servers; the service will scan users’ music libraries and then allow them to stream Apple’s versions of files they’ve already purchased.

The New York Times is reporting that Apple has reached solid deals with Universal and with Sony (SNE), the two largest record companies, while negotiations with EMI and Warner/Chappell are still taking place. More licensing deals still have to be made, but it appears that the major hurdles for iCloud are being cleared just in time for Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ big announcement next week.

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Apple nears cloud music service with label deals (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple Inc is close to launching an online music storage and streaming service after reaching deals with three of the four major labels and is expected to wrap up the fourth in a few days, according to several people familiar the plans.

The iPhone and iPad maker completed work on the new service a while back, according to two people, and will beat Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc in the bid to launch a comprehensive 'cloud' music service. The iTunes cloud-based service will offer users the ability to buy, store and stream favorite songs and albums wherever they have an Internet connection on any device.

Warner Music Group Corp was the first to reach a cloud deal with Apple more than two weeks ago and was followed by EMI Group and Sony Corp's Sony Music Entertainment more recently, according to three people with knowledge of the talks. Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, the largest music company in the world, is "within days of putting pen to paper on the new cloud service," said a fourth person.

Spokespeople for Apple and the labels all declined to comment.

The big technology companies are vying to be leaders in new ways for fans to access songs and videos. As the sales of physical media such CDs and DVDs fall rapidly, the tech giants are betting they can sell media subscriptions, software and innovative devices linked to these services.

While Amazon is the leading e-reader maker, Apple and Google are competing on mobile platforms for smartphones and tablet devices.

Apple has discussed plans for a cloud-based iTunes service on and off over the last year with the labels. It stepped up negotiations recently, according to these people. It is now expected that Apple will likely be in a position to announce its cloud music plans in time for the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 6.

Steve Jobs, Apple's founder, has in the past unveiled products, including the iPhone 4, at the WWDC.

There is a chance the new music service could be ready to launch by June 6, but it would also need deals with song publishers. Apple has opened talks with some publishers, according to two people.

Amazon and Google launched music locker services in the past few weeks without new licensing agreements, leading to threats of legal action from some music companies. At the time, Amazon argued its Cloud Drive service does not need licenses and said uploaded music belongs to the users, something the labels dispute.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; additional reporting from Poornima Gupta in San Francisco; editing by Andre Grenon)

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.