According to data from Hitwise, Facebook now accounts for 6% of all US internet traffic and continues to grow. Twitter has a fraction of that traffic and its growth appears to be stalling. The light blue line at the bottom is Twitter.
U.S. visits on Twitter:
The UK's Music Ally tipped me to this, but you have to see it for yourself. Downloads of The Beatles - and not $.99, but rather for a mere $.25 at BlueBeat Music. Same thing with ACDC. Neither act has ever been available legally as downloads.
Not sure you want to buy yet? Sign up for free and you can listen to anything without apparent limits.
The only explanation has to be that the U.S. based site has taken the beg for forgiveness rather than ask for permission approach to licensing. I can hear the billable hours clock starting to tick as a gaggle of LA music industry lawyers read this over their morning lattes.
"...a dispute concerning professional practices was resolved when one Bill Graham said to one Frank Zappa, 'You'll never work this town again'. Cut to our current climate under corporocratic rule where it is now possible for a 'promoter' (no longer an independent/veteran of city hall wars) to tell an artist (anywhere in the world) 'You'll never work this planet again'."
- Gail Zappa @ Huffington Post
RealNetworks has reported a $1.5 million Third Quarter profit or less than 1 cent per share. It marks the first time that Real has turned a profit in more than a year. Music revenue declined 7% to $38.8 million, technology products fell 8% to $47.4 million and games dropped 14% to $29.5 million.
Subscribers to Real's Rhapsody music service were down 50,000 to 700,000 in the quarter. The company said that a recently released iPhone app will be primarily used by existing Rhapsody subscribers, rather than attracting new ones. The company, which faces increasing competition from free ad supported music services, has warned of weaker fourth quarter results. One bright spot is the company's inclusion in Google's new enhanced music search.
Test driving the new Google music search has been a bit of a frustrating experience. Perhaps understandably, the roll out has been incremental and many searches don't yield the new enhanced results.
Thanks, however, to this nifty little box heisted from Google that they shared with journalists, you can get a feel for how the new Google music search looks. Stick with major acts and the results are more likely to net the new format.
