Wednesday, February 11, 2009 9:56AM - By davidhall
Just when you thought free FM radio was a thing of the past, it may now have a clear path for a comeback.
Sirius XM Satellite Radio Inc. suffered a 31% drop in shares during this morning’s trading coinciding with reports that the company may be close to filing for bankruptcy protection. The stocks dropped 3 cents to 8 cents per share, which is a significant blow considering that the company traded shares for around $4 just two yeas ago [CNN].
Since their inception in 1999, both Sirius and XM offered more than 100 varying music and talk channels and attracted millions of subscribers who were sick of hearing the same pop-radio-friendly music across hundreds of stations owned by the same company.
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Thursday, January 22, 2009 8:00AM - By Morelli
Pandora now has ads, Guitar Hero gets slammed, and Microsoft competes with iTunes, all in today’s round up!
- The popular free music site Pandora is now adding 15 second invasive advertisements, interrupting the music, and repeating every 20 songs. This action isn’t entirely unexpected, as online music sites must pay higher royalties than other music providers. It still is probably going to irritate users though. [Slashdot]
- Two interesting theories denouncing Guitar Hero have popped up. Nick Carr writes about our age of advertising, subversion, and sacrificed attention spans; and Rob Horning’s essay on how Guitar Hero is a symptom of a generational aversion to actual challenge. Read up, and decide whether the popular game is as great as the hype says. [S. Elliot]
- Microsoft has launched a mobile music download service in the UK offering tracks and videos from the major labels. The pay-per-song pricing ($2.07) is more expensive than other mobile platforms like iTunes, and MSN Mobile tracks are not DRM-free. Which means you can’t transfer tracks to other devices. [Moconews]
Photo via radio-pandora.de
