Reuters reports that Amazon is preparing to take on Apple Music, Spotify and the other music streaming services with a similar, full-fledged competitive subscription music service. That would be a step up from the limited catalog of music it currently offers to subscribers of its Prime shipping service that bundles perks for various Amazon services for a monthly or yearly fee.
According to a report this morning from The Wall Street Journal, Spotify is getting ready to finally launch its video content offerings. The rollout is set to start with the Android app getting video by the end of this week, but the iOS app is following suit by the end of next…
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According to a report out of Bloomberg, Apple is putting a hold on its plans to launch a streaming web TV service amid resistance from cable companies and networks. The report claims that Apple, while not entirely giving up on its plans, is instead shifting focus towards creating a platform on which companies can sell directly to the customer.
HBO’s new standalone streaming service called HBO NOW has officially launched on Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad. HBO NOW allows subscribers to watch the premium network’s movies and TV shows online. The service is similar to Netflix as it’s delivered over a high-speed Internet connection rather than cable or satellite and doesn’t require long-term committments through contracts. Here’s how to get HBO NOW works:
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T-Mobile has today unveiled what it hopes will be the next-generation of network maps, breathing new life into the carrier coverage maps of old. T-Mobile says that its new “Next-Gen Network Map” is the industry’s first crowd-sourced map, and reflects “near real-time customer experiences.”
Amazon has launched a new service called Prime Now which, as its title suggests, hopes to bring products from Amazon to your door faster than ever. The service currently offers “tens of thousands” of items spanning a wide variety of categories, is available now in parts of Manhattan for Amazon Prime members, and users have the option of going with either one or two hour delivery.
Apple is quietly negotiating with some of the largest ISPs in the country in order to roll out their own Content Distribution Network, which would help ensure faster and more reliable downloads for iTunes content, iCloud data, and software (via StreamingMediaBlog). Apple has previously made strides to improve its networking infrastructure, including purchasing hardware to boost performance and creating a team dedicated to improving download speeds. It is also opening new Data Centers at a frenetic pace.
The creation of these deals with Internet Service Providers comes amid a firestorm surrounding net neutrality and peering deals of this type. Apple recently declined to join a group of 100 tech companies backing Net Neutrality in a written statement to the FCC.
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Remember Twitter #music? Apparently not many people do, and as a result Twitter has decided to pull the app from the iOS App Store today and shut the service down completely next month. According to a pair of tweets posted on the official @TwitterMusic account, the app will be removed from the App Store later today and all streaming service will end on April 18th—one year after the app first launched.
If you hurry, you can probably still grab a copy of the app to use until then.
For the past few months, I’ve been testing Underwater Audio’s waterproofing service for Apple’s iPod shuffle. As the name implies, Underwater Audio is a company that created a technique to waterproof the iPod shuffle without changing the design, form-factor, size, overall weight and thinness of the wearable, lowest-cost iPod…
Consumer Reports just published its annual ratings report on wireless carriers, and the general consensus is that the Big Four tend to promise a lot—but their customer satisfaction scores prove they struggle to deliver.
None of the major carriers —Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile— could deliver an overall satisfaction score above 72 percent, as NBCNews mentioned, and Consumer Reports further added that cellphone companies rate the lowest among service providers.
Meanwhile, three smaller companies —Consumer Cellular, U.S. Cellular, and Credo Mobile— held the highest scores for customer satisfaction. U.S. Cellular, for instance, which is the largest of the three with service mostly in the Midwest, topped with a score of 88 percent.
The ratings report complied rankings from over 63,000 reader responses. The final results placed Big Red, a.k.a. Verizon, at No. 1 for overall service quality and availability, while Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T soon followed, respectively.
Verizon is apparently preferred by heavy-data users, but the latter three carriers scored better in the 4G-service department. AT&T had the fewest amount of problems for 4G service overall. Satisfaction scores also varied by location, however. The survey cropped data from 23 metropolitan areas and found AT&T rated significantly better than Verizon in places like Chicago.
Check out NBCNews for more details. The full results of the survey will become available in Consumer Reports’ January 2013 issue.
