Sprint said the charge will help it keep its network running smoothly for all the data-hungry customers, and tried to put some happy talk around what is, essentially, a rate hike.

“Sprint wants its customers to experience the range of entertainment and productivity possibilities available with today’s wireless technology,” Sprint consumer business President Bob H. Johnson said in a statement. “While some of our competitors impose overage charges and complex plans, Sprint continues to provide a worry-free, unlimited data experience while on the Sprint network. This is responsible, sustainable and reflects our commitment to simplicity and value.”

Existing Sprint smartphone customers are not affected unless they upgrade to or activate another smartphone, the company said.

The service, formerly a joint venture between RealNetworks (RNWK) and Viacom’s (VIA) MTV, has two new investors. Real and Viacom each own about 47.5 percent of the company, and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group now owns a minority stake–something less than five percent. An undisclosed investor owns something much smaller than that.

Rhapsody’s managers will tell you that their new corporate structure gives them a better shot at turning around the music service, which has lost money for years and has recently been losing subscribers as well–it’s now down to 675,000. They predict they’ll generate $130 million in revenue this year and turn profitable by the end of 2010.

But consumers won’t care about any of that. The core question about them: Is there any amount of money they’re willing to pay for a monthly music subscription that lets them listen to whatever they want wherever they are?

Rhapsody’s price cut brings it in line with the $10-per-month offering Thumbplay announced earlier this year. If you want to spend less, both Best Buy’s (BBY) Napster and MOG offer $5 monthly subscriptions, but neither supports mobile phones (yet), so they’re only good for people who do most of their listening within earshot of their PCs.

Meanwhile Spotify, the music industry’s great European hope, has yet to make it to the U.S. despite many months of promises and negotiations. And lots of folks insist/believe/hope that Apple (AAPL) will eventually offer some sort of subscription service, or at least some kind of portable option that involves the cloud.

In the meantime, the overwhelming majority of people who do pay for music online do it in $1 increments. Apple is still selling some two billion songs a year via iTunes.

[Image credit: flattop341]

3.6 billion gigabytes per month.

Astonishing. In the past year alone, the volume of mobile Web traffic spiked 160 percent to 90 petabytes per month. And it’s growing at a rate 2.4 times faster than global fixed broadband data traffic.

Interestingly, a lot of this growth is being driven by mobile video. Cisco’s study found that mobile video will represent 66 percent of all mobile data traffic by 2014, increasing 66-fold from 2009 to 2014. Something to consider as we wait for Apple’s (AAPL) iPad to arrive at market and for Apple to nail down that “Best of TV” iTunes subscription offering it has been working on.

The publisher hasn’t said how much it will charge readers and isn’t offering many other details for now. But subscribers to the print edition will be able to access the site for free.

By adopting the “metered model,” the New York Times (NYT) is emulating the Financial Times, which lets readers peruse up to 10 stories a month before forcing them to buy a subscription to the online paper.

That model isn’t all that different from the subscription strategy employed by News Corp.’s (NWS) Wall Street Journal: While much of the Journal is theoretically behind a pay wall, it’s a fairly permeable one designed to give both casual readers and search engines access to the content. (News Corp.’s Dow Jones owns both the WSJ and this Web site).

Both are have-cake/eat-cake strategies: Generate as big an audience as possible to sell to advertisers while extracting a second revenue stream from hard-core readers. The Times, which is reportedly generating $100 million a year from Web display ads, wants to do the same thing.

The paper has tried a pay wall before. In 2005, it rolled out “Times Select” whereby it cordoned off access to op-ed columnists like Thomas Friedman and to archived stories and other features. That strategy generated around $10 million a year. But it was considered a failed experiment, and the Times dropped the wall in September 2007.

Now, of course, $10 million a year sounds like a nice boost for a paper that lost more than $35 million in its most recent quarter and saw print ad revenue plummet throughout the year.

A New York Magazine story published on Sunday predicted the timing of the announcement, even though New York Times executive editor Bill Keller told me the piece was “long on speculation.”

The New York Times Announces Plans for a Metered Model for NYTimes.com in 2011NEW YORK, Jan 20, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The New York Times announced today that it will be introducing a paid model for NYTimes.com at the beginning of 2011.
The new approach, referred to as the metered model, will offer users free access to a set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number. This will enable NYTimes.com to create a second revenue stream and preserve its robust advertising business. It will also provide the necessary flexibility to keep an appropriate ratio between free and paid content and stay connected to a search-driven Web.
Through 2010, NYTimes.com will be building a new online infrastructure designed to provide consumers with a frictionless experience across multiple platforms. Once the metered model is implemented, New York Times home delivery print subscribers will continue to have free access to NYTimes.com.
“Our new business model is designed to provide additional support for The New York Times’ extraordinary, professional journalism,” said Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company and publisher of The New York Times. “Our audiences are very loyal and we believe that our readers will pay for our award-winning digital content and services.”
“This process of rethinking our business model has also been driven by our desire to achieve additional revenue diversity that will make us less susceptible to the inevitable economic cycles,” said Janet L. Robinson, president and CEO, The New York Times Company. “We were also guided by the fact that our news and information are being featured in an increasingly broad range of end-user devices and services, and our pricing plans and policies must reflect this vision.”
More details regarding the metered model will be available in the coming months.

[Image credit: etoile]

That clip, it turns out, is an unlikely homage to…wait for it…the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy. Really!

Go ahead and look at the first two clips at the bottom of the post. Note Hurley’s reference to “salt and pepper” and “two kings getting together.” See? In the Diddy clip, too. Who knew? (Okay, so at least one of you did).

Anyway, Hurley references both clips in a blog post he published this morning commemorating the anniversary of the sale. He also announced that the site is now serving up “well over” one billion video views per day. Last month comScore (SCOR) estimated YouTube was doing 10 billion views per month in the U.S.

And there’s also some general talk about the site’s evolution: Rather than focus solely on short clips, it’s also working to bring in movies and TV shows, etc. Nothing you didn’t know already.

Expect to hear more meaningful–but equally upbeat–talk about the site’s progress next Thursday, when Google (GOOG) announces its Q3 earnings.

Last quarter, Google executives went out of their way to talk up the site, and CFO Patrick Pichette said YouTube could start generating significant profits soon. This week, CEO Eric Schmidt also made a point of praising the YouTube deal and the site’s performance during a New York press conference.

Here, once again, is that famous clip:

And here’s the one Hurley was apparently referencing:

And here, once again, is the most popular clip in YouTube’s history:

While it’s true that Time Warner’s (TWX) magazine unit is embattled, there are bright spots in the portfolio. Take People.com: The gossip magazine has always been one of Time’s strongest performers (good luck trying to find a discounted subscription). Now its companion Web site is, too.

The site boasts 8.6 million unique monthly visitors, per comScore (SCOR), up 36 percent in the last year, and generates a staggering 700 million page views per month–per Omniture (OMTR). Meanwhile, once-hot sites like TMZ.com (another Time Warner property) have tailed off.

Much of the credit for that goes to Mark Golin, the awesomely sharp and frumpy editor best known as the man behind Maxim magazine’s rise, way back in the late 1990s. He’s successfully broadened the site beyond just Britney/Paris/Lindsay news by adding features like a game channel, a shopping channel and the like.

One of the most successful expansions came via acquisition: When People.com bought Celebrity Baby Blog back in May, it was generating 6.9 million page views per month. Now it’s doing 30 million, Time execs say. And before my fellow journobloggers dismiss the work that the people at Celebrity Baby Blog do, ask yourself this: Did you know that Ashlee Simpson has named her kid Bronx Mowgli? Aren’t you glad you know now?

In any case, all those page views are translating into actual dollars–not digital pennies, as NBC’s Jeff Zucker would say. Time Inc. says People.com is now one of its 10 most profitable titles–that’s out of all of the company’s 174 properties, on or offline.

The company won’t attach numbers to that claim, of course. But given that Time Inc. generated $162 million in operating profit during a very lousy third quarter, you can get some sense of the property’s success. Now Time just needs many more just like it.