Sound quality.

That’s Neil Young’s take on the issue, anyway. For years, the musician has been obsessed with improving the way modern music sounds, sonically speaking.

In an interview with Walt Mossberg and Peter Kafka at our D: Dive Into Media conference, Young, the perennial music purist, said that while modern music formats like MP3 are convenient, they sound lousy.

“My goal is to try and rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing for the past 50 years,” Young said. “We live in the digital age and, unfortunately, it’s degrading our music, not improving it.”

While modern digital encoding schemes might sound clear on our iPods and smartphones, they only feature a small percentage of the musical data present in a master recording, and Young is on a crusade to correct that.

“It’s not that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s being used isn’t doing justice to the art,” Young said. “The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.”

Young proposed that fans stage a grassroots movement to demand higher-quality audio. “Occupy audio!” he urged.

So what’s the solution? New hardware capable of playing audio files that preserve more of the data present in original recordings, said Young.

Ah. But who’s going to produce that?

Said Young, “Some rich guy.”

And evidently there once was some rich guy working on just such a device.

The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

“Steve Jobs as a pioneer of digital music, and his legacy is tremendous,” Young said. “But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you’ve got to believe that if he’d lived long enough, he would have done what I’m trying to do.”

Also a topic of conversation during today’s interview: The recording industry, and whether the record label has outlived its usefulness. Young contended it hasn’t.

“What I like about record companies is that they present and nurture artists,” he said. “That doesn’t exist on iTunes, it doesn’t exist on Amazon. That’s what a record company does, and that’s why I like my record company. People look at record companies like they’re obsolete, but there’s a lot of soul in there — a lot of people who care about music, and that’s very important.”

Then why is it the case that some artists complain so much about the economics of the industry?

Said Young, “Those artists should go by themselves. They have a choice of what they can do. Artists who want to go it alone should just do that.”

Finally, Young discussed piracy, which he doesn’t view as the threat that some other musicians do.

“Piracy is the new radio,” said Young. “That’s how music gets around.”

So well, in fact, that the tablet market is often characterized as being a two-horse race between the tricked-out Amazon e-reader and Apple’s iPad.

But when it comes down to the numbers, the two companies couldn’t be more different, like comparing Apples to oranges.

Tomorrow, Amazon is expected to report a giant fourth quarter, but it’s guaranteed not to look anything like Apple’s monstrous results reported last week for the same period.

Here’s one data point: For the holiday period, Apple’s gross margin was an impressive 44.7 percent, up from 38.5 percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, analysts are estimating that Amazon’s operating margin will fall to 1.3 percent from 3.6 percent last year.

The specifications of the two tablets can be compared side by side, but a completely different vocabulary is needed to speak intelligently about the two businesses. Simply put, Apple is a hardware maker and Amazon is a retailer.

One has very high margins and the other doesn’t, resulting in two drastically different financial outcomes today. But over time, the idea is for that to change.

Rather than making money from hardware sales, Amazon’s approach to the Fire is to generate incremental sales from other goods and services on the device. Some analysts feel that, over time, that play can create a reliable and recurring revenue stream – and ultimately higher margins.

Tomorrow, Amazon is expected to report sales of $18.3 billion in the fourth quarter, up more than 40 percent from the same period in 2010, according to FactSet Research. Q4 earnings are expected to fall notably to 17 cents a share from 91 cents a year ago.

While revenue growth is impressive, the company’s profitability is being weighed down by losses from the $199 Kindle (which is not quite a break-even proposition), the construction of more warehouses across the globe (17 were added in 2011 for a total of 69) and other investments in infrastructure, like its cloud-computing services and media services, like video, music and e-books.

In contrast, Apple has a rich markup on its iDevices and doesn’t have much of the same overhead as Amazon.

Still, the number of consumers Amazon touches in just one quarter is staggering, and it continues to take share from brick and mortar retailers.

As J.P. Morgan analyst Douglas Anmuth points out in a report, e-commerce grew about 15 percent in Q4 in the U.S. due to strong holiday sales, but he expects Amazon’s growth rate to more than double that to 47 percent year over year.

Anmuth is also bullish that while the fourth quarter could represent a “low point for margins,” Amazon could start seeing an uptick in margin as soon as the first quarter, now that a number of services and some key infrastructure are set in place.

However, don’t expect much insight tomorrow into the company’s long-range plans. The Seattle-based company is typically short on details during its earnings release and call.

If it follows standard protocol, it could provide an update on warehouses being built next year, number of employees and other infrastructure investments, but will likely dodge answers about how many Kindles it shipped during the quarter, or how much Kindle Fire owners are purchasing on the devices.

For now, we’ll have to settle for analyst estimates.

On Sunday evening, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan raised his estimate for fourth-quarter Fire sales to six million units from five million.

While only on the market for a limited time, that’s still a lot less than Apple, which sold 15.43 million iPads, up 111 percent year over year.

Amazon’s stock dropped 1.65 percent, or $3.22, today to close at $192.15 a share.

The position of the anti-SOPA activists is antithetical to the principle of protection — for authors, that is — mandated in the Constitution of the United States. Our nation’s founders recognized that furthering the rights of creators is in the national interest, to “promote the progress of science and useful arts” by “securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Over the centuries, copyright protection has been codified in an expanding body of federal law in an attempt to implement the protection outlined in the Constitution.

The SOPA debate is emblematic of the growing tension between the copyright creator — the authors, composers, lyricists and artists who have contributed so much to the socio-economic fabric of American life — and the “interests” of the public in having free access to the works of others. However, the creator/public dichotomy is a false paradigm. What is truly at stake are the competing interests of the creators and the corporations who have acquired and are exploiting their works.

It is the rare creator who has the luxury to create simply for the sake of creating. As history has shown (every Renaissance artist worth his canvas had a patron), in order for creators to enjoy the benefits of their creations, it is necessary for them to cross over into the world of commerce, and to seek the patronage of publishers, record labels, and film and television producers. Sadly, the relationship between creator and corporate sponsor is seldom equal, as evidenced by the scores of documents executed by authors, songwriters and other creators, granting the rights in their works to corporate entities in perpetuity, often in exchange for modest compensation.

Congress attempted to include in the Copyright Act a series of provisions to give the creator (or the heirs of a deceased creator) the opportunity to terminate even perpetual grants of copyright, and “recapture” rights to their works in the U.S. These provisions, known as the “termination provisions,” were first introduced as part of the Copyright Act of 1976, and later modified as part of the Sonny Bono Copyright Act of 1998.

The intent of Congress in enacting the termination provisions was clear: To give creators, or their heirs, the opportunity to escape inequitable deals, or simply to revise the terms of their deals in order to share proportionately in the success of their creations. And, indeed, the opportunity to recapture rights is a potentially valuable asset for creators and their statutory successors. Yet, outside the music industry, the termination right is significantly underutilized, while even songwriters and recording artists are often thwarted in their attempts to recapture rights in a process made unduly complicated in response to pressure from corporate lobbyists.

Like the termination provisions, the real value of SOPA and other copyright enforcement legislation is its role in safeguarding the interests of the intended beneficiaries of copyright protection. Whether or not SOPA is the most effective means of curbing piracy in the online arena is a matter that should be thoroughly examined. However, the SOPA debate should not be commandeered as a vehicle for furthering the position of those who seek to write authors out of the copyright law and the Constitution.

Lisa A. Alter is a partner in the firm of Alter & Kendrick, LLP, in New York City. Her practice is focused primarily in the area of copyright law, with a particular emphasis on domestic and international music copyright issues. Ms. Alter has lectured frequently at law schools and professional meetings on copyright matters, and has represented clients on legislative matters impacting their copyright interests. She is the author of “Protecting Your Musical Copyrights,” which has recently been released in its second edition.

Rakuten is set on challenging Amazon’s global dominance by appealing to the third-party merchants Amazon works with today and by growing it’s digital content business to compete with the Kindle.

We recently learned about the company’s strategy through the eyes of Neel Grover, the CEO of Buy.com, Rakuten’s online shopping subsidiary in the U.S.

For now, Rakuten is admittedly Amazon’s much smaller competitor, though it is dominant in Japan.

The publicly held company is worth $14.5 billion compared to Amazon’s $85 billion market capitalization, and it pales in comparison to Amazon’s mass in the U.S. Buy.com is ranked 410th here versus Amazon’s sixth-place standing, according to Compete.

But Grover said Rakuten has a two-part plan for going up against Amazon.

First, it will target and partner with third-party resellers and merchants.

Amazon does this, too, but often ends up competing with the merchants because it has its own warehouses and products that it is selling, he said.

“Oftentimes Amazon will compete with the retailer. [Third-party merchants] teach Amazon what to buy and sell, which is ultimately not good for the merchant,” he said.

Rakuten, on the other hand, does not own any warehouses or any inventory itself and instead gives retailers — brick and mortar or e-commerce — the tools and traffic to support their own businesses.

In May 2010, Rakuten acquired Buy.com.

“I sought out Rakuten. … I thought their model was one that would give us a unique differentiator in the U.S. and we could learn and bring their model to our site and customers,” Grover said. “We are still in the final stages of transforming, and it’s taken a bit of time to get it transformed.”

But, he confidently added, “It will win out in the long-term.”

A similar approach is being taken by eBay, another e-commerce giant in the U.S.

The second part of Rakuten’s plan is to go after Amazon’s growing digital business, spanning music, e-books and other content.

In November, the Japanese company purchased Kobo, a runner-up in the e-reader race behind the Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. It paid $315 million in cash for the Canadian company.

Rakuten is banking on the Kobo in assisting with its move into providing downloadable media to consumers, starting with e-books.

At the time of the acquisition, Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis told All Things D that Rakuten will give Kobo the financial backing to grow internationally, as well as compete in the U.S.

“The U.S. is absolutely important. It’s fundamental. We have millions of U.S. users today, and we plan to grow that substantially, and internationally it represents a big opportunity as well,” he said.

Earlier this month, Buy.com started linking to Kobo from its site, so that consumers have the option of buying a physical copy of a book or a digital version. Other integration efforts are also under way.

It also wants to get into other digital content, like music. Back in 1999, Buy.com was one of the original sites to have a digital music store, but Grover said it was a pretty poor experience because of all the restrictions that record labels were mandating. A lot of that has now changed.

“We are definitely looking as a group at all digital content. … We are looking at different solutions, but today we have not continued on with our initial music store,” he said.

As with Kobo and Buy.com, acquisitions are always an option, he said.

“We’ll continue to look at everything that would make our business better. It hasn’t been shy over the past two years. We have a global vision to create an e-commerce marketplace offering all goods, and we continue to see that grow.”

And going up against Amazon, some serious growth is what Rakuten and Buy.com will need.

In light of this month’s SOPA/PIPA debate, for instance, it ought to be very interesting to compare and contrast what Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman and YouTube head Salar Kamangar have to say about copyright and piracy. (Not that they were on the same page to begin with.)

But in addition to executives who help distribute media for a living, we also wanted to make sure we heard from content makers at Dive. We’ll have several, but none more famous than Neil Young.

One of the nice things about having a music icon join you onstage is that you don’t need to spend much time introducing him (though it’s easy enough to get the official and unofficial takes; and, courtesy of Kamangar’s YouTube, plenty of audiovisual reminders, which you can see at the bottom of this post).

That’s going to give us more time to have a freewheeling conversation: The man has a 40-plus-year career and is still making music and movies today, so there’s a lot of ground to cover. One digital topic I imagine we’ll certainly touch on: His long-running campaign to fix the way modern music sounds – not the songs themselves, but the way they’re recorded and distributed.

That isn’t the easiest sell, when lots of people seem content to listen to super-compressed iTunes files bleeding out of tiny, tinny, laptop speakers. But perhaps things are changing a bit: Dr. Dre and company sure have sold a lot of sort-of high-end Beats headphones in recent years.

Dive kicks off on the evening of Jan. 30, and we’ll have complete coverage here. If you want to join us in person in Laguna Niguel, Calif., grab a seat.

In November and December, the number of online transactions increased by 37 percent, and overall sales jumped by 25 percent. But the average ticket size declined by 9 percent, according to Chase Paymentech, which analyzes information across the top 50 e-commerce retailers.

As it turns out, more consumers are turning to e-commerce for more of their everyday spending, rather than reserving online purchases for big-ticket items.

Here are Chase’s three reasons for the decline:

• More consumers are purchasing digital media, which has a lower price point than most physical goods — MP3s cost less than CDs, e-books cost less than paperbacks, and apps cost less than game cartridges.
• Prices for popular electronics, such as tablets, e-readers and TVs, are falling.
• More retailers are offering free shipping, which eliminates the incentive to fill carts to reach a free-shipping threshold.

EBay, which is the first major e-commerce provider to report Q4 results, confirmed it was also seeing the trend. The company’s payments division, PayPal, reported smaller transactions during the fourth quarter across the merchants it serves.

John Donahoe, eBay’s CEO, explained in an interview that the biggest driver of that trend was eBay’s acquisition of Zong, a mobile payments provider that powers the sale of digital goods. In addition, Donahoe said retailers, including eBay, heavily discounted products in order to drive more purchases this holiday.

Amazon, which is the leading e-commerce provider, also said that it is selling a lot of low-priced digital goods, ranging from e-books to MP3s.

Historically, the company has said that Christmas is the largest day of digital sales on Amazon.com, followed by Dec. 26. In 2010, from Christmas Eve through Dec. 30, Amazon customers purchased three times more digital content — including Kindle books, magazines, movies, TV shows, music and digital games — compared to the weekly average for the year.

Despite transactions declining overall, Chase identified two exceptions: Apparel and footwear rose 6 percent; toys rose 10 percent year over year.

(Amazon photo courtesy of thisisbossi)

So no surprise that Sony is yet another company reportedly exploring “over the top” Web video. And even if it doesn’t end up launching a full package of cable-like TV programming, it seems quite reasonable to assume it’s going to be doing something with video this year.

And that’s more or less what Sony executive Tim Schaaff said near the end of the brief chat I had with him yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Schaaff is the former Apple executive hired by Howard Stringer six years ago to knit all his media and electronics businesses together. If you don’t want to hear his thoughts about his new music subscription business, or what the cloud means for Sony versus Google, Amazon, Apple, etc., skip ahead to the four-minute mark on this video.

That’s where Schaaff refuses to say that Sony is looking to get into a Netflix-style subscription business. But he does say he would love to have me “paying for video on a regular basis.”

“We’re certainly talking to lots of different people about some new possibilities, and I hope that we can have some new announcements for you later in the year.”

The guy making a cameo appearance in the background, by the way, is Sony VP Michael Aragon, who oversees video and music for Schaaff.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120112/what-kind-of-web-video-plans-does-sony-have-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120112/why-rhapsody-is-probably-bigger-than-spotify-in-the-u-s/ http://allthingsd.com/20120112/why-rhapsody-is-probably-bigger-than-spotify-in-the-u-s/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:00:24 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=163067 Jon Irwin is not pals with Sean Parker. He doesn’t hold splashy press conferences. He hasn’t been on the cover of Forbes.

But for now, at least, he can claim a bragging right that Spotify’s Daniel Ek doesn’t have: The CEO of Rhapsody has more paying subscribers than any other digital music service in the U.S.

Probably, that is. We can get into the numbers in a minute. But at the very least, Irwin argues, his company ought to get a bit of the attention that Spotify does.

They’re both doing the same thing, after all — trying to get consumers to pony up $10 a month for an ad-free service that lets you listen to any music you want, on your iPhone or (just about) any other device.

The big difference between the two is that while Rhapsody offers users a free trial period to sample the service, Ek’s company will let you listen to music for free forever.

That offer comes with advertising, and some restrictions — you can only do it for a certain number of hours per month, and you can’t take it with you. But that free offer, in conjunction with a big push from Facebook, is the real reason that so many people have heard about Spotify recently. Free, legal music is a pretty compelling offer.

Why hasn’t Rhapsody gone that route? Irwin has a long answer for that, but the short one is that he doesn’t think Spotify’s freemium model can convert enough subscribers to cover the costs of the music it gives away. The Spotify camp argues otherwise, but we’re not going to get an authoritative answer for some time.

In the meantime, Irwin can take can comfort in the fact that he has more Americans paying for his service than Ek does.

He thinks. Irwin says he passed the one-million mark at the end of last year. And while Spotify hasn’t broken out its U.S. subscriber total, we can guess that it has less than that. At the end of November, it said that it had 2.5 million paying subscribers worldwide. That’s 900,000 more than the 1.6 million it said it had in June, and that growth hasn’t all come in the U.S., because Facebook has been promoting the service everywhere.

Now, back to the future. Spotify is likely to keep growing for a while, thanks to that Facebook firehose, as well as international expansion — my bet is that Ek opens shop in Germany fairly soon.

But Irwin thinks that both companies are going to end up needing help from partners with much bigger reach — cable guys like Comcast, or wireless giants like Verizon — if they’re going to get real scale.

He explains in this interview we conducted yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show:

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120112/why-rhapsody-is-probably-bigger-than-spotify-in-the-u-s/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120110/schmidt-storm-alert-the-google-chairman-didnt-like-your-question/ http://allthingsd.com/20120110/schmidt-storm-alert-the-google-chairman-didnt-like-your-question/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:16:40 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=162654 Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt stopped by CES today, and sat down with CNET’s Molly Wood for a discussion of the “Next Big Thing” in tech, with a focus on connectivity between devices.

Schmidt is known for his candid (and sometimes odd) remarks, and today’s event didn’t disappoint.

“Google TV’s doing well,” he said to Wood, when asked about the company’s Internet TV efforts (an assessment with which Logitech’s CEO might disagree). Schmidt and Wood talked about the handful of electronics makers announcing Google TV plans this week, and Schmidt said a “whole bunch” of additional partners are expected later this year.

Schmidt then touted Google Music, and said that Google CEO Larry Page is leading the effort to standardize the user interface throughout Google’s properties.

But when asked about Microsoft as a competitor, Schmidt dismissed that company’s efforts. “Microsoft is trapped in an architectural problem they may not get through. Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said, feigning chagrin.

Apple, Schmidt said, has done very well, and said, as a former board member, he’s proud of that fact. But he still emphasized Google’s openness compared to Apple’s controlled system. Schmidt said Google is seeing 700,000 Android activations a day, totaling more than 200 million Android phones in the world. “Just do a little math with the numbers I just told you, and Android is on a billion-unit plan.”

In terms of Google’s core strategy for mobile, Schmidt said Google’s plan is to get everybody using its Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and stressed, “We absolutely allow our partners to change the interface, as long as they don’t change user compatibility.”

Regarding the early success of the Kindle Fire — and how the device skirts the Google Android marketplace — Schmidt said, “Kindle Fire has also done well, but they chose — and they did so legitimately — they chose it not to be compatible with Android guidelines and the Marketplace. So it comes with some limitations; on the other hand, it comes with a very low price point.” He noted that, as with the original Kindle, Amazon seems to be taking a books-first strategy.

Later on in the event, Wood asked Schmidt what he thought the most important part of the tech ecosystem is — services, hardware or software.

Schmidt seemed slightly flustered, answering, “It’s all of them,” before going on to suggest, “I’ll answer another question for you, which is, what was the most surprising thing in 2011?”

That got a big laugh from the audience.

But Schmidt paid no mind. He just forged full steam ahead to say that the increasing focus on the cloud platform model means everyone’s a winner; he also said the “secret” in computing in these platforms is to make them “as open as possible.”

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120110/schmidt-storm-alert-the-google-chairman-didnt-like-your-question/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20120106/the-music-business-welcomes-the-future-a-decade-behind-schedule/ http://allthingsd.com/20120106/the-music-business-welcomes-the-future-a-decade-behind-schedule/#comments Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:36:38 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=160858 It took more than a decade. But the music industry’s sales numbers are finally starting to make sense to the kind of people who are reading this story right now: For the first time ever, the labels’ digital sales have surpassed CDs and vinyl.

But just barely: Digital sales accounted for 50.3 percent of all U.S. music purchases last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

And if you want to caveat that number, that’s easy to do: For starters, the Nielsen number refers to unit sales, not revenue. So the music company’s books might still show that analog sales make more money for them. And recall stunts like Amazon’s Lady Gaga almost-giveaway last spring, when it sold nearly half a million albums at 99 cents a pop.

Still, the big picture finally resembles the one we’ve been hearing about since Napster showed up in 1999, or at least since Apple started selling music via iTunes in 2003: One day, files would beat discs.

The milestone happens to have occurred in the same year that music sales finally ticked up again. You can pick a couple different metrics to illustrate the rise, but they’re all single-digit increases. The important point is they’re not decreases.

That could simply be a one-off, and perhaps the result of lots of people buying Adele songs — Sony’s new star sold more albums than anyone has done since 2004 — or there could be a larger change afoot. Won’t know about that for a while.

But an industry that hasn’t had good news since the Backstreet Boys were big can afford to be patient.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120106/the-music-business-welcomes-the-future-a-decade-behind-schedule/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120103/a-55-million-silver-lining-for-beyond-oblivions-backers/ http://allthingsd.com/20120103/a-55-million-silver-lining-for-beyond-oblivions-backers/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 21:26:36 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=159407 Last week, Beyond Oblivion, an overly ambitious music start-up, shut its doors before it ever opened. But things could have been worse for the New York-based company’s investors, who had pledged $87 million for the venture — they only lost $32 million.

That’s because the remaining $55 million never got spent, according to sources familiar with the company. That funding was contingent on the start-up hitting certain milestones that were never met.

So that’s a bit of good news — or at least coulda-been-worse news — for Beyond Oblivion’s backers. That list includes Allen & Co., the nonprofit Wellcome Trust and News Corp., which owns this site.

Beyond Oblivion’s pitch — a subscription music service that came bundled with hardware — was always a head-scratcher, in large part because an earlier incarnation had already failed, even though it had been backed by Nokia and Universal Music Group.

But then again there still aren’t many people that have really figured out digital music. If you place Pandora and Spotify in the “jury’s still out” category (Pandora has yet to turn a profit, and Spotify is still in its early stages), then the only companies that have really made digital music work have been Apple and Amazon — two giants that don’t depend on digital music at all.

So, my guess is that we’ll continue to see other folks like Beyond Oblivion’s Adam Kidron, who was convinced he’d cracked the code. Here’s an interview I conducted with him back in March, when he was still very much an optimist.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120103/a-55-million-silver-lining-for-beyond-oblivions-backers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111231/the-end-is-here-before-the-beginning-for-beyond-oblivion/ http://allthingsd.com/20111231/the-end-is-here-before-the-beginning-for-beyond-oblivion/#comments Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:27:50 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=158662 Beyond Oblivion, a New York-based music start-up is shutting down before even launching a product, having burned through some $87 million worth of funding, according to a report in the Financial Times (link goes to a story behind a paywall). Backed by investments from News Corp. (which also owns this Web site), it had sought to bundle the service with hardware and charge a flat fee, but had trouble selling recording labels on the idea.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111231/the-end-is-here-before-the-beginning-for-beyond-oblivion/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111228/microsoft-office-on-ipad/ http://allthingsd.com/20111228/microsoft-office-on-ipad/#comments Wed, 28 Dec 2011 23:37:09 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=157859 Q:

Which app do you recommend for using on the iPad 2 for opening Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint?)

A:

If you literally just want to open the documents to read them, you don’t need any apps. The iPad comes with built-in viewers for Microsoft Office files. However, for opening, storing and editing the files, I like two products. One is called Quickoffice Pro HD, which costs $20 and handles all three types of files you cite, and more. The other is the tablet version of Apple’s iWork suite, which is sold as three separate apps for $10 each—Pages for word processing, Numbers for spreadsheets and Keynote for presentations.

This also would be a good place to note that there are reports, unconfirmed by the company, that Microsoft is considering releasing an iPad version of Office itself. I have no evidence this will happen.

Q:

Do any of your recommended Ultrabooks run Office?

A:

All Ultrabooks run Microsoft Office. While Ultrabooks are thin and light, they are full-blown Windows laptops running the latest Intel processors, and in my tests, they ran Office very well, just as well as many heavier, thicker laptops I’ve reviewed.

Q:

My son was told by an Apple phone representative that the iCloud service cannot handle our full iTunes library of 6,000 songs, and it will only sync with your hand-held, wireless devices.

A:

That’s inaccurate. ITunes Match handles 25,000 songs and syncs with Macs, PCs (if they’re running iTunes), the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Walt is on vacation and his Personal Technology column will return Jan. 5. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111228/microsoft-office-on-ipad/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111226/most-tech-stocks-were-naughty-some-nice-and-only-apple-merry-as-year-ends/ http://allthingsd.com/20111226/most-tech-stocks-were-naughty-some-nice-and-only-apple-merry-as-year-ends/#comments Mon, 26 Dec 2011 21:06:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=157036

The stock market is closed today, as part of the Christmas holiday. But it is doubtful — barring any major announcements — that the vastly different performances seen by a range of tech companies will change much.

Which is to say, some companies — such as eBay and Google — did well, although only Apple shares rose significantly enough to cause festive feelings.

As of Friday, Google rose almost 7 percent for the year to date, eBay rose 10.8 percent and Apple was up almost 26 percent.

As for all the others in tech? Lumps of coal for investors of varying size.

Let’s start with the better negative performances: Amazon was down 1.95 percent, Yahoo was down 2.7 percent and Microsoft was down 6.7 percent.

Not exactly anything to wassail about. And Yahoo shares were only down a little, since the recent swirl around its possible sale gave its stock a recent bump, or the performance would have been worse, based on its financial results.

And the oft-troubled AOL? Down 35.3 percent.

The crop of new Internet companies was also not doing so great. The latest, Zynga was down only 1.2 percent, Groupon down 12.5 percent and LinkedIn down 32.3 percent. Pandora truly tanked, with a 42.5 decline in share price. Only Russia’s Yandex bested that, with a 48.6 percent drop.

Enterprise-focused companies also had a lackluster year. While recently public Jive Software was up 9.2 percent, Cisco was down 8.7 percent and Hewlett-Packard was down 38.5 percent. Juniper got truly socked, with a 43.6 percent decline.

The music you are looking for right about now is “(Hey, Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” by B.J.Thomas, which you can enjoy here in this timely video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111226/most-tech-stocks-were-naughty-some-nice-and-only-apple-merry-as-year-ends/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111220/viral-video-this-year-first-round-vcs-channel-rebecca-black-rrrreeaaallly/ http://allthingsd.com/20111220/viral-video-this-year-first-round-vcs-channel-rebecca-black-rrrreeaaallly/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:30:27 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=155267

Oh, dear — Silicon Valley VCs acting like teenage girls.

And there’s not even a hot start-up in sight to chase and scream over.

It must be the holidays and First Round Capital’s annual digital greeting card, which is based on one of the popular viral videos of the year.

In 2008, First Round did its own version of “Dancing Matt.” In 2009, the firm’s CEOs sang as if they were Susan Boyle in “I Dreamed a Dream.” And last year, it was partner Josh Kopelman wearing a body suit to mimic the Old Spice guy.

This year, it spoofs one of the more irksome music videos of 2011 — Rebecca Black’s “Friday.”

I like First Round’s version a lot better.

Along with the rhythm-impaired VCs, you can see a wide range of their start-ups here, such as Xobni, Path and — thank goodness, since they can sing — Birchbox.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111220/viral-video-this-year-first-round-vcs-channel-rebecca-black-rrrreeaaallly/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111220/biggest-youtube-videos-of-the-year-rebecca-black-of-course-and-pitbull/ http://allthingsd.com/20111220/biggest-youtube-videos-of-the-year-rebecca-black-of-course-and-pitbull/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:20:26 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=155380 YouTube is embarking on a big push to make the world’s biggest video site look more like TV: It wants to have fancier productions and programming that encourages you to stick around for hours, not minutes.

Meanwhile, YouTube users seem very happy to do what they have always done on YouTube: Watch weird clips of people and animals behaving oddly.

The site has published its list of 2011’s most popular videos, and they’re basically what you’d expect: Clips of cute dogs, and cute babies, and an annoying 8-bit cat, and a really cute cat. And, of course, Rebecca Black, the poor/maybe rich girl who may or may not be in on the joke. Probably not.

The surprise, if you don’t pay attention to this stuff, is that YouTube’s Top 10 most-popular list of 2011 isn’t really the site’s Top 10 most-popular list. It’s the list of the top 10 videos not put out by big music companies.

Because those clips, which are distributed by Vevo, the Hulu-for-music videos, are way, way, way more popular than anything else on the site.

The most popular music video of the year, for instance, is this Jennifer Lopez clip, featuring Pitbull. It’s at nearly half a billion views, which means it is likely more than 2x Rebecca Black’s clip, the top non-big-music-label clip.

In fact, it turns out that any clip featuring Pitbull does exceptionally well. Here are two more, which collectively have generated close to 400 million views. I’ll let much smarter people, like Maura Johnston, explain why Pitbull is so popular. For our purposes, the key takeaway here is that people really, really, really like watching music videos on YouTube. Even more than they like funny girls and cute cats.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111220/biggest-youtube-videos-of-the-year-rebecca-black-of-course-and-pitbull/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111214/sending-music-to-the-cloud/ http://allthingsd.com/20111214/sending-music-to-the-cloud/#comments Wed, 14 Dec 2011 23:47:47 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=153910 Q:

If I upload my music collection to Apple’s iTunes Match cloud service, is it deleted from my computer? I ask because I wouldn’t want to lose my music if the service was killed or suffered some massive failure.

A:

No. Any songs that currently are stored on your computer’s hard disk remain there, so even if iTunes Match is discontinued, your music is safe. However, you will gain access from the cloud to additional songs that live on other computers or Apple devices you own, but now are also stored in your iTunes Match account.

Q:

I am considering buying the 10″ Toshiba Thrive tablet you reviewed a while back. It comes in three memory configurations. Other than the amount of internal memory, do the three models have the same internal hardware?

A:

Yes. A glance at the Thrive website suggests that all other key components, such as the screen, the processor, the ports, the sensors and the cameras are the same. For more, see http://bit.ly/vvy2rM.

Q:

I just got an iPad 3G with Verizon. I want an all-in-one printer, but it seems I need a Wi-Fi connection to use a printer. Is something available that would work with my Verizon connection?

A:

There are some iPad apps that claim to print over 3G. Just go to the app store, search on “print,” and study the descriptions.

But it doesn’t matter, because every iPad, including those like yours that come with 3G, also includes Wi-Fi, and can print to compatible printers. The Verizon 3G is an added, alternate connection capability—not a replacement for Wi-Fi. Just make sure when you buy your printer that it’s compatible with Apple’s AirPrint technology. More information is at http://bit.ly/r2A5VG.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111214/sending-music-to-the-cloud/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111213/rara-sells-streaming-music-to-everyone-who-hasnt-heard-of-streaming-music/ http://allthingsd.com/20111213/rara-sells-streaming-music-to-everyone-who-hasnt-heard-of-streaming-music/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:00:53 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=152951 You get your legal music on the Web from services like Apple, Amazon, Google, Spotify and Pandora. Also, perhaps, from services like Rhapsody, MOG and Rdio, etc.

Yet here comes one more, via Rara.com. The U.K.-based company launches in 18 countries today, selling a streaming music service to an audience that either hasn’t heard of streaming music services or is baffled by the existing ones.

The basics: Rara is run by Rob Lewis, the founder of Omnifone, which powers music services for the likes of Sony and Research In Motion — as well as Rara. For $5 a month, users get unlimited, ad-free streaming music delivered via the Web; for $10, users get to take their music on the go, via an Android app (an Apple app is coming, Lewis says).

In other words, it’s exactly the same model offered by the likes of Rhapsody, and very similar to the one offered by Spotify. Except Spotify offers a free, ad-supported service as well.

So why bother launching another competitor? Lewis argues that:

• Existing music services are more complicated than they should be.
• Most people don’t use the legal music services that are out there.

True on both counts. Figuring out how to sync music across devices, or how to cache songs on your phone, can be difficult even for people who pay attention to this stuff for a living (cough).

And there are perhaps five million people worldwide paying a monthly fee for music. Which is many more than there were a few years ago, but a tiny number in the grand scheme of music listeners.

And, so … what? Lewis argues that Rara offers an incredibly easy interface, with plenty of preprogrammed stations for people who like music but don’t want to work for it. I haven’t used it myself, so I can’t argue with him on those counts. But I’m not sure about the notion that there are lots of people who would pay for streaming music, but don’t because it’s too complicated. I figure most people don’t pay for streaming music because they’re satisfied with the free options they have.

In any case, we get to find out now. Rara is launching with an assist from Hewlett-Packard, which is embedding links to the service on some of its PCs. It’s also offering a three-month trial for 99 cents a month.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111213/rara-sells-streaming-music-to-everyone-who-hasnt-heard-of-streaming-music/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111212/the-louis-c-k-window/ http://allthingsd.com/20111212/the-louis-c-k-window/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:00:20 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=152751 So, yes. You can go to Louis C.K.’s Web site, give him $5 via PayPal, and download his newest stand-up concert.

I bought it Saturday night, watched it on the plane Sunday, and laughed out loud, a bunch. You should do it, and there’s a good chance you have — techland loved this story this weekend. Also, again: It’s very funny.

But What Does It All Mean? Not a ton. It’s an evolutionary step, relevant to a select group of people who make entertainment. With one interesting twist.

The part that isn’t new here is Louis C.K. using the Web and doing it on his own. We’ve seen a bunch of that over the years, mostly from entertainers who have already become famous (or at least semi-famous) with the help of mainstream media. Prince and Radiohead sold their own music only after they sold lots of songs for big music labels. Adam Carolla leapt/got pushed from TV and radio gigs into podcasting.

The new twist here is the way his experiment changes video “windows” — which determine when shows and movies show up on different outlets. By going direct-to-fan first, C.K. doesn’t shut off his chance to end up working the Big Media Companies he says he doesn’t want to work with. He’s just making them wait. So the people who really love him can get it right away, and he can capture almost all of that value in the transaction.

We’ll call it the Louis C.K. Window.

It can run for a week, or a month, or however long he’d like to be the sole outlet for his show. But then, if he wants to get more money for his product and reach a different audience, C.K. can sell the program to HBO or Showtime or Netflix for a “pay-TV window.” And then, eventually, to the likes of Comedy Central or FX. At some point, he can retail discs and downloads via Amazon and iTunes, etc.

The Louis C.K. Window is the most gratifying, because it’s cool, and because he’ll keep almost every penny his fans spend to see him. But it’s also likely to expose him to the smallest number of people.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that a million people pony up for the concert — basically, that is, everyone who watches his (great) show on News Corp.’s FX channel. (News Corp. owns this site, too.)

That’s a wildly optimistic estimate, and it will still be a fraction of the people that HBO, which has some 28 million subscribers, can reach. You can fault Big Media for a lot of things, but it remains pretty good at rounding up Big Audiences.

But that’s the great thing about the Louis C.K. Window. It lets Louis C.K. — and a relatively small group of people with big ambitions, and ardent fans — have it both ways.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111212/the-louis-c-k-window/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111209/an-apple-gift-for-the-holidays-free-beatles-book-on-itunes/ http://allthingsd.com/20111209/an-apple-gift-for-the-holidays-free-beatles-book-on-itunes/#comments Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:32:03 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=152628 More than a year after the Beatles came to iTunes, Apple’s digital store remains the only place you can legally download the band’s music. And now, if you want some Beatles but don’t want to pay for it, Apple can help you there, too: The company is giving away a free Beatles e-book.

“Yellow Submarine” is just what it sounds like — an illustrated version of the band’s 1968 movie, which is both trippy and kid-friendly (so British!). The book was first published in 2004, but the new version features interactive goodies like song samples and bits from the animated movie.

It’s a bunch of fun and will work on both iPads and iPhones, but you’re really better off enjoying this one on the former.

If you wanted to be churlish, you could note that the free book also serves as a promotion for a compilation album based on songs featured in the book.

Less churlish: Worth noting, yet again, that a year-plus exclusive is unheard of in digital music. Apple says it has sold 10 million songs and 1.8 million albums during that time; still love to know what they paid for that privilege.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111209/an-apple-gift-for-the-holidays-free-beatles-book-on-itunes/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111206/soundtracking-for-android-adds-spotify-rdio-streaming/ http://allthingsd.com/20111206/soundtracking-for-android-adds-spotify-rdio-streaming/#comments Wed, 07 Dec 2011 02:40:57 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=151078 SoundTracking, the mobile music app that wants your song choices and album covers to be shared like postcards with friends, is branching out beyond the iPhone and launching an app that works on Google Android phones.

But this version of SoundTracking isn’t just another Android app launch: it also integrates other, bigger streaming music services in a way that allows users to listen to full streams of songs rather than short snippets.

SoundTracking will incorporate music services Spotify and Rdio into its Android app by showing a small “add” button in the upper corner of the screen that will direct users to listen to full songs on those apps — provided the user is already signed up for Spotify and Rdio. The ability to listen to full song streams is one notable feature; the ability to move seamlessly back into the SoundTracking app by pressing the Android phone’s back button (and not having to relaunch the entire app) is another.

As my colleague Peter Kafka recently reported, industry sources think it’s possible that services like Spotify may eventually let third-party developers tap into Spotify’s music library and make it available to their own users — as long as those users are already paying for Spotify. Otherwise, things could get very sticky with the music labels.

While, technically, SoundTracking users will be navigated to the Rdio and Spotify apps, the ease with which users can listen to the songs within them is one step closer to tapping into an expanded API and music library of another service.

Through its iOS app, SoundTracking currently gets a tiny cut of purchases it prompts in the iTunes store. With the Android app, it also stands to make some (very incremental) revenue from the arrangement — should users sign up for Rdio, which has a referral program by which it pays affiliates 3 percent of the total value of a lifetime customer driven to subscribe from another service. Spotify currently doesn’t offer an affiliate program.

SoundTracking, created by Bay Area-based incubator Schematic Labs, first launched in March 2011, and claims about a million downloads to date. The SoundTracking Android app officially launches Wednesday, and will be available for free in the Android Market.

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