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.

Why not? No mystery at all: The band has decided that it wants to sell albums and tracks, not streams.

Billboard’s Glenn Peoples walks through this one quite effectively. It’s not that Coldplay doesn’t want to promote its new music on the Internet. It’s offering plenty of free samples through outlets like iTunes and YouTube, including a free concert that Google streamed this week.

It’s just that the band thinks that offering unlimited listens via Spotify and other streamers will cut into sales.

Spotify and the other services do pay the music labels and publishers to use their music, and eventually that money is supposed to make its way down to the musicians.

But for the few big acts like Coldplay that can still move millions of albums — their last one, which got a big push from Apple, sold 2.8 million copies — there’s no way that Spotify royalties will ever come close to the money they’ll make selling downloads and CDs (yes, CDs — the music industry still sells more discs than digital copies).

The list of Coldplay-size artists gets smaller and smaller every year, which is one big reason that the music labels finally acquiesced and let Spotify offer free music. Some money > none. But if they believe Spotify-style streaming ends up accelerating the decline of their remaining music sales, you might see more pullbacks down the line.

Meanwhile, speaking of absences: Note that the Beatles still aren’t legally available on any other outlet beyond iTunes.

Under the terms of the agreement, Rhapsody will give the big box electronics retailer a stake in its company in return for its Napster subscribers and certain other assets. Best Buy acquired the digital music company for $121 million in 2008.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of November.

The companies, which are claiming to have the two largest music subscriber bases in the U.S., did not disclose how many they will have together. Rhapsody said it will also use the assets to add to its product line. Separately, Rhapsody has reported that it has surpassed 800,000 subscribers.

In a statement, Jon Irwin, Rhapsody’s president, said, “There’s substantial value in bringing Napster’s subscribers and robust IP portfolio to Rhapsody as we execute on our strategy to expand our business via direct acquisition of members and distribution deals.”

The two companies likely have felt additional pressure as new subscription and ad-supported music services enter the U.S. market, such as Rdio and Spotify.

Over the summer, Spotify finally opened for business in the U.S. and included a free, ad-supported option in its offerings. Now both MOG and Rdio, two other subscription music services, are adding big free components themselves.

Tomorrow MOG is rolling out a Web-based, ad-supported version of the service that gives users an undisclosed amount of free streaming music, which they can keep listening to if they engage with the service in certain ways, like sharing playlists with friends.

And soon Rdio will offering something similar, with two differences: Its free version will be ad-free, and the company won’t prompt users to take certain actions to keep the free going. It will decide, out of the user’s sight, how long to extend the free trial period, with the intent of getting them to upgrade to a $10 monthly subscription.

The timing of the new free services aren’t accidental. They’re both being announced in advance of Facebook’s F8 developer conference next Thursday. That’s when the social network is expected to announce a new music service that will incorporate MOG and Rdio as well as Spotify.

Details about Facebook’s service are still sketchy, but the primary gist is that Facebook won’t be building its own music service. Instead it will work as a hub that allows existing services’ users to share their tunes with their friends.

But it’s very unlikely you’ll be able to listen to a friend’s Spotify song unless you’re a Spotify user yourself. So it’s crucial for the services to make sure that signing up to use them is as easy as possible. And requiring someone to pay to listen to a friend’s song seems like a non-starter.

Hence: Lots of free trials that last for an undefined period.

Rdio CEO Drew Larner won’t comment about Facebook and its upcoming service. But he will talk about the strategy of offering free music, but only for a limited time. “We know free is powerful, it’s a great way to increase your funnel,” he says. “But it’s about not creating a tier for an alternative or replacement for what would be a paying subscriber.”

Ultimately Rdio, MOG and Spotify, along with services like Rhapsody, are all trying to get to the same place. They want customers to pay them a $10 monthly fee for unlimited music that works on both the web and devices like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android.

That’s a model the music industry was never happy about until recently, in large part because free ad-supported services like iMeem, MySpace Music, Qtrax, and Spiralfrog sputtered and/or failed completely.

The other option for music fans who don’t want to pay for music but don’t want to break the law is to play with Web radio services like Pandora and Clear Channel’s new iheartradio.

Those services let you listen to unlimited music, for free, but don’t give you on-demand access. Instead, you need to let them program your music for you in some capacity.

Somewhere in between the two sits Turntable.fm, which is also free, but gives users more control of their music — for now, at least, while the company tries to hammer out label deals. The service is also expected to play a role in the F8 announcement next week.

To spell that out: Muve won’t work with your iPhone or iPod. And there’s no Web version, either.

No thanks, right? Not exactly: Cricket parent company Leap Wireless says that so far this year it has signed up 200,000 subscribers for its $55 a month plan, which includes unlimited voice, data, etc.

Those numbers make Muve either the second- or third-biggest music subscription service in the country: Rhapsody, which has been at this for years, says it has about 800,000 subscribers. And a month ago, Spotify had racked up 175,000 subs after just a few weeks in the U.S.

So Muve is doing something right, for someone. How are they doing it? Hard to tell from a distance, but the big take-aways seem to be:

Not everyone needs the full experience: Again, it’s worth noting that, until today, Cricket — which often targets less affluent customers — hasn’t offered the service for smartphones at all (it’s also now available for Android handsets for $65 a month). That means just about everyone who reads this story would turn their nose up at the offering from the get-go. But folks who read sites like this one tend to forget that there are lots and lots of people who don’t have cutting-edge tech, and lots of them don’t have smartphones. So for them, a feature phone with all-you-can-eat music is a big step up from their previous options, which were zilch.

Bundles really can work, and confusion isn’t a terrible thing: I spent the morning trying to compare and contrast Cricket’s $55-a-month Muve offer with its regular $55 a month offer. The big difference is that one works on smartphones and the other doesn’t, but you have to work at it to figure that out. I bet that many of Cricket’s customers don’t actually know what they’re getting. But if they’re happy, they’re happy.

A couple of tweaks to my earlier report: Most important is that BBM Music subscribers can “share” songs with friends who also use the service. Which means that your pool of available songs could expand well beyond the 50 associated with your account.

Other details: You can only change up to 25 of the songs in your collection each month. And while music sources I talked to thought an international rollout wouldn’t kick in until next year, Research In Motion says it will be available in many territories later this year. For now, the beta is limited to the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

The big picture is the same: On a price-per-song basis, BBM Music isn’t nearly as good as the $10 for unlimited music services offered by MOG, Rhapsody, Spotify, etc. Nor will it give you access to all the songs you already own, a la new cloud services from Amazon, Google and Apple. But RIM will be marketing this as a service that’s about sharing and “personalization,” not access to a music library.

That’s the basic pitch behind BBM Music, the new subscription service Research In Motion plans to roll out soon.

As previously reported, the BlackBerry maker is in late-stage talks with the big music labels; music industry sources believe RIM is aiming for a beta launch in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom in early September. A RIM rep declined to comment.

Some other details:

• A full-fledged rollout is planned for the first three territories later this fall.
• RIM is negotiating global licenses with the music companies, and expects to launch in other territories in 2012; the big idea is to piggyback on the success of RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger service, which has more than 45 million users worldwide.
• Subscribers won’t be able to export their music to PCs or other hardware, with the exception of RIM’s much-maligned PlayBook tablet.
• Subscribers will be able to share songs with friends who are also BBM Music subscribers.

So why would anyone pay $5 a month to get 50 songs on their phone, when they can pay $10 a month and get an unlimited number of songs, that work on lots of different devices, from services like Rdio and Rhapsody?

Reasonable question! But RIM seems to be assuming that its subscribers won’t ask. Instead, it is playing up the notion that BBM Music will be about “personalizing” your phone, in the same way that ringtones supposedly did a decade ago.

Ringtones, as you’ll recall, let buyers play a few seconds of a song, and sold for a couple bucks, while full songs from Apple’s iTunes went for 99 cents. And for a few years, the music companies and the wireless carriers sold lots and lots of ringtones. (Crazy Frog!)

As I wrote yesterday, I don’t think a mini-subscription service is a terrible idea. Yes, standard subscription services offer much more bang for the buck, but they have yet to take the world by storm. And while people say they want unlimited music, they generally end up listening to a very small number of songs, over and over.

And if RIM can integrate billing through the carriers — so its users can sign up directly on their phones without having to take out a credit card — even better. This won’t save the company, but I don’t see how it hurts it.

Today there’s a lot of hope that Spotify’s buzz/marketing will help make subscriptions mainstream. But if these things are ever really going to work, subscription services are probably going to need help, by attaching themselves to services that consumers are already using/paying for.

That’s what Rhapsody is trying today, by bundling itself along with wireless carrier MetroPCS via a $60 package that gives you all-you-can eat data and music. As Billboard notes, Rhapsody also has deals with Verizon and AT&T, but this is a deep integration that puts the service offering front and center for MetroPCS’s 9 million customers.

That said, I’m still not sure how compelling the offer will be, since it doesn’t appear to offer any discount to Rhapsody’s standalone $10 a month service: Beyond the music service, the differences between a $50 a month MetroPCS plan and a $60 a month MetroPCS plan seem to be limited at best.

And if you pay for Rhapsody on your own, you won’t be limited to Android phones, as you are with the MetroPCS deal.

[UPDATE: Rhapsody takes issue with my assertion that the MetroPCS bundle doesn't amount to a discount on Rhapsody's $10 a month a la carte price. I spent some time going back and forth with a Rhapsody PR executive over the issue this afternoon, and in the end, we're going to end up agreeing to disagree.

They point out that MetroPCS 4G users who pay $60 for a bundle that includes Rhapsody also get goodies like unlimited multimedia streaming, while $50 4G users who don't get Rhapsody are capped at 1 gig per month. The distinctions between the $50 and $60 3G plans are slighter, as I noted above. Again, you can try to decipher it for yourself via MetroPCS' pricing grid. But in the end, as I argue below, I don't think the bundle represents a serious discount, and certainly not one that will register with most consumers.]

[UPDATE TWO: As CNET points out, Warner Music Group, one of the four major music labels, has not signed on for this version of Rhapsody, which means any notion of a discount is officially silly, since MetroPCS bundle-buyers will be getting a service with major holes.]

If you really want to move the needle, I think that carriers or cable companies or someone will have to be willing to absorb some of the costs and offer subscription music at a substantial discount to the now-standard $10 a month price point. Any takers?

Short version: A few prominent players have accepted Apple’s terms and will be giving Steve Jobs a big chunk of their subscription revenue.

Many more are sticking around the App Store, but removing any kind of e-commerce link from their apps. This makes their apps less useful, but at least it doesn’t cost them any money.

And a third group is trying an end run by building their own Web apps that will work on Apple devices without requiring the company’s approval.

Some examples from each category:

Play along, eat the tax: Some big print publishers, including the New York Times, Condé Nast and Hearst, are working with the new rules.

That means that they’ll hand over 30 percent of the subscription revenue they generate via iOS apps every month, and that they won’t have access to as much consumer data as they’d get if they sold the subscriptions on their own. But they’ll put up with it in order to reach the 225 million iTunes accounts Apple controls.

(Variation on the theme — play along, pass the tax along to consumers: Music subscription service Rdio is accepting Apple’s tax as well. But to protect its margins it is raising the price for subscriptions sold through iOS devices, from $10 to $15. After Apple gets its 30 percent cut, Rdio will end up with the same $10 it would have had before the new rules.)

Stay in iTunes, but grudgingly: This is the “better than nothing” approach. Services like Netflix, Hulu, Rhapsody, Spotify, and publishers like Time Inc. and The Wall Street Journal (which, like this Web site, is owned by News Corp) are keeping their apps in iTunes. But rather than hand over cash and lose access to customer data, they won’t sell any subscriptions through their iTunes apps.

And at Apple’s insistence, they are stripping out any links that send customers to the companies’ home Web sites. This even applies to services that aren’t selling subscriptions at all, but are offering access to content as part of other subscription services. See, for example, ESPN’s WatchESPN app, which tells users that they have to visit an ESPN Web site to sign up for the service, which is free for certain cable company customers. But the app doesn’t offer a live link to the site, just an address.

End run: The Financial Times was the first big media company to build a Web site that mimics an app but works on Apple’s Safari browser, as a way of working around Apple’s restrictions while reaching Apple’s customers. Now Amazon has followed suit, as has Wal-Mart’s Vudu video service.

Note that both the FT and Amazon continue to keep their old apps in iTunes; they’ve just neutered them. You can still read Kindle titles you bought on Amazon’s iOS app, for instance — you just can’t press a button that will take you directly to Amazon’s Web site to buy a new one.

So what does all of that tell us about the App Store ecosystem and how developers will fare in and out of it?

Not much. It’s pretty early. We might have a better idea in a few months when some publicly traded companies like the Times may end up talking about their Apple relationship during earnings calls. (Admittedly, that’s a stretch of a hope: Apple has a way of getting most of its partners to STFU.)

That said, here’s a not-very-out-on-a-limb prediction: Companies who already have lots of customers and are already in frequent communication with them, like Amazon, should do fine outside of the store.

And companies that have lots of potential customers but little traction, like Vudu, will likely struggle. Particularly since that company sells the same thing — video-on-demand rentals and sales — that Apple already sells through iTunes.

Wal-Mart sold MP3s from its Web site?

Exactly. For the record: The company wasn’t always a complete non-factor in digital music. For a couple years it was a very, very, very, very minor factor.

NPD estimated Wal-Mart’s share of the U.S. digital music market at 1.8 percent at the beginning of 2008. But by the end of last year that number had dropped below one percent, placing it behind Amazon, Zune, Rhapsody and Napster.

And, of course, Apple, which has consistently owned the overwhelming share of the digital music market since the iTunes store launched back in 2003.

It would be easy enough to document Wal-Mart’s missteps — embracing Microsoft’s now-defunct Windows Media Audio standard, for instance — but the truth is that no one has ever made any headway against Apple in this market, ever. Amazon is by the far the best non-Apple performer, and even it hasn’t been able to garner more much than 10 percent of the market.

So cut the world’s biggest physical retailer just a teeny tiny bit of slack.

At least as important: Spotify now has 175,000 paying U.S. subscribers, less than a month after it finally opened its doors in America, says the same source. Last week Billboard cited a source who pegged Spotify’s U.S. user total at “at least one million.”

That’s a conversion rate — crucial to both Spotify’s business plans and to the big music labels — of 12.5 percent. Not quite as good as the 15 percent rate that Spotify reported in its home base of Europe last spring.

On the other hand, Amercian users have less incentive to pay for Spotify than Europeans do — during the company’s six-month launch phase, the U.S. version of the free service gives users more music than the European one does. The main reason to upgrade to paid is to get access on iPhones and Android handsets, for $10 a month.

In any case, it’s still hard to gauge what the numbers mean — it’s very early, and there has been a lot of hype.

Still, for context: Spotify reports that it has 1.6 million paid subscribers in Europe. And last month Rhapsody, the biggest digital music subscription service in the U.S., said it had 800,000 paid subscribers. (Sirius XM has 21 million subscribers, but the satellite radio service isn’t an apples-to-apples analog with Spotify et al; closer to a pear.)

Meanwhile, Rdio, a U.S.-based Spotify competitor hoping to capitalize on Spotify’s wave of publicity — or at least not get drowned by it — has made an interesting move: It is going to continue marketing its service via Apple’s iTunes, while raising its prices — for customers who sign up via its mobile apps — from $10 to $15 a month in order to comply with Apple’s new subscription rules and fees.

Most other subscription services — including Spotify and Rhapsody — have gone the other route, by taking down subscription links from their Apple apps, but keeping their pricing intact.

For some of you. The streaming music service, which has been trying to get to the U.S. for a couple long, grinding years, has finally done it.

All four big music labels are on board, including holdout Warner Music Group, and the service will officially open its doors tomorrow.

For now it’s invitation only, but it will open up over the coming weeks and months.

The basics: As in Europe, Spotify offers a couple different tiers of service. There’s a free, ad-supported service that lets you listen to whatever you want, as long as you’re on a computer that’s connected to the Web, and as long you don’t exceed a monthly time limit. For now, that’s 20 hours a month.

Spotify’s real goal is to get you to upgrade to its $10-a-month plan, which gives you unlimited, ad-free music, which you can also take with you via iPhone and Android apps. There’s also a $5-a-month middle step, which gives you ad-free music that’s not portable, but the Spotify guys don’t really expect much take-up there.

So go check it out, if you can.

And if you can’t, you’ve still got plenty of options. As I’ve noted many times before, Americans already have access to lots of subscription music services, like MOG, Rhapsody and Rdio. The big difference between those options and Spotify is they only offer a few days of free music before requiring you to pay up.

And of course, if you don’t want to pay at all, there’s plenty of other options, from legal services like Pandora, to grey-area services like Grooveshark and Turntable.fm, and the full-fledged piracy options which are easy enough for all of you to figure out on your own.

Related posts

• Here’s How Spotify Plans to Invade the U.S., With Facebook’s Help
• Spotify, Gearing Up for U.S. Launch, Closes Its $1 Billion Round
• When Will Spotify Finally Come to the U.S.?
• Spotify Toots Its Own Horn: One Million Paying Subscribers
• D: Dive Into Mobile: The Full Interview Video of Spotify’s Daniel Ek
• Spotify CEO Daniel Ek Live at D: Dive Into Mobile
• Spotify Full Coverage

My informed guess: Next week. Because that’s what Spotify reps have been telling U.S. label executives.

Or maybe later! Spotify is Spotify, so anyone who has paid any attention to this story will be reflexively skeptical that Spotify will show up in the U.S. until Spotify shows up in the U.S. Meanwhile, Spotify PR reps decline to comment.

While the service has agreements in place with three of the four big music labels, it still doesn’t have a signed deal with Warner Music Group, which normally would be a warning flag for this kind of guesstimating. But people I’ve talked to who are familiar with negotiations believe the two companies are close enough that a deal will be inked before the launch.

Meanwhile, if you’re in the U.S. and want to get a sense of what Spotify will look like, go check out Rdio or MOG or Rhapsody or Napster (for now — that last one may not make it much longer). Each one offers a similar service, where $10 a month gets you unlimited, ad-free, on-demand music on your PC or iPhone or Android handset.

The big difference between Spotify and its competitors is that in the past, Spotify has also offered unlimited free music, with ads, on your PC. But over time Spotify has cut back the amount of free music it offers, and now only gives away 10 hours a month in Europe.

It’s possible that some of those terms will change with the U.S. launch, but I’d expect them to stay quite similar. I also wouldn’t expect a grand PR push when Spotify does open up. Then again, they’re going to get plenty of (even more) free press on launch day.

Later this summer the Web site will begin selling access to two new premium Web radio services, which will let listeners enjoy digital radio via their iPhones — and later via iPads and Google’s Android handsets.

The offering is part of a larger move where AOL will use digital music start-up Slacker to power its free radio service, replacing longtime partner CBS.

AOL’s subscription service will also be based off Slacker. Slacker sells a “Radio Plus” offering for $4 a month and a “Premium Radio” for $10 a month, and AOL’s services should be priced similarly. Unlike the free radio service, both paid versions offer ad-free music and more interactivity than the free version, which is like Pandora except that it uses humans instead of algorithms to program music.

AOL Music chief Jeff Bronikowski says AOL’s existing radio service already draws around three million unique visitors a month, who listen to about 30 million hours of music.

AOL used to have a monthly subscription service, but sold it off in 2007 to Napster. Why try selling music again?

“Users have actually asked us for a subscription offering for a while,” Bronikowski says.

The trick will be distinguishing AOL’s offering from the competition, which is growing all the time: In addition to Pandora’s radio service, which also offers a premium version, there are on-demand subscriptions from the likes of Rhapsody, Rdio and MOG; U.K.-based Spotify should also be in the U.S. by the time AOL is selling subscriptions again.

AOL ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH SLACKER INC. TO DELIVER
ENHANCED ONLINE RADIO LISTENING EXPERIENCE

Slacker Inc. to Become AOL Music Network’s Exclusive Radio Partner

New York, NY – June 28, 2011 – The AOL Huffington Post Media Group’s AOL Music is re-launching AOL Radio in partnership with Slacker Inc., it was announced today. AOL Radio will offer an enhanced radio experience with fewer ads, new personalization features and premium subscription offerings. The new service will deliver three product tiers to users: free AOL Radio with personalization and customization by Slacker, ad-free and feature-rich Slacker Radio Plus and on-demand access with Slacker Premium Radio.

AOL’s partnership with Slacker Inc. will provide access to ad-free radio and enable users to create tailored radio stations, save favorite songs and stations, read album reviews, access artist biographies, review station histories, and skip up to six songs per hour, per station. The partnership will enable Slacker to deliver its new radio offerings to a larger audience, allow AOL Radio and Slacker to develop new advertising opportunities for mutual clients and integrate AOL Music’s original editorial voice across all its services.

“Slacker Radio is the perfect partner to significantly increase the quality of our offerings,” said Lisa Namerow, Head of AOL Radio. “By combining AOL Radio’s reach with the success of Slacker in mobile, we are increasing the distribution of our brands and further identifying AOL Radio as a leader in delivering superior radio experiences.”

“Both companies bring unique content and functionality to this new partnership,” said Jim Cady, CEO of Slacker. “Aligning our strengths will enable us to expand our reach to greater opportunities across multiple platforms. We are thrilled to work with AOL Radio to continue to improve how music lovers experience radio.”

Upon the launch of the new AOL Radio player, Slacker will lead advertising sales within the player, enabling AOL to package a portion of the inventory for premium AOL Music integrated sponsorships.

The new AOL Radio and its award winning iPhone App, which has been downloaded more than 3 million times*, will re-launch in late summer. Android and other platform launches will follow shortly thereafter. The new player will also continue to host AOL’s 250 expert-programmed original music stations, as well as additional new Slacker programming including stations and content from ESPN Radio and ABC News Radio, which will include additional offerings and stations for subscribers.

*According to Apple’s App Store (via iTunes Connect)

Here’s the old version of the Hulu Plus subscription app for the iPad:

And here’s the new version, built to comply with Apple edicts that kick in at the end of the month:

Easy, right? All Hulu had to do was strip out the link that sent potential subscribers to its Web site, because Apple’s new rule will ban “apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the app.”

That means that the app can no longer function as an effective advertising tool for the video service, which is a bummer for Hulu (which is owned by Comcast’s NBC, Disney’s ABC and News Corp.’s Fox; News Corp. also owns this Web site). It’d be quite useful to offer a smattering of free content on the app, then encourage users who want more stuff to click through to Hulu.com to pony up $8 a month.

But that’s much better than the previous choice Apple offered app developers that wanted to sell access to content: Use Apple’s in-house purchase system — and give Apple 30 percent of all sales that flow from that — or don’t do it at all.

Lots of developers have no problem using Apple’s system, which gives them access to a customer base of 225 million people. But others won’t want to give up that much revenue.

So now we’ll see how other content companies that currently use external links in their apps decide to play it over the next couple weeks.

My hunch is that digital video and music companies like Netflix and Rhapsody will follow Hulu’s lead and drop their “buy” buttons. The New York Times has already said it would work with Apple’s rules, but that was back when it announced its paywall/subscription plan in March, when it had a different set of options. I asked Times officials about their plans 10 days ago, and they declined to comment.

Also not commenting: The Wall Street Journal — which again, like this Web site, is owned by News Corp. The Journal hasn’t said a peep about its Apple subscription plans, which seems a bit odd, given that News Corp. and Apple rolled out the first iteration of Apple’s subscription offering, via The Daily, back in February.

Rival business daily the Financial Times, meanwhile, has quite clearly signaled what it plans to do: It has built an HTML5 Web app so it can control every part of the subscription process itself.

Then there’s Amazon, which seems to be one of the clear targets of Apple’s revised rules – note that they specifically rule out the use of a “buy” button that goes to a Web site to purchase a digital book. Hard to believe that Amazon will get rid of its Kindle iOS apps altogether, since they’re a key feature of the Kindle ecosystem. But dropping the app’s “buy” button will be a real drag for the bookseller, too.

And by the end of Thursday, following a 24 percent stock drop, Pandora was worth $2.1 billion.

What happened?

Anyone who can tell you, with a straight face, why Pandora investors bid the stock up one day and crushed it the next is full of it.

But just to be clear: Other than showing up at the New York Stock Exchange to ring the bell and give some interviews, Pandora executives didn’t do a thing to make the company more or less valuable in the last two days. And nothing outside the company affected its intrinsic value, either.

So unless you’re day-trading, Pandora’s temporary gyrations shouldn’t be that interesting. More interesting: What do the company’s next couple years look like? And crucially, what happens in 2015, when the company’s music licenses get reset?

Here’s Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy’s take, via an edited Q&A I conducted with him in the IPO aftermath:

Peter Kafka: Pandora only offers Web radio, which has been great for you because it means you haven’t had to strike individual licensing deals with music labels. But it also limits the service you can offer. Do you think you’ll end up working with the music industry to expand your offerings?

Joe Kennedy: Our focus is on radio. The research indicates that 80 percent of the average American’s music consumption is in radio form. Only 20 percent is CDs, or iTunes, iPod or whatever. We’ve dedicated ourselves to that 80 percent of the market, radio-like listening, serendipitous listening. It leverages 11-plus years of intellectual property, and that really is our focus as a company.

We’re more than happy to leave the 20 percent to Sony Walkmen, iPods, iTunes, iCloud, Rhapsody, MOG, Spotify, you name it.

But a lot of people seem to think of you in the same category as all of those other services, anyway. Is that a good thing?

Consumers do this 80 percent/20 percent thing without thinking about it. I don’t think they’ve ever thought about it consciously.

As far as general commentary about digital music, I think there is a lack of discrimination: “Oh, it’s digital music. Oh, it’s streaming.” By implication, it all meets the same consumer need. I think that will go through increased refinement and precision over time.

But some services are going to end up mashing up different kinds of features, anyway. Google was reportedly trying to offer a cloud locker, and a store, and a Web radio service like yours. You sure you want to stay streaming radio only?

Yes. We’d rather be best in the world at one thing that’s a great big piece of the market than be less-than-best in the world at several things.

The licensing deal you have goes away in 2015, and lots of people think that when that happens, the music industry will insist on extracting every bit of revenue they can from you. You’ll be worth $3 billion and they’ll want to grab $2.9 billion of it for themselves. How do you plan for that?

We operate under Federal statutory licenses. The license mandates arbitration proceedings every five years, and it’s Federally administered. It’s not a negotiated process. We believe that that process will yield an economically reasonable outcome.

So let me translate: What you’re staying is that this isn’t like iTunes, or Spotify, where a label could say, “I don’t want to participate.”

It’s fundamentally different.

And you’re saying that at some point, you’ll have a deal, brokered by a neutral party, and that if it’s at least not fair, it will be equally disappointing for both sides. And that you guys can live with that.

The law proscribes that judges determine the rates at which a willing buyer and a willing seller would meet in a marketplace transaction. No party has the ability to say, “I’m not in.” It is an economic analysis.

You usage is up dramatically, driven in large part by mobile use via Android and the iPhone. But mobile revenue isn’t that big for you. How do you change that?

We generate considerable revenue from mobile. I believe we’re one of the biggest mobile advertising sites in the country. Today, mobile advertising is more nascent than desktop advertising, which took 10 to 15 years to develop, but mobile is growing far faster. Key pieces of the puzzle, like third-party measurement, are just coming in. We’ll benefit tremendously from that.

Radio advertising is local, and you guys are predominantly selling national spots. Are you going to have to ramp up to sell locally?

That’s part of the advertising opportunity. But the vast majority of the biggest national online brands spending money on the interactive market — the vast majority of them already spend money on Pandora. We have the opportunity to take that spending and expand it to mobile. So we don’t see our opportunity limited to one bucket or another. We’re fully legitimately an online player, fully legitimately a mobile player, and fully legitimately a radio player.

Cars are a big part of the bull story for you guys — that at some point you’re going to be competing directly with radio on most people’s dashboards. When does that become a big deal for you?

We’ve had announcements from six of the world’s major automakers — Ford, Toyota, GM, Mercedes, BMW and Hyundai — and they’ve all said “we’re going to integrate Pandora into our vehicles going forward.” Now, the nature of automotive is, it isn’t a flip-the-switch phenomena. It rolls out over several models, over time. And then you have a replacement cycle that’s about 7 years per car. So I think of automotive as a snowball, that starts out relatively small, but builds and builds and builds and builds. You get out to years five to ten, and it’s tremendously big.

So five to 10 years?

The way I’d phrase it is that it starts out relatively small, and snowballs.

And over the next five years, we have the explosion of smartphones. They’re selling at a 15 million per quarter pace in the U.S. alone, 15 million android and iPhones. A good year in the car business in 15 million.

Now, apps can offer access to content purchased outside of Apple’s walls, as long as the app doesn’t have a “buy” button that connects consumers directly to an external store. That is: Apple won’t make it easy for users to buy in-app content without going through Apple’s store, but it won’t outlaw it, either.

The changes to Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines, published today and first noted by MacRumor’s Jordan Golson, don’t address Apple’s control of credit card information.

Which means that some print publishers, including the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, may still not be willing to adopt Apple’s subscription rules, which kick in at the end of the month. (The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp., as is this Web site). But if those publishers are willing to forgo selling subscriptions through Apple, which just announced it has billing relationships with 225 million customers, it shouldn’t be a problem.

And for many other content companies, including Netflix and music services like Rhapsody, the bigger issue has always been the 30 percent revenue cut that Apple was going to extract every month for all in-app subscriptions.

Many of them appeared ready to accept Apple’s rules anyway, and simply try to persuade most customers to sign up outside of Apple’s walls, so they could keep 100 percent of their revenue. Now, as long as they’re willing to give up access to Apple’s marketing might, they don’t have to worry about it.

And as PaidContent notes, Apple also appears to be offering developers another option — raise prices on content they sell through iTunes so that Apple’s 30 percent cut doesn’t eat into their revenue.

Apple previously required developers who sold content within its apps to do so “at the same price or less than it is offered outside the app” — that is, the Apple price couldn’t be higher than anywhere else. Now that language has disappeared from Apple’s rules.

But Apple’s rules still appear to pose a problem for book sellers like Amazon. You can’t purchase books directly from Amazon’s Kindle app, but the software does have a “Kindle Store” button that takes buyers to Amazon’s Web store. But Apple’s new rules look designed to ban exactly that sort of thing.

Here is the language governing subscriptions that Apple introduced back in February:

11.13 Apps can read or play approved content (magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video) that is sold outside of the app, for which Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues, provided that the same content is also offered in the app using IAP at the same price or less than it is offered outside the app. This applies to both purchased content and subscriptions.

And here are the new rules:

11.13 Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the app, such as a “buy” button that goes to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected.
11.14 Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app, as long as there is no button or external link in the app to purchase the approved content. Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues for approved content that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app.

It will be interesting to see now if some companies that had said they’d start selling subscriptions via iTunes change course. Conde Nast and Hearst have recently begun selling monthly and yearly subscriptions to some of their magazines via iTunes.

And the New York Times has made a point of saying it would “comply” with Apple’s rules once they kicked in, but so far the publisher has only been selling digital subscriptions from its Web site.

It will also be interesting to see what happens to app companies that don’t adopt Apple’s rules but continue to offer their stuff through iTunes anyway: Will Apple forcibly remove them from the store, and/or disable their apps? Or will the company take less drastic measures, like refusing to approve new updates to their apps? We may see within a few weeks.

For years, the legal digital music world has seemed relatively simple to grasp. There were two basic models: the online stores, where you buy singles or albums and store them on individual computers or devices; and the subscription services, where you pay a monthly fee or listen to ads for access to an online trove of songs.

Of the two approaches, the download-and-own model has been the clear victor so far, and its prime exemplar, Apple’s iTunes, has risen to become the biggest merchant of music. Now, a new hybrid approach is emerging, one where you own your music, but also can access it all from the cloud and stream it to many different devices via a Web browser or mobile app. This approach is typically called the “music locker.” It is being developed because each of the two existing models has drawbacks.

The iTunes buy-to-own method, which is also offered by Amazon and others, makes sharing or accessing your whole music collection among multiple devices difficult, because songs are stored on each individual device, rather than in the cloud.

Meanwhile, the access-oriented services, like Rhapsody, Pandora, Slacker and many others, have been held back by a confusing array of pricing schemes and rules, often imposed by the record labels. They can cost $10 or $15 a month, and require Internet access for use of all their capabilities. In some cases, they let you store songs locally for offline use, but the songs become unplayable if you stop paying the monthly fees. Some place limits on things like how many hours of music you can hear a month, how many songs by a given artist can be played in a given time period, or how often a user can skip songs in a playlist or an online radio “station.”

Google’s Music Beta on Android

Amazon’s Cloud Player on the Web

Recently, two online giants, Amazon and Google, have launched rudimentary music lockers, which allow you to store songs you own online and listen to them on a variety of devices, at no cost or for relatively low fees, and with few if any limits. Apple, meanwhile, is reported to be working on an even more sophisticated version.

Amazon’s music locker is called the Cloud Player, and Google’s is called the Music Beta, both of which I’ve been testing. Amazon’s is available now, but Google is currently only allowing users to sign up for invitations, which it then will parcel out.

I call these two new services rudimentary because they have a major pain point: Before you can use them, you must upload all your songs to the cloud service. Depending on your Internet connection (which is often much slower for uploading than downloading) and the size of your collection, this can take days.

By contrast, the Holy Grail of music lockers is one where no uploading is required. It’s sometimes called “scan and match.” Under this approach, the music service would first buy from the labels the rights to stream a huge catalog of music, and, with your permission, scan your computer to see which of those songs are present. Then, it would simply assign you the rights to stream those songs you already have via multiple devices of your choice, and even preserve your playlists of those songs.

This is believed to be the system Google was trying to launch until it couldn’t negotiate the rights with the labels on terms the parties would accept. Apple is thought to be trying to launch just such a scan-and-match system, though the company hasn’t said so. Such an approach offers benefits beyond just the avoidance of painful uploading. With the proper rights, users could share music with others, or sample new music. There could be a variety of pricing and advertising models. But the music labels have been unwilling to allow this system in the past, partly because they know that much of the music people possess might have been stolen, or at the very least copied from legally purchased CDs, and thus hard to verify as having been bought.

I’ve been testing the Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music Beta, and found that both work as advertised. While the two services do have some differences, they are basically similar. Each works either through a Web browser or an app for Android devices. Amazon says it is working on compatibility with Apple’s mobile devices, but Google says it has nothing to announce on that front. (You can use both through the Web browser on an iPad or iPhone, but they worked poorly on those devices in my tests.)

Amazon’s service is priced by the amount of storage you use. You get 5 gigabytes free, enough for over 1,000 songs, depending on the quality, length, and thus the size of your song files. If you buy an album from Amazon’s digital music store, you get bumped up to 20 GB free of charge for a year. Other plans are available, ranging from $20 a year for 20 GB to $100 a year for 100 GB. Google lets you store up to 20,000 songs for the beta version, and says it will be free for “a limited time.”

I uploaded the same 1,400 or so songs to each service, and was able to play them back just fine on the major Web browsers on multiple Windows and Mac computers, and on an Android phone and tablet. Each imports music using a small computer program you download. In my case, with a limited test collection and an unusually fast Internet connection, the upload process took several hours.

Google has a few nice features—it has a clever instant playlist creator, and, when uploading, it tries to prioritize your most played songs. But, overall, I preferred the Amazon player, mainly because it gives you much more control over exactly what you want to upload or download, down to the individual song. Google will upload only large collections, such as your iTunes library or main music folder. If you want to upload only certain songs, you have to create a folder containing only those songs. If you want to download only certain songs on your Android device, you must first make a playlist of those songs.

Also, the Amazon service found all my iTunes playlists, but the Google service omitted some. In addition, Amazon sells digital music and can deliver it right to your Cloud Player. Google doesn’t sell music. Neither service will upload or play back copy-protected music.

These new music lockers provide a new option for digital music lovers, and if the tech and music industries can ever agree, even better options could be ahead.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110518/for-a-song-online-giants-offer-music-in-a-cloud/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110321/join-the-club-mog-wants-more-money-for-digital-music-too/ http://allthingsd.com/20110321/join-the-club-mog-wants-more-money-for-digital-music-too/#comments Mon, 21 Mar 2011 19:14:14 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=30986 Digital music service MOG, which raised $10 million a year ago and $15 million altogether, wants more. It’s out trying to put together a funding round of $25 million to $30 million.

Nothing new there: Everyone is raising money–lots of money–for digital music services. Again. Even though the industry’s track record for the last decade has ranged from uninspired to lousy.

Still: Pandora is trying to raise $100 million or more via IPO, and Spotify is getting another $100 million or more from DST, Kleiner Perkins and others. Then there’s Rdio, and Beyond Oblivion, and SoundCloud, etc.

The big rap on subscription streaming services like MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody and Spotify is two-fold: Royalty fees from the music owners are too high, and consumer demand is too low–if people do want to spend money on digital music, they do it on a track-by-track basis at Apple’s iTunes store, not by signing up for a $10-a-month commitment.

But MOG founder David Hyman, like many of his peers, says that things have finally changed: He says he has worked out label deals that let him make money, and that new technology–he’s particularly excited about getting streaming Web music into cars–makes subscriptions appealing to mainstream consumers.

“Music is all about portability, and it was never going to take off until smartphones and 3G,” he said. “[Without that] it was like having a book, and being told you couldn’t read it outside of a library.”

Investors who’ve seen MOG’s pitch tell me the company is projecting $14 million in revenue for next year, which seems like a very, very long stretch: Industry scuttlebutt places MOG’s total subscriber base in the 20,000 range, which is where Thumbplay was before it gave up and sold to Clear Channel earlier this year.

Hyman won’t comment on the $14 million projection or subscriber numbers, but he does point out that MOG has a second business, selling advertising for a network of music blogs. He says he’s working with 1,500 properties, which collectively attract 39 million uniques a month.

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