Music streaming is finally bigger than downloads We've just hit a massive milestone in the evolution of the music industry:
a record label is reporting higher revenues from music streaming than paid downloads. Warner Music group has announced that its streaming revenues have passed those from digital downloads.
CEO Stephen Cooper said"the rate of this growth has made it abundantly clear that in years to come,
and songwriters receive appropriate value for their work.""Paid downloads have long been the primary way listeners consume music, with downloads overtaking physical sales in the US (by volume) back in 2012.
But downloads have gone into decline as faster internet connections have allowed the rise of streaming services, often offering users free access to libraries of millions of tracks,
financially supported by ads. This shift toward free music has left a sour taste in some artists'mouths,
who feel the ad-supported model doesn't properly value their work. Singer Taylor swift had a public spat with Spotify, one of the largest streaming services
arguing that"there should be an inherent value placed on art "and that she"didn't see that happening, perception-wise,"on the platform.
"and offers high-quality music to users who pay for the most expensive tier. This shift also underscores why Apple's expected launch of its own streaming service is important to the company.
Through itunes, Apple has dominated long the digital music business. But as digital downloads decline it risks losing its industry-leading position to challengers like Spotify, Tidal, and others.
Though Apple is yet to make an official announcement, it is expected later this year to relaunch the Beats Music streaming service it acquired.
along with a number of other BBC employees. A source with knowledge of the matter also told us Apple was trying to persuade musicians to put together curated streams
or more than three for every person on the planet, will be connected to the internet by the end of 2020.
and Israel that Tehran successfully reverse-engineered before turning it into their own cyber weapon to destroy the servers of Saudi arabia's national oil and natural gas company.
outlined to Business Insider four major ways that advancements in internet technology could threaten national security.
"Cyber warfare doesn't require a significant number of troops or a superior set of bombs,
"Iran is building its cyber warfare capabilities faster than experts"would have imagined ever.""Attacks by Iranian hackers have targeted the military, oil and gas, energy and utilities, transportation, airlines, airports, hospitals and aerospace industries, among others,
and have taken place at over 50 companies in 16 countries 10 of which have been in the US.
North korea's hack of Sony Pictures in December was unprecedented in both size and scope, downing Sony's system and releasing upwards of 11 terabytes of internal company data.
And the State department is still struggling to purge Russian hackers from its system 6 months after suffering its"worst ever"attack.
AP Photo/Ahn Young-joonpeople walk past a TV screen showing a poster of Sony Picture's"The Interview"in a news report
at the Seoul Railway station in Seoul, South korea, Monday, Dec 22, 2014.""In 10 years time, Iran's cyber capabilities will be more troubling than its nuclear program,"geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer,
president of the Eurasia group, tweeted last month. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has increased the government's cybersecurity spending 12-fold since taking office,
About 1, 500 Iranian cyber-warriors"have assumed their duties and will in the future carry out many operations,"according to IRGC commander Hossein Hamedani. screenshot via phoenix tson February 2011,
the Iranian Cyber Army launched an attack against the Voice of america web site. China recently increased its cyber warfare spending by 20-30%in
what experts say is a major attempt to compete with superior US military cyber capabilities. hey the Chinese have devoted previously substantial resources to cyber espionage and theft,
cyber security expert and former Department of Homeland security policymaker Paul Rosenzweig told the Free Beacon. hina vision of combined operations,
Elite Russian hackers had breached the stock exchange and inserted a digital bomb, "Michael Riley of Bloomberg Business reported in 2014.
The frequency of identity theft has increased dramatically, according to a report released last year by the National security agency,
and cost Americans $10 billion more than burglary, car theft, and property theft combined in 2012.
REUTERS/Dado Ruvicpeople pose in front of a display showing the word'cyber'in binary code, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica December 27, 2014.
finances, or legal standing. When it comes to finding security holes in a company's information system,
people hired to hack into a company's systems start with what is often the biggest and clearest vulnerability its employees.
At Infiltrate, a professional penetration tester for a major company in Silicon valley told Business Insider that the easiest way to infiltrate a client's system is to bait an employee into clicking on an infected link in a seemingly innocuous email.
From there, the hacker for hire can acquire the employee's username, passwords, and other sensitive information which can lead a hacker into the company's system.
This tactic known as"phishing,"can be executed by unskilled scammers. When executed by a professional, however, phishing becomes a highly targeted tool.
SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) is a type of industrial control system that monitors and controls key infrastructure in the US and around the world.
electricity, heating, and, perhaps most worryingly, airplanes and trains. Boisvert told Infiltrate he was concerned initially that a deadly July 2013 train crash in Spain was caused by a hacker (it turned out to be human error.
experts worried aloud whether the system could potentially be hacked to cause a serious crash.""We know that the risk of a cyberattack will increase as we continue to roll out digital technology across the network,
And some cybersecurity experts fear that hackers aboard an aircraft could bring down the plane using the onboard Wi-fi many commercial jets now offer to passengers."
"Modern aircraft are connected increasingly to the internet. This interconnectedness can potentially provide unauthorized remote access to aircraft avionics systems,
"the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a statement. Michael B. Kelley contributed to this report
and dialed the phone numbers of some of the users of his new music-streaming service, Tidal.
Staff at Roc Nation, Jay z's sports-and entertainment-management company, listened as fans reacted with shock to phone calls from Jay z."
but, as one streaming expert told us, it could also be its undoing. At the start of January, before Jay z got his hands on it,
It had grown up in the years before the iphone providing services for Nokia and Ericsson feature phones.
It was a tiny player in the music-streaming world, and nobody paid much attention to it.
By the end of March, Aspiro had become one of the most talked-about technology companies in the world.
as the company was forced to deal with the departure of a series of key executives.
Fans remain largely confused as to why Tidal even exists it offers streaming music at twice the price of Google, Apple, and Spotify.
This is the full story of how Jay z took over an obscure Scandinavian telecoms company in the hopes of staging a revolution on behalf of artists who feel they aren't being paid properly in a world where no one buys CDS anymore.
If you used a mobile phone to browse the internet back in 2003, then you probably did
so using a technology called wireless application protocol (WAP). It let older mobile phones download data using their cellular service.
It was a precursor to the much faster networks that we use today. Jörgen Adolfsson, Christer Månsson,
while they were working at Europolitan, one of the biggest telephone networks in Sweden. Aspiroaspiro founders Klas Hallqvist, Christer Månsson,
where they became aware of WAP and the companies that were starting to build businesses using the technology.
They left Europolitan and convinced Hallqvist to join them. Aspiro offered a range of different services using WAP and text messages.
It didn't sell its services direct to consumers but instead sold them onto mobile networks that could include it as part of their bundles.
Aspiro developed interactive games, ringtones, horoscopes, even a system to send fax messages from your phone.
Aspirothe Aspiro website in 2001. Aspiro grew quickly thanks to partnerships with European phone manufacturers such as Ericsson and Nokia.
Those companies were selling vast amounts of old-fashioned feature phones in Europe, so Aspiro's products reached millions of customers.
Aspiroa brochure produced by Aspiro in 2001. Adolfsson and Månsson wanted to live and work in Malmö in Sweden,
so Aspiro's first office was set up there. But Hallqvist wasn't so keen and preferred Karlskrona
Flickr/sigurdgaaspiro partnered with a Norwegian music store to launch its streaming site. Aspiro focused on WAP for years,
and it developed new services for the mobile network that was quickly becoming antiquated. But it also branched out into other online services,
including music news and search engines. The most important decision in Aspiro's history was the development of a music-streaming service built in conjunction with Platekompaniet,
a Norwegian retail chain that sells CDS and DVDS. Wimp, as Aspiro's music-streaming service was called,
did something different from its competitors. It emphasised high-quality audio streaming at higher bit rates than Rdio and Spotify.
demographic that was more willing to pay a higher price for better-quality music. The new music-streaming service was a hit,
It used the same strategy that it used for its WAP business to rapidly scale up the business:
Aspiro struck deals with telecoms companies and hardware manufacturers to pick up customers who wouldn't have
The actual database of music and pricing was unchanged. Tidalsince Jörgen Adolfsson was replaced as the first CEO in 2000,
Aspiro had seen many different executives take the helm of the company. Longterm Aspiro employee Peter Tonstad became CEO of the company in 2012.
He had worked previously as a consultant to the Norwegian environment ministry and as a sales executive for Reuters in Norway.
He took over the running of Aspiro at a time when its music-streaming service was growing.
Aspiro didn't feel like an old-school telecoms company anymore; this time, it was a tech startup out to disrupt the music industry.
and Tidal curated music using actual people, rather than algorithms: The legacy really comes from Wimp,
The 2014 year-end financial report gave a gloomy outlook:""The company is funded not fully for the coming twelve months."
"the Board is considering various funding alternatives.""The story of Aspiro becomes really surreal on January 30, 2015.
"a company he had set up with the sole purpose of buying a music-streaming site.
"It was offering the equivalent of $56 million (£36 million) for the company, an offer that Aspiro's majority shareholder, Norwegian media company Schibsted, immediately accepted.
See, Aspiro was listed publicly on the Swedish stock exchange, and the deal required all of Aspiro's other shareholders had to accept the offer too.
Aspiro had known about Jay z's acquisition attempt since December 3 so its majority shareholder was ready.
But other investors had to decide whether Jay z would be the right fit for Aspiro.
Getty Images Entertainmentjay Z, born Shawn Carter in Brooklyn, New york, in 1969, started his rap career in 1994
and took part in rap battles with other performers. He started selling CDS from his car,
and eventually scored a deal with the influential music label Def Jam Records. It wasn't a smooth ride to the top, though.
or car wash those were the businesses back then. Things you can get in easily to get out of that life.
because your window is very small; youe going to get locked up or youe going to die. But as well as music, Jay z has built also a career as an entrepreneur and investor.
He cofounded the Rocawear clothing line, co-owns the 40/40 line of bars and clubs,
including executives from established music labels. A group of minority shareholders in Aspiro grouped together to try
and block the deal. Investors who together owned just over 10%of the company issued a statement saying that they would not authorise an acquisition by Jay z:"
"We will recommend our members say no to the offer. We have accumulated more than 10 percent of the owners,
"But Fredrik Bjørland, chairman of Aspiro's committee for the Project Panther bid, hit back at the minority shareholders,
and the current majority shareholder has indicated it is not willing to support this capital need.
Eventually the minority shareholders gave in.""We have together with the major shareholders decided that it is best to accept the bid,
"they said in an emailed statement. That left the path clear for Jay z to move forward
Jay z hosted a secret meeting of future Tidal investors, artist managers, and record labels in Los angeles in February.
Entertainment news site Showbiz 411 heard about the secret meeting and published a list of names that were in attendance.
The Fig Housethe venue for Jay z private music-industry summit was The Fig House in Los angeles. Jay z booked the entire venue,
Hype started building for Jay z's music-streaming service on March 30 when musicians began turning their social media profiles light blue in anticipation of the relaunch of Aspiro's streaming service.
The posts made it clear that the Wimp name had been dropped, and Jay z's streaming site would be called Tidal.
The March 30 press conference was meant to be the opportunity for Tidal to reboot its public image and present itself as a major player in the world of music streaming. ew York
as Tidal staff referred to the press conference, was held at Skylight in Moynihan Station, located inside in New york James A. Farley Post office in midtown Manhattan.
Jamie Mccarthy/Getty Images for Roc Nationthe modern event space featured areas where guests could try Tidal on expensive headphones,
and a giant screen above the stage that displayed tweets from fans of the musicians who had been promoting the event.
Schlogel also announced that Tidal would support offline playing of music, just like Spotify. The relaunched streaming site would be based around exclusive music and video content,
as well as special live events for subscribers. Tidaltidal became Jay z's music-streaming service. But the most important part of the press conference wasn Schlogel speech;
One member of Daft punk even referred to it as"the Avengers of music"during the Fig House meeting.
"The press conference featured a video filmed at the Fig House meeting in Los angeles in February.
In it, the multimillionaire musicians who had become Tidal investors demanded changes to the music industry that essentially gave them more power and control."
"Music-streaming researcher Dr. Todd Green, a professor at the Goodman School of business at Brock University, is also critical of Tidal's New york relaunch.
"and joked about the event feeling like a graduation. Then, the assembled musicians signed a"declaration":
the protection of the sustainability of the music industry rooted in creativity and expression. Just as our vision is to introduce change to the current system,
the site encompasses high quality sound, video, exclusive editorial but there are more features on the way. In time, TIDAL will be not just a streaming service but a platform with enhanced experiences.
and gesticulating to offstage employees. The awkwardness continued after the event when Jay z talked to the press.
"Journalists and amused fans took to Twitter to mock Jay z's ignorance of the fact that people pay taxes
An executive from a water company even wrote an open letter to Jay z, reminding him that it costs money.
And the controversy over Tidal's New york press conference didn't stop there. Venturebeat noticed that Radiohead song"The National anthem"played during the press conference as the attendees signed the declaration,
"Musician The Haxan Cloak also publicly accused Jay z of ripping off his work in the promotional videos released during the New york press conference.
He claimed that videos of the Fig House meeting used two tracks that sounded very similar to his own music."
and his music is now available to stream on the site. The backlash against Tidal began in earnest after the New york press conference.
"pointing out that its ios app had plummeted down the App store chart from the top 20 to a point where it wasn't even in the top 700 most popular apps.
Why, then, was Vania Schlogel, an executive from Roc Nation, on stage introducing Tidal to the world?
and Swedish news site Breakit claimed that 25 employees in Aspiro's Norway office had also been forced to leave."
"Tidal denied the job cuts, however, referring to them as"redundancies"and"streamlining.""Tidal quickly rushed out a statement.
It said that Tidal had a new"interim CEO"called"Peter Norstad.""There was no such person working at Tidal.
when the real work began on Tidal. It now had an office in Norway, as well as support from Roc Nation in London,
New york, and Los angeles. Roc Nation executive Schlogel became Tidal's chief investment officer, and told Business Insider that Jay z worked"every day"on Tidal.
but maybe the work is a bit more interesting. I don know, I can say because I wasn there before.
Jay z also set about reorganising the board of Tidal to place loyal executive and lawyers in control of the company.
Jay z took to Twitter on April 26 to air his views on Tidal.""Stream of consciousness coming in 5, 4, 3, 2,
Tidal itself had just 17,000 users as of January 31. The bigger service, Wimp, had 486,000 users, with 391,000 of them coming through partnerships with companies such as carriers.
That means just 91,000 users had sought actually out Wimp and subscribed to it. Another view that Jay z made clear in his Twitter"stream of consciousness"was that he felt that other music-streaming services were out to get him.
He accused"big companies"of"spending millions on a smear campaign.""Tidal employees suggested via email at the time that Jay z was referring to rivals like Apple and Spotify.
However, both companies deny the accusation. Tidal employees weren't aware that Jay z was going to make a public statement about the company.
It seems that it really was a stream of consciousness. There's a long and complicated history surrounding the hyphen in Jay z's name.
First he had a y"with an umlaut and a hyphen. Then the umlaut disappeared, and these days he doesn't even have a hyphen.
I take my respectpharrell even told me go with the safest betjimmy Iovine on for the safety netgoogle dig around a crazy checki feel like Youtube is the biggest culpritthem n---pay you a 10th of what you supposed to getyou know I came in this game independent right?
when it their own s---You bought nine iphones, and Steve jobs is richphil Knight is worth millions.
they ain say s---Jay z suggested that Google offered him money to partner with its own streaming service,
but hinted that he was upset with music appearing on Youtube (and the diminished revenue he receives from it).
And in case you weren't at the B-Sides shows and missed Jay z's angry freestyle,
so that all of his users could hear it. Spotify wasn't worried about the threat from Tidal, however.
"This time, there wasn't another executive to step up and take over running the company. Tidal has been without a CEO since June,
Two more key executives have recently left Tidal. US sales and marketing manager David Solomon left Tidal in July after 10 months at the company.
"However, Tidal told Business Insider that Solomon was employed only as a consultant. Another high-profile departure has been Zena Burns,
The Tidal Twitter account publicly shut down the rumour. Right now there are two big reasons why someone would sign up to Tidal:
it has an entire online-radio station with shows by stars like Josh Homme and Elton john. Getty Images Europeapple hired BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe to present its own online-radio station.
Spotify has also been moving forward and developing new ways to bring in customers. It has launched playlists designed to surface up-and-coming music,
He also signed up as an investor in Tidal alongside the artists who appeared at the New york press conference.
Tidal was promptly hit with a $50 million (£32 million) lawsuit from Cash Money Records, Lil Wayne's record label.
because he claims that it's withholding money from him. Another potential savior for Tidal is Prince.
although The Daily mirror (one of the newspapers that partnered with Prince) compared it to his greatest hits. There's no denying that Tidal has come a long way from Aspiro's innovative WAP services in 1998.
and it just raised $40 million Massdrop is a new kind of Internet retailer. Actually, it's technically not a retailer at all.
The site doesn't have any kind of item on hand to sell you. Instead, it acts as a middleman between manufacturers, enthusiasts, and would-be customers."
It works like this: Massdrop users vote for what product they would like to see on a"drop."
"Coats, backpacks, boots, shoes, wallets, and belts are all available to be voted on, as well as watches, razors, camping equipment, headphones, and drones.
Once the poll closes, Massdrop will reach out to the brand of the top-voted product.
the site now has over one million monthly users. To keep up with that demand, Massdrop's employees have ballooned from 14 just over a year ago to 70 today.
The staff is projected to reach 110 by year's end according to El-Hage. El-Hage says that the company's unique relationship with vendors sets it apart from other failed flash sale websites.
Massdrop prioritizes relationships with its vendors and manufacturers in a few ways: it uses a third-party shipping service to get products to customers,
it takes a small percentage of the profit, and it's committed to connecting vendors with enthusiastic buyers.
Eighty to 85%of vendors list on Massdrop again. El-Hage's vision for Massdrop doesn't stop at group buys.
Massdrop just closed its Series B round of investment this month; it will be using the $40 million it raised to further these goals.
and headphones with aftermarket car parts, dog and cat products, and RC cars a
#The Apple Pay effect is real n-store mobile payments volume will top $800 billion in 2019 Mobile payments the use of phones to complete transactions in stores instead of cash
and physical card swipes are going to grow much more quickly than many observers Believe in no small part,
this will be thanks to the growing popularity of Apple's new Apple Pay system. In an in depth report on mobile payments from BI Intelligence, we explain how a few US retailers account for the vast majority of over $4. 7 trillion in aggregate payment volume.
Many of these retailers have adopted already the technology necessary to accept mobile payments from Apple Pay and similar apps
or plan to. It only takes a handful of these large retailers to drive an explosion in mobile payment volume
and that's precisely what we think is going to happen. Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:
Explosive mobile payments growth: We forecast US mobile payment volume to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 172%.
%Volume will rise to $818 billion by 2019, or just under 15%of total US payment volume.
Apple Pay is showing early signs of success: Payments made through Apple Pay accounted for between 0. 1%-1. 6%of transactions at five top retailers in the month following the launch of the feature.
Considering that the feature can only be used on the new iphones we think that's indicative of exceptional momentum.
Currentc isn't dead on arrival: Despite a firestorm of bad press for the yet-to-be launched mobile wallet from the MCX retail consortium,
Even with mediocre results, that adds up to a lot of payment volume in aggregate. Android mobile wallets are benefiting from Apple Pay:
Multiple sources confirm that Google Wallet saw a jump in payment volume following the launch of Apple Pay.
Softcard (formerly Isis), a mobile wallet backed by big wireless carriers including Verizon, also struck a number of new deals that were likely a result of retailers attempting to give their customers an Android-based alternative to Apple Pay.
In full, the report: Forecasts US mobile payment volume from 2014-2019 and provides an in depth explanation of the assumptions and data behind the forecast.
Analyzes the latest adoption statistics on Apple Pay and why the fledgling mobile payments feature is sure to be a success. Provides a quarterly update on the mobile payments industry including analysis of Softcard, Google Wallet, Currentc, Paypal, and Looppay.
To access the full report from BI Intelligence, sign up for a 14-day trial here.
Members also gain access to new in depth reports, hundreds of charts, and daily newsletters on the digital industry
a popular social coding site for programmers, is fighting a days-long cyberattack that reportedly originates in China.
The U s. coding site Github said on Sunday it was deflecting most of the traffic from the cyberattack that had caused intermittent outages.
The attackers paralyzed the site at times by using distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attacks, a technique commonly used to disrupt websites and computer networks,
according to the Wall street journal. They pushed massive amounts of traffic to Github by redirecting overseas users of the popular Chinese search engine Baidu Inc,
according to the Wall street journal. The newspaper said they targeted two Github pages that link to copies of websites banned in China-a Mandarin-language site from the New york times Co and Greatfire. org,
which helps Chinese users circumvent government censorship. A Beijing-based Baidu spokesman said a thorough investigation had determined it was neither a security problem on Baidu's side nor a hacking attack."
"We have notified other security organizations and are working to get to the bottom of this, "the spokesman said.
On its blog, Github said the attack began early on Thursday and involved"every vector we've seen in previous attacks as well as some sophisticated new techniques that use the web browsers of unsuspecting, uninvolved people to flood github. com with high levels of traffic.
Github said it believed the intent of the attack was to convince the company to remove a specific class of content.
The Chinese government has denied repeatedly it has anything to do with hacking. Asked about the report
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