Fitbit confirms Pebble takeover deal
the deal does not include any of Pebble’s products, and work on several crowdfunded devices that have yet to be made has been cancelled.
Fitbit have confirmed it is buying the inventions that power Pebble’s smartwatches.
Pebble’s key asset was its software,” commented Paul Lamkin, editor of the Wareable news site.
“A lot of people think its quite a lot better than anything Apple and Google have managed to do, and it offers Fitbit a huge developer community, which it wouldn’t have otherwise had.”
YouTube’s $1bn royalties are not enough, says music industry
Robert Kyncl posted a blog highlighting the site’s contribution to the industry.
He said YouTube had distributed $1bn in advertising royalties alone, arguing that “free” streaming was as important as subscription sites like Spotify.
But record labels were not impressed.
in 2015 Spotify alone paid record labels some $2bn, equivalent to an estimated $18 per user while With 800 million music users worldwide, YouTube is generating revenues of just over $1 per user for the entire year.
The industry has also pushed for reforms to the “safe harbour” laws, which mean YouTube and other similar sites cannot be penalised when users upload copyrighted material – including full albums – provided they remove it on request.
Artists like Lady Gaga, Sir Paul McCartney, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and Abba have all written to the US Congress asking for the law to be changed.
Apple Music attracts 20 million subscribers in 18 months
number of paid subscribers passes 20 million for the first time.
Spotify, which now boasts 40 million subscribers
Galaxy S8 will likely ditch headphone jack
Samsung is planning to ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack in the Galaxy S8 it’s planning to release next year,
Instead, Samsung is planning to offer a USB Type-C port in its handset that will accommodate headphones.
According to the rumor, Samsung is removing the port to make additional room for stereo speakers — a first for the Samsung Galaxy S line — and allow the company to bundle a bigger battery with its next handset.
Samsung also wouldn’t allow users to charge their device and listen to music on the handset at the same time. It’s unclear whether the company’s smartphone will ship with an adapter, like the iPhone 7.
reports saying it might be unveiled anytime between Mobile World Congress in February and April
You can now use Spotify to control your Sonos speakers
Spotify users can now use the music-streaming service’s app to control Sonos speakers in their home.
Spotify Connect, which has been in public beta for the past month, allows Spotify Premium subscribers to stream music from a tablet or phone to any Sonos Wi-Fi compatible speaker on the network, the streaming service said Tuesday. The feature also lets users control the speakers’ volume, skip forward and backward in the track list, and create groups of speakers from within Spotify.
Sonos is the latest service to enable streaming service’s proprietary connection protocol after Google Cast support was added in 2015. While Google Cast and Sonos speakers can be grouped among themselves, they can’t be grouped together.
Sonos announced at a press conference in August that it would add the feature later this year. The speaker maker also plans to add compatibility with Amazon’s Alexa voice control next year.
Sonos said in August that a similar partnership with Pandora is also in the works, but the company hasn’t said when the integration will arrive.
Report: Apple in talks with studios to offer current cinema releases in-home
Bloomberg says Apple is applying tremendous pressure to Hollywood studios for earlier access to movies. In the US, a blockbuster film tends to have a theater run of two months or more before coming to home video via streaming service, Blu-ray, or DVD.
21st Century Fox, Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures, have all confirmed they are looking at high-priced rentals of new movies shortly after their release. It’s not a done deal, but Apple’s iTunes platform seems to check a lot of boxes for the studios and it’s already in millions of homes.
According to Warner Bros. chief Kevin Tsujihara, one option is a premium-priced rental services that would release new movies at a hefty price tag of $25 to $50 each. A small family would argue that this is still beneficial to theater pricing, and doesn’t require leaving the house with small children.
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