Mp3tunes.com Files For Bankruptsy
Mp3tunes.com has filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District Of California.
The San Diego based company was founded by Michael Robertson in 2005 and offered cloud and music streaming services to its American members.
Mr. Robertson, who also co-founded mp3.com in 1997, blames litigation for the failure of the company in a May 1st, 2012 statement.
EMI has stated they would continue their lawsuit against the company, according to C-Net News.
Movies In The Cloud ?
iTunes have recently added movies to their cloud services in the States.
This enables their clients to view films and television programs on multiple devices though it appears that they may be short on Universal and Fox releases.
Hopefully this will be rectified by the time the service is enabled in Canada, though it should be noted that no official date in regards to its introduction has yet been published.
Zip Delays Online Streaming
It appears there is a strong market in regards to film rentals in Canada. So much so that it appears that Zip.ca might be prioritizing their kiosks over online streaming.
In an article in the Ottawa Business Journal printed on March 13th, Rob Hall, the founder of Zip.ca, stated that he had delayed his company’s plans to offer rentals via streaming beyond this year, favouring the further expansion of kiosks.
Zip.ca‘s red coloured kiosks are currently expanding through Metro/Food Basic grocery stores in Ontario and offer rentals at $1 per older release per day and $2 per new release per day.
The kiosks were test marketed in the Ottawa area and Nova Scotia, the latter in Sobeys grocery stores, with great success. And sales remain strong with former Blockbuster Canada customers and people who use their internet sparingly.
In Canada it is still rather expensive to stream films online because of internet usage capping so many Canadians will continue to rent DVDs and Blu-Ray discs for years to come.
High Definition films in 720p are generally over 3 gigabytes in size while standard definition films are over 1.5 gigabytes in size. And many Canadians have had their internet usage capped dramatically recently.
Having rented from them in the past, I’m hoping to have one of their kiosks in my neighbourhood soon.
Google Merges Services
Google has merged its Android application, eBook, film rental and cloud services into one service, entitled Google Play.
Canadians with Gmail accounts are able to access Android applications and a limited selection of films and books at the moment. But the online entertainment hub is expected to expand shortly.
The music service on Google Play, which enables users to store up to 20,000 songs on a cloud service that can be accessed by any Android device, is only available to Americans.
CBC Unveils Music Service
music.CBC.ca is online.
This CBC music service offers streaming stations in various genres and music on demand from a select number of artists.
Walmart’s Online Movie Rental Service
Walmart has decided to offer online movie rentals in the states, via the Vudu service they had purchased in March 2010.
There is no news in regards to a Canadian service yet.