What’s even more impressive about WMG’s third quarter is the company hit a milestone, as U.S. digital music unit sales surpassed those from physical for the first time. Also, revenue from digital music is far and away ahead of music streaming, with $204 million compared to just $15 million.

Spotify has yet to make a huge impact, but this could be due to Warner Music coming on board late. The company did acknowledge that it envisions Spotify’s unlimited-subscription model to be its future, as it shows better growth with subscribers locked in to paying a $120 a year premium.

“That flow of dollars is substantially greater than the average annual purchases with respect to an iTunes user.” CEO Cooper told analysts, “Both downloads and streaming provide us with meaningful economics. I’m personally agnostic – although you can draw your own conclusions from the streaming payments versus average iTunes users’ (payments).”

This news proves that publishing companies were overly paranoid when it came to fully embracing the unlimited-subscription model that’s offered from the Spotify’s or Rdio’s of the world. Warner Music Group flat-out admitted it’s more profitable for music publishing companies in the long-term. It’s good to see these guys finally come around, but I guess profits will do that.

[via PC]

New features in this upgrade includes:

• Streamlined Top-level Navigation – All-new home screen design gives one-click access to key features in the app
• Convenient Control – Take advantage of Android Ice Cream Sandwich’s new remote control client to manage playback controls on the lock screen, including viewing controls and album art
• New Releases – Be the first to listen to new albums and singles on the day they are released, and access new albums released up to two weeks prior
• Top Charts - Check out recent chart-topping albums
• Recommendations – Discover more music by exploring fresh album recommendations based on your listening history
• Enhanced Search – In addition to searching for artists, albums, and songs, you can now search for Playlists and People
• Synced collection and playlist views – View only the music you have synced for offline listening, without the need to go into offline mode
• User Profiles - Search, browse, and follow other Rdio users; discover new music by seeing their activity, who they follow, their playlists and more

Tim Schaaff, head of Sony Entertainment Network and Sony’s Michael Aragon assured folks over at CES its Music Unlimited app would differ from its competitors. Their plan is to take advantage of its major retail and international presence, while targeting users who have yet to adopt a cloud music service, instead of directly targeting those using competitors.

I don’t see how Sony can compete against Spotify and Rdio, as these streaming services are far ahead of the pack. It’s hard to transition people to a cloud music service, especially if they haven’t done so with the competition already. Sony has to do better at differentiating themselves from the others. I don’t use any cloud music services, but if were to, why would I choose Sony over services which already have millions of customers like Spotify and Rdio?

[via VentureBeat]

Shazam Player also serves as a one-stop-shop to find tour dates from bands and artists you enjoy, watch YouTube videos and concert clips, and even allow its users to buy tracks from iTunes within the app itself.

It’s great to see Shazam branch out from just a simple music discovery app into something with a little more meat behind it. Shazam Player seems to be exactly what the original Shazam should have been, and seems very familiar to the kind of stuff SoundHound has been offering for its users.

Here’s a full list of all the features and details shown on iTunes:

• LyricPlay. See streaming lyrics in time to the music – you’ll always have the words to your favorite songs with you.
• Share the soundtrack of your day on Facebook and Twitter
• Watch YouTube videos and concert clips
• Find tour dates for the bands and artists you’re into
• Manage your music – see your iTunes playlists and create new playlists on the fly
• Select your favorite tracks and hide ones you don’t want to hear
• Add to your music – buy new tracks on iTunes from within the app
• View music by artist/album/title and use the Track Tray to see all the great Shazam features available for each song
• Top tracks – a changing list of LyricPlay tracks – buy them straight from the app if you don’t already own them
• Identify new music you’re hearing by instantly launching the Shazam App

[via iTunes]

For what is primarily a music player, Sony wanted to make sure this thing has a great music experience. In terms of audio quality, the Walkman Z1000 boasts a “S-Master MX” digital amplifier to reduce unwanted noise and distortion. In terms of usability, there’s a dedicated W button on board. Tapping it instantly launches the music app from wherever you are.

In today’s world, phones are never just phones and music players are never just music players anymore. That’s why the Z1000 runs Android Gingerbread, rocks a 4.3-inch multitouch display, has built-in WiFi to the full library of apps in the Android Market.

Sure, there are apps for music in the Market but Sony really wants you to use its cloud music service with millions of songs from Sony Entertainment Network and can transfer with iTunes or Windows Media Player. If the 4.3-inch display just isn’t cutting it for you, beam the contents of the display to your television (if it’s DLNA-enabled) or hook it up via wired HDMI.

This all sounds pretty nice, but the Walkman Z1000 won’t go easy on your wallet. The starting price is $249.99 for an 8GB model — $50 more than Apple’s entry-level iPod touch. You save some green the more you move up the line: the 16GB model is $279.99 and the 32GB model is $329.99. These devices will all be available this spring.

I’ve been using cheap iPod docks for my shower tunes needs but the moisture will eventually kill those – which is why I wouldn’t dare to put a Sonos in there. The iShower will be unveiled at CES next week and its designed to be water proof and mount against your shower wall. They say it will be able to remember up to five Bluetooth devices (Android or iPhone) from up to 200 feet away and it will take three batteries for 15 hours of streaming.

At $99.99, the iShower is a bit steep but it also comes with a small display to show you what time it is and to allow you to switch through your songs. I won’t be able to see how well it sounds or if it really is as easy to set up and use as they’re promising but this could be the next you-didn’t-know-you-needed-it-until-now purchases. The iShower link below isn’t live yet but expect it to roll out early next week during CES.

[Via iShower]

Spotify faces some well-entrenched competition, particularly with Slacker Radio, which has been enjoying a preload on many RIM devices. For $10, Spotify offers you access to millions of tracks streaming to your phone, and plugged into your various social networks. Tunes can be cached locally, and you can drill down into detailed artist, track, and album information. Spotify made its big splash initially on the web, where it offered free, on-demand streaming music.

The precedent set by Pandora in the web music business was that you could never pull up specific tunes, but could still tailor preferences and build stations suited to your taste. I guess with enough traffic, interspersing tracks with ads became a viable option, but it’s too bad the mobile is still a strictly premium feature on Spotify.

To get started, head over to m.spotify.com on your BlackBerry browser. Those of us in Canada are a little screwed since the service still isn’t available up here, but I’ve been using Rdio for awhile, it’s solid alternative. At the very least, Spotify is better than BBM Music.

One of my many initial complains about BBM Music was that it didn’t update your status with what you were listening to like that native media player, but they’ve patched that up in in version 1.1. You can also invite friends on Facebook and Twitter to be your buddy on BBM Music, as well as share individual tracks you’re listening to. Of course, for now the links that are being shared are only accessible on BlackBerry devices with BBM Music installed, but I’m sure in time folks in desktop browsers will be able to check out the share music too. Aside from that, there are a smattering of other UI and performance tweaks, but it’s more or less the same experience: pick 50 songs, add friends, get access to their songs. Just make sure you have friends with good taste in music. And that they own a BlackBerry. And that they’re also willing to shell out $5/month for the service. And that they listen to music exclusively on their phone.

If you’re in Canada and want to give BBM Music 1.1 a shot, sign up for the program over here in the Beta Zone.

BBM Music is a subscription music service exclusive to BlackBerry handsets that, for $5/month, lets you pick 50 songs as your personal collection, which is then expanded by the people you add to your contact list. A home feed shows what your contacts have added, who they’ve started following, and what comments they’ve left on the songs of others. Of course, this means your collection is limited by the number of contacts you have, and the quality of their taste, both of which might be a roadblock for some people. At that price, the service is a bit of a throwaway, but if you’re going to even bother with a subscription music service why not go all-out at $10/month for Rdio, Slacker, or Spotify? Beats me. Now, if RIM introduced a fully-functional free tier where you could, say, follow up to five people, but have no collection of your own, that might be an impetus to sign up. Licensing for on-demand music can be harsh, but maybe if they took out the on-demand element and just let you shuffle the music of five friends and throw some ads in between, BlackBerry owners might be willing to give it a shot.

As is, licences are constantly shuffled, people are constantly tweaking their collections, and you can’t access the vast majority of music from friends outside the country. Overall, it makes for a pretty unstable collection of music. Still, free’s free. You can find more info on BBM Music and sign up over here.

The guys behind the EastMidWestMusic YouTube channel produced a full cover of Jason Derulo’s “It Girl” song using nothing but instruments from iPad apps. While the man in the video is singing (quite well, I might add) into a microphone, a few other people in the background are recording the music using multiple apps. These include Animoog, Rebirth, Alchemy, GarageBand, Magic Fiddle, MadPad, iSynpoly, and Magic Piano. The different sounds and instruments were then compiled to create the full song.

I can’t help but wonder how long it took to make, though I can’t imagine it taking too much longer than regular instruments. All of these apps combined don’t even come close to how much money you’d need to buy just one instrument. The most expensive is Animoog for $29.99. One thing is for sure, though: we’re moving toward a world in which using these types of digital instruments for recording purposes might be the norm.

[via TechCrunch]

Spotify is opening its platform to developers who can create apps that’ll pull music from Spotify and use it in a novel way. It’s not what you think, though. These apps won’t run on the web or a mobile device; they run within the Spotify app itself. It’s a way for Spotify to improve its app using outside developers who can add features like lyric support, concert event listings and more. You add these HTML 5-based helper apps from within Spotify’s new App Finder. And they are available to both free and premium users. Launch partners include Last.fm, Rolling Stone, TuneWiki and others.

The biggest thing missing in all of this is mobile support. The apps are tied into Spotify on the desktop and cannot be used on mobile devices, at least not yet.  But that’s the million dollar question – when is Spotify going to bring these features to the mobile platform? The formal presentation did not mention mobile, so we really don’t know what Spotify has planned. We presume mobile  is on the road map for this new app platform, but it may take a while. There may be complex licensing deals that limit mobile playback or technological challenges that make it difficult to run an app within an app on a mobile device.

Spotify is smart enough to choose HTML 5 as the code for these helper apps. Presumably, they can be easily ported to mobile devices once Spotify decides to flick the switch on mobile.

[Spotify]