Appletell

I wouldn’t have expected NBC Universal to have a “record performance” in 2007. But according to their CEO, Jeff Zucker, they did. In fact, NBC realized a total profit of $923 million and revenue of $2.1 billion. I’m sure you know that NBC Universal drop out of iTunes last year - and I would have expected that to hurt their revenue; obviously, it hasn’t. This success may be the reason for Universal ditching iTunes in the first place - they only gained $15 million from it over the last year. Compared to their other sectors (cable and film), that is a fairly small amount. We would have also assumed that the 9 weeks (in 2007) of the Writer Guild Association strike would have put a damper on revenue and profits.

NBC Universal had a few major movie releases in 2007, including “The Bourne Ultimatum”.

Via [Electronista]

• Apple TV. Why?
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It has become the norm to see that each week yet another lawsuit is filed against Apple. Last week we saw Apple sued over the iPhone battery, and this week has started of with Apple being sued over the iTunes Store. Rapper Eminem and his music publishers are taking Apple to court saying that Apple doesn’t have permission to be selling his music on the iTunes Store. Even though Apple pays a portion of the money collected for the tracks to Universal, Eminem’s music publishers claim that they never authorized Universal put the music up on iTunes.

At issue is is whether record labels have the right to turn an artist’s CD recordings into digital music downloads on the Internet, or whether further permission is needed from the music publishers who hold the copyrights to the lyrics and sheet music.

This quote from AppleInsider shows what it seems Eminem and his publishers are fighting for. I am not really sure what Eminem is up in arms about. Now that the iTunes Store is the third largest music store in the US, I would expect that Eminem is selling a fair amount of music on iTunes. If Apple loses the lawsuit and is forced to remove Eminem’s music from the store, who is it really hurting in the end?

Via [AppleInsider]

• New MacBooks and MacBook Pros require HDCP for some iTunes videos
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Steve Jobs convinced them the first time. He convinced all of the major record labels to sign a contract that would lock them into selling their songs on the iTunes Store for a fixed $0.99 per song. The labels accepted, and the iTunes Store sold over 2 billion songs. Now, the time comes again for the labels to sign for a contract with iTunes, and rumors around the web have alluded to the fact that Universal, one of the biggest record labels, may not re-sign their long-term contract with iTunes.

Apple has publicly denied this when spokesman Tom Neumyr told the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday “We are still negotiating with Universal. Their music is still on iTunes and their not re-signing is just not true.“

Despite Apple denying this rumor, some still believe that Universal will not sign the deal with Apple, because they do not want to be restricted by the $0.99 price tag for all songs. However, iTunes also has to weigh in on the situation, being the 3rd largest distributer of music in the USA. If Universal decides to pull their music from the iTunes Store, it would be like them pulling their music from a Target Store or Amazon—not really a good idea.

Read [AppleInsider]

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