Apple
‘Grotesquely overpriced’ — Apple’s App Store wants 30% cut on NFT sales
Non-fungible token (NFT) app developers and others have balked at a decision by tech giant Apple to impose a 30% commission on NFTs sold through apps on its marketplace, effectively putting NFT purchases in the same boat as regular in-app purchases. According to a Friday report from The Information, the smartphone company is now allowing NFTs to be bought and sold through apps listed on its marketplace but imposes its standard commission on in-app purchases of 30% — similar to that imposed by Android’s app store Google Play. The commission rate has however been slammed by some for being “grotesquely overpriced” — particularly when compared to standard NFT marketplace commissions, which are around 2.5%. Tech blogger Florian Mueller called Apple’s “app tax” on NFT sales “abusive but consiste...
Apple Unveils It’s Worst-Kept Secret, The iPhone 14 & iPhone 14 Pro, Twitter Is Ready To Sell Organs To Buy One
HipHopWired Featured Video CLOSE Source: Apple / iPhone 14 As expected, Apple followed up Samsung’s event with its usual September event to introduce to the world and devoted followers to its new lineup of iPhone 14 flagship smartphones. The company that jobs built also announced two new Apple Watch models and the new AirPods Pro. iPhone 14 & iPhone 14 Plus If your current iPhone is glitching, that only means new models are on the way. Today during its latest “Far Out” event, Apple unveiled the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus models. If you already own an iPhone 13, this new model isn’t going to blow you away at all with its features. Coming in at $799, it runs on the same A15 system-on-chip from the previous model, but thanks to a 5-core GPU, Apple has managed to improve the iPhone 14’s ...
Publishers, Streamers Reach Deal for Highest Streaming Royalty Rate Ever: Here’s How It Works
Songwriter and publisher U.S. mechanical streaming royalty rates are going up — slowly — to a headline rate of 15.35% of total revenue from 2023-2027. That’s the big news out of Wednesday’s (Aug. 31) joint announcement on the “Phonorecords IV” settlement from the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the Nashville Songwriters Associations International and the Digital Media Association (DiMA). But how long will it take to get there and at what pace? What are the other conditions? Billboard now has more more key details about the deal. Under the new settlement agreement — which the NMPA touts will set the “highest royalty rate in the history of streaming anywhere” — the headline rate will escalate from 15.1% of revenue in 2023 to 15.2% in 2024 and then a half a percentage point inc...
36% of Surveyed Apple Users Considering Switching to Android – New Study
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iPhone 14 Launch Date Revealed
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Harry Styles Brings Back Apple’s Iconic Silhouette Ad, Donates Paycheck to IRC
Harry Styles appears in a new ad for Apple Airpods, a visually striking commercial which harkens back to the company’s old-school days of advertising the iPod with dancing silhouettes. Even better than this hit of nostalgia, the pop star donated his paycheck to the International Rescue Committee. The IRC, a global humanitarian aid organization, tweeted its thanks to Styles and Apple on June 2nd. “From all of us at the IRC: Thank you to @Harry_Styles and @Apple for your generous donation to the IRC,” the organization said. “Working in more than 40 countries, your support will help us reach even more refugees and people in need in the world’s toughest places. Honored to have your support!” The donation comes as the IRC aids the more than six million refugees who have fled Ukraine in recent m...
Revisiting Daft Punk’s “Silhouette” iPod Ad: May Its Memory Never Die
Apple dealt a deadly blow this week when they announced the iPod, originally released in 2001, will be no more. While its memory lives on via features now standard to the casual listening experience (playlists, play counts, and most famously, the shuffle button), there’s one iPod feature that we can’t dare to forget: the “silhouette” commercials. Debuted in the early 2000s alongside the 3rd and 4th generation iPod Classics, Apple’s most iconic line of ads featured silhouette figures moving and grooving in front of candy-colored backgrounds and of course, their white corded headphones. One of our favorite songs to set the soundtrack for a silhouette commercial was “Technologic” by Daft Punk. It’s like a time capsule for its 2005 release ...
The iPod Officially Laid To Rest After Apple Announced It’s Discontinuing iPod Touch
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images / Getty Apple is finally laying the iPod to rest. Apple announced it was quietly discontinuing the iPod touch, the last version of its popular portable music player. With this move, the company that Steve Jobs built hammered the final nail in the coffin of the device it first introduced in 2001 that introduced Apple to the digital music era allowing users to store “up to 1,000 CD-quality songs into an ultra-portable, 6.5-ounce design that fits in your pocket.” The first iteration of the iPod touch was introduced in 2007 and was the first version of the device to closely resemble the iPhone, the last time Apple released an updated model was in 2019. Related Stories Apple created the iPod touch for the perso...
iPod Commercials Defined an Era for Music in Marketing: The 10 Most Iconic Ads
It’s difficult to underestimate how deeply and completely the iPod revolutionized music listening. Introduced in 2001, the pocket-sized device escorted music consumers out of the CD era and into the gleaming digital age. (“I don’t know who your product’s designers are,” Moby said in a 2001 promotional video from Apple, “but boy, you’re not paying them enough.”) Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Of course, iPod commercials quickly became as iconic as the products they sold. Launched in 2003, the classic iPod ad campaign featured silhouettes of people dancing like mad in front of brightly colored backgrounds, with the iPod and its headphones in stark white contrast. These clips are deeply embedded in the memories of most anyone who watched televisi...
Apple iPod Officially Discontinued After 20 Years
For the better part of the last decade, the Apple iPod has been more of a nostalgia item or the first smart device for children than a must-have item. Today, it has finally been discontinued and will only be available “while supplies last.” While the move hardly comes out of nowhere — the iPod Classic was discontinued back in 2014, and Apple last updated the iPod Touch in 2019 — it will strike a chord with older millennials who have rose-colored memories of loading their MP3 collections into iTunes. Sure, the click wheels on the early models would sometimes stick, and the spinning hard drives would die without warning, but being able to carry thousands of songs in one’s pocket was a groundbreaking moment in technology. Of course, the iPod wasn’t the first portable MP3 player, but it c...
A New Book Reveals How Dr. Dre’s Loose Lips Kept Him From Being “Hip-Hop’s First Billionaire”
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Bernard Smalls / @BeanzGotGamez Dr. Dre let the excitement of the pending Beats Apple deal cost him some money a new book details. Tripp Mickle’s new book After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul shared an interesting nugget about the infamous Beats Apple deal and its announcement to the world. Per Mickle’s book, he writes that Tim Apple, oops, we mean Cook saw the deal as his easy way into the music streaming service. The book also reveals that Dr. Dre’s partner Jimmy Iovine had a feeling a leak could spoil the massive deal. Little did he know he would be right and that it would be his business partner doing the leaking. “At 2 am, Iovine got a call from Puff Daddy, who was screaming that Dre and Tyrese, a rapper, wer...
