Google plans a music download service tied to its search engine later this year, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Last year, as a first step into music, the company began linking to partner websites such as Pandora and iLike through its search engine, allowing people to stream songs with one click from its search page.
Now, the company is looking to tie its own music service to its search engine.
Google is also moving to add professional content to YouTube, and is planning to roll out a digital bookstore this year. Apple’s iAds advertising platform for its iPhone and iPad tablet will compete with Google’s AdMob.
Publishers are enthusiastic about tablet publishing. Tablet ads generate higher CPMs than web ads. That’s good news for publishers, since web banners bring in only 10% of a similar print ad. Combining subscription fees with advertising is closer to the current publishing model. Apple has sold three million iPads, just 80 days after its introduction in the US. Competitive tablets will bring more eyeballs. It’s all good.
This morning Borders announced that its $149 Kobo eReader will now be bundled with a $20 Borders gift card, and double Borders Bucks that can be used towards a future Borders purchase. Now that ebook readers like Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle have dropped to $150-$180, the ebook market is poised to explode.
Tablets like Apple’s iPad — and soon Android tablets — provide an exciting new platform for advertisers, with color and motion. More targeting. Less cost.
Google plans to begin selling e-books by this summer. They can be read on any Internet-connected device including Apple’s iPad. Google’s new e-book store will launch sometime during the first half of 2010, and will have about 500,000 titles at launch. Under Google’s payment scheme, publishers will receive about 63 percent of the gross sales, and Google will keep the remaining 37 percent.
Google also hopes to offer Editions titles through other online book retailers. In this scenario, online retailers would get 55 percent of revenues minus a small fee paid to Google, and publishers would get 45 percent, according to Read Write Web.
Adobe Digital Editions is a lightweight (2.5 MB) application that allows users to read and to manage any ebook or other digital publication that is supported by the PDF- or XML-based files. The software combines an iTunes-like interface with support for Flash SWF for audio and video enhancement as well as DRM and EPUB. Adobe offers free applications for Microsoft Windows and Mac-based operating systems, and a Linux version is in the works.
Books and magazines have structural differences that led to the development of two separate XML formats; ePUB for books and PRISM for magazines. The two formats make it difficult to develop magazines for e-readers, but a new initiative is designed to bridge this gap.
ePUB Next is a joint venture of the IDEAlliance, the PRISM Working Group and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). It “takes the best of both specifications” and projects a working draft of the spec by September and final recommendation by May 15, 2011.
According to IDC, by 2013, more than 1.2 billion people — one-third of the world’s workforce — will be mobile.
Will tablets become THE media platform, replacing television, print and the laptop?
Follow the money.
Related e-book articles on Dailywireless include; Media’s Primordial Soup: Tablets, Scribd Does HTML 5 Magazines, Tablets, Tablets, Tablets, E-Magazines: Pay Once, Play Anywhere, The $99 Android Tablet, Barnes & Noble: Self Publishing this Summer, Apple Sells 1M iPads, Google Editions: World’s Largest Virtual Bookstore?, Google Tablet for Verizon?, Android Outsells Apple, Flash Support in Android 2.2, Battle of the eBooks, Dell Android Tablet for AT&T/T-Mobile?, Google Tablet: Android or What?, and Tablet Revolution!
