It’s a wild world these days at the intersection of traditional television business models and all the new ways that people are consuming content online and across different devices. Panelists at paidContent Entertainment 2011 grappled with the implications of that shift by emphasizing the need for quality: quality metrics, quality…

After years of effort and speculation, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has pieced together nearly 40 broadcast services from around the world to boost the on-demand programming available through Xbox Live. It took a shift in strategy to make room for broadcasters like the BBC, the trend toward authentication to bring on…

Two PE firms—Summit Partners and TA Associates—have purchased a controlling stake in online games company Bigpoint for $350 million. NBCU’s Peacock Equity and UK PE firm GMT Communications had bought a 70 percent stake in Bigpoint three years ago for $110 million. Peacock Equity, which is now part of Comcast…

Our look at some of the big stories today in mobile: reports of RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) looking at investing in India; Best Buy starts up its WiMax service with Clearwire; (NSDQ: CLWR) and another advance in MasterCard’s NFC initiative.

Naysayers continue expressing suspicion Spotify will launch in the U.S.. But Spotify’s not alone in discovering the challenge of an overseas launch. Here’s a newsflash for the sceptics: the list of U.S. services which haven’t found their way out of America is also long…

Spotify has given itself one more, small reason why people might subscribe to Spotify Premium - a hook in to Sonos’ wireless music systems around the home.

Playboy Enterprises (NYSE: PLA) is forming a new video game label this year as part of a wider digital strategy to make its brand more mainstream, Paul H. Lee, the company’s managing director for new digital ventures, told paidContent. The company hasn’t decided on a name yet, but it already…

Paul Brown, who is leaving as partnerships SVP at Spotify, is becoming chief operating officer for Mendeley, a start-up often described as a Last.fm for research papers, say MediaWeek and TechCrunch, and Brown confirmed to paidContent:UK.

Spotify’s partnerships SVP Paul Brown is leaving after 18 months with the music startup, saying his exit’s on good terms. “I wasn’t looking to leave. But this was an opportunity that came along and which I had to take,” Brown tells MusicWeek.

Despite trying for over a year, Spotify has been beaten to U.S. launch by Rdio, the comparable online music start-up backed by Atomico Ventures’ Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who earlier in their careers founded Skype and Kazaa.

Spotify has been offering pay-TV operators a set top box version of the music service for some time now. But so far it only has the deal inked with triple-play telco TeliaSonera back in October. That service is launching today on the TeliaSonera TV service in Sweden and Finland, Spotify…

Spotify is slashing the cost of its advert-free music streaming in Europe, in a bid to win more paying customers besides just mobile users. It comes in two new tariffs Spotify’s introducing… —Spotify Unlimited: £4.99pm/ for no-ads music, but no mobile access, no offline or MP3 play and no higher-bitrate…

Spotify spent most of its first year saying it would refrain from adding “social” features and concentrate on just serving music. But the ice in Stockholm has thawed lately and today the music service added just that, amongst its first significant product updates since launching in late 2008. —New profiles:…

If you were hoping that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek would use his South by Southwest Interactive keynote to announce a launch date for the U.S., no such luck (although Rafat has a source who says possibly end of May). Ek’s biggest bit of news: Spotify now has more than 320,000…

At the Digital Music Forum East in New York today, Thomas Hesse, President of Global Digital Bus., US Sales & Corp. Strategy at Sony (NYSE: SNE) Music Entertainment was the keynote interview, and he gave a lot of details on the company, state of the industry, and how he sees…

Spotify has reportedly raised further venture funding from Facebook and Friendster backer Founders Fund, for U.S. expansion. The company won’t comment on it when we asked. Former Stardoll CTO Daniel Ek and TradeDoubler co-founder Martin Lorentzon put up €8 million of their own money to start the music service in…

Already an investor in TT Games, Snowblind Studios and Midway Games assets, Warner Bros. (NYSE: TWX) Home Entertainment is buying further in to the video games market by acquiring a majority of London-based Rocksteady Studios, the developer that made the Batman: Arkham Asylum game starring WB’s superhero. Group president Kevin…

In a previous post I explained how free music services such as Spotify were making premium rental services such as Rhapsody and Napster increasingly irrelevant.  Why pay $9.99 for unlimited on demand streaming music when you can get it for free? It seems that Warner Music’s chief executive Edgar Bronfman…