Using your cellphone during checkout at Target could soon earn you discounts.
Starting Wednesday, the giant retailer will allow customers to take advantage of special mobile-coupon offers on their handsets.
The coupon is redeemed when the bar code on the phone is scanned at checkout. Offers are good only once and expire on the dates listed. “We believe it’s a competitive advantage for us,” says Target.com President Steve Eastman.
Target (TGT) says it will be the first major nationwide retailer to exploit the bar-code technology in all its stores. It almost certainly won’t be the last.
For example, J.C. Penney is testing similar scanner-based technology at 16 point-of-sale registers in Houston. But at the rest of its stores, checkout clerks still must manually enter alphanumeric codes tied to discount coupons, rather than using scanners.
Scanning bar codes makes the process faster and easier, says Dan Kihanya, vice president of consumer marketing at Cellfire, the mobile-coupon company working with J.C. Penney on its Houston tests. “Any time you have data entry, you have to worry about errors.”
Mobile coupons, while not new, are still in their relative infancy. “It’s an area ripe for growth,” says ABI Research analyst Neil Strother. Not everyone clips coupons, virtually or otherwise. But most people crave a bargain when the economy is tough. And coupon technology works with more and more cellphones.
Live Nation Entertainment and Walmart have inked a deal that will allow Walmart shoppers to buy tickets to concerts, sports and other community events at around 500 stores in the coming months, chairman Irving Azoff said today at the NBA Technology Summit in Dallas.
“Walmart and Ticketmaster have entered into an agreement for selling event access in Walmart stores in select markets,” Azoff told a summit panel. “The system is in the process of rolling out to approximately 500 stores in the coming months, including major market cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles.”
Tickets can be purchased for community, sporting, and concert events with the help of Walmart associates at registers in the store Entertainment department. We look forward to sharing more information in the future about this partnership.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Google Inc. plans to build a handful of experimental, ultra-fast broadband networks around the country to connect consumers to the Internet and ensure that tomorrow’s systems can keep up with online video and other advanced applications that the search company will want to deliver.
The Google project, announced Wednesday, is also intended to provide a platform for outside developers to create and try out all sorts of cutting-edge applications that will require far more bandwidth than today’s networks offer.
The company said its testbed fiber-optic networks will deliver speeds of 1 gigabit per second to as many as 500,000 Americans. The systems will be many times faster than the DSL, cable and fiber-optic networks that connect most U.S. homes to the Internet today, at speeds typically ranging from 3 megabits to 20 megabits per second.
Google envisions systems that will enable consumers to download a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes, allow rural health clinics to send 3-D medical images over the Web and let students collaborate with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture.
“Our goal is to trial new technologies and figure out what kinds of applications you can send over these big pipes,” said Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington-based counsel for telecommunications and media. “There may be next-generation applications that are being held back right now.”
The New Orleans Saints’ victory over Indianapolis in the Super Bowl was watched by more than 106 million people, surpassing the 1983 finale of “M*A*S*H” to become the most-watched program in U.S. television history, the Nielsen Co. said Monday.
Compelling story lines involving the city of New Orleans and its ongoing recovery from Hurricane Katrina and the attempt at a second Super Bowl ring for Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning propelled the viewership. Football ratings have been strong all season.
“It was one of those magical moments that you don’t often see in sports,” said Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports.
Nielsen estimated Monday that 106.5 million people watched Sunday’s Super Bowl. The “M*A*S*H” record was 105.97 million.
The viewership estimate obliterated the previous record viewership for a Super Bowl — last year’s game between Arizona and Pittsburgh. That game was seen by 98.7 million people, Nielsen said.
The “M*A*S*H” record has proven as durable and meaningful in television as Babe Ruth’s record of 714 home runs was in baseball until topped by Hank Aaron. Ultimately, it may be hard to tell which program was really watched by more people. There’s a margin for error in such numbers, and Nielsen’s Monday estimate was preliminary, and could change with a more thorough look at data due Tuesday.
“It’s significant for all of the members of the broadcasting community,” said Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp. CEO. “For anyone who wants to write that broadcasting is dead, 106 million people watched this program. You can’t find that anywhere else.”
LOS ANGELES - Concert promoter Live Nation and ticket-seller Ticketmaster consummated their merger on Monday after the U.S. Justice Department approved it with conditions meant to lower ticket prices for consumers.
Shares in both companies rallied by about 15 percent in trading Monday, showing that investors approved of how the Obama administration handled its first big merger with its appointee Christine Varney as assistant attorney general.
Regulators required Ticketmaster to license its ticketing software to a competitor and sell a subsidiary that handles tens of millions of tickets a year.
That is meant to strengthen the companies that will compete for ticketing contracts and concert promotion work with Live Nation Entertainment Inc., the new company formed by the merger of Live Nation Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc.
“Generally when you see robust competition, you see prices coming down,” Varney told reporters. “This is the right result.”
Consumer groups, ticket resellers and some politicians had expressed concerns that the combined company would control too much of the concert experience. Varney said the original proposal for the merger would have been “anticompetitive.”
Both companies agreed to the conditions, but a federal court in Washington still has to approve it. Canadian regulators and 17 state attorneys general also signed on to the deal.
The combined company will handle all aspects of the concert business, including promoting them, selling tickets, beer and parking, putting out albums and managing an artist roster that includes U2, Madonna, Jay-Z and the Eagles. Its operations span more than 30 countries. The companies said music fans will benefit through lower ticket prices because the merged company can earn money in ways that separate companies could not.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Cameron’s “Avatar” continues to race up the box office charts, remaining No. 1 domestically for the fourth straight weekend with $48.5 million and placing second among all-time top-grossing films worldwide.
The science-fiction saga from 20th Century Fox added $143 million overseas to raise its international haul to $906 million. With $429 million domestically, “Avatar” has pulled in $1.34 billion worldwide, behind only Cameron’s “Titanic,” which took in $1.8 billion.
In just 24 days, “Avatar” shot past the $402.1 million domestic total of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” to become the No. 1 release of 2009. Cameron’s tale of humans and aliens in conflict on a distant world now stands at No. 6 on the all-time domestic chart.
The film has just over $100 million to go to pass the No. 2 domestic hit, “The Dark Knight” at $533.3 million.
“I think we’ll get there very soon,” said Bert Livingston, 20th Century Fox distribution executive. “I believe anything is possible with this picture. Nothing would surprise me. There’s a still a long way to go, and it’s going to keep on playing and playing.”
The No. 2 and No. 3 box office draws remained unchanged from the previous weekend, with the Warner Bros. hit “Sherlock Holmes” in second place at $16.6 million and 20th Century Fox’s “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” in third at $16.3 million. “Sherlock Holmes” raised its domestic take to $165.2 million, and “Alvin and the Chipmunks” lifted its total to $178.2 million.
Among new movies, Lionsgate’s vampire thriller “Daybreakers” had the best premiere, coming in at No. 4 with $15 million. “Daybreakers” stars Ethan Hawke as a reluctant vampire racing to find a substitute for human blood in a world overrun by the undead in the near future.
The first buzzword of ‘09 has to be fusion. New combinations of R&B, hip-hop, rock, dance, Latin and country continued to emerge with help from acts like Kid Cudi, Asher Roth, 3OH!3, Pitbull, LMFAO, Wale, Infected Mushroom, Lady Gaga and even Lo Cash Cowboys. And it looks like the trend will accelerate in the coming year.
Coming in at No. 2 is style. The days of bands showing up wearing whatever was clean (or not) seem to be coming to an end. Whether it’s the preppy chic of bands like Vampire Weekend, the semi-glam looks sported by The Killers and Fall Out Boy or the all-out glam favored by Adam Lambert, the wigged-out esthetic of LMFAO or the high style glamour of Beyoncé and Rihanna, artists have started dressing for success again.
Of course the queen of that movement (and one of the main forces driving it) is none other than Lady Gaga. In fact, I think it’s pretty clear that Lady G. is unquestionably the most influential artist of 2009. (There I said it. You can call me names and argue with me as much as you like, but that won’t change the fact that her impact is huge. I knew the singer was going to be big as soon as I heard “Just Dance.” If only I’d known how big.
Tommy Lee’s new Methods Of Mayhem album will be completed with a little help from his fans, he said in an interview with Musictoob. But he won’t be paying them.
Out in March 2010, his CD will feature tracks recorded by Lee and his producer Scott Humphrey, with parts added by fans.
In the last few months, Lee placed MP3 files online at ThePublicRecord.com and invited musicians to download the tracks and add their own parts before reloading them back onto the site.
“I listen to hundreds of these a day, and let me tell you, there are some talented people out there,” he told Musictoob. “One guy in Prague sent in cool distorted accordian. Another was playing bagpipes.”
Each day Lee gives direction to potential contributors via a webcam to stop “people playing all over the place,” he said.
This process has been dubbed “crowdsourcing.” According to journalist Jeff Howe, who coined the term, it means taking a job done by an individual and offering it to a large group of people in an open call. While Radiohead have allowed their tracks to be remixed by fans, no one has ever asked fans to play on their music and released the results before.
The touring business weathered a bad economy for the second straight summer, as concert grosses held steady and attendance rose slightly.
Concerts grossed $1 billion from May 1 to Sept. 1, roughly equal to the same period in 2008. Attendance rose for the season’s 4,200-plus live music shows to 19.2 million, up 3% from 18.7 million a year ago. The data are from Boxscore reports published by Billboard and analyzed by USA TODAY.
“It was pretty much on par with last year, which is remarkable considering that this was probably the most challenging environment the business has ever faced,” says Billboard touring editor Ray Waddell.
Google is about to give beleaguered record companies a potentially powerful boost by offering people who search for information about musicians the tools to listen to songs - and buy them.
The new capabilities will be unveiled next week as part of a service tentatively called Google OneBox, according to five executives who have been briefed on the matter but declined to be identified because they are not authorized to disclose the information.
Although Internet users already have lots of ways to access music, Google’s (GOOG) involvement could make the initiative important.
“Radio has lost its mojo” for promoting songs, says Phil Leigh, president of market research firm Inside Digital Media. “When new releases come out, people do a Google search.”
But that’s been a frustrating experience for some fans - and for record companies, which have been lobbying the No. 1 search company to change the way results are displayed when people want to track a favorite performer or song.
The current arrangement just offers links to other destinations and often features a grab bag of fan sites, without a clear way to find the music itself.
Under the new system, the No. 1 search company will put at the top of its own page a box with information, photos and, possibly, song lyrics.
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