Scribd Adds Sheet Music And Sesame Street To Its Subscription E-Book Service

Scribd continues to expand its selection — it’s adding sheet music for the first time, and also announcing deals to bring in Sesame Street children’s books and expand its selection of textbooks.

Scribd already offers unlimited access to a library of e-books and other content for $8.99 a month. Even though the company has been expanding into areas like audiobooks and comics, sheet music might not seem like an obvious addition. However, co-founder and CEO Trip Adler said sheet music is already “a really highly searched-for term on Scribd.”

“We want to be broader than just books,” Adler added. “We started with documents, we did comics, we see ourselves as being the library of the future.”

The company’s first sheet music deal is with publisher Hal Leonard, adding 2,600 digital song books to the Scribd library. It covers a range of instruments (Adler’s a saxophone player himself), difficulty levels and genres.

The company also said it’s adding thousands of textbooks from Elsevier, and will be introducing Sesame Street titles in the first quarter of next year.

It’s been a few months since Oyster (which was Scribd’s highest profile startup competitor) shut down, with many of its team members joining Google Play Books, raising questions about the viability of “Netflix for books”-style model.

As for content licensing (which can be a big challenge for online media services), Adler acknowledged that they represent Scribd’s biggest cost, but he doesn’t see that as a bad thing.Adler said that at Scribd, “Everything is going according to plan.” He argued that the company has a unique advantage, since it started out as a document-sharing service reaching a large audience (currently 80 million unique monthly visitors) and convinces a “fraction” of those users to sign up for the paid plan every month.

“We’ve been able to negotiate a lot of really great deals,” he said. “We’ve been making it work pretty well… Our goal is to make money for publishers and authors, and think we’ve been doing that really successfully.”

Comments

Intel announces the first 14 nanometre processor

At the Computex conference in Taipei, chipmaker Intel has revealed a fanless mobile PC reference design using the first of its next-generation 14nm "Broadwell" processors. The 2 in 1 pictured here is a 12.5" screen that is just 7.2 mm thick with keyboard detached and weighs 670 grams. The Surface Pro 3 – for comparison – is 9.1 mm thick and weighs 800 grams. It includes a media dock that provides additional cooling for a burst of performance. The next-generation chip is purpose-built for 2 in 1s and will hit the market later in 2014 . Called the Intel Core M, it will be the most energy-efficient Intel Core processor in the company's history with power usage cut by up to 45 percent, resulting in 60 percent less heat. The majority of designs based on this new chip are expected to be fanless, with up to 32 hours of battery life, offering both a lightning-fast tablet and razor-thin laptop. Intel is also delivering innovation and performance for the ...

Laser gun is deployed and operational on U.S. Navy warship

After several years of research and testing, the U.S. Navy has introduced a new laser gun designed to protect ships without using ammunition. Another entry on our timeline is now a reality as the U.S. Navy has authorised the first operational use of a laser weapon. This new hi-tech system – known as the Laser Weapon System (LaWS) – is designed to serve as a form of defence against drones and other small flying vehicles or small-boat enemies including suicide attackers. It is highly accurate, able to hit objects moving at up to 300 mph (480 km/h). The LaWS fires a solid-state infrared beam with two modes: high output to destroy a target, and low output for optical "dazzling", warning shots or to cripple a potential attacker. Among the advantages of this device versus projectile weapons is the low cost per shot, as each firing of the weapon requires only minimal cost for generating the energetic pulse; by contrast ordnance for projectile weapons must be des...

Uber, Google and other tech employees form Coalition of Black Excellence

When black employee resource groups from a variety of tech companies come together, black magic happens. More specifically, black excellence happens. The Coalition of Black Excellence Week, spearheaded by Uber Litigation Counsel Angela Johnson in collaboration with black ERGs from over 40 tech companies like Facebook, Google, eBay, Lyft and Microsoft, kicks off this Monday in the San Francisco Yay (Bay) Area. The idea for CBE Week came in part from Johnson’s experiences living in Washington D.C., and being able to attend events put on by the Congressional Black Caucus, she told me at Uber’s headquarters this week. “When I moved out to the Bay Area, I really wished there were similar types of experiences for tech,” Johnson said. “And I thought if we could bring together different black ERGs, or diversity and inclusion committees, or people who were interested in some of the issues the black community is passionate about, a lot of positive change and impact could come from that....

Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

At half the price of its last mobile VR headset, the new $99 Oculus-made Samsung Gear VR is cheap enough to unlock virtual reality for the mainstream. Revealed today at the Oculus Connect conference, it works with the whole 2015 line of Samsung Smartphones including the Note 5, S6, S6 Edge, and S6 Edge+. It will ship in November in time for Black Friday. Compared to the $199 previous Gear VRs that only worked with fewer phones, this headset will be a lot more accessible. The new Gear VR is 22% lighter, making it more comfortable to wear. The trackpad on the temple of the headset also now has a tactile directional pad on it so your finger will know where it’s touching. The previous Gear VRs had a smooth trackpad and sometimes it was to tough to know if you were touching it or just the unsensitive shell of the headset when you couldn’t see for yourself. There’s also a new Gear VR Gamepad which all the Oculus Connect conference attendees will get for free. It features an...

C++ Question!!

Come and submit your answers here. Pls visit the link for correct answer: http://www.orianaitsolutions.com/tuton_question-of-day

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog