Techmeme
November 11, 2014, 2:50 PM

Top News

Daniel Ek / Spotify Blog:
Spotify has paid music industry $2B to date, $1B since last year; has 12.5M paying subscribers; top artists to exceed $6M/year in payments  —  $2 Billion and Counting  — A blog post written by CEO Daniel Ek (@eldsjal)  —  Taylor Swift is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it.
Aaron Souppouris / Engadget:
Groupon says it will end trademark dispute with open-source foundation GNOME  —  Groupon says it'll end trademark spat with open-source community (update)  —  Well, this could get messy.  The GNOME project is a well-known free and open-source desktop environment for Linux distros.
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft rebrands Lync as ‘Skype for Business’; readies 2015 releases  —  Summary: Microsoft is rebranding its unified-communications line-up from Lync to Skype for Business, and is readying the next releases of those products for the first half of 2015.  —  Microsoft is rebranding …
Reuters:
Apple hiring dedicated sales team, working with business app developers in enterprise push  —  Exclusive: Apple's enterprise assault gets into higher gear  —  (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) is embarking on its most aggressive expansion yet onto corporate turf, hiring a dedicated sales force …
Juro Osawa / Wall Street Journal:
Alibaba, Apple Talks on Payments Tie-Up Focused on China  —  Alibaba's Joseph Tsai Says Both Companies Are Working Out Details on Potential Partnership  —  A senior Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. executive said Tuesday that a payment alliance between Apple Inc. and the Chinese e-commerce giant's …
Rob Price / The Daily Dot:
Controversial anonabox is back, raises $14,000 on Indiegogo in 2 days  —  Just under a month after Kickstarter suspended the privacy-centric anonabox for misleading its customers, the controversial router is now on Indiegogo for another go—and it's already raised almost $14,000.
More: Engadget and DSLreportsTweets: @runasandThanks:@robaeprice
Dana Wollman / Engadget:
Garmin Vivosmart review: one of the few fitness bands that doubles as smartwatch, but overpriced at $170  —  Garmin Vivosmart review: where fitness band meets smartwatch  —  There are fitness trackers and there are smartwatches, but there's only a small number of devices that attempt to be both.
More: The Verge
Everett Rosenfeld / CNBC:
Alibaba Singles' Day sales hit $9.34B  —  Alibaba's Jack Ma: I don't watch our stock price  —  Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma discusses the company's valuation and expectations now that they are bigger than Wal-Mart in market value.  —  Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman …
Fred Wilson / AVC:
Interfering with a competitor's fundraising, as Uber did, while not new, is unethical and ineffective  —  Messing With A Competitor's Fundraising  —  I saw a post that described how Uber tried to mess with Lyft's fundraising.  This is not a new tactic.  I have seen it used for as long as I have been in the VC business.

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More News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Earlier Picks

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Phobos / The Tor Blog:
Kim Zetter / Wired:
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch: