Apptitude

When the IMDb turns 25 in October, both its database and popularity will have multiplied exponentially. The IMDb consumer site (imdb.com) currently lists more than 3 million movies and TV shows and more than 6 million cast and crew members. It has a combined Web and mobile audience exceeding 200 million unique monthly visitors.

Venture capital is flowing into an array of startup services poised to exploit the emerging trends of 2018. We know because we happened to retrieve a document entitled “Where to Put Your Money Now” that had fallen out of the pocket of a tuxedo-clad capitalist as he stepped into a black limo and sped off.

I was skeptical that Apple’s all-you-can-queue subscription plan, Apple Music, would cause me to abandon online services like Spotify that also boasted 30 million songs. Not an Apple acolyte, I use a Windows computer and an Android smartphone. I boycotted buying anything from iTunes when a $50 credit in my account was hacked and Apple refused to restore it the second time it happened. But I also own an iPod touch, two iPads, and an Apple TV, and the iTunes Store on my PC continued to be the place for sampling free music—typically after discovering the songs on radio stations streamed on iTunes.

Remember when you'd pop a CD into a computer and click "Import" in iTunes or "Rip CD" in Windows Media Player?

You’d think that a company that started out in 1998, four years before the iPod, selling a dedicated audio player and a small library of spoken-word books would be out of business by now. Yet thanks to the rise of smartphones and a timely acquisition in 2008 by Amazon, Audible has become the leading provider of digital audio books.

Maybe it’s because the broadcast networks crave turning the clock back to when they were dominant that the new season is dominated by series about time travel.

Paul McCartney and Candlestick Park are more likely to be linked to endings (the last Beatles concert, 1966; the last big gig at the Stick, 2014) than new beginnings. But thanks to an innovative app that incorporates a 360-degree perspective from the stage of McCartney’s performance of “Live and Let Die” at the San Francisco ballpark, the man and place will now be coupled to the birth of an exciting way for everybody to enjoy music like never before.