Subscribers to Apple’s iTunes Match service are sending copyright-holders “magic money,” writes Jeff Price at the blog for the TuneCore online music distribution service. And while not an overwhelming amount ($10,000 in the first two months, spread out across 55,000 TuneCore artists), Price points out that it is more than the null sum that artists were previously receiving.

Amazon keeps ladling on benefits for its Prime subscription, which launched years ago to provide free two-day shipping in the United States for $79 per year and later added video streaming from a subset of Amazon's film and television catalog. The latest update brings free ebook loans from a selection of thousands of titles, allowing up to one loan per month with no due date. The offer is available only to owners of Kindle hardware, not Kindle apps.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has sent email to all Netflix customers and posted on the company’s blog with a message that, while somewhat conciliatory, doesn’t exactly acknowledge that the decision to split Netflix into separate DVD and streaming companies was ill-considered. But it does admit that dealing two sites would be more difficult for customers, and summarizes with “This means no change: one website, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.” The next question is how badly Netflix’s missteps will have hurt the company, and if any competitor can take advantage of the debacle.

After a nearly inexplicable 60 percent price increase in July 2011 was followed by a drop in customers, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has written an apology and explanation that was posted on the company’s blog and sent to all customers in email. In it, Hastings reveals that Netflix will be separating the DVD and streaming sides of the business even more, rebranding the DVD-delivery service to “Qwikster.” Responses (over 10,000 so far) on the company’s blog seem to be universally negative, with customers expressing unhappiness (to put it mildly) with the future separation of services and the pricing. Might be time for Netflix to consider an about-face before it’s too late.