Since the advent of portable electronics, man has been trying to jury-rig portable electronics into automobiles to replace the lowly car stereo. Those days may soon be coming to an end.
How much is a song worth? It’s a question that’s often been discussed since the internet got involved in the music industry. Is it 99 cents, as iTunes, Amazon and other digital retailers believe? Is it some minuscule percentage of a monthly subscription fee, a la Spotify and online radio stations? Or is it free? One new label has made free music the center of its business model.
Shown off at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, Ion Audio’s Guitar Apprentice iPad accessory has already been a fixture on every local, regional and national broadcast news outlet’s segment, the formula being that the anchors and reporters banter back and forth, half-condescendingly portraying the biggest tech show of the year as little more than a nerdy flea market chock full of silly toys with iPad docks. But I digress.
Last year, for the first time in history, digital music sales exceeded physical sales, according to a newly released Nielsen/Billboard report cited by CNNMoney.
Google Music is now open to everyone in the U.S. It’s a free service that you can use to store up to 20,000 of your songs on Google’s servers and stream those songs to compatible devices. Songs can now be purchased directly from the Android Market as well.
Facebook users really, really want their friends to know what they’re listening to. According to numbers released by the social networking giant yesterday, users have shared their listening activity more than 1.5 billion times in the two months since Facebook unveiled listening integration services with Open Graph.
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is forging ahead with its BBM Music offering, an attempt at creating a viral music service that will probably fall flat.
Apple’s iTunes may have ushered in a digital revolution to the music industry, making music more affordable and—in tandem with the iPod and other MP3 players—more of a feature in people’s day-to-day lives, but according to Pete Townshend, iTunes is a “digital vampire” that’s bleeding musicians by taking a commission for each download sold.
Spotify users who are also fans of Coldplay may have found themselves wondering something over the last few days, and it’s not “Why does Chris Martin always sound so sad and tired?” Instead, they’re probably asking themselves when “Mylo Xyloto,” the Coldplay album released earlier this week is going to show up on the streaming [...]
Until Google irons out its music licensing issues with the big record labels, its Google Music service (which the Wall Street Journal says is rumored to launch within the next few weeks) probably won’t reach the popularity of the music industry’s latest big thing: Spotify. One thing Google does want to do is emulate Spotify’s [...]
Though the Apple Store memorials have since given way to long lines for the iPhone 4S, it’s still difficult to imagine the technology company without Steve Jobs at its helm. And while much has been written about the gadgets that defined perhaps Jobs’ most productive decade, it’s tough to isolate one device for its impact above [...]
