Music

Research in Motion has announced an updated version of the BlackBerry Music Gateway gadget. It’s the first in what we’re hoping is a stream of new announcements from BlackBerry World, the company’s developer conference running between May 1 and May 3. The original version came out way back in 2008, and this second edition adds in several new features including NFC. It’s a tiny thing, measuring just 60mm by 40mm and 12mm thick, and weighing a… Read More

Spotify is great, but discovering music on it has never been as easy as it could be. There are lists of top-selling songs, but the service has never had a great recommendation engine to let users know what music they may love, but may never have heard of before. That could change later this year. Bloomberg believes that a Pandora-like recommendation service is in the works.  "...The new format would be similar to Pandora’s, which… Read More

Poor Zune. What chance did Microsoft’s little media player and its attendant digital music and video store have in the face of the crushing monolith that is Apple and iTunes? In all the ways that the Xbox brand, the Xbox 360, and Xbox Live have succeeded over the past eleven years, Zune has failed. The company already stopped making actual Zune handhelds. Now it’s time, finally, for the Zune Marketplace itself to die. (Microsoft announced in… Read More

Snagging an MP3 on iTunes is easy. Making it is not. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into making the music we take for granted. Technology has gone a long way in making music easier to distribute than ever, but actually producing it remains an immense task. Artists, producers and recording engineers may pour hours, weeks and months into distilling just a couple minutes of flawless audio. Whether it eventually reaches you as a vinyl… Read More

Fighting for its life in a post-Megaupload world, Swiss cyberlocker Rapidshare has published a guideline for how all such services can avoid becoming the target of Hollywood and the U.S. government. Uncovered by TorrentFreak, the "manifesto" is a strict condemnation of people who try to use the site and others like it for the illegal distribution of copyrighted material, like music, movies and TV shows.  "Because any customer… Read More

The big challenge for a streaming music service like Spotify is getting the mobile experience right. Until now, the company's Android app has been a bit lackluster. It used a generic app template and often had issues downloading and staying open (it crashed on us, a lot). Today, we were sent a preview build of the new Spotify app for Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) phones and devices. We haven't tested it on an Android tablet yet,… Read More

Spotify, a music streaming service, is strategically partnering up with...a soft drink company. Yep. Today in New York, Spotify held a big press conference announcing its new "strategic" partnership with Coca Cola. Coke will soon have its own app in the Spotify marketplace where it will promote music it likes (and has paid for), and the two companies will co-promote each other in many ways throughout 2012 and beyond. Despite the… Read More

Back in September 2011, we were bracing ourselves for some big announcements from Facebook. The phrase “Read. Watch. Listen.” was supposed to embody what the social network had planned for us, and soon thereafter Open Graph was launched and the Timeline apps that more fully document and detail our digital lives were introduced. Still, prior to the announcement there had been all sorts of talk about a digital media hub from Facebook, and while… Read More

This certainly wasn't the lineup originally advertised by Coachella. On Sunday night's closing act to week one of the 2012 Coachella music festival, a hologram of the late Tupac Shakur joined Snoop Dogg seamlessly on stage as he performed "Hail Mary," and  "2 Of Amerikaz Most Wanted." Shakur, who passed away for more than 15 years ago, rapped among other popular hip hop artists such as Eminem, Dr. Dre, 50… Read More

Ever wonder how musicians and music publishers get paid for all the digital music distributed by streaming services, stored in media lockers, and distributed via playlists and special bundles? Music publishers and artists have been wondering, too — because, for most artists anyway, the money from these new services hasn't amounted to a hill of beans. Now, there's an answer: A new agreement between music publishers, record labels,… Read More

If you have personal files stored on the Megaupload servers, your data is safe — for now. At a hearing today in Alexandria, VA, a U.S. District Court judge ruled on the side of Megaupload, agreeing to allow for further negotiations about what to do with the massive amounts of information stored on servers used by Megaupload. As CNet reports, Megaupload attorney Ira Rothken asked U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady to allow all the interested… Read More

Announced by Amazon earlier today, the Trade-In Program has been expanded to include compact discs.The popular program allows Amazon users to send in old video games, books, Blu-ray and DVD movies as well as a variety of electronics to trade in for Amazon store credit. If an item meets Amazon's criteria for acceptance, the user prints a shipping label provided by Amazon and sends the item. After receiving the item and passing an… Read More

These days, iPod docks are pretty affordable. Walk into any discount retailer and we assure you can get a decent dock for under $40. So why this large sectional sofa with a built-in iPod dock system wants to charge you approximately $1,600 per set is beyond us. Okay, fair enough, the Sound Sofa is huge. The regular set looks like it can seat up to at least five, more if you've got kids bundling up for a music session in your living room.… Read More