We spend a lot of time thinking about the future of music as an app phenomenon – mostly for listeners, but also for musicians: instruments for the synth wiz, ways for musicians to market and monetize tunes, and recently, how this whole transition into apps has affected music bloggers. Our lengthy conversation with Sean Adams – founder of influential music…
At first glance, This American Life and OK Go don’t have much in common. The former is a talk radio show known for its funny and touching stories about human connection, and the latter is a rock band known for its sugary hooks and music videos about dancing on treadmills. A closer look reveals a…
At its San Francisco headquarters, Rdio recently held its first-ever hack day — a marathon event where coders build stuff that works, fast. Most hack days, including the one our editor just attended in Sydney, are open to the public and consist of programming wizards getting together over a 24-hour period and building a slew…
We’re all for apps that let beginners and seasoned geeks alike make music in a fun, easy, engaging way, but with the potential for sonically interesting results. We like to call them apps for making music without really trying. eDrops (free-$2, for iPhone and iPad), the latest entry in this field, takes its musical inspiration from the…
If you were told to make an iPhone app that to capture the current zeitgeist, what would it look like? A gas price calculator, perhaps, or something like the Inhuman Microphone? Or how about an app that lets you make dubstep tracks from Tim Tebow’s voice –does that sound about right? We thought so. Enter…
It’s tax day once again — that joyful, once-a-year occasion when liberal types like the author are asked quite literally to put our money where our mouths are, as folks on the other side of the aisle get to sit around telling us they told us so. We kid. We can still be friends, right? This…
Spotify has received plenty of attention for its app platform, and rightfully so. Rdio also has an app platform, offering access to the same songs, more or less. Evolver.fm caught up with Rdio vice president of engineering Todd Berman to discuss the one-year anniversary of Rdio’s developer API; the service’s approach to third-party apps; and his belief…
Upon arriving at MusicGrid.me, users are greeted with, yes, a grid full of music. MusicGrid presents new releases by everyone from love-’em-or-hate-’em blog darlings Sleigh Bells (“Like a really evil ’80s R&B record” according to one reviewer) to those milquetoast purveyors of primetime soap soundtrack cheese, The Fray (“music you can comfortably shop with your…
Last year’s Music Hack Day Boston gave us Drinkify, a web app that went viral by suggesting the perfect cocktail to drink while listening to any musicians. For Johnny Cash: equal parts Jack Daniels and honey. For The Mummies: 6 oz. of Bud Light. For Gwar: 8 ounces of Beefeater gin, of course. This year, at Music Hack…
When the MP3 revolution hit its stride, the coolest thing about it was how much control we were given over our music. Weightless files and tiny players let you carry your entire library around with you, all the time. Anything you wanted to listen to — so long as you had already hunted it down…
The music section of the Chrome Web Store has amplified quite a bit since its initial rollout of 23 apps. In addition to offerings from heavy hitters like MOG, Rdio, and Pandora, it’s also home to a wide selection of apps and extensions from smaller developers from off the beaten trail. Getting an app into…
We first checked out Herd.fm about a year ago, after it had been a finalist in last year’s SXSW Accelerator contest. Back then, the app shared music based on your physical location, allowing you to “drop” tracks at various venues for other users to “pick up” and listen to — a pretty neat idea. Unfortunately,…
Much has been made of our supposedly decreasing attention spans when it comes to music. The proliferation of MP3s, peer-to-peer file sharing, and streaming services like Spotify and Rdio have put ridiculous amounts of content at our fingertips and in our pockets. Some argue that all this music weakens our ability to appreciate it. Why focus…
Depending on when you tuned in to the 54th Grammy awards Sunday night, you may have seen one of four shows: One was stately and appropriately low-key in its remembrance of the late Whitney Houston; another was unabashedly celebratory; a third was full of the usual awkwardly-forced collaborations; and the fourth one had way too much…
Vincent Morisset bills himself as a “web-friendly” director, which is a fitting distinction. Where most films progress in a linear fashion, Morisset takes things a step further, or maybe sideways. Through simple interactions like scrolling a mouse across a computer screen, or complicated ones like dancing in front of a webcam, Morisset’s films ask the…
