This could be the year when home networked audio systems — AirPlay speakers, Sonos, videogame consoles, and the like — unite the most effective music delivery system in history (the internet) with the formerly outdated notion that music should sound good for the average music fan. People are paying good money for headphones these days,…
Bruno Zamborlin has devised a way to connect a custom contact microphone to an iPhone app, with intriguing results. His invention, the Mogee, attaches to just about anything around you and picks up vibrations from these objects, turning them into sound with the iPhone app, and then out to headphones, speakers, a recording device, an…
Like many people these days, I do almost all of my music listening with streaming services — on-demand subscriptions, online radio, random things shared on social networks, and my collections and playlists on various services. Even then, I occasionally need to listen to something on my home computer — friends’ recordings, interviews, MP3 albums I’ve…
Two and a half years ago, we put together a round-up of the best music apps for not crashing your car. None of them were as pretty or as functional as MacPaw Listen (free, iOS), which lets you play any of the music in your local or iCloud library without touching a single button, or…
It’s hard to believe what web browsers are capable of these days, even on smartphones and tablets. Igor Zinken’s WebSID puts a synthesizer based on the vintage Commodore 64 “SID” module into supported web browsers on any computer, smartphone, or tablet. In our experience, it was most fun on a device with a touchscreen. Bookmark it…
For music fans, gesture music controls should mean the ability to skip songs and more by, for example, tapping a button on the steering wheel and waving a hand. Gesture controls mean something else for musicians or anyone else trying to make music: the ability to shape, pan, record, trigger, play, scrub, and add effects…
If you’re a music fan, and your music collection is scattered all over the place, which it is, BitTorrent offers a great app called BitTorrent Sync that helps somewhat, by letting you access the music downloads on all of your computers, from all of your devices. It’s a good start, from the point of view…
Sony Music Unlimited isn’t just another music subscription, in part because it lets you choose the music that plays in PlayStation 4 videogames, which, alone, will be worth the price of admission ($5/ or $10/month) to some gamers, especially because all of that music can play on computers, phones, and/or tablets, just like any other…
Rap’s wordplay can be confusing, with oblique references, inside jokes, and regional slang. Since 2009, fans of the genre have been hashing out song meanings on RapGenius.com, which set out to demystify rap lyrics through the power of crowdsourcing. And now, all of the lyrics, annotations, and opinions about what each line means, which are…
Unlike most music experiences these days, going to a show is something you do with other people. Yes, it would be nice if they would stop ruining shows with their smartphones, but for the most part, having other people around adds to the live music experience. It’s even nicer if you know some of these…
Swedish indietronica four-piece Little Dragon launched a promotional campaign on Monday that will almost certainly be the funnest promotional campaign you’ll try all week, should you elect to do so. Little Dragon Klapp Klapp asks for your phone number. If you’re brave enough to give it up, you’re in for a treat — each member…
Nobody expects people to install a separate app for each album they want to hear, at least until music players gain the ability to run or launch music apps from within a music library. Still, a band like Radiohead, which people already know, stands a good chance of convincing people to install a dedicated app…
The hip-hop trio De La Soul is back with a big, free music promotion on the 25th anniversary of its landmark Three Feet High and Rising album. Today, Valentine’s Day, the group is offering all of their albums as free downloads. Just check the boxes and subscribe a real email address to a newsletter, and…
When a commenter suggested that we should check out AirEnabler, we knew we had to do it. This $50 promises a plug-and-play version of the arduous, hacker-y process described here for putting Apple’s AirPlay wireless music connection into your car. Not only that, but it does the same for any of the sound systems in your home, to boot, stretching…
It’s easy to make fun of FM radio: no personalization, over-saturated with audio ads, prone to over-caffeinated “morning zoo” antics, and barely customizable at all. Still, it can be nice to get those news and weather snippets in between songs someone and/or something decided you should hear that morning, in that particular city or region….
