In the early days of Web 1.0 beta (i.e. the ’90s), most of us who were paying attention thought music middlemen were on their way out. Technology on the near horizon allowed bands to sell tickets, merchandise, and recordings directly to fans, while promoting their music through early internet radio, where payola and corporate sway…
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…
Sonos was way ahead of the game when it comes to piping digital around the home. It took years for Apple to catch up, which it might have, by implementing AirPlay across its operating systems, iOS devices, AirPort Express, and AppleTV. Before that happened, I used to call Sonos the “iPod Home” that Apple should…
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…
Spotify recently rolled out a third batch of music apps that run within its desktop software, offering new ways to find stuff to listen to on your desktop, whether you pay for Spotify or not. This didn’t “just happen.” Rather, it’s part of a concerted effort on the part of Spotify to become, in the…
The consensus from SXSW so far appears to be that no single app is dominating the festival, although Highlight and some other apps did see their share of hype. One observer bets that Groupme may have been the breakout hit of SXSW just like last year because the company has only lost one employee since being acquired…
People are using music apps more than they did last year, according to data from mobile app analytics firm Flurry — and not only that, they appear more likely to pay for music apps than for other kinds of apps. In London on Tuesday evening, members of the British music app cognescenti gathered to hear…
Beyond Oblivion was supposed to save the music industry. Instead, it lived up to its name, collapsing in dramatic fashion at the end of 2011 when investors lost their patience with a company that kept promising and never delivering. Years of careers and $33.2 million vanished, with two days notice, over the December holiday break….
Information overload might feel less onerous if we spread it around. Why should our eyes and fingers do so much of the work of inundating our brains with torrents of information? Our ears can chip in. Social Radio for Twitter, an iOS app temporarily available for free, reads your Twitter feed to you along with…
It’s always a pleasure to chat with host John Schaefer on WNYC Soundcheck, airing locally in New York and nationwide on NPR affiliate stations. Yesterday, joined by music technology writer Geeta Dayal, we discussed digital music collections as part of the show’s “Supercollectors” series. (As usual, I stuck around to hear the musical guest, which a…
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…
The following interview with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek originally appeared on GRAMMY.com. Ek will give the keynote address at the GRAMMY Foundation’s Entertainment Law Initiative Luncheon & Scholarship Presentation on Feb. 10 in Beverly Hills, Calif. For more information on the GRAMMY Foundation, visit www.grammyfoundation.org. The 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards airs live on Sunday, Feb….
CANNES, FRANCE — We’ve been quite busy appearing on panels and meeting with sources here at Midem 2012, but perhaps no one at this music industry festival worked harder and slept less than the music app developers at Music Hack Day Cannes. In an oxygen-starved room on the fifth floor of the Palais des Festivals,…
I learned my lesson about writing about Apple Genius Bar employees after nearly costing a friend his job, by merely reporting about how Apple rescued John Stewart’s laptop. Apple’s PR machine is tight-lipped, to say the least, and was apparently rather displeased to have it known that any Apple laptop had malfunctioned, let alone the…
In 13-plus years of writing about digital music all day, one of my favorite pieces remains “4 Reasons Music Needs One Big Database,” which argues that all of these MP3 blogs, music subscriptions, tweets, videos, streaming radio services, and so on are talking about the same set of music: the one that exists on planet…
