As part of our ongoing investigation into how people collect music in these overwhelming times, let’s talk about the three basic stages of this process — and how our current music ecosystem fails us, and how the right interface can solve the problem. That interface is the triptych, and we’ll get to it soon. Interface…
What follows is a new twist on our This Week In Music Apps series. Instead of simply bringing you a selection of the most interesting new music apps, we’re grouping them into themes. This week’s theme is web apps for your browser. But first… Recent Reviews Speakerfy: How To Listen Together/Alone with iPhone, Android Friends…
Android folks are used to reading about stuff they can’t use. Today, it’s the Apple iOS crew’s chance to feel left out. Hotspot.fm purports to be the “world’s only 3D music service,” and it’s only available for Android. Indeed, this Finnish-born Android app does have some elements that might be considered three dimensional. To use it,…
Most of us get our dose of new music on the interwebs, whether via streaming radio, blogs, blog aggregators, friends, feeds, label newsletters, or hybrids like Shuffler.fm, the online music blog curator that’s also recently joined the lineup of Spotify apps. This one’s different. The popular site The Turntable Kitchen, part personal blog, music blog, tech blog,…
A year in open development, music discovery site WOMP.in is the brainchild of Jason Wimp, Michal Krupa and Neil Mallinar — three college students still earning their undergraduate degrees from Indiana University, University of Illinois: Urbana Champaign, and John Hopkins respectively (updated). WOMP, set for its official launch this March, emerged from Wimp’s previous, more…
We’re back with another batch of fresh music apps as part of our This Week in Music Apps series, which usually includes Android apps, but this time it’s iOS, the web, and desktops only. First, the latest app reviews: This Week in Reviews Boil The Frog: The Coolest Playlist Generator We’ve Seen All Year Rework_,…
Most of us probably remember having a song, album, or band change our lives. It’s a fairly common experience, even for those unfortunate beings who don’t live and breathe music. It’s a good thing to have happen to you (unless you become too obsessed). Still, anyone can get bored of the music they already know,…
Earlier this week, Google rolled out its latest mobile operating system, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, along with a tag-along announcement: a new music discovery app that sits within the Google Play Store. However, at this point, almost no one can use it; to try, you’ll need an Android tablet as well as the new operating…
At SXSW in March, I wasn’t allowed to write about one of the neatest things I saw. It happens — due to the embargoes that (most of) us technology press people have to agree to in order to see stuff before its creators want people to know about it. For example, on Monday, I met…
Many successful apps tend to encourage little bursts of activity, for when you’re waiting for the bus, the doctor, the coffee, whatever. Maybe that’s why Apple chose Band of the Day, a free iOS app that brings you one undiscovered, up-and-coming band each day, as its iPhone App of the Year Runner-Up of 2011,behind Instagram. Even Robert Scoble…
Spotify has concocted a new way to hook fans into becoming subscribers: a free, ad-supported radio feature that will play forever within the Spotify iOS app (including its new iPad version) — whether or not the person pays a cent for the service. Until today, using Spotify for free meant sticking to the desktop version or…
It’s a problem that exists all around the world: Radio stations can only play on song at a time, and those songs tend to be the ones that a person or algorithm has already decided is worthy of airplay. We all know there’s plenty of great new stuff sitting there, but it’s not always easy…
The ColorHits web app was designed to let you “discover new music with color,” quite literally, based on the color of its album cover. There are plenty of ways to find music that make musical sense. Why not try one that doesn’t? You might find something you never would have otherwise. Fire up ColorHits (after requesting…
Starting today, music fans who use Spotify will have access to 12 new apps within the popular free-or-subscription music service. The new apps, pictured above, give music fans a nice range of options for discovering new music among Spotify’s 16-million-song plus catalog, whether they pay for the service or not. Subscribers can listen as much as…
Happy holidays! So, you scored a new iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. You’ve already downloaded Angry Birds, set up email, and possibly had some interesting conversations with Siri. What about the music? You probably have some, and you probably want more. Sure, you could just sync and playing the same music from your iTunes library. But that’s something your…
