The Washington Post is in bad shape, and its social reader app, which spams your Facebook friends with the fact that you just read an article about Kim Kardashian’s latest hangnail atrocity, isn’t helping. As noted by Forbes, usage of the Washington Post Social Reader plummeted over the last 30 days from 17.4 million to…
Application Programming Interface, thy name be “awesome!” Excuse the geek-out, if you’re not up on your API ABC’s, but how else are we to react to the fact that Facebook just added a Listen button to its artist pages that lets you play songs from that artist just about instantly, by hooking in to each…
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…
Responding to complaints about its practice of limiting data plans it sold as “unlimited,” AT&T clarified the amount of wireless data its smartphone customers can use before it starts throttling their bandwidth this week. The new limits at which AT&T will slow down users’ bandwidth: 3GB per month for smartphone users or 5GB for subscribers…
Music services sometimes issue press releases when their catalogs break certain thresholds — 10 million tracks, 12 million tracks, and so on. But they never mention it when a certain artist, album, or song disappears from their catalogs, which happens as licensing contracts end, or when musicians reconsider the wisdom of licensing their music to…
The current crop of car stereos that work with apps mostly do so by interfacing with your smartphone. Observe, as we test cars capable of connecting to MOG and Pandora through an iPhone. In those cases, the car’s standard dashboard hardware controls the apps, and displays the content — albums, artists, songs, and so on…
First, the bad news: This little wireless speaker costs $200, which is far more than most people would pay for a little portable speaker. Experts in the consumer electronics industry generally assume that starting at $200, people have to check an expenditure with their spouses, and for something like this, the response would probably be…
Facebook’s recently-launched music features are not perfect, but in the past month-plus, the social network has already boosted usage of Facebook-connected unlimited music services significantly — and none so much as MOG. The data in the above charts comes from AppData, which doesn’t track Rhapsody as a Facebook music app, but it shows MOG growing…
Tired of listening to music on your lonesome? Facebook might have the answer. About a month ago, the social network built some “connective tissue” between music fans and the services they use to listen. At its most basic level, Facebook now lets you A) let your friends know what you’re listening to on supported music services, and…
Put on your headphones. It’s time to listen to music in a new way that might just blow your mind. The above headline doesn’t really do justice to Tomahawk and the new Tomahawklet add-on, which added support for the popular Turntable.fm group-listening service today. Here’s how to work this strange magic for yourself. First, get…
The car is the next frontier for digital music. Auto-makers, whose dashboards lag, by design necessity, behind the rest of the market for 18-plus months, are starting to capitalize on the power of music apps. A large percentage of music listening happens in the car, so this is a welcome development for music fans —…
Probably the most under-appreciated product Apple has ever made is its AirPort Express. This humble device lets you play music from a wide range of AirPlay-enabled iOS apps on your stereo, where they sound good, without running wires through your living space. It rules — and so does its younger cousin, Apple TV, which adds…
On September 22, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (above) announced sixteen music partners ranging from almost-unheard-of to the incredibly popular. Of those, eight (updated) have completed their integration with Facebook, meaning that they can automatically send users’ listening activity to their friends’ Facebook tickers and Music sections, and to their own Facebook Timelines. Here’s the full list in…
Clearly, people are nervous about the new Facebook. We, too, are concerned that it represents a big step in the privatization of the internet, which is a public good that people don’t seem to want to use in its unmediated form. Who wants to run their own web and email servers these days, or write…
Facebook wants to be the “connective tissue” desperately needed by music fans and the music industry alike, so that, at long last, people would be able to share music with each other without friction — and without breaking the law. However, despite all the other neat stuff Facebook unveiled today, it mostly failed in that…
