We were mightily impressed with the music apps created at Music Hack Day Sydney — the first such hackathon ever to be held in the southwestern hemisphere. The latest to float our boat: Ivy, a web app that lets friends or coworkers add songs to a group playlist that they can all hear at the same…
First, a disclaimer: We appreciate that the above headline is begging to be proven wrong. One of the classic journalistic mistakes is to declare anything to be the “first,” “best,” or any other superlative. It’s a big world out there, with many things in it. But having already written about the first MP3 players, it only…
“We like it hard, we like it fast We got the biggest amps, man they blast True metal people wanna rock not pose Wearin’ jeans and leather, not crackerjack clothes.” Manowar – “Kings Of Metal“ Heavy metal is a force. Of that, we are certain. But what makes heavy metal truly “metal?” Is it the…
AUSTIN, TEXAS — The biggest app at this year’s SXSW wasn’t Highlight or Glancee, physically speaking. It was the building pictured to the right, which Nike essentially turned into a music app as part of its Diplo/Sleigh Bells party. The company’s new Fuelband wristband ($149) tracks how active you are throughout the day as you exercise, walk…
AUSTIN, TEXAS — This is the second part of our exclusive SXSW interview with Peter Blom, co-founder of the popular SpotON Radio app for iOS, which turns Spotify into an artist-based radio service. See the first part here. Eliot Van Buskirk, Evolver.fm: Do you think it hurts you that because Spotify’s mobile app lacks a free trial,…
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…
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…
Of all the hacks cobbled together at Music Hack Day San Francisco this past weekend, none were more timely than Paul Lamere’s, which attempted to predict Grammy Awards winners in 13 categories automatically, by analyzing what people were saying about the artists in question. Just hours before last night’s ceremony, Lamere revealed that his app…
In one possible dystopian future, a single ticketing company has come to dominate the live music space to the point that concertgoers have no choice but to attend virtually. Concert 2012, which puts forth this vision, was one of the more curious apps to emerge from Music Hack Day San Francisco this past weekend. This…
It’s easy to make fun of Guitar Hero now that the craze is over, but one thing is for sure: It created a new enthusiasm for the guitar as an instrument, in these days of DJs and remix artists. We’ve seen a rash of startingly innovative new ways to teach people how to play the…
CANNES, FRANCE — Rovio’s Angry Birds is one of the most popular apps of all time, with over 500 million downloads, a series of animations, plush toys, and even a full-length feature film said to be in the works. Music fans might be delighted to learn that in addition, the company is working on a…
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Remember MySpace? It’s now a music app for Facebook, the same social network that supplanted it just in time for social networking becoming a mainstream phenomenon, complete with its own biopic. The main use for this MySpace Facebook app (sorry, it’s spelled “Myspace” now) is to embed songs on…
Normally, we write about music apps that exist. Not this time. I’ve been dreaming of the ultimate music app; maybe it’s because I used to do the same thing with hardware during my days as the guy who reviewed MP3 players at CNET (although they deleted the column), or maybe it’s just fun to make…
