At first glance, This American Life and OK Go don’t have much in common. The former is a talk radio show known for its funny and touching stories about human connection, and the latter is a rock band known for its sugary hooks and music videos about dancing on treadmills. A closer look reveals a…
Grooveshark is getting it from all angles. Not only did its only major label deal (with EMI) collapse, but the company is now being sued by all four major labels for large-scale copyright infringement due to its policy of letting users upload music into its system, where over 30 million people stream it for free…
Doug Freeman (@dmfreeman) is a music critic for the Austin Chronicle and co-editor of The Austin Chronicle Music Anthology. He also works in PR and marketing for early stage technology startups at Jones-Dilworth. (See also Sean Adams’ own response to that interview.) Evolver.fm’s interview with Drowned in Sound’s Sean Adams earlier this week offered an interesting…
If you own an iPhone, iPad, or iPad Touch — and an AppleTV, AirPort Express or AirPlay-enabled system — you probably already know that you can play the music from any Apple AirPlay-enabled app (like Spotify or Pandora). All you need to do is tap the button within the app that looks like this: Suddenly,…
It’s true, what they say: Our digital lives are moving to the cloud. Whenever we fire up Facebook instead of a local email client, we’re taking part in the shift from locally-run software to the networked app world. However, some fairly major parts of those digital lives — our music, movies, and other activities —…
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….
When a digital music startup distributes massive amounts of unlicensed music and fails to pay for the music it has licensed, most of us know what happens next: They go out of business. Not so with Grooveshark. The popular P2P streaming site, which claims 30 million active users (over twice Spotify’s footprint) responded to lawsuits from…
Last.fm essentially invented the idea of tracking what people play in various services and sharing it with others about ten years before Mark Zuckerberg announced last month that Facebook would do the same. Today, Last.fm actually “scrobbles” from more devices and music services than Facebook does, but Facebook has the users — and therefore, the…
Wait — don’t switch the channel. We know you’ve heard all about how Facebook lets you see what your friends are listening to and play it back later. This is different. With the free, US-only Myxer Social Radio (previewed here), you can see what your friends are listening to via Facebook and join them in…
Bands and labels that stream music from their Facebook pages, the way they do with Myspace, are in for a big surprise: Facebook is phasing out its native Music Player app, which allowed them to post songs and discographies on the social network. Instead, Facebook recommends that they post videos instead, rely on third-party apps,…
There’s arguably more music on the web than on any music service, but playing it isn’t as easy as pressing play on an iPod. MP3 blogs alone bring a wealth of fascinating stuff to hear. The thing is, pretty much nobody has 27 hours per day to read the web looking for tunes. This is where exfm,…
Over 24 hours after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings stunned the technology chattering classes with his decision to spin its DVD shipping business off from its streaming business, observers are still questioning it. Nobody seems to know why Netflix would split its company into Qwikster, which will deliver DVDs slowly through the mail, and Netflix, which…
Let this be a lesson to the technology press, present company included. Just because Apple usually declines to comment when we approach them, it’s still worth checking with the company to verify the speculation of others. Yesterday, we and many others took Insanely Great Mac’s video depiction of iCloud music “streaming” at face value. However, contrary…
Update 8/31: The situation is more nuanced than what appears in the above video. Read our follow-up story for more details. Forget some of what you sort of thought you knew about Apple’s as-yet-unreleased iCloud service. Contrary to previous reporting, this $25/year personal cloud storage service will be capable of streaming music to iOS devices, meaning…
It’s the start of a new week, which for most of us means back to the grind. Add a little rain here at our Boston and New York offices, and it doesn’t leave much to smile about. But there’s a silver lining, because at Evolver.fm, each week brings new music apps for our “This Week…
