Tag Archives | Digital Music

Spotify’s Ship is Sailing

Posted by Jared Newman on December 8, 2010 at 9:51 am

CNet’s Greg Sandoval has an update on Spotify, the music service best known for streaming free, ad-supported songs.

Although Spotify debuted in Europe two years ago, the service has yet to launch in the United States. Record labels are worried that Spotify can’t convert enough people to its premium subscription plan, and that its free version would cut into iTunes and other a la carte download services. As a kind of insurance against cannibalization, record labels want to charge Spotify a premium for licensing.

Now, Sandoval reports, Spotify will miss its promised 2010 launch, and Daniel Ek, the company’s founder and chief executive, won’t commit to a later date. No major labels have licensed music to Spotify in the United States.

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Loud, But Not Deafeningly Loud

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 2, 2010 at 7:06 am

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: dB Logic headphones

Price: $29

Worried that listening to loud music for too long could damage your hearing? You could stop listening to loud music for long periods. Or you could buy dB Logic’s headphones. They use a technology called SPL2 which the company says “intelligently modifies the sound wave to closely match the profile of the original sound wave, while keeping the overall volume level at a level that can help avoid hearing loss.” They’ll be available this month.

 

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Can’t Buy Me So Many Other Things

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 15, 2010 at 4:44 pm

Apple’s home page is saying that the company is going to make an announcement that we’ll never forget. It involves iTunes and will occur at 7am Technologizer time. I hate to make Apple predictions, but I’m not above agreeing with ones made by others, and the idea that this might involve the release at long last, of the Beatles in digital form sounds plausible. In fact, the Wall Street Journal says the deal is done.

Assuming that the news does involve the Fab Four, it’s going to be a relief to never, ever have to write about their absence from the the iTunes Store and legal digital music in general again. (Here’s a ten-year-old PC World column that makes reference to me being ticked off about the subject.) As every rational person who’s ever written about the topic has said, this was a non-problem: Digital Beatles is already on untold computers, music players, phones, and other devices, in ripped form.

So with all the time we’ll save not seething about this, can we devote some energy to being upset about content that isn’t currently available in legal recorded form, period? The Rutles’ wonderful album Archaeology springs to mind. So do three of my favorite movie comedies of the 1960s and 1970s: The Wrong Box, Movie Movie, and Cold Turkey. It’s never been the least bit difficult to listen to the Beatles here, there, and everywhere, but much of our culture is still locked up in studio vaults…

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A Bespoke Fit for Off-the-Shelf Earphones

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 9, 2010 at 5:43 pm

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Sonomax Soundcage

Price: $199

I have oddly-shaped ears. I’m not sure if they’re oddly large or oddly small–all I know is that most headphones either fall out or sting. Or sometimes both. So I’m interested in the idea, at least, of Sonomax’s Soundcage–a set of headphones you buy, then custom-fit yourself. The fitting process takes four minutes and involves a special headband, shown to the right.

The $199 price may sound stiff, but it’s a pittance compared to fully customized headphones such as Ultimate Ears’ $999-and-about models which are produced from molds of your ears. I wonder how close the quality comes–and whether these would stay in my ears without hurting?

Soundcage is scheduled to ship in February of next year.

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A Cocoon for You and Your Media

Posted by Robin Raskin on November 9, 2010 at 9:07 am

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Acousticom Sound Egg

Price: $1450

If your name is Maxwell Smart or you’re an urban dweller who can never escape ambient noise, the Sound Egg is a sound investment.  The 70’s style egg chair has been reworked as an audio cocoon,  First seen at CES 2010, The Egg lets you immerse yourself in 5.1 Surround Sound without disturbing the people around you. It plays movies, music, video games, and any other media source through its array of speakers, including a 10″ subwoofer.  The chair is molded from colored foam.  At $1450, it’s a lot to pay for your own private world of sound, but for some, it may be worth it.

 

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Jawbone Jambox: Little Bluetooth Box, Big Sound–and It’s a Speakerphone, Too

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 4, 2010 at 6:00 am

Aliph–the maker of those stylish, noise-reducing Jawbone headsets–is announcing its first product that isn’t a headset. It is, however, something with close technological ties to its other products: a small stereo speaker system which connects via Bluetooth to phones, computers, and other devices, and which doubles as a speakerphone. It’s called the Jawbone Jambox, and it’s a really interesting alternative to the tinny speakers that are built into gadgets.

The $199 Jambox is 5.9″ by 2.2″ by 1.6″–not pocket-sized, but close, and certainly briefcase-friendly. It comes in four colors (“Black Diamond,” “Blue Wave,” “Red Dot,” and “Gray Hex,” each with its own grille design, and all with a rather classic look (by design guru Yves Behar) that reminds me of vintage transistor radios. (If anyone had made Bluetooth speakers in the 1950s, they would have looked like this.) The case houses tiny stereo speakers and a rechargeable battery that Aliph says is good for up to eight hours.

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Napster is (Allegedly) Available for iPhone

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 20, 2010 at 5:29 pm

The original Napster was a scandalously easy way to get music for free. I’ve just been trying to use the new iPhone app from the latter-day, not-free service that carries the Napster name–and so far, it’s proven to be an annoyingly difficult way to pay for music.

Actually, I haven’t gotten it to accept my money at all. I began by downloading the iPhone app from the App Store and trying to upgrade my existing Napster event to the $10/month plan needed to stream and cache unlimited music on an iOS device. The app sent me to Safari to do the upgrade–and when I got there, I was greeted by an error message.

I tried doing the upgrade on a PC. Same error. Figuring that something might be wrong with my aged Napster account, I started to sign up for a new one, and didn’t see the $10 iOS plan among my options.

Then I noticed that there was no mention of iPhone compatibility on the Napster site. Scratch that–there is a reference to it…one that says that full-blown Napster doesn’t work with Apple devices.

I see no reference to an iPhone app on the Napster blog or in its press releases, so I wonder if the software wandered onto the App Store a bit ahead of schedule.

Maybe some of the dozens of folks who wrote about Napster for iOs today were able to get it up and running, but I’m giving up. With MOG, Rhapsody, Rdio, and Thumbplay already offering worthy on-demand music services for iOS, Napster is pretty darn late to the iPhone game. (Me, I’m currently partial to Rdio.)

If you’re able to make Napster work on an iOS device, lemme know what you think…

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Google Music Scuttlebutt Reads Like an iTunes Wishlist

Posted by Jared Newman on September 16, 2010 at 8:58 am

Reports of a music service from Google have been in the rumor mill since June, but without any useful details on how the so-called Google Music might work. Now, Billboard is citing anonymous sources in a lengthy Google music service tell-all.

Supposedly, the service will provide a la carte music downloads, just like iTunes, but with a batch of online features to sweeten the deal. In addition to downloads, Google users could opt to spend roughly $25 per year for digital locker access, letting them stream or download their libraries on any web-connected device, Billboard says.

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