Rdio has made a bit of a name for itself stateside as a valid Spotify alternative, and now the music streaming service has touched down for UK users too.

Matching Spotify's price plans at £5 a month for a desktop-only subscription and £10 for mobile listening too (though far more expensive than what's charged for Rdio's services in other international territories. Thanks rip-off Britain), it offers a 15 million strong-music library in the US, which makes its way more-or-less intact to Blighty.

Rdio's big bonus over Spotify is that it offers an in-browser listening mode, which is great for those listening at work or in school where IT managers have application installations on lockdown.

And while it doesn't have an ad-funded option, you do get a 7-day free trial of the premium subscription service, with nifty apps available for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry.

Click here to give it a look.

Bose have today announced updated versions of two of their most popular home audio products, the Bose Wave Radio and Bose Wave Music System.

Each now includes an integrated DAB, DAB+, and T-DMB broadcast signals and also an improved FM/AM tuner which should help listeners get a clearer sound in areas where radio signals are hampered by interference.

The two Bose units also now offer a touch pad on their top sides for power and alarm/snooze control, while two different alarms set to two different sources can now be configured.

The Wave Music System also houses a front-loading CD player, while each also has an auxiliary input for other audio sources such as MP3 players. Both units offer a Bose Link input for hooking up sold-separately accessories like the Wave Bluetooth adaptor for wireless music streaming, Wave Connect Kit for easy iPod/iPhone docking and a Wave Multi-CD Changer.

"The Bose Wave Radio and Wave Music System changed the way people listen to music," said Santiago Carvajal, business director for Bose Wave products.

"They've delighted and excited owners for years, and have become two of the most enduring consumer electronics products in history. We've updated them with new features and accessories, making each even better for enjoying the radio and digital music."

The Bose Wave Radio III and Wave Music System III will be available only from Bose as of the 2nd May, 2012, at £449.95 and £599.95, respectively. Each comes in either Platinum White or Graphite Gray colours, while the Wave Music System will also be available in Titanium Silver.

Android-owning Spotify users have always had a bit of a raw deal when it comes to the mobile application of the uber-popular streaming service. While iPhone owners get a slick, clean interface, the Android version of Spotify has always been a bit of a mess.

It looks like CEO Daniel Ek and co have finally recognised this, as we've just been sent a preview build of a forthcoming Android makeover for the app. And it's looking and feeling much much better.

Fully supporting Android 4.0, the app has been redesigned from the ground up to make use of Android at its best. It now features a left-hand slide-out panel for navigating social sections and browsing pals' playlists, checking out new releases, your inbox and app settings.

Album artwork now comes in high-resolution, while the related artist tab appears for the first time in mobiles too.

There are also a host of other little improvements, such as locally downloaded playlists appearing at the top of your playlist pile instead of dotted among you many created song collections, meaning you'll easily be able to avoid tapping into your 3G allowance.

And there's still more to come; Spotify will be adding folder support and Last FM scrobbling before the app goes live in Google Play in the near future.

You too can give the app a try today. Firstly set your phone to allow installation from 'Unknown Sources' by going to the Settings > Applications > Unknown sources menu. Then click here to grab the installer.

Scroll down to check out some images of the new app in action:

Apple have released an update to their enthusiast level music production software packages Logic Pro and Logic Express.

Offering compatibility, performance and stability improvements, the update hasn't yet been added to Apple's support download page. However, you can still grab the update early through Software Update, manually triggering the download.

Check below for the list of updates highlighted in the release notes:

Compatibility

Resolves an issue in OS X 10.7.x Lion that caused the Consolidate Project command in Logic to open a backup of the project at the end of the process.

Via: CNET

Multi-room audio specialists Sonos have revamped their Mac and PC controller apps, offering an updated interface for users looking to control the company's speakers dotted around their homes.

New features such as instant volume control, a new Party Mode that lets you control volume levels in grouped rooms with one touch, a faster and improved search tool and a "better-than-ever" drag-and-drop interface will "make it easier than ever to find, control and play music in any room - right from your favourite desktop or laptop", according to Sonos.

There's also a new Mini Controller widget too, which Sonos describe as "a slick, pop-out of album art that lets you control your music while you're working in other apps, so now it's even easier to control any music you want - any way you want".

The Sonos 3.7 update will best work with Mac OS X 10.6 or higher, or Windows 7 SP3. Rolling out next week, check out the refreshed software in action in the video below:

Spotify users rejoice! Your party playlist megamixes just got a whole lot more professional sounding, as the digital music streaming platform have added gapless playback and crossfade features to the desktop application.

Gapless playback means that you'll no longer get those annoying pauses between playlist or album tracks (particularly noticeable if you're a classical or dance music fan), while the ability to tweak crossfade settings from 1 to 12 seconds between tracks will be particularly useful for bedroom DJs.

Gustav Söderström, VP Products at Spotify, said: "Gapless playback and crossfade have been some of the most eagerly awaited Spotify features on your wish list.

"Whether you're listening to Wagner's Gotterdammerung or The Wonders of the Deep by The Chemical Brothers, this latest update will make Spotify better than ever before. It's time to get the party started."

Other features of the update include improved sorting options, faster browsing, a restore feature for Now Playing, better friend and favourites options, a more visible offline mode option and the abilitiy to hide purchase buttons for Spotify Premium users.

No word yet on whether these features are also headed to the mobile apps, butwe'll keep you posted.

Automatically rolling out to all users now, the impatient music fans among you can get early access by manually installing the update. Click here for the Mac version, and here for Windows.

Spotify could have had it all when it came to multi-Grammy award winning Adele and her album 21, but refused the demands the singer made.

The Rolling in the Deep singer had stated that her album could only be streamed if it was made exclusively available to Premium subscribers. However, Spotify refuse, stating it would mean a complete overhaul for their business model, which works by giving all users equal access to the catalogue of songs, the pay off between the free and premium versions being the removal of adverts and mobile playback.

"Ultimately, Spotify decided it did not want to split up its content catalog, so as to create separate music libraries for paying subscribers and freemium users," reads the FastCompany report.

"Thus, it was essentially Spotify that decided against providing streaming access to Adele's content for paying subscribers - not the other way around."

Adele is isn't the only artist or band that doesn't want to be on Spotify. The Beatles and Metallica are just two of the many high-profile acts who have limited the service's access to their music.

Still, fair play to Spotify; they turned down the biggest album of last year just to ensure all their users got a fair deal. Nice work guys.

HTC may be preparing to unleash their own digital music streaming platform to take on the likes of Last.fm and Spotify.

Having paid $300 million for audio specialists Beats, HTC have gone hell-to-leather pushing out as many Beats Audio enabled handsets as they can.

It now seems the phones are to get a bespoke streaming service to go with the audio tech. Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine (who doubles as a music producer and the chairman of Interscope-Geffen-A&M) is thought to be launching a new streaming service with Beats branding.

GigaOmcite "sources familiar with the company's plans", stating that the streaming service will land with a new tablet and batch of HTC smartphones, and will become the default HTC music client.

The site also states that a standalone speaker device from HTC may be in the works, describing a "wireless boombox that would most likely stream music from HTC phones over Bluetooth".

On top of the news that HTC are to grab PlayStation certification for their phones from Sony, it's looking like a very busy MWC 2012 for the Taiwanese mobile company.

Spotify have reached the 3 million Premium subscriber mark. 20% of their 15 million users are now opting to pay for the ad-free, unlimited service, showing that the streaming giant are well on their way to hitting the conversion figures they aimed for.

The figures are up from 2.5m in November and 2m in September, showing the fast rate of growth is remaining consistent.

"We have an enormous internal effort to drive conversion and engagement with the service", Ken Parks, chief content officer at Spotify.

Parks also defended the free ad-supported model which some artists and labels have criticised, stating its allowed them the breathing room to build up customer loyalty, a loyalty that will soon pay dividends for the artists featured on the service.

"This is a healthy model. As it scales it gets better for everybody.We are very focused on growing in our existing 12 markets as well as expanding in other markets."

The fact that half of Spotify's paid-for users are under 30 is a superb achievement in itself, considering they are a traditionally difficult demographic to corner.

2011 was a busy year for Spotify; not only did they launch their internal app platform, but also announced a high-profile partnership with Facebook, a deal which undoubtedly helped drive subscriber numbers.

Via: FT

Facebook have announced a new social music feature, rolling out across their network today, called "Listen With Friends".

Music fans on Facebook will now be able to see what their pals are listening to from within the Facebook Chat pane, and jump into playback of a track at the very same point their friends are listening to. Up to 50 people can listen at once, which then opens a group chat window where they can discuss the music being played.

"You can listen to the same song, at the exact same time--so when your favorite vocal part comes in you can experience it together, just like when you're jamming out at a performance or dance club," said Facebook product designer Alexandre Roche on the Facebook blog.

You'll be able to identify who is listening to music by a small musical note icon that pops up next to their name. However, the service is currently limited to songs being played through Facebook partners Spotify and Rdio. While more services are set to be added, you'll likely be out of luck if you're playing locally stored files through a platform like iTunes.

The service should be rolling out to all users today, so keep an eye open for it when you're browsing the network.

Griffin are doing a great job of catering for budding musicians on the iPad at CES 2012, adding two new music-making tools that beef up the potential for sonic creativity on the Apple slate.

First up is the StudioConnect, which, when combined with the GarageBand app, turns your iPad into a feature-rich portable music studio.

An all-in-one interface, it handles audio and MIDI-IN, as well as MIDI-Out connectivity. Instruments and mics can be hooked up through a mono 0.25-inch connection, as well as plugging a mixer into the stereo 3.5mm jack.

Left and right line-level RCA plugs are onboard, as well as a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack for monitoring your creations.

Griffin have also launched a slightly more basic music tool called MIDIConnect. It adds a standard 5-pin DIN MIDI-in port to your iPad, letting you plug in guitars, keyboards and the like, as well as a MIDI Out port that can be used to turn your iPad into a MIDI controller, at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated one.

"GarageBand has put powerful audio production tools within reach of any musician with an idea and an iPad," said Mark Rowan, president of Griffin Technology.

"We've made it easy to connect your real instruments with GarageBand and control every aspect of your project."

StudioConnect will be available from February for $149.99, with MIDIConnect landing sometime in the spring for $79.99. No word on UK pricing yet or availability, but Griffin usually do a good job of getting their gear over here at roughly the same time.

For more news from CES 2012, click here.

Heavy-metal superstars Metallica have confirmed they are working on a 3D movie project.

Responding to rumours that were circulating on the web, the band stressed that the movie would not be ready until the beginning of 2013 at the earliest.

"We're here to tell you that, yes, there is indeed a 3D project in the very early stages of production!" said a statement on the band's website.

"We wish we could tell you more right now, but we don't have all the finer points nailed down just yet".

They went on to add: "What we can tell you is that we are planning on being in a theatre near you sometime in 2013 and as you hear us say ever so often, this will be the space for all the details as we finalize them."

It's not the first time that Metallica have got in front of the camera's for a movie. Back during the years 2001 to 2003, they let a documentary film crew follow them around during the recording of their album St. Anger, including many counselling sessions with their on-call shrink.

Fans are hoping that the 3D movie will match, if not exceed, the joy that the Spice Girl's Spice World brought to cinema multiplexes up and down the land.

After yesterday's false start, UK Apple fans can finally get playing with the Cupertino team's latest service, iTunes Match.

The service prematurely went live yesterday across the UK, France and Australia, lacking full functionality and having a troublesome sign-up system. despite launching just a few hours later, Apple still went through the trouble of refunding users who had jumped on too early to the service.

In the early hours of this morning however the service returned, in a fully functional state, offering users a year's subscription for £21.99. This follows last month's US launch.

iTunes Match is Apple's own unique take on streaming services. It scans a user's iTunes digital music library, offering 256kbps high-quality versions of all your tracks, ready to be streamed wherever you are, regardless of the original quality of the song.

iTunes Match works across practically the whole Apple ecosystem, with iPads, Macs, iPhones, iPod Touch devices, Apple TV as well as PCs able to stream from Apple's servers.

However, Apple have come under fire for some elements of iTunes Match, namely that it also scans and offers high-quality streaming versions of songs that a user may pirated.

Got a music-loving philanthropist on your Christmas gift list? Then why not pop a Fairshare Music giftcard in their stocking?

For every track you buy through Fairshare Music, half the profits go to a charity of your choosing from a list including Amnesty International, British Heart Foundation, British Red Cross, Centrepoint, Friends of the Earth, Great Ormond Street Hospital, NSPCC, Oxfam, Sue Ryder Care, Teenage Cancer Trust and WWF.

Giftcards work with the same charity incentive, and can be bought in £5, £10, £15 and £25 forms. With a catalogue of over 16 million tracks to choose from, and with many albums priced at a competitive £5, that's ample opportunity to both rock out and help out a good cause over the Christmas season.

"The giftcards are a win-win situation - you get to give a great value, feel good gift and the recipient of your gift gets something they actually want, a choice of music from a huge selection of the latest tracks or some of the classics," said Lee Cannon, Co-founder of Fairshare Music.

"If the millions of people who downloaded music in the last year all downloaded in this way, a huge £6.5 million could have been raised for some really worthwhile causes."

For more info, visit www.fairsharemusic.com.

Today marks the launch of Rara.com, a new mobile and web browser based digital music streaming service that's set to rival Spotify.

Offering somewhere in the region of 10 million tracks, including all the major labels, Rara.com sets itself apart by not aiming at tech-savvy musos, but those less comfortable with concepts like streaming and only a casual interest in music. It aims to achieve this by simplifying the "speadsheet" style interface of rivals like iTunes and Spotify, collecting tracks into a UI full of colourful, customisable music hubs.

Launching in 16 global territories simultaneously, including the UK and North America, Rara.com has the potential to reach 900 million users when its total roll-out is completed.

"The vast majority of music services today are designed for people who know a lot about music and are technically literate," said founder Rob Lewis, whose name may be recognised by those who are familiar with Omnifone (the independent unlimited cloud-based music vendors) whom he also founded.

"If we're going to make digital as mainstream as the CD was (which is what we need to do with CD revenues heading in the wrong direction), we need to reach people who know less about music and less about technology."

According to Rara's research, these casual tech and music users/listeners account for 80% of the potential streaming market.

While the simple UI addresses the tech-savvyness issues, Rara are looking to a strong focus on editorial content and curation to push the service's potential as a music discovery tool. To do this, they will be enlisting the help of a number of high-profile associate editors, kicking off with a tenure by grammy-award winning Brit, musician Imogen Heap.

"I'm honoured to be the first associate editor of Rara.com," said Heap.

"As a musician I've been searching for the direction where the music industry is going to go, and how it's going to manage to pay the artists in this ever-wider sharing, free-music-download world. I think [Rara is] really exciting; it's very easy to use, and isn't boring, flat and lifeless like so many players are.

"It speaks to you. I believe it's the future of music making sense again."

That mass-market aim will be aided by the news that Rara.com comes with one of the biggest global partners in the world of tech, HP. Rara will come pre-installed on all 2012 HP computers with a bookmark "quick-link" directing users to the web-based service straight out of the box.

As well as the browser based offering, Rara can be accessed from today in the form of a mobile Android app too, with Windows Phone 7 and iOS apps to arrive hot on its heels. The mobile service makes use of system called "Network Aware Mobile Streaming", which can judge whether you're on a Wi-Fi or 3G connection, and adjust the data sent appropriately in order to keep you data usage at manageable levels. It pars down the visuals to keep data usage to a minimum, and greys out functionality only available over Wi-Fi.

Tracks themselves, though varying in bitrate from device to device, wherever possible are streamed using the EAAC+ codec, a highly compressed format that still manages to keep audio quality relatively high.

Pricing also looks fairly competitive, "radical" even according to the Rara executives. To coax people into giving Rara a try, the first 3 months access will cost just 99p, and £4.99 for the months following. To add in mobile music-caching functionality to ease the strain on your data plan, those prices jump up to £1.99 for the first 3 months, then £9.99 for the months thereafter. End your subscription and a short "grace period" allows access to your saved playlists for a limited time.

Some will argue that Spotify has the upper hand here, offering a free ad-funded model to lure music fans onto their service, but Rara are sticking to their guns, believing that offering the superlative, ad-free version at a reduced price is a more tempting gateway to subscription.

So does it have what it takes to topple the now-dominant streaming service Spotify? It's tough to say. Rara's main draw, in my opinion, is its colourful, inviting interface which displays its curated music. It's simple, but still isn't as simple as popping a CD in a player however. It also doesn't answer the big consumer turn off; ownership of streamed tracks. You're still effectively renting music with Rara, which even few Spotify subscribers feel comfortable with.

There's another question too. If Rara, aimed as it is at tech dunces and casual music fans, manages to convert the masses to music streaming, what's to say the newly-educated Rara subscribers wont jump-ship to more complex, fully-featured services? It may be more complicated, but the added features of apps, digital music downloads, a larger music catalogue to play with, collaborative playlists and deep Facebook integration within Spotify will surely begin to tempt users who cut their teeth on the simplistic Rara.

All this before you start considering the artists themselves, and the measly sums they make from music streaming.

However, Rara seem to have big plans in mind for the service. Hinting at significant announcements coming at CES, Rob Lewis made mention of plans to integrate the service into all forms of connected devices, including Blu-ray players, Sonos systems and car dashboards.

Head on over to www.rara.com to give the service a try.

It's been a busy few weeks for Spotify. First they reveal their superb new apps platform, and now they're looking to revamp their radio station and recommendation engines too.

Spotify list the features of the new update as:

·Unlimited stations - picking a track, artist or genre will instantly generate a station full of similar music. The station will play continuously with few or no repeats until you stop it. You can make as many custom stations as you choose.

·Available to all - The new Spotify Radio features will be available to both free and paying customers, worldwide.

"Spotify Radio is an amazing new radio experience, offering unlimited stations and unlimited skips," said Ken Parks, Spotify's Chief Content Officer.

"With our new intelligent recommendation engine and multi-million track library, the new Spotify Radio is a music discovery experience without equal."

The new radio features will be rolling out alongside the final release of the Spotify App Finder platform in the next few days. If you cant wait that long, visit http://www.spotify.com/download/previews for a preview the new player build.

Napster, the digital music download service that rocked the industry and changed the way we consume tunes forever, has closed following the completion of a merger with Rhapsody.

Though beginning life as an illegal P2P service, in the past few years Napster went legit, offering a subscription based deal.

Head over to Napster.com and you are met with this message:

"Napster has joined Rhapsody. The number one subscription service is now even bigger."

It's sad to see Napster, a service surrounded with so much controversy fade away rather than burn out. Afterall, without founders' Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker's revolutionary approach to music distribution in 1999, it's unlikely we'd have services like the US-centric Rhapsody today.

With the acquisition of Napster in place, Rhapsody are now in a better position to battle it out against Spotify, the steam-rolling music streaming service that launched in the US earlier this year.

Spotify have announced the next big upgrade for their music streaming platform. Described as the "Spotify revolution" and the "next big step for music". Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek revealed App Finder, set to bring a wealth of apps to the digital music service.

The "best and the brightest" of the music and app industries are lining up to become a part of the re-vamped service, with the likes of Rolling Stone, Last.fm, Songkick, TuneWiki, Pitchfork, The Guardian and Fuse all readying apps for the platform.

All of these apps will be able to tap into and integrate with Spotify's catalogue of 16 million (and growing) tracks. For instance, an editorial piece from Rolling Stone magazine may come with an integrated playlist, letting you listen to an albumwhile simultaneously reading a review of it. Or, in the case of TuneWiki, turn Spotify into the most comprehensive karaoke platform in the world.

Powered by HTML5, it seems as though the App Finder will become part of the desktop Spotify application's left-hand toolbar, with pop-out features sitting on top of the usual Spotify experience.

No word yet on when the update will roll out, but we do know that all apps will be available to both free and Premium users of the service.

Tech gifts don't have to be about screen sizes or processing capabilities these days. In fact, they don't have to be physical gifts at all. You can put a smile on a loved one's face just by setting them up with one of the many ace online digital services and subscription packages that are tied into apps, download and streaming sites too.

From music packages like Spotify to productivity programs like Dropbox, there's something here for everyone.

When you're done here, be sure to check out the rest of Tech Digest's 2011 Christmas wishlists too.

BBM Music, the socially-orientated music downloading and sharing service exclusive to BlackBerry users, has gone live in the UK today.

First announced in August, the service costs £4.99 a month and gives users access to 50 tracks a month, with users allowed to swap out 25 of those tracks for new ones every month.

However, through integration with BlackBerry Messenger, users will have access to the 50 tracks stored on up to 140 of their BlackBerry-using friend's handsets, potentially giving access to 7,000 tracks on and offline each month to every user.

Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI are among the labels touting their artists on the service.

It's a very strange system. Quite fixed in its nature, it relies heavily on many of your friends using the service in order to maximize the tracks available to you, as well as having similar taste to your pals in order to enjoy it. It looks as though RIM are hoping word of mouth will push the service, as users hope to expand the range of their available music each month, in a similar way to Dropbox's storage-increasing referral system.

However, you do have to wonder who in their right mind would choose the service over alternatives. Limited to 50 tracks a month for a fiver (not including the random selections from pals), BBM Music pales in comparison to the unlimited access to millions of songs you get from Spotify mobile for £9.99 a month, now available on BlackBerry OS 7 devices. You can argue that the integration with BlackBerry Messenger gives the service a unique social aspect, given the wild popularity of the free messaging client, but with Spotify now so integrally tied into Facebook (and with everyone and their dog signed up to the world's largest social network), the BBM features themselves seem moot and limited in their scope.

Working on BB OS 7, BB OS 6, and BB OS 5 devices running BBM 6, the app is available now from the BlackBerry App World.