Tag: Music
Spotify squash Xbox 360, PS3 rumours
It's already a massive hit on PCs and smartphones, with the service last week rolling onto Symbian devices. So where to now for Spotify? The Xbox 360 and PS3 games consoles, surely?
Top 50 iPhone Apps 2009: Part 5 – The Top 10 Apps
Dunna na na, dunna na na na…..It's the final countdown! Here is our list of the top 10 iPhone apps for 2009.
Spotify US launch delayed
Spotify's US launch will be delayed until early 2010, co-founder Daniel Ek has revealed.
Top 50 iPhone Apps 2009: Part 2 – Top 10 Music Apps
We continue our look at the top apps of 2009. Today it's the best music apps.
Top 10 iPhone music apps
After yesterday's mammoth list of the 101 best iPhone apps we decided there was a little bit more room… for a list of the iPhone's top 10 music applications. These are apps that help you to listen to or discover…
Get your record cut at Abbey Road
Fancy having your music mastered at the famous Abbey Road studios? Not very likely unless you make it big-time. Well, not very likely until now that is.
The legendary studio is launching an online mastering service this month where musicians and producers can send their tacks to be mastered by Abbey Road’s top engineers using the world famous equipment such as the original EMI TG mastering consoles with the SADiE 5 PCM8 digital audio workstation.
Users can upload up to 2GB of audio onto a dedicated server in uncompressed WAV or AIFF format and sit back and wait whilst the experts do their thing. Within five working days users will receive an email with a download link. The link will stay live for a month and the mastered tracks will be in WAV, DDP image file or an audio PMCD. Vinyl will be provided in the format requested – either 7-inch, 12-inch or LP album. Additional copies can also be produced on CD or vinyl.
The cost is on a track by track basis (£90 per track) with a fixed price for vinyl masters depending on the format.
If you fancy giving the service a try go direct to the Abbey Road Studios online mastering service. Your band may not be as good as The Beatles but at least you can get your music mastered at the same place that they did.
UK top 40 to include streaming songs
The UK singles chart is to be revamped to include songs played via streaming services. The move would mean that, for the first time since it began in 1952, the chart would not be simply compiled via music sales.
With services like Spotify and We7 becoming ever more popular the UK Charts Company said the charts were “bound to” incorporate streams although the changes might not be in place until 2010.
The company said: “The charts have always been there as a popularity poll, as a means of identifying what are the hottest records of the moment. That’s been relatively simple when people have bought stuff to keep forever. But that’s going to become increasingly more complicated.”
No exact details of how streams will be counted have been revealed although it has been suggested that they will carry less weight than actual sales.
In terms of keeping the charts as an actual representation of popular music, the proposal has to be a good thing. But the system will have to be properly monitored as there are a number of additional factors to consider.
What happens, for example, if a tune is streamed but then stopped or skipped by the user? Also, what about when a stream finishes and a new one automatically starts without the user specifically selecting that stream?
It will have to be policed as well, as the system would be open to corruption. It would be fairly easy for an artist to set up a couple of computers to continuously repeat their selected stream over and over again. Some sort of IP address tracking will no doubt come in to play.
Currently the top 2 songs on Spotify are Right Round by Flo Rida which was released in January and Kids by MGMT which first came out in October last year. This would indicate that songs don’t necessarily have to be brand new to be popular. The charts could be in for a bit of shake up then.
(via BBC)
Virgin and Universal team up to offer unlimited music package
Virgin Media has announced that they have signed a deal with Universal Music to offer their customers an unlimited digital music service.
The move, which sounds a darned sized better than previous digital music services such asNokias Comes With Music, would mean users get unlimited access to DRM-free mp3s of Universal artists for a monthly fee, rumoured to be around £10-15. Users would be free to store these mp3s on any players of their choice.
Universal Music owns a huge number of record labels and artists available in the service will include the likes of Kanye West, Jack Johnson, U2 and Elton John. Virgin are also said to be in talks with other record companies.
The only snag is that you have to be a Virgin broadband customer in order to use the service. If successful though, hopefully other ISPs will get involved or similar services will be set up.
This news comes a day before Lord Carter’s digital review is due to be published. In it, he is expected to call for ISPs to offer more attractive options to music fans than illegal downloads. Virgin’s package will seemingly do just do that.
Virgin has also announced that it would be doing more to prevent illegal downloads via its network. They’re talking about educating users and may suspend Internet access for persistent offenders.
It will be interesting to see how other ISPs respond to this news and how they respond to Lord Carter’s report in general. It’s obvious that illegal downloading is a big issue at the moment.
Hats off to Virgin for being the first out of the blocks in response.
(via Reuters)
Sony Ericsson patents theme music technology to match your mood
Here’s some pretty future tech for you. Sony Ericsson has filed a patent for phone technology that’ll recognise your facial expressions and automatically select music for you according to your mood.
Your handset will use the front facing camera to capture your image and, although there may be some initial calibration involved, the system will then pick the next track from your collection that best suits your mood.
If it works, there could be some alarming revelations about your neutral expression. I’d like to think my general demeanour would sound like the poppier end of The Who’s catalogue but I guess I’ll have to wait and see what Sony Ericsson thinks.
What would your theme music be according to your phone? Answers in the comments below
(via USEB)
8-bit FM – chiptune and video game music, 24/7
Do you like old-skool videogame music and chiptune acts like Pixelh8, Neotericz and Receptors? Then you’ll be pleased as punch about the launch of 8-bit FM, an internet radio station dedicated to the bleepy sounds of days gone by.
Although they’re currently working out some bugs, the plan is for the station to be live 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. There’s a web-based flash player, and you can also listen in Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, Winamp, and iTunes. There’s even a live request system if there’s a particular choon you wanna hear.
8-bit FM (via Technabob)
