Rumors have emerged that Facebook is partnering with streaming music company Spotify to integrate the service into the Facebook platform in Europe.
According to Forbes, Spotify will have an icon to the left of the Facebook news feed with photos and events. Clicking on the icon will download the Spotify desktop client and allow users to listen to music with their Facebook friends, a source told Forbes. The service will only be available to Facebook users in locations where Spotify has a presence meaning only the major countries in Europe at this time.
Streaming music services like Spotify, MOG, Rdio, Grooveshark, Slacker Radio and others are making headlines for their innovations in today's digital music economy and its extension onto our mobile devices, into our homes and even into our cars. But when it comes to who's paying for the premium (i.e., "paid") level of these services, a new study shows that it's often indie music fans who are footing the bill.
I didn't start using a mobile device to rock me some of that sweet, sweet sissy bounce until I got my Android smart phone last year. I figured I'd need such a device to do justice to the music. Little did I know I could have done it with grandma's candlestick telephone.
According to an article in Scientific American published in July of 1892, the "théâtrophone" system had been use in Paris for two years at the time. You could listen from your home or from telephones in various public locations to popular concerts. In an early form of RSS, you could even subscribe!
Bonnaroo, one of the music festivals that have helped to move rock music from the club to the Garden of Earthly Delights, has announced it will be using RFID chips in the entrance wristbands to prevent counterfeiting.
Like all RFID tech, it requires readers to scan. Those readers will be at all entrance points to the festival. If a band lacks a working RFID chip, the wearer will not be allowed in. The festival is also allowing festival-goers to use the bracelet for a lot more, however.
Updated after the jump.
Slacker Radio, an Internet radio service similar to streaming music giant Pandora, has just introduced a new tier to its subscription service: a $9.99 per month Premium version which offers music on-demand. Previously, as the name implies, Slacker Radio was more focused on a radio-like experience, where you listen to a station built around your favorite artist, just like in Pandora. For example, type in "Lady Gaga" and you'll be presented with her hottest tracks, as well as those from "related" artists.
To ditch the advertisements and skip songs you don't like, a $3.99/month subscription (Slacker Radio Plus) was made available. And today, Slacker has launched another option: a $9.99/month Premium Radio subscription for playing the songs, albums or artists you want to hear on demand. This is similar to a number of other services out there today, including two of our favorites, MOG and Rdio.
Which one is right for you?
Last summer, Google showcased the capabilities of HTML5 and the Chrome browser with an interactive short film "The Wilderness Downtown." Based on the Arcade Fire Song "We Used to Wait," the project was at once deeply nostalgic and technologically forward-looking. On stage at Google IO last week, the Creative Lab Team revealed their next music project, again directed by Chris Milk.
Today YouTube launched a new music video chart, called the YouTube 100. It's a popularity index that measures "song traffic" for official music videos and user-uploaded videos. YouTube 100 has similarities to other online music charts, such as Ultimate Chart, MTV's Music Meter and We Are Hunted. However there are two main differences between the YouTube 100 and other online music charts. Firstly, the presence of user-generated and viral music, such as the (in)famous Rebecca Black. Secondly, YouTube's chart is focused on videos - whereas the others are focused on the music, with the videos (if offered) being supplementary. Perhaps the second is not much of a distinction in the end, because one of the main use cases for YouTube is to listen to music. The presence of 8 music videos in the top 10 YouTube videos of all time is proof enough of that.
The hardest part of finding good music online these days is discovering what you should look for in the first place. Almost all our old favorites are available on demand but finding good new bands and songs remains a challenge. Various services are competing to fill this need as effectively as possible, but it's a tough nut to crack.
My new favorite entrant into the field is an iPhone app from long-time MP3 blog aggregator Hype Machine. Hype Machine Radio is being sold for $2.99 (iTunes) and is worth every penny. The company says the app is "the Hype Machine evolved into a lean back, non-stop rich radio experience." It's essentially a mobile music blog browser, complete with continuos play, album covers, blog posts reviewing the songs, subscriptions, automatically personalized playlists and offline caching of the music posted by particular blogs. It's a great compliment to other music services and it's very nice looking, too.
The U.S. Library of Congress, in conjunction with Sony Music Entertainment, has launched a new website today, the National Jukebox. The site will stream some 10,000 sound recordings from several historic music collections. This includes music and other audio recordings from the Victor Records collection, one closely associated with the early Victrola hand-cranked record players.
The songs can all be listened to for free online, but they cannot be downloaded.
The National Jukebox launches with recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925 and contains a rich history of American music, including Fanny Brice singing the original "My Man" and Theodore Roosevelt giving a speech on "The Farmer and the Businessman.
Google is finally launching its Google Music service at this week's Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, a year after its reveal at the last event. The new service will be similar to what Amazon launched in March, an online storage locker where your songs will be stored in the "cloud." In this case, the "cloud" refers to Google's servers. Once your music is uploaded, you can stream it to your Android-powered mobile phone or via the Web to your computer.
While both Amazon and Google's offerings have the same basic concept behind their design, there are some notable differences between the two, as detailed below.
