Among the many features rolled out to iOS device owners today is one that's pretty easy to lose sight of alongside things like iCloud, iMessage, Newsstand and many of the other 200 or so odd features Apple launched today.
The iPad's native Music app (essentially, a stripped down version of iTunes for the iPad) got a visual overhaul as part of iOS 5, complete with a new home screen icon. In terms of feature set, the app remains pretty basic. You can play back albums and podcasts, manage playlists and of course, jump over to the iTunes Store to download more music.
If you were having trouble streaming dubstep remixes hosted on SoundCloud lastnight, you're not the only one. The site fell victim to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, the company confirmed on its status blog today.
The social audio-sharing site experienced several hours of intermittent downtime yesterday as SoundCloud's engineers fought off the attack.
It hasn't even been three months since Spotify launched in the United States, but the freemium music streaming service is certainly having an impact on its competition. Rdio, one of those competitors, announced today that it's taking down the paywall around its Web-based streaming service.
The move comes three weeks after MOG, another popular music service, did the same. Both Rdio and MOG still charge for unlimited access and for the ability to stream music from one's smartphone or tablet. Listening to music in the browser, however, is free.
Three years after being bought by Best Buy, online music subcription service Napster has been acquired by rival company Rhapsody. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
The acquisition will give Rhapsody Napster's paying subscribers as well as "certain other assets" including Napster's IP portfolio. The companies' announcement did not divulge the current number of Napster subscribers, but it's understood to be at least half of Rhapsody's 700,000 subscribers.
Not even two weeks in, Spotify's integration with Facebook already appears to be paying off in terms of application usage. The streaming service's Facebook app has seen a 55% rise in usage since Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced the new integration at the f8 conference on September 22.
This growth comes despite a recent outcry among some users, who object to Spotify's new policy of requiring people to sign up using their Facebook accounts.
For East Coast fans of Radiohead, the news could hardly have been more exciting. The band, multiple news outlets confirmed, would be playing a surprise show in downtown Manhattan on Friday afternoon. The show would coincide with the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests that had been organized online and with which the band would likely be sympathetic.
Once a few prominent blogs began reporting on it, the news spread like wildfire across Twitter and Facebook, where eager fans posted updates about the show and began making plans to attend.
It might be a decade late, but it appears as though the music industry may have found the antidote to the digital piracy it claims has ravaged its revenues for so long.
New research into Swedish music consumption indicates that the public launch of Spotify in that country has led to a 25% reduction in the illegal downloading of songs and albums. In the second quarter of 2011, music piracy had dropped 9% from the same period last year.
For several weeks prior to last week's f8 conference, word got around that Facebook would be unveiling some kind of music initiative. Would the social networking behemoth launch its own streaming service? A cloud music locker like Google, Apple and Amazon? As details emerged it became clear that their ambitions were more modest, but still very significant: Facebook would be partnering with a handful of existing music services to more closely integrate them with the social mega-site.
That's exactly what went live last week shortly after Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and others took the stage at f8. Services like Spotify, Rdio and Mog are now more tightly integrated into Facebook's platform, with real-time music listening data showing up everywhere from your News Feed to the site's new Music dashboard.
On-demand music streaming service Spotify announced today that it's eliminating its "Open" subscription tier and offering all new users six months of unlimited streaming.
Spotify Open was a more limited version of the Spotify Free plan. The company is now merging these two non-paid account types together. To make signing up for the service more attractive, they're also giving all new sign-ups a six month grace period in which they can stream music with no time caps of any kind.
The deep integration with Facebook that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced at the f8 conference yesterday is now live and we've taken some time to explore how it works and where on Facebook you can expect your Spotify activity to pop up.
The new integration can be activated from within the Spotify desktop client. We were prompted to opt into it from the right column of the service, but if you're not seeing a similar call to action, you can go into your accounts settings where a new option will appear: "Get personal recommendations by sending music you play to Facebook's Open Graph."
