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As popular uprisings have unfolded across the Middle East this year, much attention has been paid to the both underlying unrest that is causing them and the social media that often helps fuel them. In the background, receiving less of the limelight, lies another phenomenon: the growing community of musicians whose music is inspired by this growing demand for social change

It was this growing creative movement that inspired Esra'a El Shafei to launch MidEastTunes, a website that serves as a central hub for independent artists from throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The site, which went live in 2010, was recently relaunched with a fresh design and new features geared toward making it easer for artists to upload and share their music.

Icelandic musician Björk recently released what she claims to be the world's "first app album." It's an iPad and iPhone app featuring 10 songs, each song accompanied by an interactive app. The "mother" app is called Biophilia, which is the name of the album. That is available free on iTunes, but the 'song' apps then cost $1.99 each and are bought from within the main app. The first song, 'Cosmogony,' is included free. So far two other songs have been released: the first single 'Crystalline' and a song called 'Virus.'

I checked out Biophilia this evening, depositing $3.98 into Björk's App Store account for the first two paid songs. I'm a fan of Björk already and have a number of her earlier albums. Other than the music, what impresses me about this album is her inventiveness in coming up with a brand new album format - the "app album." Plus she finds a new way to make money from her music. Both are achievements in a music era where albums and revenue have been under attack due to the Internet.

The endlessly-hyped music streaming service Spotify has only been live in the United States for less than four weeks, but is already boasting 1.4 million American users, according to AllThingsD.

About 175,000 of those users are paying for the service, which is a conversion rate of 12.5%. There was no word on the break-down of those paid subcriptions between Spotify's $4.99 unlimited Web streaming plan and its $9.99 premium plan, which includes mobile access.

Forget Guitar Hero. Much more is possible in the world of musical gaming. Audiosurf has created what Alec Meer from PC Gamer UK calls "A near-religious musical gaming experience." It's a racing game that uses audio files of your choice to generate 3-D courses. The whole mood, even the speed of the ride, is determined by the songs you choose. You collect colored blocks that appear along the course as you go, and you compete online for the highest scores on the same songs.

Audiosurf employs user-generated content and both friendly and competitive online social layers. It's not just for racing; you can discover and share new music along the way.

Did you miss out on the initial round of invites to Google's newest cloud locker service, Google Music? Well, today's the day to hit up your Google Music-loving friends for an invite. Existing users have been awarded just two invites each, which they can give out to anyone they choose. However, the service is still U.S.-only, so you may want to hold off on sharing with your overseas friends just yet.

After two years of waiting, the U.S. market finally gets a chance to try out Spotify, the music-streaming service that's now wildly popular Europe. But why is there so much hype around Spotify, you may wonder? Don't we already have plenty of music streaming services here, like Pandora, Last.fm, Slacker Radio, MOG and Rdio, for example?

Sure we do. But we've never had anything like Spotify before.

Best Buy is joining Amazon, Google, and Apple in offering customers a cloud-based storage and streaming service for digital music. Using its "PlayAnywhere" technology, the Best Buy Music Cloud will let users upload their songs to the cloud, then stream the music across multiple devices, including Blackberry, Android and iOS.

But with stiff competition from the other big companies who've entered the cloud music locker space lately, can Best Buy offer something that will make customers use its service? Based on what's available today, the answer is "probably not."

Facebook is now "getting serious about music and media," writes Om Malik on GigaOm.com, revealing unannounced details regarding the social network's new ambition to be a place to discover music with friends. The deal involves partnerships with the internationally popular music streaming service Spotify, and possibly other music services, too, currently in talks with Facebook.

Sharing music with friends? Sounds like the final death knell for MySpace, doesn't it?

There was a lot of buzz prior to today's announcements at WWDC about the deals that Apple had reportedly struck with the major record labels. Even before any Apple executives took the stage, many industry observers had crowned Apple the heir apparent to music in the cloud, decreeing that its offerings would surely trump those recently announced by Google and Amazon.

But now that the dust has settled and the glimmer has faded from today's keynote at WWDC, we have to ask, has Apple really triumphed here? Did we see the future of digital music unveiled onstage?

In the battle of cloud music services, you have a variety of options including radio service like Pandora and Last.fm, online lockers like Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive, Internet radio stations and premium, "program-your-own" services like MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody and Zune. But what if you want it all? Then you may want to consider mSpot and its recently updated mobile app for Android.