ReadWriteWeb

Looking for that next booming trend in the tech industry? Perhaps you need to look no further than music, as a report from the site Indie Music Tech shows that this year's first quarter music tech investments nearly doubled from the previous two years. Author Duncan Freeman estimates 25 deals in Q1 2010, far surpassing the 27 total investments in the opening months of 2008 and 2009, but averaging a slightly lower deal size at $4.4 million per investment.

In an unsurprising move, Apple is said to be working with major record labels to provide an "interactive album" to consumers. The company is rumored to be working with EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal to bundle photos, lyric sheets, liner notes and videos with album purchases in the iTunes store. According to the FInancial Times, the move is meant to increase album sales. Nevertheless, a number of critics have already argued that the attempt will be ill-fated. While it's true that "interactive" music material has already been executed in various iterations, Apple's move may have a extremely positive affect on the music industry as a whole.

Open-source Mozilla-based music player Songbird just announced a slew of new features including the long anticipated ability to get music onto the iPhone. But there's a catch. In the past, Songbird was unable to export to the iPhone, as Apple purposely encrypted the device to keep music files within their proprietary ecosystem. Meanwhile, Songbird has always had the ability to sync with iPods. For this workaround, rather than syncing directly to the iPhone, the player syncs to iTunes and allows for export and import from there. So why open both players rather than just iTunes? It's pretty simple. Cross platform and multi-device compatibility.

Editor's Note: This list was contributed by Steve O'Hear, editor of last100, a former RWW network blog.

There was lots of activity in the digital lifestyle space in 2008, with new devices, services, and platforms being launched and some of our favorites from last year getting significant updates. One notable trend throughout the year was the way these products and services began to converge; not in the sense that they were becoming all-in-one devices, although some of that was happening, but rather by hardware, services, and content playing together nicely, often through open standards and platforms, with the Internet acting as a conduit. On that note, here are our picks of the 10 best digital lifestyle products of 2008.