Round Up: Pandora Ads, Guitar Hero Denounced, MSN Mobile
By Morelli
Pandora now has ads, Guitar Hero gets slammed, and Microsoft competes with iTunes, all in today’s round up!
- The popular free music site Pandora is now adding 15 second invasive advertisements, interrupting the music, and repeating every 20 songs. This action isn’t entirely unexpected, as online music sites must pay higher royalties than other music providers. It still is probably going to irritate users though. [Slashdot]
- Two interesting theories denouncing Guitar Hero have popped up. Nick Carr writes about our age of advertising, subversion, and sacrificed attention spans; and Rob Horning’s essay on how Guitar Hero is a symptom of a generational aversion to actual challenge. Read up, and decide whether the popular game is as great as the hype says. [S. Elliot]
- Microsoft has launched a mobile music download service in the UK offering tracks and videos from the major labels. The pay-per-song pricing ($2.07) is more expensive than other mobile platforms like iTunes, and MSN Mobile tracks are not DRM-free. Which means you can’t transfer tracks to other devices. [Moconews]
Photo via radio-pandora.de
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 8:00AM
[...] and Eran Egozy, co-developers of a groundbreaking decade-plus long line of music games including Guitar Hero and culminating in the Rock Band franchise, with the Pioneer Award for their work; and Tommy [...]