Wednesday, April 8, 2009 3:00PM - By Morelli
With all the music streaming and download services available, it’s difficult to decide which one to use. iTunes recently introduced their tiered pricing, but Amazon is selling top-tier songs at a cheaper price. Even though iTunes controls the download market, fans looking to buy music might be enticed by Amazon’s price drop.
On the free streaming front, Spotify released libspotify Tuesday night, which allows third-party developers to write applications for the service, and YouTube, though reported to have blocked “premium” videos in the UK and Germany, still provides most music for free, through user-made videos.
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Tuesday, March 31, 2009 11:00AM - By Morelli
Music streaming service Spotify will now sell music downloads after striking a deal with online music store 7digital, stepping up the competition with iTunes’ in the music downloads market. Users will be able to click a link associated with a song, be redirected to the 7ditigal site, and purchase the respective track.
Spotify will initially only allow users to download singles and albums, but could eventually give the option to purchase entire user created playlists. Pricing is yet to be confirmed, but digital rights management software (DRM), which impedes music from being transferred to different devices, won’t be attached to the mp3s. For now, the new service will be available in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
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Monday, March 16, 2009 4:00PM - By Morelli
Spotify, the free streaming music service we’ve mentioned before, has updated their music catalogue today with 22,000 new tracks. Some highlights of the new update are Mr. Oizo, Nightwish, Funker Vogt, Pete Doherty, Melotron, Walls Of Jericho, Motörhead, and much more, so check out the full listing here.
On top of today’s update, another 88,000 songs were added to the service last Friday, including Radiohead’s back catalog. Friday’s full listing is also viewable, so check it out. Pretty soon, if it isn’t on Spotify, it doesn’t exist!
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Friday, March 6, 2009 9:00AM - By Morelli
If you use the music service Spotify, beware. The Swedish company says that hackers were able to break into the service at the end of 2008, and steal users’ personal details. The security breach was only discovered last week, and the company has issued a formal apology and promises users that it will make efforts to ensure the violation is not repeated.
E-mail addresses, dates of birth and addresses were all stolen, but credit-card details, which were handled by a third party, are thought to have remained secure. Spotify’s communications manager, Jim Butcher, told BBC:
“We think about 10,000 accounts [could be] at risk, although we are 95% sure it is a fraction of that.”
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Friday, February 20, 2009 5:00PM - By davidhall
Some of us have lives (AKA commuting, working nine-to-five, commuting some more, etc…) and some of us spend most of our time (to our paychecks’ dismay) surfing the web for all the free and entertaining music tidbits we can get our hands on. For those of you in the latter category who haven’t yet scored your fix for today, here are some starting points:
- Are you one of those music fans who loves a visual element to go along with your all-American music (I know I’m a fan of picture books)? If your answer if, ‘By God, I do love pictures with my music!’, then check out this sweet four-part illustrated show review (sample shown above) by artist Ariel Kitch of Alela Diane and Blitzen Trapper playing at Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis. Seriously, this is an awesome concept – we need more sketch artists doing show reviews!
- Ground control to Cat Power fans, this one’s for you. If you haven’t been flipping channels during TV commercials, you might have heard none other than Chan Marshall (AKA Cat Power) singing David Bowie‘s “Space Oddity” over a new ad for Lincoln’s 2009 MKS. So far, we’ve only got the clip available (below), but cross your fingers that this rendition ends up on another cover album from Marshall! Great choice…
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Friday, January 30, 2009 3:00PM - By Morelli
Spotify posted on their blog that their music catalogue will be reduced in quantity and some tracks will be removed for certain countries. The free streaming music service is being bullied by the major labels to restrict their distribution and although Spotify is compiling, they are not happy about it. From the blog:
“These restrictions are a legacy from when most music was sold on tapes and CDs and they have continued over into streaming music, our hope is that one day restrictions like this will disappear for good.”
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Wednesday, October 8, 2008 2:03PM - By Seraphina L.
It may be cool to create a MySpace profile playlist with the new MySpace Music streaming. However, as we’ve told you before, it doesn’t really help out independent artists. Another streaming service, called Spotify, has just been launched yesterday in hopes of solving this problem.
Just like MySpace Music streaming, Spotify users will also have unlimited access to music and social features as well as the ability to create playlists and share them. However, consumers are asked to choose between a premium, monthly subscription, or a free (ad-supported) service. There is also a “day pass” purchase available for users which is advertisement free.
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