Today the WSJ confirms as much, citing “people familiar with the matter.” The Journal adds that the Web-based service would negate the need to download the iTunes software.
You wouldn’t need to download your music either; it could live on the cloud, accessible anywhere with a Web connection. Lala users current pay 10 cents to stream a track forever, significantly undercutting iTunes’ model – Apple might choose to keep that model intact. Read more at mashable.com |
Google, the search giant, plans to announce a music initiative at an event it will hold at the Capitol Records building in Hollywood next Wednesday, according to three people briefed on the details, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the service before it was announced. |
The service will give users a more efficient way to find, learn about and sample music after they search for information about bands, albums or songs, said a person who has seen an early demonstration. |
Through relationships with streaming music sites, like Lala, Imeem and the MySpace division iLike, users wanting to sample a song will be presented with a pop-up box from one of the music partners that will play at least a 30-second sample, and in some cases, the whole song. Read more at www.nytimes.com |
SuperGlued just launched a free iPhone app (iTunes link) with all the CMJ music show listings (and more) that lets you see Tweets about each show, Tweet out your own messages, and share pictures you take via the app.
The launch is timed for CMJ, but it works anywhere. The app pulls in show listings from Last.fm, Livenation, local show listings, and those added by members. The app lets you indicate that you are going to a particular show. |
| It also lets you gawk at other people at shows, by snapping pictures and sharing them through the app, or checking out Tweets about that show. It acts as a Twitter client as well, letting you Tweet to your friends whether or not a show is worth coming out to, or just to show your appreciation for a particularly rocking song. (The rock-show Tweet is the digital equivalent of holding up a lighter, I guess). Each Tweet is accompanied with a short link to that show’s listing page on SuperGlued (like this one) , which also shows who else is going. |
Concert Vault, which gives you access to these amazing shows directly from your iPhone or
iPod Touch.
The update adds a couple minor features, including a list of featured concerts–helpful for keeping track of shows that have been recently added to the vault–and fixes some reported problems with stuttering and stalling.
|
| 7digital, an online music retailer formed five years ago in Europe, launched its U.S. outlet today — the latest MP3 store to challenge Apple’s iTunes juggernaut. The most obvious difference between the two stores, at least from a consumer’s perspective, is 7digital’s prices: single tracks for 77 cents, albums for $7.77. That’s more than 20% less than Apple typically charges. The songs also are MP3s, unlike Apple’s more idiosyncratic AAC format, and are encoded at 320 Kbps — a higher rate than used by other MP3 stores, presumably delivering better sound quality.Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com |
| Streaming music service Pandora added a new feature today: music videos. Every Saturday, Sunday, and Monday the site will feature new artist-produced music videos on the site. |
If you launch any of the studio-version videos in a browser window, Pandora ( ) will continuously play the rest of the available videos in alphabetical sequence. It’s not quite as full-featured as the main music service (yet, at least), but it’s an interesting new direction for the heretofore audio-only service. Read more at mashable.com |
| computer scientists in Taiwan have devised a neural network program that can automatically classify computerised music files based on their beat and tempo. |
Chang-Biau Yang of National Sun Yat-sen University plays the music file to his neural network, which analyses the beat and tempo using two main approaches to classifying music - the Ellis and the Dixon methods - named for their inventors. The software then outputs a general musical genre. |
In this initial learning phase, the researchers correct the misses and feed the hits back into the neural network so that it builds up an audio profile of how different music files sound in each different genre. Once the neural network has been trained it can then classify a whole collection of music files. |
The next step is then to use the Ellis and Dixon methods to further confirm the genre of each neurally classified group of music files. These methods using different signal processing approaches to listen to the music file and to determine the position of peaks that correspond to the musical beat. They can be used to estimate tempo and beat pattern. Read more at www.techradar.com |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The death of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of 35 may have been caused by complications stemming from strep throat, according to a Dutch study published on Monday. Since the composer’s death in 1791, there have been various theories about the cause of his untimely end, from intentional poisoning, to rheumatic fever, to trichinosis, a parasitic disease caused by eating raw or undercooked pork. |
Their new study, reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was based on information from official death registers for Vienna in the winter of 1791 that places Mozart’s death in a wider context. He died in Vienna. |
“Our findings suggest that Mozart fell victim to an epidemic of strep throat infection that was contracted by many Viennese people in Mozart’s month of death, and that Mozart was one of several persons in that epidemic that developed a deadly kidney complication,” researcher Richard Zegers, of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, told Reuters Health. Read more at www.reuters.com |
 Dr. Dre, Interscope Chairman Jimmy Lovine and HP have teamed up in an effort to reconstruct the entire “digital music ecosystem” starting with a new line of laptops, software and headsets under the Beats by Dr. Dre brand.
|
| is to educate the iPod-owning masses about what music should sound like so that we may rise up and demand this sort of quality in the future. Details on the product line have not been released, but we do know that they will feature a premium price tag—a major barrier for adoption beyond the hardcore audiophileRead more at gizmodo.com |
The entity that collects royalties almost every time somebody plays a Michael Jackson tune is exporting about 32 jobs to Nashville as it prepares to move from Midtown to the 7 World Trade Center office tower. |
The organization, Broadcast Music Inc., which collects license fees on behalf of songwriters, composers and music publishers, including Mr. Jackson, who died last Thursday at age 50, has gradually shifted the bulk of its jobs to Music Row in Nashville from West 57th Street in Manhattan, said Robbin Ahrold, a spokesman for B.M.I. It now has about 140 jobs in the city, down from a peak of about 500, and plans to move about 110 of them into two floors of 7 World Trade Center in the spring. |
Most of the remaining jobs in New York will be executive positions and those of employees who deal with the TV and radio broadcasters based in the city or overseas, Mr. Ahrold said. Most of the employees who are busy these days tracking all of the performances of Mr. Jackson’s music and collecting royalties on them are in Nashville. Read more at cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com |
|
Following Apple’s acquisition of Web-based music service Lala, it didn’t take much to connect the dots: Apple wants to take iTunes to the Web.
