Category: Digital Music
T-Mobile adds Last.fm and Wikipedia to its mobile jukebox service
This is potentially game-changing for mobile music. T-Mobile has added music-discovery functionality from Last.fm to its mobile jukebox service. The addition means that users of the service can simply put in an artist’s name, and they’ll receive a list of other musicians that they might like.
With each option presented, you’ll have the option to stream a 30 second preview (why not a full preview?) and then buy the track. Users will also get plenty of biographical info about the artist, thanks to a partnership with Wikipedia.
Nokia's "Comes with Music" DRM cracked
Rejoice, those of you with a “Comes with Music” subscription. You’ll now be able to strip the DRM off the tracks that, remember, you’ve paid for – and use them whenever and wherever you like. In all honesty, I’m surprised it took this long.
The software you’ll need is Tunebite. It costs £17.50 (or free, see below), and works by playing back the song at a very high speed, and then copying the data that comes out onto an MP3 file. It’s a bit like holding up a tape recorder next to your speakers, but retaining all the quality of the original file.
iTunes DRM-free before the year end?
There’s a lot of rumbling this morning on the intertubes about iTunes potentially going DRM-free on all labels as of today. It would be a dramatic change from Apple’s famously ‘locked-down’ way of doing things, and could damage the iPod’s sales as consumers learn they can play their media on other devices.
Download site 7Digital won a coveted Tech Digest Official Badge of Awesomeness earlier this year for being the first download site to go 100% DRM-free. Many have since followed, but iTunes remains a holdout, with the majority of its catalogue still lumbered with restrictions.
NOISE GATE: 6 Tenets for a New Music Industry, Part Five
Although piracy is undeniably bad for the music industry, there are plenty of ways around it. The sue-em-all solution hasn’t worked, so what else can record companies do to slow the problem down? In this instalment, I’ll share some of my ideas on how the industry can be creative in tackling the pirates. Hint: It’s all about carrots.
- Music must be sharable – word of mouth is more important than ever
- Revenue must come from multiple sources – if one bit of the industry becomes obsolete, it shouldn’t sink the whole ship
- New technologies are to be welcomed and understood, not feared and litigated against
- A&R can be crowdsourced, but remember the long tail
- “Added value” is key – give people a reason not to pirate things
- Your artists are your most important spokespeople
Bopaboo – selling second-hand MP3s. This has got to be a joke, right?
A site has just launched called Bopaboo. It claims to be a marketplace that allows you to resell unwanted MP3s to other people. There are only two valid conclusions to be had here – either it’s a joke, or it’s been set up by some people who haven’t got the faintest idea about how digital music works.
At the moment it’s still in private beta, but if you can track down an invite code (I found one on Google in less than 30 seconds) then you can try it out. You upload songs, and then others can download them at a price, at which point you get some cash, and the site takes 20%. No word on how much of that 20% goes back to the record labels.
PureSolo is Karaoke 2.0, and great for learning instruments, too
PureSolo is a new application designed for people to sing, or play, along with backing tracks. It’s great for drunken Karaoke after lunch on Christmas day, but it’s also good for any aspiring musicians – classical or rock & pop – to play along as if they were in a real band.
Each song offered by the service is missing a particular track, be that vocals, guitar, or even oboe or alto sax. When you join you get one free download, but beyond that, each track costs £1 to £2. You can record your efforts with a microphone, and use headphones, too.
Songbird hits version 1.0
Plenty of GOOD NEWS this morning in the world of digital music. First Amazon MP3 launches in the UK, and now awesome media player Songbird hits version 1.0.
Songbird, as I’ve said before, is one of my favourite music clients. Although it’s currently being neglected in favour of Spotify, it remains my player of choice for actual MP3 files. Why? Because it’s so wonderfully intuitive and feature-packed, as well as being open-source.
The new version brings massive performance improvements, loads of UI tweaks, better search and sorting, and better ability to cope with big libraries (full of completely legally-acquired MP3s, I’m sure). If you’re still using iTunes to play music, then I strongly recommend you give this a try. You won’t be disappointed.
Related posts: 5 good reasons to try Songbird | Try Spotify, too
Amazon MP3 goes live in the UK
Rejoice, DRM-haters. Amazon MP3 has quietly gone live in the UK this morning. You can find it here. It’s got some big big discounts on popular albums, with Take That’s new ‘Circus’ going for just £3, as is Elbow’s ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ and Seasick Steve’s ‘I Started Out With Nothin And I Still Got Most Of It Left’. Recent albums by Kings Of Leon, Coldplay and Girls Aloud are similarly cheaptastic.
Although the catalogue isn’t as ridiculously extensive as more established download services – yet – the user experience is great. I just downloaded Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ in just four clicks, plus a small one-off Amazon Downloader install, which downloads tracks in the background and adds them to your favourite media player.
Guitar Hero makes music look easy – 2.5 million extra kids learning instruments thanks to video games
Hear that sound? That’s the slow, disjointed, tortured noise made by 2.5 million 14-year-old boys currently trying to work out the opening chords of ‘Smoke on the Water’ on their new proper guitars.
It’s all thanks to the success of music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which have triggered a massive surge in the number of kids learning to play musical instruments. The Times says a survey by Youth Music found that over half of…
NOISE GATE: 6 Tenets for a New Music Industry, Part Four
There’s nothing worse than someone who’s constantly using buzzwords, but I’ve used one or two today to discuss what I think needs to happen to A&R. Crowdsourcing. Don’t worry – I’m not going all Web 2.0 on you – but “the crowd” is far better at finding new bands than any A&R man. Find my thoughts over the jump, and an index of the past weeks below.
- Music must be sharable – word of mouth is more important than ever
- Revenue must come from multiple sources – if one bit of the industry becomes obsolete, it shouldn’t sink the whole ship
- New technologies are to be welcomed and understood, not feared and litigated against
- A&R can be crowdsourced, but remember the long tail
- “Added value” is key – give people a reason not to pirate things – carrots, not sticks
- Your artists are your most important spokespeople
