Tag: Music
Semicircular headphones, so you don't get hit by a bus
These semicircular bluetooth headphones, from designer Seohyun Baek, are designed for cyclists. The idea is that they fit into your ears, but don’t block out external noise – like that lorry frantically beeping at you to get out the way…
OPINION: Sony Ericsson's "PlayNow" service is a little better than it first appeared
I was a bit doubtful of “PlayNow” when it first appeared on my radar. I’m still not convinced that it’ll suddenly persuade everything that it’s worth buying music again, but the deal is slightly sweeter than it originally appeared to be…
NOISE GATE: Wi-Fi enabled MP3 Players
From today, I’ll be contributing a new weekly column to the site every Tuesday afternoon about digital music. We’re calling it Noise Gate – which refers to an electronic device that cuts through the noise and crackle of an analog signal and delivers you a noise-free result. In the same way, I want to cut through all the crap surrounding digital music, mainly delivered by major labels and tech companies, and deliver you the pure, unadulterated facts. Think you can handle them?
SlotMusic – albums on SD cards from SanDisk
Here’s the latest novelty music format to come from a technology company desperate to get a piece of Apple pie. Albums on MicroSD cards, from SanDisk. SanDisk, who have second place in the MP3 player market with 11% market share, reckon that the way to get consumers to re-engage with buying music is to provide it to them in a mostly useless format…
7digital sign up Sony and go 100% DRM-free in their digital music store
This morning, in a loft in Shoreditch, 7Digital announced that their digital music catalogue is to become 100% free of DRM. The last holdout among the major labels – SonyBMG – has bowed to consumer demand and agreed to sell its catalogue of 250,000 tracks in MP3 format, as opposed to the restricted WMA format. Even better, all SonyBMG tracks that customers have previously bought will be upgraded to MP3s at no cost. All MP3s are at 320kbps quality…
RUMOUR: MySpace Music to launch next week
Remember MySpace? For a long time now, they’ve been on life support. The crowds have deserted it for Facebook, and one of the big things keeping it afloat has been their music section. Bands can upload songs, photos, videos, tour dates, etc. It’s the perfect no-effort-needed minisite for unsigned bands to use, and a great way for music fans to sample a new band…
Passionato – DRM-free, high quality classical music downloads
Following in the footsteps of Deutsche Gramophon, a service called Passionato is launching today, which will feature very high quality DRM-free downloads of classical… er… classics. It could prove popular – as previously reported, one in three classical music lovers owns an MP3 player, and download music, as well as ripping their classical CDs to MP3. One in five legally download tracks…
Sony Ericsson to launch mobile music service in a stunning display of originality
Sony Ericsson’s fortunes and market share have been declining of late, there are rumours floating around that they’re thinking about launching a mobile music service to fix things called “Me Too”. Just kidding. It’s actually called “Playnow”, named after their existing “Playnow Arena” a-la-carte download service available only in Scandinavia…
EMI adding over 400,000 new tunes to We7's free streaming library
We7, the free-to-use ad-funded music site that’s famously the brainchild of musical wildcard Peter Gabriel will, finally, soon feature the Peter Gabriel back catalogue in its listings.
This is thanks to music goliath EMI announcing a deal to stick 400,000 of its songs up on the streaming service before the end of the year, a move which will significantly boost the amount of content on the rapidly-growing free music site. Sony BMG…
Songbird – 5 reasons why it's my favourite media player
Songbird, the fantastic web-integrated media player, has released a new beta 0.7 version of its software client. It’s much improved on previous versions, but most people haven’t even heard of it. I strongly believe that Songbird is worthy of a place on everyone’s computer, and here’s why…
