Digital Noise: Music & Technology

How the RIAA looks for pirates

Matt Rosoff — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:37:00 GMT

If you've followed the RIAA's antipiracy efforts, perhaps you've wondered how they find suspected pirates. Yesterday, the The Chronicle for Higher Education published an article in which an RIAA spokesperson--anonymous for fear of hate mail--outlined the organization's surprisingly low-tech methods.

Do you use LimeWire? So does ...

Blackberry 9000 will get iTunes sync

Matt Rosoff — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:47:00 GMT

Smartphone fans are excited about yesterday's announcement of the Blackberry 9000, aka Blackberry Bold, aka Research In Motion's iPhone killer. But Blackberry users are a different breed than iPhone users--the Blackberry's reason for existence is always-connected e-mail, and Blackberry users tend to be all business, afraid of ...

R.E.M. offers 45 rpm vinyl

Matt Rosoff — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:12:00 GMT

I have a theory about indie rock hipsters: you can tell how old they are by which R.E.M. album they say was "the last good one." Specifically, it was the last R.E.M. album that came out before they turned 22, the age at which most four-year ...

IP protection law would let feds sieze your PC

Matt Rosoff — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:19:00 GMT

Some new intellectual property (IP) enforcement legislation passed the U.S. House yesterday by a wide margin. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been against the proposal since its inception, put out a release highlighting the silliness of creating a new presidential appointee (complete with official seal) specifically to oversee ...

DRM: it's like those zombie movies

Matt Rosoff — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:04:00 GMT

You know those movies where you think they've killed the last zombie and then the hero turns a corner and here comes a whole new crop of them sprung fresh from the graveyard? That's how it feels with DRM in the last couple of days. First, the New York Times' Bits blog ...

Neil Young Blu-ray preview video

Matt Rosoff — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

A quick recap of Neil Young's recent announcement at the Sun JavaOne conference, as reported by CNET's Dan Farber. The long-awaited (by fans) Neil Young Archive project is coming out this year. It'll be on Blu-ray, which is the first digital format to satisfy Mr. Young's ...

Are we in the '60s again?

Matt Rosoff — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:31:00 GMT

It was just two months ago that Nine Inch Nails released its album Ghosts I-IV in multiple formats, from free nine-song download all the way up to a deluxe LP/CD/Blu-ray set. Today, the band started taking orders for free downloads of its next album, The Slip; like Radiohead ...

Zune update: first impressions

Matt Rosoff — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:01:00 GMT

I've had a chance to play around with Zune 2.5, the latest software update to Microsoft's iPod-competitor, and I'm happy to report that all of the basic fixes Microsoft promised, such as the ability to edit song information and sort songs by genre, are there and ...

Zune update adds TV, "social," and software fixes

Matt Rosoff — Tue, 06 May 2008 04:01:00 GMT

Microsoft is releasing a major update to its Zune software and online service, and it couldn't have come soon enough.

Microsoft continues its tradition of delivering software updates to all Zune models.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Most of the headlines will probably focus on Microsoft adding downloadable shows, such as "South ...

Adventures in music analysis

Matt Rosoff — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:04:00 GMT

Founded to two MIT Media Lab alums, The Echo Nest is focused on what it calls "music intelligence." The company is developing software technology that can analyze the sounds within music files, text within online articles and blog postings about music, and other online data (such as songs being downloaded ...