match

PayPal is getting competitive for the holidays. The payment service will refund customers up to $1,000 if they find that an item purchased through PayPal is advertised for cheaper elsewhere during the holiday season.

From today through December 31, PayPal will price-match your purchases with a limit of $250 on a single item, according to a blog post from PayPal Shopping Specialist Claudia Lombana.

"If the item you purchase is advertised for lower with any merchant within 30 days of purchase, you can receive a reimbursement for the difference," Lombana writes. "It doesn't matter if … Read more

With the one-year anniversary of iTunes Match fast approaching, Apple is reminding annual subscribers that their plan will automatically renew.

The company sent out e-mails to subscribers this morning, noting that the automatic renewal can be turned off just like in-app subscriptions for newspaper and magazine feature Newsstand.

iTunes Match stores music tracks in the cloud, and makes them available on any device with iTunes. It can also tidy up old collections of ripped CDs with high-quality versions from Apple's digital store.

The $24.99-a-year service launched last November following a three-week delay.

Apple was the first out of … Read more

Google announced plans today to roll out its version of a scan-and-match feature for the company's music service in Europe in two weeks and then in the United States soon after.

The company was to announce the feature today, as well as other updates to Google Play entertainment media during a press event in New York that was supposed to mark the debut of the latest version of its Android operating system, according to multiple music industry sources. The search company cancelled the event due to Hurricane Sandy.

Last month, CNET reported that Google was trying to obtain the … Read more

One of the creators of Skype has announced a new addition to his digital music service Rdio.

Janus Friis says the Rdio Artist Program is designed to give musicians a better alternative to iTunes Match or Spotify, where some complain that commission rates based on the number of times a song is streamed leaves an artist with almost nothing.

With Rdio, uploaders earn $10 for every new subscriber they lure to the service. The platform pays artists to share both music and recommendations on social-networking sites including Facebook and Twitter -- promoting the company as well as themselves.

San Francisco-based … Read more

The Music app received a mostly cosmetic makeover with iOS 6, but there are a couple of items under the hood that have changed. If you use Apple's Podcasts and iTunes U apps, you'll soon discover that content for those apps are now directed to those apps and no longer available in the Music app. The bigger change has to do with iTunes Match.

Before, when you played a song stored in iCloud via iTunes Match, the song would be downloaded to your device as you listened to it. And next to each track stored in iCloud was … Read more

There are several games on both of my iOS devices at any given time from just about every genre. But there are only a few games I go back to on an almost daily basis and that's because they are fun, addictive, and a great way to keep in touch with friends and family.

These "casual" games are turn-based and require you to connect with a friend to start playing -- there is no single-player option with this collection. They have also been around for a while, but that's kind of the point: these are the games I continue to play because it only requires a couple of minutes to take my turn and send it to a friend. While it is sometimes a pain to go in and complete my turns (especially when life gets busy), the overall experience of competing with your friends and family is a good one and acts as a way to stay connected, even in our busy everyday lives.… Read more

Music-streaming services are big business for labels and even the companies that offer them. But for artists, they're not so great.

Josh Davison, a member of the band Parks and Gardens, yesterday took to Twitter to divulge the exceedingly small amount he and his fellow musicians make from streaming on iTunes Match and Spotify. According to Davison, each time one of his songs streams on iTunes Match, the band makes $0.00330526797710. When that same song plays on Spotify, the band makes $0.00966947678815. In other words, if Davison wants to make just one cent off a song play, … Read more

Apple will match the price of an iPhone from another authorized retailer if you buy it in an Apple store, according to a new report.

Citing an anonymous source, MacRumors this morning says it's now a quiet policy at Apple's stores to price-match with a handful of third-party authorized sellers and carrier partners so that users can buy a new phone in an Apple store versus going elsewhere to get the same deal.

Per a purportedly leaked photo of the new policy, that amounts to a savings of $49.01 on the 8GB iPhone 4, as well as … Read more