music

How to identify nameless music tracks in your iTunes library

Commercial MP3s and other digital music files provide a wealth of information about the songs in addition to the audio-playback itself. This metadata makes it easy to display the track name, artist, album, and other facts about the songs in your playback device or program.

When you use an application such as the free Audacity audio-editing utility to convert music from LPs, cassettes, or another analog source, the only metadata accompanying the tracks is whatever information you provide when you create the digital file. There's the rub.

In July 2011 I described how to use Audacity to convert LPs and audio cassettes to digital. … Read more

Spotify branches out into its own social network

With its feed, user profiles, and people tab, Spotify is already well on its way to becoming its own social network. And now, the music-streaming service is about to beef up its social aspect even more.

Spotify is in the middle of rolling out a "Follow" tab to replace its "People" tab for desktop users, according to The Next Web. The idea of the "Follow" tab is for people to be able to connect with friends, music artists, and top influential users. The way it works is similar to "liking" an artist … Read more

Pandora caps free mobile listening at 40 hours a month

Streaming radio service Pandora announced today it will introduce a cap on mobile listening as it grapples with rising royalty rates.

Nonpaying users of the service will be limited to 40 hours of free music each month, after which time they will be invited to pay a one-time fee of 99 cents for the remainder of the month or subscribe to the premium service, which features unlimited music and is advertising free. Users will also have the option of listening to unlimited listening via desktop.

Pandora, which eliminated a similar listening limit for desktop users in September 2011, blamed increasing … Read more

Maybe there's hope for the music industry yet

The big digital music companies, from Internet radio company Pandora to fast-growing startups like Spotify and Deezer, face huge business challenges because of the simple fact that the majority of the money they bring in -- either from ads or subscriptions -- goes to the big music labels and publishers.

And that's starting to look pretty good for the long suffering music industry.

A pair of reports published today on the music industry -- one from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the other from research firm NPD -- highlighted the first glimmer of good news that the … Read more

Illegal music downloads dropped in 2012, says report

Fewer people are illegally downloading and sharing music, NPD Group said in a report today.

Among those surveyed for NPD's "Annual Music Study 2012," 40 percent who illegally downloaded music via peer-to-peer services in 2011 said they had stopped or decreased their illegal downloads in 2012.

Overall, the number of illegally downloaded songs from P2P services dropped by 26 percent in 2012 from 2011.

Part of that was due to an overall decline in the use of P2P services. At the 2005 peek of P2P file sharing networks, 33 million people used them. For 2012, that number … Read more

The Pirate Bay sets sail for Norway, Spain after Sweden sinks ship

The Pirate Bay has broken its operation in two after an organization backed by the music and movie industries took aim at its backer.

According to TorrentFreak, The Pirate Bay today shifted its operational duties to Norway and Spain. Previously, the Swedish Pirate Party was providing it with the bandwidth it needed to operate its site. However, the Rights Alliance, an organization backed by the biggest music and movie companies, threatened to sue the Swedish Pirate Party over its support. That lawsuit could have cut off the Swedish Pirate Party's ability to pay for The Pirate Bay's bandwidth … Read more

DoubleTwist and Qualcomm to bring AirPlay-like streaming to Android

DoubleTwist, maker of the popular eponymous music player software, has teamed up with chip maker Qualcomm in an attempt to make wireless streaming easier for Android users. The fruit of their collaboration is dubbed MagicPlay, a new open-source wireless streaming platform that the two companies hope OEMs will integrate into present and future devices.

Built atop Qualcomm's already existing AllJoyn platform, DoubleTwist's MagicPlay can stream to wireless speakers, headphones, televisions, and other devices. Since MagicPlay is open-source, any number of devices or apps could potentially integrate its code and stream to hardware that has a Qualcomm chip and … Read more

Google in talks with labels over streaming music service -- report

When your market cap is north of $263 billion and the company's stock price is hovering around the $800 level, the prevailing question du jour becomes "well, why not?"

So it is that we learn, courtesy of the Financial Times, that Google has been talking with the major music labels about a possible streaming music service. The Times report said that "it is expected that the streaming service will offer a subscription model as well as free unlimited access to songs, supported by advertising, mirroring models adopted by Spotify and Deezer."

What with everyone seemingly … Read more

The 404 1,213: Where Sphere says no to 'Yes to the Dress' (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Is Spotify unfair to musicians?

- Spotify reports net loss of $59 million 2011.

- Spotify will pay $500 million to artists and rights holders in 2013.

- Benford's law, also called the first-digit law.

- Godwin's Law, also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies.

- The Audiophiliac wants to see your audio system.

- Are the Monoprice 9774 speakers inspired by, or knocks-offs of, the Energy Take Classic 5.1?… Read more

Songza gives you tailored playlists for what you're doing right now

Editors' note This review has been updated with new features added in version 3.0.

Songza is a popular streaming-music app that offers a different take on the type of programmed radio experience that Pandora initially made popular. Rather than generate playlists based on specific songs or artists, this app tries to offer up the right selection of tunes for specific activities you might be engaged in. In version 3.0, new features make the app less cluttered and help you start listening to music faster and with fewer steps.

While other streaming-radio apps typically start you off with a … Read more