spotify

AOL has lost one of the top executives to music-streaming service Spotify, All Things Digital is reporting today.

According to All Things Digital, Jared Grusd, AOL's senior vice president for business development and chief of strategy, has left the company to pursue an unspecified role at Spotify. Although All Things Digital wasn't able to nail down what position he'll take on, its sources say that it's a "high-level position in New York."

After making a name for itself in Europe, Spotify made its U.S. debut in July.

As Grusd reportedly pursues a new … Read more

Coldplay, one of the world's biggest music acts, has declined to offer songs from the band's new album "Mylo Xyloto," to streaming services such as Spotify, Rdio and Rhapsody, multiple sources told CNET.

EMI, the band's record label, acknowledged that Coldplay, known for such songs as "Yellow" and "Clocks," will not distribute through streaming services for "Mylo Xyloto," but did not detail the reasons for the decision. "We always work with our artists and management on a case by case basis to deliver the best outcome for each … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Sean Parker's interests in revolutionizing the music industry, so to speak, are well known from his early days as a co-founder of Napster. His current efforts on this horizon are focused on Spotify.

"These historical limitations that defined the dynamics of the record business no longer any sense," said Parker, speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit.

Parker described Spotify as an "attempt to finish" what he started with Napster, being that it is a "dream of frictionless-free, tiered service that enables music sharing."

"We're all trying to figure out … Read more

Spotify's music-streaming service has proven quite popular in the U.S., Reuters reported yesterday.

According to the news service, citing sources, Spotify now has 250,000 U.S. subscribers that are paying for access to its service. That claim, which Spotify has not confirmed, follows comments made by the company's CEO Daniel Ek last month, who said that the number of total paid subscribers worldwide is now over 2 million.

Spotify launched in the U.S. in July. And although users can sign up for free, those who pay for Spotify Unlimited at $4.99 a month will … Read more

Digster, a playlist service from Universal Music Group, is betting that even in the age of search algorithms and recommendation engines, humans are still the best music-discovery tools.

Rolled out in the United States in August, Digster started out by providing playlists exclusively to users of Spotify, the European music service that also launched U.S. operations this summer. Digster's initial goal was to help cull the millions of tracks available there.

Digster now wants to do the same for users of Rdio, a Spotify competitor. Mitch Rotter, a vice president of marketing and product development at Universal Music, … Read more

Following the success of the WD TV Live Hub, Western Digital has now introduced the diskless version in the new WD TV Live (2011).

The new Live adds a couple more killer features, namely built-in Wi-Fi and support for the Spotify music-streaming service, to the already long list of services and file formats handled by its predecessors. And all for only $99, but there is a lot of competition at this price level. There were still some bugs left to iron out and the Spotify service is a little daunting in comparison to its desktop counterpart, but in all this … Read more

Western Digital announced today its latest in the WD TV media player series, the WD TV Live. This is the fifth generation of the company's WD TV family of networked-media players--not to be confused with the second-generation product of the same name that was released two years ago--and it's the first that offers built-in support for Wi-Fi and delivers the Spotify Music service.… Read more

Welcome to our first Buzz Out Loud Weekly, which is, ironically, our third show this week! It's a stair-step approach, really. We're recapping and analyzing Amazon's Kindle conflagration, wondering what the new iPhone 5 will look like and whether hidden retail skus do indeed point to a cheaper model, and pondering where to get free coffee on this, National Coffee Day. Plus, your calls and letters -- keep them coming!

We all have two or three playlists on Spotify we would prefer our listening habits of be left private. With the recent changes to Facebook and the new integration with the various music services, hiding your guilty pleasures has become somewhat of a hassle.

Up until now, the only available solution to prevent your music selection from being displayed on Facebook is somewhat permanent. Thankfully, Spotify has rolled out a Private Listening feature to its desktop clients, allowing users to temporarily stop their music selection from being broadcast all over the Internet.

To enable Private Listening in Spotify on a … Read more