spotify

Real's Rhapsody: Streaming to change the music biz

AUSTIN, Texas--At South by Southwest here, I had a short but interesting conversation Wednesday afternoon with Tim Quirk, the vice president of music programming for Rhapsody, wedged in around a set from Jersey punks Titus Andronicus (who had very tight and well-constructed songs with incredible energy and some interesting triple-guitar work, but I don't know if the singer's going to make it another three days).

Quirk, who's been with Rhapsody since before it was acquired by RealNetworks, suggested that streaming music on demand will change the mechanics of the music business because artists (and other stakeholders) won'… Read more

More free on-demand audio with Muziic

I love covering music software because the pace of evolution is so fast. I guess everybody's looking for the next billion-dollar business (after iTunes) to help replace declining CD sales.

Last week, I blogged about Spotify, a free and legal music player that offers a massive library of music on demand. Unfortunately, Spotify's library has some big gaps because of legal disputes with rights-holders, and it's not available in the U.S.

A couple days later, software developer David Nelson contacted me about Muziic, a company he started with his dad--he's 15(!) and has gone from … Read more

Spotify's latest music dirge: We've been hacked

Hackers were able to penetrate Spotify's computer network, potentially exposing the personal information and passwords of some of the music service's users.

In a company blog announcement, Spotify did not get specific about the extent of the breach. Here's part of the post:

Along with passwords, registration information such as your email address, birth date, gender, postal code and billing receipt details were potentially exposed. Credit card numbers are not stored by us and were not at risk. All payment data is handled by a secure 3rd party provider.

If you have an account that was created … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 918: The incredible, edible car

Within 15 years, cars will be made of seaweed, but will they be edible? That's your next task, auto industry. We also make book recommendations, give medical advice, and generally just try to help. Oh, and we talk about exploding donut factories.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 918

Court upholds AP “quasi-property” rights on hot news http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/24/2229205

Conan copyright trolls censor fan-readings of public-domain stories http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/25/conan-copyright-trol.html

SMiShing’ fishes for personal data over cell phone http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10171241-83.html… Read more

Answers to Spotify questions

A follow-up to yesterday's post about Spotify, which is poised to become my new favorite online music service. Because the company is based in Europe (headquarters in London, R&D in Stockholm), we missed one another because of the time change, but the company got back to me with some answers to my questions late last night.

First, Spotify's unavailability in the U.S. isn't only because of the complexities of music licensing, but also because the company wants to make sure it can scale reliably in its home market before expanding overseas. Fair enough--one of … Read more

Spotify could become the best music service ever

I've been reading good buzz about Spotify for several months now, but the noise seems to have reached a fever pitch with recent coverage by music industry blogger Bob Lefsetz and Sunday's announcement that the new U2 album, "No Line on the Horizon," is available on Spotify in several European countries right now--a week before its official worldwide release date of March 2.

Some quick background: the promise of Spotify is music, on-demand, from any computer with an Internet connection. Which sounds a lot like Rhapsody, Napster, Microsoft's Zune Pass, or any other of the … Read more

Music streaming service Spotify wins early fans

Move over, Pandora. There's a new music service in town--well, in some towns anyway.

TorrentFreak has an in-depth write-up of a new music streaming service called Spotify, which shows an awful lot of promise--so much so that the music piracy-focused blog sees it as a viable alternative to downloading pirated songs for free.

Spotify is a lean, downloadable application that lets users stream music instantly from its library--a library built with the blessing of EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and some smaller record labels. That, of course, begs the question: how does it make … Read more