music

Senators want to overthrow new Net radio fees

Congressional momentum appears to be building in support of overturning a contentious ruling that Webcasters argue could cripple their services.

On Thursday, U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) introduced a bill that would repeal a U.S. Copyright Royalty Board decision scheduled to take effect July 15. The rules would raise the rate per song and per listener retroactively to 2006, and then in each year until 2010. It would also require each Internet radio "channel" to make a $500 minimum payment.

Opponents of the new rules, which include large and small commercial Internet … Read more

Download.com Music video report

What are the cool kids spinning? Not that we at Download.com Music are all that "cool." OK, well, maybe we are a little. Whatever you want to call us, you can't deny the music in our latest Download.com crew video report--produced by our good friends at CNET TV--is rather tasty. Bjork chimes in wth a brand-new track, along with former Pulp maestro Jarvis Cocker, rising hip-hop star Phat Kat, and the crazy dance rhythms of Bonde Do Role.

Web search is music to the ears at Hakia

A would-be Google rival is making waves, but not the kind you might think. Hakia dubs itself the "meaning-based search engine" and purports to give more relevant results than the major search sites. Google may be the most popular Web search engine; it may have free lunches and be a verb, but Hakia has something that Google doesn't--a band. So there, Larry and Sergey!

Hakia's Chief Executive Riza Berkan has started a band with several other employees of the New York-based start-up and some professional musicians. The group's first CD, titled ""Cogito Ergo Search,&… Read more

Three music video search tools

With this morning's news of Last.fm launching a video service, we thought it would be worth mentioning a few resources that are out there for finding free music videos.

MusicTonic is a very slick search tool that mashes up various pieces of artist information like photos, album art, news stories, and a video playlist. It ties into a few online services like Flickr, YouTube, Last.fm, and MyStrands, among others. It's a lot like Foxytunes Planet, which we looked at in January, although there's no integration with any jukebox players.

Middio is a simplified music-video search … Read more

Mash up audio and video with MXPlay

There are a number of great digital-music players already on CNET Download.com--iTunes rules the roost because of its compatibility with iPods; MediaMonkey is fantastic for free music management and playlist creation; JetAudio Basic is packed with features for burning and broadcasting via JetCast; the classic free player Winamp now provides Internet TV and music videos; and Quintessential Player, my personal favorite player, is the perfect size for those who prefer a light system footprint.

A new digital-music player called MXPlay focuses primarily on one facet that most of the current software doesn't even mention: sound quality. Designed mostly for streaming audio, MXPlay augments even the lowest-quality 96kbps music streams to provide a more full-bodied sound for your favorite tunes. Also, a unique graphical interface lets you position your virtual speakers and audience to tweak the sound of your songs to your heart's content, and a built-in browser lets you both surf the Web and add photos and videos to create your own music mashups.… Read more

Surround sound from the phone?

In the shotgun wedding between mobile phones and MP3 players, some handsets are trying to seize the upper hand by including larger speakers in their slender frames. The recently discovered "Super Audio Phone" from China, for example, has a speaker that makes it look something like an old-fashioned transistor radio.

Another model from Hong Kong is aiming to go a step further with several small built-in speakers to create 7.1 surround sound, according to Pocket-lint. Regardless of how well (or poorly) they perform, at least we know that they won't look as awkward as some snap-on … Read more

New Net radio fee collections delayed

The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board has pushed back the date on which a contentious fee hike for Internet radio broadcasters takes effect.

In a 32-page final rule (PDF) formally published Monday, the three-judge panel within the Library of Congress set July 15 as the date that the new royalty rates required of Net radio operators will kick in--two months later than the original deadline.

After more than a year of vetting outside submissions, the judges issued an initial ruling on March 2, drawing widespread outcry from large and small commercial Webcasters and the public radio community.

The board prescribed … Read more

eMusic really knows how to bribe a girl

Into signing up for its music service again, that is. Because--of course--any attempts to lure me into ratcheting up the eMusic review score would be systematically rejected--not that the service needs much help in that regard anyway. However, I did receive an offer today (actually, at 4:10 a.m. Saturday morning...gotta love e-mail bots) for 50 free music downloads--and all I need to do is "rejoin eMusic NOW!" Well, I do love free music, so perhaps I'll take them up on that. If you got a similar offer, will you? Leave me a comment … Read more

More tunes to rock your skull underwater

It still sends chills up our spine, literally and figuratively, but the skull-as-speaker concept continues to make inroads in audio technology. And not content to take over our bodies on land, companies have been refining their products under water as well.

Two years after Finis' "SwiMP3" seized the aquatic world by the cheekbones, the company has updated its swimmers' headphones with a new pair dubbed simply the "v2." Aside from a slightly different design, however, Electronista says the most significant difference is more storage capacity (256MB vs. 128MB), as well as adding support for the WMA … Read more