beats

HTC plays with streaming music, psychiatrists study Internet addiction, and MySpace beats on with the MySpace Music Player.

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

I nearly fell off my couch when I saw Harman Kardon and JBL ads in the middle of the Grammy Awards show on Sunday night.

Audio-brand awareness in the mainstream is mostly limited to Bose and Beats by Dr. Dre, but now it looks like Harman, the parent company of AKG, Harman Kardon, JBL, Mark Levinson, Lexicon, and Infinity is starting to flex its muscles. I spoke with Chris Dragon, the senior global marketing director of Harman, to learn more about the campaigns.

JBL's "Hear the Truth" ads will feature many of the world's top musical … Read more

HTC is hoping a different tune may reverse its recent flagging fortunes.

The smartphone vendor is working on its own streaming music service, according to a report from GigaOm. The service would purportedly become the default music client on HTC phones and tablets, and pricing and plans are getting worked out.

An HTC representative wasn't immediately available to comment to CNET.

This wouldn't be HTC's first foray into the music scene. Last summer, the company acquired a majority stake in Beats Audio, the headphone business started by rapper Dr. Dre and music industry executive Jimmy Iovine. While … Read more

Monster and Dr. Dre spearheaded the trend of celebrity-endorsed headphones, starting with the eponymous Monster Beats by Dr. Dre and Lady Gaga's own signature earbuds. But an increasing number of artists are partnering with other manufacturers for their own collaborations.

Signeo announced the Soul by Ludacris headphone series at CES 2011, and 50 Cent stopped by the CNET stage this year to demo his own wireless cans, but does a celebrity shout-out mean that those devices sound better than the competition?

Check out the following list to get the real scoop on all these new headphones supported by famous musicians.… Read more

Beat the Traffic will unveil Beat The Traffic 2.0 app for the iPhone at the Macworld iWorld 2012 event being held January 26-28 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

A team of 100 beta-testers will begin using the new Beat the Traffic app, which lets travelers view real-time traffic conditions--such as accidents, traffic congestion, and roadwork delays--and adjust their travel plans.

The new Beat the Traffic app offers interactive maps and additional surface street details; it also lets motorists retrieve travel times and live camera views.

The app will be available for free for the iPhone and iPad … Read more

It's Friday the 13th & we are wrapping up CES 2012. Today on the show we discuss the Best of CES winners and losers and discuss some CES disappointments and surprises.

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LAS VEGAS--The Beats and Monster brands are so synonymous that it's hard to believe the relationship is over. After a five-year lovefest that spawned dozens of headphones including the eponymous Beats by Dr. Dre and Lady Gaga's own Heartbeats, Beats is cutting ties and refusing to renew the partnership contract.

According to a report from Businessweek, two anonymous sources confirmed that Noel Lee's Monster Brand and Jimmy Iovine's Beats label severed ties after an irreconcilable dispute over who should get more credit for last year's 53 percent headphone marketshare.

Dre and Iovine remain adamant about their aim to educate young listeners on the value of accurate sound reproduction seemingly lost in this era of awful-sounding Apple ibuds, and they even brought names like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and Miles Davis into the fold to help drive sales with cameos in music videos and live DJ sets.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Proving again that it can't make a move before Monster does it first, Fanny Wang has announced that its Duo 1000, 2000, and 3000 headphone lines all boast a rainbow of color options to suit your palette.

And now that its litigation with Monster Cable is over, there's no stopping Fanny Wang from moving ahead with its offerings.

Regardless, Fanny Wang understands that its customers appreciate the ability to add a splash of color to their headphones, so the Duo 1000 series gets upgraded with black, white, orange, green, and blue options; the 2000 over-ear models will … Read more

It takes a lot to stand out in the crowded world of ultrabooks, but HP is betting that a liberal dose of Gorilla Glass will do the trick.

The newly announced HP Spectre is the most glass-covered laptop we've ever seen. Is that a good thing? We've seen glass-heavy smartphones like the iPhone 4, but not so much in laptops...until now. At CES 2012, we got a good close-up look at HP's bold Envy redesign.

The Spectre is HP's first consumer-oriented ultrabook (the HP Folio 13 released last year was technically HP's first ultrabook, … Read more