music

Xbox Music was initially announced in June of this year and released to Xbox 360 users first. When Windows 8 reached general availability on October 26, Xbox Music became available to all Windows 8 users as well. Like Spotify, Microsoft's new music service can stream full songs on demand, as well as play taste-based radio like Pandora. Here's what you need to know to get started with Xbox Music on Windows 8:

To begin using Xbox Music, click on the orange Music tile on your Windows 8 Start screen and sign in with a Microsoft account.

Streaming songs … Read more

Leawo Music Recorder is an app for OS X that allows you to convert your computer into a recording machine, taking inputs from any connected devices, the built-in microphone, or even the system audio. While we liked the concept, we found some flaws in the execution.

The Leawo Music Recorder interface is clean, and it's easy to get started, with the prominent red Record button at the top. Beneath that, the left pane holds a list of your recordings, and the right pane is used for prompts and a graphic animation that shows when recording is under way. It'… Read more

Spunk, that's what Music Hall's Marimba speaker has lots of. No measurements are needed to confirm this is an exceptional speaker. Its low-key looks are deceiving; it's just a nicely finished "wood" grain black medium-density fiberboard box, measuring 6.6 inches by 8.7 inches by 11 inches, with rounded corners. There's a 1-inch silk dome tweeter and a 5.25-inch woofer lurking behind a removable black cloth grille. The internally braced cabinet feels solid; there's nothing exotic about the design, but the box feels more expensive than you usually get in a $… Read more

In Apple's never-ending negotiations with record labels, iTunes boss Eddy Cue often played the good cop to Steve Jobs' bad cop. But for current CEO Tim Cook, Cue may well be Mr. Fix-It.

In a surprising executive shuffle, Apple announced Monday that Scott Forstall, who runs software development for the iPad and iPhone, would be leaving the company, along with retail chief John Browett. Cue, an Apple employee for 23 years who was chief of iTunes since it launched in 2003, has now absorbed control of the Siri voice recognition service and the disappointing Apple Maps.

For the affable … Read more

Google Play's position among the top destinations for entertainment content, right there alongside Apple and Amazon, can no longer be denied.

Google announced today that it now has the licenses to offer movies and TV shows from News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox, which means Google Play can rent and sell material from all the major Hollywood studios. Google also locked up a deal with Time Inc. to distribute the media company's top magazine titles such as People, InStyle, and Time.

Perhaps most telling for Google is the deal it struck with Warner Music Group, one of the … Read more

Bluetooth speakers are all the rage these days, but when you stream your music library, Pandora playlists, and the like to a Bluetooth speaker, the audio gets compressed. And that makes audiophiles angry.

Plus, why listen to a relatively small sound system when you've already got a big, honking stereo? What you need is some Bluetooth-style way to beam your tunes from your iDevice to those sweet speakers -- but without the Bluetooth-style compression.

There's one way, and it's on sale! Through November 4, Shoptronics has the Nyrius NiAA300 Digital Wireless Audio Transmitter System for $59.99 shipped … Read more

Google announced plans today to roll out its version of a scan-and-match feature for the company's music service in Europe in two weeks and then in the United States soon after.

The company was to announce the feature today, as well as other updates to Google Play entertainment media during a press event in New York that was supposed to mark the debut of the latest version of its Android operating system, according to multiple music industry sources. The search company cancelled the event due to Hurricane Sandy.

Last month, CNET reported that Google was trying to obtain the … Read more

Is $10, or the price of a few Starbucks lattes, really too much to pay for an album? Is $10 really too much to support musicians well enough they'll want to record more music? I still play LPs I bought when I was a teenager, and I can't think of anything else I still use from that part of my life. Those records are, if anything, more valuable to me now then they were then. I'm old enough to remember when record companies were freaking out about kids making cassette copies of albums, but producer and engineer … Read more

There are a lot of great programs available to rip CDs to MP3, AAC, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, etc., but most require you to re-rip your CD if you want to save the rip to a different file format. If you have a large CD collection, ripping your CDs twice could take an excruciatingly long time.

dBpoweramp for Windows (XP/Vista/7/8), is a very fast and accurate audio CD ripper that supports ripping to multiple encoders. If you want to rip your CDs to FLAC for archiving and to MP3 for use on an iPod or smartphone, dbPoweramp can … Read more