It's been months since Roku announced that the Amazon Cloud Player was "coming soon," but today the company finally made good on that promise.

Amazon's cloud music service is now available on Roku and Samsung Smart TVs, offering the ability to stream your own digital music tracks without needing to keep a separate computer running. For Roku, it's a solid response to Apple's iTunes Match service, which offers cloud storage and streaming for $25 per year.

While Amazon Cloud Player started off as a largely free service, it now requires a similar fee as … Read more

Sonos has released updates to its iPhone and iPad apps that allow iOS 6 users to access their device's onboard music library and stream it through their Sonos system.

While the Sonos doesn't add AirPlay as such, the update lets the user access iTunes from within the Sonos app menu, something that most streaming and DLNA apps don't allow for non-AirPlay devices.

The device's music will appear on the menu under "This iPhone," and will list songs, playlists, and podcasts.

Sonos describes this as a major update; it follows two other recent updates that … Read more

Sony has announced that PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to add Music Unlimited Premium membership to their accounts for a limited time at $12 per year.

The PlayStation store update is due to go live later today (November 20) and represents a saving of 90 percent based on the regular price of $10 per month, while non-PlayStation Plus members can sign up for a discounted $60 yearly rate instead.

A PlayStation Plus account costs $49.99 a year, so buying Plus and Music Unlimited together makes more sense while the deal is running.

Sony boasts it has a catalog … Read more

Sonos has announced support for music service Murfie, which is a site that enables users to store their physical CD collection offsite and stream or sell the CDs through the cloud.

Users can stream their ripped CDs or, for a dollar, download them in a number of formats including FLAC. Until today, the only way a Murfie user could stream a collection was via a Web browser, but the dedicated Murfie plug-in means you can use your Sonos controller wirelessly around the house.

Murfie works by enabling users to mail their CDs in and rip them and have them stored … Read more

In the late 1990s, one of the original portable music file formats -- the MP3 -- was causing quite a bit of bother. It had earned itself a reputation as a pirate format, and this was mainly due to the sharing site Napster, which was at the height of its notoriety. While MP3 inevitably prevailed, there is a much better choice for high-quality music, and it's gaining in popularity.

FLAC is a musical file format that offers bit-perfect copies of CDs at half the size, and is compatible with many phones (including the iPhone -- with an app), MP3 … Read more

Music-streaming service Rhapsody has announced it will be available on Smart TVs from LG, Panasonic, and Samsung starting today, with Sharp and Xbox available in coming months.

Although the announcement came today, the service has been available on Panasonic and LG for a few months. Samsung is new with today's announcement. A Rhapsody app has also been available on Vizio TVs for the last two years. We're not surprised that Sony's Smart TVs, which support the competing Sony Entertainment Network's music service, aren't on the list of supporting TVs.

The new app appears to be … Read more

Every time there's a significant update to either product, the e-mails start filling up my inbox: so now which is better, the Apple TV or Roku?

It's an understandable question, and one that only gets harder to answer now that Apple TV has recently added two, significant features: AirPlay Mirroring via Mountain Lion and a dedicated Hulu Plus app. While it used to be easy to give the Roku LT the edge for costing half as much and offering more streaming services, it's a much closer call with the Apple TV's standout features.

Let's take a look at the strengths and weaknesses of both boxes.… Read more

Sonos has announced that its streaming-music players now support Amazon Cloud Player, which joins other supported services including Spotify, Mog, and Songza.

In July, after an agreement with the four major record companies, Amazon announced iTunes and Windows Media Player library "matching," meaning users of the Amazon Cloud Player service can upload their libraries to the cloud.

Amazon is offering two versions of the service: Cloud Player Free, with which customers can store all MP3 music purchased at Amazon, plus import up to 250 songs from their PC or Mac to Cloud Player, and Cloud Player Premium, for an annual fee of $24.99, which permits customers to import and store up to 250,000 songs.

The Amazon Cloud Player replays MP3s in 256Kbps, while in contrast the competing Spotify service streams in a higher-quality 320Kbps Ogg Vorbis format.

Earlier this week, Sonos also announced support for playlist service Songza and that it would be providing exclusive mixes from artists such as Slash, Counting Crows, Tori Amos, and Montgomery Gentry.… Read more

As you've likely heard by now, Google has decided to postpone the release of its Android-based media streamer, the Nexus Q.

Citing a desire to "make it even better," Google promised to redesign the device in one capacity or another. As to whether it will be a hardware change or a simple software update remains unclear at this point, but the Nexus Q we know today will become a thing of the past. But what lies ahead? I've come up with a few ideas as to what Google must do if it ever wants the Nexus … Read more