Online music services

I'm not convinced Google TV will be any different from the many other failed attempts to bridge the Internet and television--WebTV and its various Microsoft offshoots, AOLTV, and the first iteration of Apple TV all come to mind. (Although the new Apple TV might be at the right price point to make a go of it.)

Google's emphasis on apps might sway some skeptics, but for the masses, it really comes down to entertainment content. Before I'll pay for some mysterious box that attaches to my TV--much less buy a brand new Internet TV--it needs to … Read more

One of my favorite online streaming services, Grooveshark, has begun notifying registered users that it's going to raise the price of its VIP subscription service beginning December 1. But if you sign up for VIP service before then, you'll never pay more than $3 a month or $30 a year.

Grooveshark's online music streaming service is and will remain free. The main benefit of the VIP service is support for streaming to mobile phones, including Android, BlackBerry, some Nokia phones, and Palm; you also get access to a desktop app and other benefits. The company briefly offered … Read more

mSpot, a cloud-based service that stores your music and lets you stream it to your Android phone, announced new pricing and features today.

The company will continue to offer music fans 2GB of free storage. But instead selling various paid tiers that topped out at 100GB for $13.99 a month, the company now has just one paid plan: up to 40GB of storage for $3.99 a month.

This makes mSpot more competitive on a price-to-storage basis with its main rival, MP3tunes However, MP3tunes offers far greater capacity, with multiple plans topping out at 200GB for $12.95 per … Read more

Subscription music pioneer Rhapsody was spun out from joint owners RealNetworks and Viacom in April, and it immediately declared its independence by dropping the price of its mobile service from $15 to $10 per month. Since then, the service has introduced offline playback to its iPhone application--critical, if you want to be able to get the most out of your subscription while on AT&T's notoriously flaky 3G network--and successfully launched an Android version, which will be getting offline playback shortly.

Tomorrow, the company is set to announce that it's moving its streaming service from several data … Read more

Streaming music from your PC to your phone is a nice alternative to music locker services like MP3Tunes and mSpot, which require you to upload your music to a server on the Internet before you can access it on your phone. Simplify Media had a great iPhone app that performed this function, but Google bought the company earlier this year--presumably to integrate it into some sort of future music service for Android--and discontinued the iPhone app. I've been looking for a viable replacement ever since.

Today, I found it: ZumoCast. It's brought to you by the folks who … Read more

Three years after launching the first DRM-free music download store, Amazon.com is once again stepping up its music game.

On Wednesday morning, subscribers to the indie-music download service Amie Street received an e-mail announcing that the company had been bought by Amazon. Existing customers get a $5 gift certificate to Amazon's MP3 store and must download all the music they've paid for by September 22.

Amie Street started by offering music from independent labels and digital distributors like The Orchard, and it was a pioneer of demand-based pricing--all downloads on the site started off being available for … Read more

After I expressed my disappointment with Ping yesterday, a helpful reader pointed me to Like.fm as an example of the promise of social music.

Here's how it works. First, download and install the free plug-in for iTunes. (There's also a WinAmp version for you holdouts.) Whenever you play a song from iTunes, Like.fm posts the title and artist on a public Web page. Other users can then click on the "play" button on that page and if a video of the song exists on YouTube, it'll start playing. If you link Like.fm … Read more

The official Google blog on Tuesday posted a link to an experimental music video for the Arcade Fire song "We Used To Wait" that shows off the capabilities of HTML5 with Google's Chrome browser.

I gave it a run earlier this afternoon. After I followed the instructions to close other applications and enter my home address, the video took about 15 seconds to start. My first impression was a flashback of visiting shady Web sites back in the days before pop-up blockers existed: a cascade of no fewer than eight browser windows opened, and trying to close … Read more

This summer's concert season has been brutal for the music industry, with cancellations and discounting galore. Blame the economy, blame the lack of marketable big-name artists on tour, but whatever the reason, concert ticketing giant Ticketmaster (which is owned by concert promoter and venue owner Live Nation) is responding.

In the inaugural post of Ticketology, the new Ticketmaster blog, the company has announced the end of a longstanding annoyance: service charges that get tacked on to the ticket price late in the buying process. Now, when you select a ticket on Ticketmaster's Web site, service fees are included … Read more