Music

Much as I love services like Pandora and Songza for streaming music, sometimes you want to hear exactly the songs you want to hear -- hence on-demand services like Rdio and Spotify.

Of course, most of those services cost around $10 per month. If you like the idea but not the price, Sony has a deal worth considering: a one-year Music Unlimited subscription for $59.99. That's 50 percent of the regular price and the equivalent of $5 monthly.

Even better, if you're a PlayStation Plus subscriber, you can get the Music Unlimited plan for $41.99.

Sony'… Read more

I guess it's safe to assume Adele and Coldplay are making decent livings in the music business, but I wanted to talk with an average band to see how they were doing. What sort of income did they see from Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube, vs. selling CDs or downloads? So I chatted with Phil Metzler, from Just Off Turner, and he was willing to share some income numbers. The band has been featured on soundtracks on shows from ABC, MTV, E!, and Oxygen; they've toured the U.S., Europe, Brazil, Australia, and the U.K.

They made three … Read more

If you have regularly used iTunes to purchase music and movies, then you may have a significant collection of titles that are tied to your specific iTunes account. However, if you have used more than one iTunes account, then you may run into trouble if you cannot remember the account ID you used to purchase the items.

At the very least, if the songs are DRM-protected and you have not authorized your system to play them, then iTunes will present you with a notice to log in to your account before it will play them.

While Apple offers a quick … Read more

Is an album a more substantial work of art than a single? Or is a well-crafted single all we need? There were always singles, but in the days before the Internet, fans were sometimes "forced" to buy albums to get the music they wanted, even when most of the album's tunes weren't great. The hugely entertaining "The Great Debate: Singles vs. Albums" held last Monday at the New Music Seminar in NYC covered the issue in depth.

Robert Christgau, one of the first generations of professional "rock critics," was there to defend … Read more

Songbird, an iTunes alternative that originally combined music playback and management with Web-based music discovery, will exit stage left permanently at the end of the month.

CEO Eric Wittman revealed in a blog post that Songbird will no longer be maintained as of June 28, and that its parent company, Pioneers of the Inevitable, also would be closing down.

"[T]he company has found ourselves unable to fund further business operations," he said. The open-source desktop version of Songbird, its mobile apps for Android and iOS, and its music discovery service Songbird.me will all go dark. Wittman … Read more

Google's music-streaming service All Access launched last month during I/O. The service, similar to that of Spotify or Slacker, allows Android users to create radio stations or stream entire albums directly on an Android device.

Streaming isn't a new feature in the Google Music app, as you have been able to stream music library stored in the cloud service for a while now. But All Access has increased the amount of streaming, and thus increased data usage.

Google on Thursday updated the Android Music app, which now allows you to choose the audio quality streamed through the … Read more

Like many mixing programs, Program4PC's DJ Music Maker duplicates the classic DJ console, only without the turntables. Like pro consoles, DJ Music Maker has dual control suites, one for each deck, with both offering variable pitch, looping, cueing, and multiple crossfade options, plus effects, sampling, and recording. It has some features that many free tools and other competitors lack, such as independent media players for each deck, automatic beats-per-minute calculation, real-time pitch control, and real-time monitoring with external mixers and sound cards. DJ Music Mixer 5.0 works with Windows XP to 8 and requires DirectX 9 or better. … Read more

Jaksta Music Miner for Mac caters to frequent users of YouTube or other sites with streaming audio who may want to listen to their favorite songs away from the Internet. The application performs well and successfully saves copies of media files streamed online to your hard drive.

Upon installation Jaksta Music Miner for Mac's basic tutorial walks the user through the initial setup. To keep it working in the background the user needs to turn the program "on" by pressing a small button in the program's status bar. When an audio track or a video comes … Read more

Headed to the beach? The campground? The shower? Gotta love a battery-powered Bluetooth speaker for those and other destinations.

But which one? Jawbone's Jambox is arguably the best-known, but at $129.99 (down from $179.99), it feels a little pricey. Thankfully, there are more affordable alternatives.

Like this one: Today only, and while supplies last, Tanga has the Urge Basics Soundbrick portable Bluetooth speaker for $33.99, plus $2.99 for shipping. It's available in your choice of colors: white, blue, red, and pink.

Urge Basics? Nope, I never heard of 'em either. But check this out: … Read more