pandora

About a year ago I asked readers if it still made sense to buy CDs, what with DRM all but dead and MP3 albums typically selling for less than their disc-based counterparts.

The response was incredible, with some pretty passionate defense of the seemingly antiquated CD. For some users, it's all about sound quality. For others, it's about the security of owning physical media.

Lately I've been wondering if it makes sense to own music at all. Make no mistake: I grew up accumulating LP and 45 records (a crate of which I recently donated to charity), … Read more

Despite being hit by competitors from all sides, Pandora continues gain users at a steady rate.

The music streaming service announced today that it hit a major milestone by racking up 200 million registered users. It took the company six years to get 100 million users, but less than two years to double that number to 200 million.

"When we launched http://www.pandora.com in 2005, we hoped to create a new way to discover and enjoy music that was completely personalized for each and every listener," Pandora founder Tim Westergren wrote in a blog post today. &… Read more

Most car stereos that I've ever fiddled with have offered some sort of equalizer setting that lets the driver customize the sound to their liking, but fitting more than the basic treble, bass, and --occassionally-- midrange controls onto the cramped display of a single DIN receiver is a tricky endeavor. Alpine wants to make it easier for users of its new CDE-147BT receiver to access advanced graphic EQ controls by offloading the audio tuning interface to an Alpine TuneIt app for Android and iOS devices.

The app lets users create a profile for their vehicle and any other Alpine … Read more

Apple is close to striking a streaming deal with two of the major music labels that could end up far sweeter for the music industry than what the labels currently get from Pandora, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.

Much has been made in recent weeks of Apple trying to squeeze the labels on terms, and the deals do have Apple paying the labels a per-stream rate that's half of what Pandora pays. But CNET has learned that Apple's planned music service would offer new revenue streams as well.

That includes a quick way for consumers … Read more

Physical music formats were so 20th century, so we put our music on computers. But even that was too much of a burden, so music is going up, up, and away, into the cloud and streaming. The iPod Classic is firmly rooted to the ground, and I like it that way.

I can live without Siri, iCloud, a camera, iOS 6, a Lightning connector, Bluetooth, AirPlay, or any of that jazz to keep the Classic's 160GB storage capability, and the Classic's "classic" 30-pin connector that still works with gazillions of docks and accessories. Is there another … Read more

The music industry is still in rough shape, based on data released today by the Recording Industry Association of America. But U.S. digital revenues continue to climb, helped by the growth of so-called "access services" such as Spotify, YouTube, and Vevo.

And the bigger picture shows that the beaten-down industry is stabilizing. Recorded music sales slipped 0.9 percent from 2011 to 2012, totaling $7.1 billion. That's roughly in line with the total sales for the last few years.

Sales from digital formats, meantime, rose 14 percent from 2011 and last year surpassed $4 billion … Read more

Google hasn't budged from the No. 1 spot when it comes to its desktop and mobile audience, according to ComScore's latest rankings, but the companies with the most mobile growth are ones that have been struggling to keep investors happy.

Groupon, Zynga, and Pandora's mobile users grew more than twice as much as their numbers for desktop users, according to ComScore's February measurement for the top 50 digital media companies. Of course, the three companies -- which have seen their share of management shakeups and disappointing earnings this past year -- had much smaller numbers to … Read more

Google wants to "Keep" your notes.

Yesterday Google introduced Keep, the new mobile and Web-based note-storing service that looks to take aim at products like Evernote. Boasting a simple, easy-to-use interface, Keep will work with Google Drive so that all notes are synced across different platforms. Users can edit their notes from either their phone or the Web and the information will be saved everywhere. You can also use voice dictation and photos to help enhance each note you take.

The BlackBerry Store has topped 100,000 apps, 30,000 of which were just added in the last … Read more

Pandora has tuned up a Windows Phone 8 app that's both free and ad-free.

Available as of today in the Windows Phone store, the app offers all the standard features for Pandora listeners.

You can create up to 100 different stations based on your tastes in music. You can tell Pandora what you like and don't like by giving each song a thumb's up or thumb's down.

You can filter certain songs that you won't want to hear and flip on a switch for higher-quality audio. Existing Pandora users can log in with their current … Read more