phonograph

Toss one down! Groovy beer bottle plays music

Aside from delivering liquid courage or serving as an impromptu weapon, what can your beer bottle do for you? As far as we know, nothing you drink out of compares with the Edison Bottle -- a beer bottle inscribed with New Zealand indie rock band Ghost Wave's latest single "Here She Comes."

The Edison Bottle, created in collaboration with creative agency Shine Limited and Beck's Record Label project, contains a fully playable 3-minute, 23-second song etched onto a Beck's beer bottle. The project required around 600 hours of research and development.… Read more

From old tuba to new iPad dock

As we move further away from our analog roots and become more entrenched in digital music, what are we to do with the forgotten musical instruments of yesteryear? Austin, Texas, artist and art teacher Christopher Locke has an idea. He salvages old horned instruments to create incredible audio players for the most ubiquitous digital music devices around. … Read more

Steampunk your iPad with phonograph speaker

Remember kicking back in the 1890s? There was nothing better than relaxing with the latest Sherlock Holmes adventure in The Strand magazine and a Gilbert and Sullivan cylinder on the phonograph.

Now you can relive those glory days with your iPad and this classy steampunk audio system by Michael Greensmith.

We've seen plenty of passive speaker systems for the iPhone, including the organic iBamboo and the funky Horn Bike. The iPhonograph is a powered, steampunk-style audio system for the iPad that Greensmith put together with a little elbow grease and several odd parts from recycling shops. … Read more

Surround-sound music format flops

Why did home theater buyers readily accept surround sound, but consistently reject multichannel music formats? From Thomas Edison's very first phonograph in 1877 through the late 1950s, monophonic sound was the only way people heard music at home.

Stereo arrived in the late 1950s on LP and analog reel-to-reel tape, and stereo has remained the most popular music format to this day. Quadraphonic (four-channel surround) debuted in the early 1970s, but didn't survive the end of the decade. People didn't want to plant four speakers in their living rooms, and the Quadraphonic Wars ensured the format's … Read more

Big media wants more piracy busting from Google

When it comes to fighting online piracy, some music and film industry executives think Google could be doing more to help.

At a time when Google is negotiating with television, movie, and music producers for the recently launched GoogleTV and an upcoming digital music service, the company has been sending mixed messages about how much help it will provide in removing links to pirated songs from its search index.

Last month, executives from two music-industry trade groups, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), asked Google if it could provide a … Read more

Behind the scenes with 'The Wizard of Menlo Park'

WEST ORANGE, N.J.--I have come to the mountaintop of invention.

Today, this is the Thomas Edison National Historic Park, but for decades, it was the laboratory complex where the great innovator and the many people he employed did their work. For a geek, it doesn't get much better than this.

As part of Road Trip 2010, I'm paying a visit to a complex that, when it was fully operational, comprised dozens of buildings and employed hundreds of people. And I have to say that, while I'm no Edison scholar, this was definitely one of the … Read more

British music biz group targets Google results

For years, file sharers have wondered why copyright owners don't go after Google, when the search engine is as effective at finding pirated film and music content as The Pirate Bay or any other BitTorrent search engine.

It seems as if someone at the British Phonographic Industry must have wondered about that too, as the trade group for the music industry in Great Britain has requested that Google remove links to some popular file-sharing sites, including Megaupload, 4shared.com, Zippyshare, and MediaFire.

"We have identified the following links that are available via Google's search engine," the … Read more

Labels pressure Global Gaming for Pirate Bay money

Music industry executives in Europe have begun pressuring Global Gaming Factor, the company that intends to buy The Pirate Bay, to turn over to them any money it pays to acquire the site.

Jo Oliver, the general counsel for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), wrote Hans Pandeya, Global Gaming's CEO, on July 24. Oliver told Pandeya that the group will ask authorities in Sweden to "issue an order prohibiting Global Gaming from paying the purchase sum" to the founders of The Pirate Bay. Oliver added that copyright owners will also ask the government require … Read more

Music industry wants cut of Pirate Bay sale

The music industry will attempt to seize money paid to acquire the Pirate Bay, according to a high-level music industry source and a spokesman for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the trade group representing the music industry worldwide.

Global Gaming Factory, a Swedish software company, made big news two weeks ago by announcing that it would acquire the Pirate Bay, the popular outlaw file-sharing site, for $7.8 million. Since then the company has been touting a new business model and even hiring executives, such as Wayne Rosso, the former Grokster president, to legally obtain content from … Read more

Sound recording predates Edison's phonograph

It's not exactly Gershwin's "An American in Paris," but there is one thing very significant about an archaic 10-second recording discovered earlier this month in the City of Lights by a group of American audio historians: it is the earliest known sound recording. The phonoautograph of the folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" was made in 1860, some 17 years before the advent of Thomas Edison's phonograph. And get this: it was a visual tool, not an audio one. Still, scientists figured out how to make it play.