rhapsody

If Best Buy walks, Real's Rhapsody will hurt

Best Buy's acquisition of Napster is likely to mean RealNetwork's Rhapsody music service will wave goodbye to more than just one of its biggest partners.

Rhapsody of course powered Best Buy's digital music store. Two music insiders told me on Thursday, while I was reporting a story about whether Apple is wise to get into music subscriptions, that the Napster acquisition will almost certainly mean Best Buy will sever it's relationship with Rhapsody. This means that RealNetwork's CEO Rob Glaser would no longer have the muscle behind him to demand electronics companies make their players … Read more

Should Apple take a chance with music subscriptions?

It's hard to figure why anyone would do any prospecting in the stony terrain of digital-music subscriptions.

This week, Best Buy acquired the remade and beleaguered version of Napster for a song. The deal is likely bad news for RealNetwork's Rhapsody, the current engine behind Best Buy's digital music store and one of the pioneers in music subscriptions. (I wrote a sidebar about the troubles RealNetworks' Rhapsody may face if Best Buy walks.)

And don't forget, the Yahoo Unlimited subscription service was shuttered earlier this year.

The all-you-can-eat music services are the ones getting chewed up. … Read more

Yahoo adds full-length music tracks to search results

It's been a good seven months since Yahoo killed off its own music service in favor of teaming up with RealNetworks' Rhapsody. The evolution of this partnership finally surfaced on Yahoo's search results late Wednesday evening. Now any time you do a search for an artist or song name you'll be able to play up to four of their tracks, in full length, right from the results. Previously the system only allowed for 30-second previews.

The updated service allows for up to 25 full-length plays per month, although users who sign up to be a part of … Read more

iLike launches developer platform: Playlists rock!

Facebook's favorite music service, iLike, has officially launched its developer platform. The company first hinted at this several months ago and CNET News reported last week that it was nearing its debut. With the platform, approved developers will be able to access the iLike API and work it into their own sites.

"We've always adopted a strategy of syndication, of going where the consumers are instead of trying to bring them to us," CEO Ali Partovi told CNET News on Tuesday. Indeed, iLike launched first an iTunes plugin and then a Facebook application to spread its … Read more

Logitech Squeezebox Boom: The ultimate Wi-Fi radio?

If you took one of Logitech's increasingly ubiquitous Pure-Fi desktop stereos and integrated one of its Squeezebox network-audio streamers, you'd probably come up with something like the Logitech Squeezebox Boom. Previous Squeezebox models had to be plugged into an existing stereo receiver or speaker system, but the Boom is the first model in Logitech's network-audio line to have the speakers built-in.

The result is a full-service Wi-Fi radio that can access a wide variety of digital music straight from the Internet or from a networked PC.

We've been playing with an early sample of the Squeezebox Boom, and so far, it's one of the best products in its class we've ever seen. That's not surprising, given that it has the same guts as the recent Editors' Choice Squeezebox Duet.

As far as abilities are concerned, the Boom pretty much has the identically impressive range of features as the Duet: the ability to stream everything from premium Rhapsody and Sirius content to freely available Internet radio, podcasts, Pandora, Slacker, and Last.fm music straight off the Web, as well as nearly any non-DRM digital-audio format from a networked PC (Windows, Mac, or Linux). (Editor's note: CNET and Last.fm are both subsidiaries of CBS.) But the Boom trades the Duet's digital and analog outputs for a pair of good-sounding stereo speakers (3-inch woofers flanked by 0.75-inch tweeters), so the entire system is self-contained.

The unit's handsome, black housing is a mere 5 inches high by 13 inches wide and 4-inches deep. It's got the same sort of bright, vacuum, fluorescent display found on the "classic" Squeezebox, which makes it easily viewable, even from halfway across the room. The control panel is pretty much a spread-out version of the Squeezebox Duet remote (itself strongly modeled on the iPod). Most functions are accessed from a single scrollwheel--depress the wheel to make a menu choice, use the nearby "back" button to reverse course. Six preset buttons are also on board for quick access to Internet radio stations of your choice. A small wireless remote is also included--it magnetically attaches to the Boom's topside (or any other metal surface) for easy locating. … Read more

Rumored iTunes subscription would be a bargain

Repeat after me: it's just a rumor. Record company sources deny it. But if the anonymous tipster who e-mailed Mac Daily News is telling the truth, and Apple is indeed going to offer an all-you-can-download iTunes subscription service for for $129.99 a year (or $179.99 a year with Mobile Me), other subscription services will have a hard time surviving.

Let's review for a moment, shall we?

eMusic. Cost? The cheapest plan $143.88 per year, but only for 30 downloads per month. No unlimited plan available. Works with the iPod? Yes, because the downloads are non-DRM-protected … Read more

The Digital Home 29: What the music industry doesn't want you to know

In this week's episode of the Digital Home podcast, Don Reisinger takes a look at what Google and Apple are doing and talks a little about his new video series. After that, he talks with Rhapsody about the music industry and wraps up the show with a rant. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 29 … Read more

Bandwidth '08 notebook

The Bandwidth music tech conference in San Francisco attracts folks from all corners of the music industry: from label owners and musicians, to Internet radio broadcasters and mobile phone software developers. This year, the conference featured panel discussions on topics such as the future of music gadgets (a subject dear to my nerd heart), developing music services for mobile phones, and the realities of running a label in today's fractured music industry.

One of the more popular themes drawing heated discussion across all panels was the idea of ditching the paid download model dominated by iTunes in favor of … Read more

Top 5 music discovery tips for the unhip, unmotivated

When you're young, new music is everywhere: radio, Facebook profiles, borrowed iPods, or even burned CDs. It's not hard to find tunes you love. The music appetites of 13- to 21-year-olds are voracious and the consequences of being musically unhip can be punishing.

Then something happens: you get older; work a full-time job; get married; have a mortgage; have children; adopt a particularly demanding parrot; and so on. You wake up one day and realize your taste in music hasn't budged since your early '20s and the prospect of discovering good, new music now seems like an overwhelming chore, fraught with disappointment. I know, I'm living proof.

We're all familiar with the long, depressing list of activities that seemed easy in youth that now take effort. Fortunately, finding good music isn't as tough as working off that middle-age gut. Since its inception, the Internet has helped us--mostly illegally--discover new music. Finally, tools for legal and efficient online music discovery are hitting their stride.

To help you help yourself, we've collected our favorite techniques to help the lazy, hurried, or unhip (or, face it, aging) connect with good, new music. … Read more