artist

This week on the CNET Monitor hour, we're going pro. As in professional.

Take a look at our picks of the best monitors I've reviewed, intended for professional use. Remember the "I've reviewed" detail when considering commenting. Yes, unfortunately, I'm limited to the reality of this accursed Einsteinian universe, and cannot review every monitor released.

Pro monitors are sought after by graphic artists, thanks to their ability to display accurate colors, with low black levels, and wide viewing angles. They're also usually much more expensive than a normal monitor of the same size.… Read more

On-demand music service Spotify, which is currently available only in Europe, has been broadly praised by users (including me) for its large selection of music and exceptional responsiveness. Today, Spotify added two new levels of service: Open and Unlimited. The Open tier is more notable because, once again, it opens the service to users without an invitation.

The new levels are the latest step in Spotify's ongoing experiment to broaden its audience without compromising performance. When it launched in 2008, Spotify was free and offered unlimited streams to a PC, but an invitation was required. In February 2009, it … Read more

Yesterday, I compiled my list of the five most welcome products for digital audio that came out in 2009. Today, I'm following it up with my list of the year's five biggest digital audio duds.

Zookz. The breathless pitch got me interested: a mysterious online service was getting ready to compete against subscription-based download service eMusic. But where eMusic limits users to a set number of downloads, this mystery service would offer unlimited music and movie downloads. How could this be? Wouldn't users just download all the material they wanted then cancel their subscriptions? How could content … Read more

Once the world's largest social-networking service and an essential tool for musicians, MySpace has fallen upon hard times, but I'm encouraged by one of the new services the company announced Wednesday.

The MySpace Artist Dashboard is a new free tool for any artist with a music profile page on the site. For artists, it offers demographic information about the people who are visiting your site, and a breakdown of what they're doing there. The geographic data could be particularly useful for small touring bands to help plan their routes. I was also encouraged by the statement from … Read more

Citra FX Photo Effects provides users with a fast option for applying photo filters. With a wide range of options and some neat ways of applying them, this program excels.

We needed a brief visit to the Help file to research what these mysterious command icons meant. With that under our belt, we were scrolling through the drop-down menus and clicking and dragging our options in no time. We were able to apply effects to our images by selecting a specific area and making a circle, square, heart, or free-form shape. The filters and masks we applied to these new … Read more

You may have already read on CNET News about how artist Jorge Colombo managed to get his work on the cover of The New Yorker. To have your art featured on the cover of a widely read national magazine is a big deal, but the coolest thing about it was that it was done with an application for the iPhone.

This week's apps include the cool painting app that was used to make The New Yorker cover and a game where you pilot a bomber high over the landscape.

Brushes ($3.99 for limited time) is an easy-to-use painting … Read more

Social music start-up iLike has come a long way from its early days as the way to "dedicate a song" to your friends on Facebook.

On Wednesday, the Seattle-based company plans to unveil some fresh new features for the set of tools it offers to artists who want to connect with current and potential fans. It's hooked up the application program interfaces (APIs) of Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace to allow for more extensive content syndication from artists' iLike pages, and has released an iPhone app-creation product to boost their mobile presences.

"Marketing and communication are the … Read more

Jango CEO Dan Kaufman posted a long response to my post criticizing Jango Artist Airplay as a pay-for-play scheme that artists should avoid. (He also e-mailed me with contact info, so I'm fairly sure it's him, although the usual caveats apply.) It's a thoughtful comment, and Dan comes across as a serious businessperson, not a fly-by-night scam artist.

To summarize, Jango is trying to maintain a quality experience for listeners by making sure they're not inundated with Airplay artists they're not going to like. Rather than playing Airplay artists based strictly on how much money … Read more

Yes, beginning bands need to do some marketing, and sometimes this requires an outlay of money.

In the old days, it was going to Kinko's to print fliers and postcards for your mailing list. Now it's registering a domain name, building your own Web site, or establishing an online store to sell downloads, CDs, and merchandise (though there are more and more ways to do this with no money up front, like Audiolife and Routenote).

There's a slippery slope between these necessary expenses and one of the oldest scams in the music industry: pay-for-play. The idea's … Read more