music

When I walked into midtown Manhattan's flashy Arena nightclub on Tuesday evening for an event celebrating the introduction of RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service on TiVo, a waiter approached me with a tray full of tumblers containing a clear liquid accompanied by slices of lime.

I was thirsty. "Is this water?" I asked him.

"No, it's an HD Crystal Clear Cosmo," he replied matter-of-factly, "so, no, it's not water."

A little bit of journalistic digging--i.e. finding a sign detailing the evening's signature drinks--yielded that that the HD Crystal Clear Cosmo … Read more

I love my Archos Gmini 220. It doesn't play movies, make phone calls, or take snapshots, but it provides me 20GB of digital music and files that I can take anywhere and transfer to any computer. It also only cost me $150 two years ago and is still going strong (with the help of one critical rubber band). It's also very solid as a lo-fi recording device for live shows.

While I don't need a portable music player that massages my back or sorts my laundry, I do need one that can shuffle my tracks randomly. Unfortunately, … Read more

If all robots were musicians, the best instrument for them to play would be the theremin. This is because it creates delightful scenarios in which the robot can play its own space-age soundtrack music.

Take Lev, for example. The theremin-shredding bot, built by Ranjit Bhatnagar at Moonmilk Laboratories, is featured in a couple of mesmerizing videos below. Both are "Crazy"--one by Patsy Cline, and one by Gnarls Barkley in which Lev is accompanied by a robot drummer called Thumpbot.

Lev's been playing the theremin for a while; according to the Moonmilk site, the robot played a … Read more

U.K. newspaper the Telegraph has been giving lots of coverage to Radiohead's recent decision to offer its next album on a bid-for-download basis, with lots of breathless headlines. Some of the paper's analysis seems overly simplistic to me--the labels were in trouble before Radiohead's move, and younger kids buy plenty of CDs and downloads, just not from flavor-of-the-minute pop artists like they did five years ago. But the coverage emphasizes how much Radiohead's move is shaking up the music industry.

Today, the paper reports rumors that Oasis (who have the #3 all-time seller in the … Read more

Add Rhapsody to TiVo's bag of broadband media tricks. Real Networks' music subscription service is available as of today to users of TiVo's standalone Series2 and Series3 DVRs. The integration makes good on an announcement by the two companies back at January's Consumer Electronics Show. Rhapsody joins a host of other broadband offerings on TiVo's DVRs, including Amazon Unbox videos, Live 365 streaming radio, podcast downloads, Yahoo photos/traffic/weather, and customized TiVoCast video downloads. (Note: CNET is a content provider for TiVoCast.)

Existing Rhapsody subscribers should have no trouble getting access to their music collection, … Read more

Less than a month after publicly calling executives at his music label unprintable names, rocker Trent Reznor has signaled that his days of working for a record company are over.

The only official member of the band Nine Inch Nails, Reznor announced Monday that the group is now "free of any recording contract with any label." Representatives from Reznor's music label, Universal Music Group, were unavailable for comment.

Reznor provided few details in a note on the band's Web site about how the group plans to proceed, but his announcement raised hopes among fans that he … Read more

Rafat Ali of PaidContent claims to have dug up more details about the mysterious "iTunes Store rival" that Facebook has allegedly been working on in recent weeks. And he says that sources indicate it's not Apple that should be worried, but rather MySpace, the once-formidable social network that Facebook has been gaining on steadily since the launch of its developer platform in May.

Ali calls the new project an "artist platform," and says we'll be seeing it later this year. "The platform will allows (sic) bands and labels to create artists pages," … Read more

Even on a run-of-the-mill day, a debate over the perceived rights and wrongs surrounding digital file swapping gets readers worked up. And I mean really worked up.

But ever since the Recording Industry Association of America prevailed late Thursday in its copyright lawsuit against a 30-year-old single mom with a couple of kids, all hell has broken loose.

I'll leave it to you to debate the relative merits of the case, but there's no denying that the recording industry sometimes can be its own worst enemy. It's almost as if the industry's hired guns were on … Read more

AllFacebook blogger Nick O'Neill wrote on Friday that an "extremely reliable anonymous source" had told him that Facebook is working on an in-house rival to Apple's mighty iTunes Store. According to O'Neill, the company is in the process of looking for an executive to head this division--his source allegedly knew about the whole deal because of an acquaintance interviewing for the position--and is already meeting with record labels.

It's unclear whether this would be strictly a music store or whether it might extend to other forms of media, like TV shows and movies.

This … Read more