I don’t usually link to dance remixes of popular songs, but this remix (via TechCrunch) of the default iOS 7 ringtone is simply great. MetroGnome did an impressive job with the various sections of the remix (I especially like the build-up in the middle) and the end has a nice surprise.
Download links for the MP3 and ringtone versions are available on MetroGnome’s YouTube channel.
Since its first release in late 2010, Algoriddim’s djay was always met with the same question: without the right songs on your iPad, how can you fully enjoy the app? Three years and numerous awards later (including an Apple Design Award in 2011), Algoriddim wants to tear down the barrier to entry for its popular DJ software with a simple, yet technologically complex solution: full Spotify integration.
Skipping has become an important part of how we listen to music. It is no surprise then, that ‘unlimited skipping’ is a feature used to entice people to upgrade to a premium paid account. And it may be one of the reasons why people would switch from a service that doesn’t offer unlimited skips even on their premium service to one that does.
Fascinating analysis of Spotify data by Paul Lamere. I would have expected the difference between mobile and desktop to be higher, especially because smartphones and tablets have playback controls available in the Lock screen.
Brad Hill, writing at RAIN News about the shift from owning music to acquiring it through Internet streaming services and the importance of “music ID” apps:
One growing catalyst of this trend is the music-identification app, a category dominated by Shazam and SoundHound. These apps, which identify music wherever in the world it is heard, bring the “celestial jukebox” down to earth where it is even more vast and connected to the user.
Increasingly, these apps function as pivot points between what you hear and how you acquire. They enable purchasing an identified song in iTunes, for those who still favor outright ownership. But more ominously for music-download merchants, Shazam and SoundHound can fling your song discoveries into some of the most popular on-demand services.
Years after the launch of Shazam and SoundHound, it still feels incredible to me that you can hold your phone up to a speaker to recognize any song in seconds. Apple has reportedly recognized the value of music ID software, and they may be planning to integrate Shazam into Siri for iOS 8.
I hope that, if true, this integration won’t be exclusive to Siri’s voice activation system, because one of the best things about Shazam is that you only need to tap the app icon to start listening. A voice-only command would ruin Shazam’s immediacy (not to mention that Siri would have issues understanding your voice command if loud music is playing). Ideally, it’d be great to simply activate Siri with a tap & hold of the Home button anywhere on iOS and let it listen to whatever’s playing with no voice input required.
While my daily music listening needs are mostly fulfilled by Spotify1 and my personal library in iTunes Match2, I do follow a couple of artists on SoundCloud and I enjoy using the service to play a variety of mashups and records from independent creators that I can’t find anywhere else. I’m not a huge SoundCloud user, but I’ve always had an affinity for the website’s interface and the company’s focus.
Created by Stefan Kofler and Patrick Schneider, Soundflake is a new SoundCloud client for iPhone that wants to provide a better experience than the official app through a modern design, advanced features, and gesture controls that make managing playback and sharing a faster and more intuitive affair. After trying Soundflake for about a month, I don’t see why – as an occasional SoundCloud music listener – I would go back to using SoundCloud’s app for iPhone.
Three days ago, Beats Music released a 2.0 update to their iOS app with native iPad support. As part of my ongoing experiment with multiple music streaming services, I installed the app on my iPad to see how the service had improved since January and check out the new iPad design.
In a post published on their official blog last week, music streaming service Rdio has announced that they’ve started a conversion process to offer their entire catalog in higher quality:
As the initial step in this program, Rdio has begun to convert its entire existing catalog to the AAC format and will deliver 320KbPS as our new standard — without increasing our price. In addition, and as part of our ongoing commitment to the artist community, Rdio will work closely with artists and labels from around the world to continue to raise the bar higher on streaming quality where sufficient network bandwidth exists, and to improve stream delivery in markets around the world where network quality and bandwidth are often inconsistent.
Since its launch, Rdio has always streamed at a highest quality of 192kbps, with variable bitrates for mobile devices. Rdio is the latest music service to start offering 320kbps streams, as both Spotify and Beats Music already provide higher quality to paid subscribers (Beats Music included the option since day one).
Yinka Adegoke, writing for Billboard:
Two of music’s most successful brand marketers, Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, are in the hot seat as label sources grouse that the first 100 days of the duo’s subscription streaming service, Beats Music, has been a disappointment and soon will face competition on the mobile platform when Sprint begins bundling Spotify with its “Framily” plans.
According to Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers, the company is doing fine and the problem has been converting iOS users to paid subscriptions.
I still believe that the human curation Beats is doing for music recommendations offers great value, but the service needs to be available internationally and on more platforms. Spotify is available in several countries outside the United States, has desktop and mobile apps, and, more importantly, it has mindshare after years of existence. For some people, Spotify is synonym of “legal music streaming” (when I was using Rdio, I would always introduce it to my friends as “an app like Spotify”).
If Beats Music doesn’t want to offer a free plan, they should aim at people willing to pay for streaming services through new software, international rollouts, and exclusives. Last week, they released an update to their iPhone app with better social integrations and App Store subscriptions. iTunes will undoubtedly make it easier to subscribe to Beats Music, and I’m hoping that the company will find a way to grow its userbase quickly without compromising on the original vision.
With an update released over the weekend, musiXmatch – my favorite lyrics discovery tool for iOS – added support for video playback on iPhone, faster performance for older devices (iPhone 4 and 4S), as well as a new way to quickly get lyrics for the song that’s currently playing in the Music app. Read more
