Posts tagged with "music"

MacStories Giveaway: Win A Copy of djay for iPad and Mac

djay by Algoriddim is an excellent music making / mixing software for OS X that recently made its way to the iPad, with an app that takes full advantage of the new features introduced in iOS 4.2. From our review:

…the great value of djay lies in its own software nature: it’s not a complicated piece of hardware you have to set up and manually wire, it’s a great app that can be used in professional environments and by casual users like me at the same time. I’m sure “pro” users will delve deeper into the app to test all the impressive tech that’s behind it, but for someone like me — who’s not really a DJ nor does know all the terminology necessary to understand all the features of djay — this is just so cool, and useful.

We have two copies of djay to give away: one for the iPad, one for the Mac. Check out the giveaway rules below. Good luck! Read more

Slow Down: An App That Will Make You Slow Down Your Car, With Music

This is an app I’m completely supporting, as it’s been developed and promoted by the Belgian organization OVK, Parents of Children Killed in Road Accidents. Slow Down, available for free in the App Store, will make you slow down your car by slowing down the music you’re listening to while driving.

Thanks to a combination of GPS to retrieve a road’s driving speed limit and access to the iPod library on your iPhone, Slow Down will remind you when you need to slow by slowing down a song or completely stop its playback. Simple and genius at the same time, as as I said – a concept I’m seriously rooting for.

Go download the app here. Then use it.[Engadget via OVK] Read more

djay: Full-Featured DJ System For iPad With A Gorgeous UI

When the iPad was announced back in January, many of us realized that the device would be perfect for professional DJ software. A large multi-touch surface, a brand new device developed by Apple backed up by the App Store – obviously the iPad was meant for DJ and music applications. Even more than the iPhone (which saw the rise of music making software anyway, in spite of the 3.5-inch screen) the iPad was too perfect for turntable interfaces to not take the risk and start developing one soon after the announcement.

What happened is history: just take a look at DJ Rana June’s Youtube channel and open the Music category in the App Store to get the idea of the success of professional music making / mixing software on the iPad. There are hundreds of apps out there that allow you to record and mix music, and there are dozens of quality DJ apps in the App Store.

The just-released djay by Algoriddim, however, takes the game a step further. It comes with an impressive feature set and underlying technology, it takes advantage of iOS 4.2 audio and streaming functionalities, it’s got stunning user interface and animations. Here’s why you should check it out no matter if you’re into DJ software for iOS devices (and Mac) or not. Read more

Nice Move, Apple: Michael Jackson’s New Song A Ping Exclusive

In a clear attempt to drive more traffic to its music-based and iTunes Store-oriented social network, Ping, Apple managed to grab an exclusive from Michael Jackson’s upcoming posthumous, a new single called “Much Too Soon”. The song, in fact, can only be streamed on Apple’s Ping through Jackson’s official artist page, and as you can guess you have to sign up for Ping to view the page.

While there’s quite a debate going on whether this new MJ album actually features MJ or not, this is undoubtedly a clever move for Apple which I’m certain will drive lots of extra traffic to the service, especially from people who didn’t think would sign up for Ping at first – e.g. Jackson’s loyal fans.

Michael Jackson’s new album will be released on December 14th. [via MichaelJackson.com]

Business Insider: Ping One Of The Biggest Flops of 2010→

Business Insider: Ping One Of The Biggest Flops of 2010

It’s not just Google that can’t master social. Apple also struggles. Ping was launched to much fanfare, but it has utterly failed to gain traction.

Ping was launched in September. It recently became available on the iPad. It also got Twitter integration a few weeks ago. I don’t use it and I don’t see many of my friends using it, but I still think a Ping for apps would be great.

Apps aren’t just for geeks anymore. Will Apple ever deploy its own social app discovery platform?

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Today’s AirPlay Is Just A Teaser

Yesterday we posted a tutorial on how to turn your iOS devices into AirPlay-compatible speakers using a jailbreak hack that involves copying two files to iOS’ filesystem. 24 hours into using it, I have to admit this has already radically changed the way I think of AirPlay – Apple’s streaming functionality for audio and video content introduced in iOS 4.2.

This is a taste of the AirPlay that’s going to be, and it looks a lot like an integrated model, all over again. Read more

Beatles In iTunes: 2 Million Songs Sold, 450,000 Album Downloads

Unless you’ve been living in a yellow submarine for the past three weeks, I guess you heard about the Beatles coming to iTunes. In fact, Apple thought the day the Beatles’ library was released in iTunes would be a day we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.

Life-changing event or not, the Beatles in iTunes have sold over 2 million songs so far and generated 450,000 album downloads, Billboard reports.

In US the best-selling album was Abbey Road and best-selling song was Here Comes the Sun.

Backed by a strong advertising campaign which also happens to promote iTunes, it looks like there was room for The Beatles in people’s music libraries, after all. One could argue whether 2 million songs sold with all that campaign are much or not, we’re just going to wait for Billboard to provide additional numbers and information before judging.

Aweditorium With Background Audio Is The Perfect Way To Enjoy Your Weekend

Aweditorium is a great music discovery app for iPad that launched two weeks ago, and I’ve been addicted to it since then. The app allows you to discover independent artists through a gorgeous “wall” visualization you can manipulate with your fingers. From my review:

So you have all these thumbnails on this digital grid / map, and you can tap around to load a specific song from a band you likely don’t know about. If you do know the artist, the experience is great nonetheless. This is the idea behind Aweditorium: you can listen to songs, byt why limiting the experience to just listening to something? Let’s put some additional information in there, and let’s forget about mimicking real-life objects. Let’s make it all be proud of being digital, meant for the iPad.

Read more