Category: Audio

TuneCrank is another crack at a familiar problem: How do you make people listen to unfamiliar independent artists, and help the good stuff float to the top? Uvumi tries to do this, and so does Bandcamp in a completely different take. TuneCrank is yet another attempt, with a stress on bare-bones simplicity and minimalism. It's basically just a player with "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" buttons, and ...

Windows users, rejoice! You can now steal music from shared iTunes libraries -- or move music between two of your own computers, of course. Simply install Aethyr, connect to a library in iTunes, then switch to Aethyr and download some songs. Library sharing in iTunes acts like a local-area network radio: you can stream music from computer to computer (from Mac to Windows!), but downloading is ...

This morning, I was fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at an alpha version of Winamp for Android. The beta version currently available from the Android Market is already a lot better than other media players, but judging by what I've seen today, it's going to get even better. For this alpha build, Nullsoft has focused on SHOUTcast integration. The implementation is still a little rough around ...

On my desktop, I'm a Grooveshark user -- but there's no Grooveshark app for Windows Phone 7 yet... so where does one turn for custom-tailored streaming tunes? Why, Slacker Radio, of course! Search for a band, tap their name (Volbeat, for example), and Slacker begins buffering your first track and looking for other songs it thinks you'll like -- which you can like or ban while they play. Tap ...

Bump, the app that lets users exchange contact info and photos by bumping their phones together, now also lets you exchange music. With the latest update to Bump for iOS, you can pick any song in your iTunes library and send it to a friend via Bump. Don't get too excited, though: we're not talking about full-on file transfer, here. Bumping a song just lets your friend stream the entire track via ...

Adobe has brought its once Windows-only professional audio authoring suite, Audition, to the Mac platform with the release of a public beta. For those of you who've missed Audition in the past, it's Adobe's solution for recording, mixing, editing, and mastering audio and vocal tracks -- an answer to Apple's Logic Studio, Avid Technology's Pro Tools, and others. Bringing Audition to OS X ...

Spotify has started making a seven-day trial of its Premium subscription available. Spotify Premium is a paid subscription that gives you access to all the top notch features such as higher quality audio, ad-free listening, mobile access, and offline mode for both desktop and mobile. The free trial does come with caveats though. First off, you'll have to enter your payment details when you ...

Grooveshark is one of my most-used webOS apps, and the recent 1.2 update makes an already good app even better. The most prominent addition is the notification area player controls, which allow you to command Grooveshark as it plays in the background -- just like the built-in webOS player. There's also a new shuffle mode for random enjoyment of your playlists, and Grooveshark 1.2 has also ...

To the average downloading public, the recent news about LimeWire being forced to shut down sounds pretty ominous. At my day job, I've already been asked "How do I download songs now?" While LimeWire shutting down is bad news for its users, there's a silver lining to this cloud. The Gnutella network did not get shut down -- the actual songs you were downloading came from the Gnutella network, ...

Mozilla has just announced a new Firefox plug-in called Rainbow that will let users access audio and video recording capabilities through the browser. It's similar to something Mozilla tried with audio recording while they were developing the Jetpack plug-in system, but Rainbow includes video as well. Rainbow records using open formats (Ogg Theora video and Ogg Vorbis audio), and you can set it to ...

Spotify, a streaming music service with more than 10 million users worldwide, is reportedly nearing music licensing deals with the four major US record labels. According to CNET, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation are claiming that Spotify has never been closer to securing the music rights it would need for a US launch. They've been plying label executives with offers of big money ...

Spotify has just launched another mobile app, this time for Palm's (now HP's) webOS. Those who own smartphones running this operating system, such as the Palm Pre and the Palm Pixi can now use their Spotify Premium subscriptions while on the go as well. Because, as with all other Spotify mobile applications, a Premium account is required for this app to work. Feature-wise, it's pretty much got ...

I've always wanted to do something musical. But having received no musical education and not coming from a musically-inclined family, I find myself dreading the subject and feeling that it's all a bit too much for me. I'm speaking mainly of the theoretical side of it, which has to do with figuring out all of those scales and then telling them apart. Theta Music Trainer has shown me that I might ...

Google has announced the launch of its Music Search service in India. It's under the 'Labs' wing, which means it's an experimental trial for now. It's also restricted to Hindi Bollywood songs, so you won't be listening to Lady Gaga with this service any time soon. It works in a very similar fashion to Google's US Music Search service: you go to the website and just search for an artist, a song, ...

Rdio, the music streaming service from the guys behind Kazaa and Skype, has announced that embedding songs, playlists, and albums is now possible. Of course, to use this feature, you have to be an Rdio subscriber (which will set you back either $5 or $10 each month, depending on whether you want mobile access or not). What's more interesting (and disappointing) is that you have to be an Rdio ...