Sony expands Music Unlimited, its hopeful Spotify killer, to iPhone and iPod Touch. This homemade turntable is how to make Spotify social. Facebook's 'Listen' Button Plays Artists on Spotify, Mog, Rdio and More | Underwire. Facebook's new Listen button instantly connects you with bands' music, played through Spotify, Rdio and other services.Screengrab: Evolver.fm By Eliot Van Buskirk, Evolver.fm Application Programming Interface, thy name be “awesome!” Excuse the geek-out, if you’re not up on your API ABCs, but how else are we to react to the fact that Facebook just added a Listen button to its artist pages that lets you play songs from that artist just about instantly, by hooking in to each service’s API? [partner id="evolverfm"] Unlike the MySpace (which is now a Facebook app) pages of yore, bands don’t need to upload anything in order for the music to play.
Instead, Facebook lets you listen on any of the supported unlimited music services that are connected to your account. Facebook defaults to the service you use the most, as noted by TechCrunch, but you can still choose which one you want. . • Rdio only plays 30-second samples unless you have a premium account. Twitter’s message to musicians not yet on the site: sign up now! Twitter put the call out to musicians and artists on Friday with a message on its Twitter Media website encouraging them to sign up to the social networking site if they haven’t yet done so. The article suggests ways in which singers and bands can utilize the site to their advantage, building up their fan base in the process. “For music fans, Twitter is the next best thing to being backstage,” the article said. “For performers, connecting with your fans in an authentic way is one key to your success.”
It continued, “A Twitter connection tells fans how much you appreciate them, and it also enables you to tailor your messages. The article highlights a number of artists — Katy Perry and Selena Gomez among them — and shows how they’ve been using the microblogging service to connect with fans and keep them informed of news and events. Top 10 most followed recording artists on Twitter (source: Twitter Counter): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. [Image: Chinellato Photo / Shutterstock] How Developers Are Shaping the Future of Music. That the music industry has radically changed in the last decade is a serious understatement. Technology has altered everything from the creation of music to its distribution, upending retailers, studios and business models across the industry.
But it’s not all bad news. Music isn’t dying so much as evolving, and the landscape is already beginning to look quite different. Not long ago, the professional music industry involved a complex but fixed set of players: artists, labels, managers, promoters and the like. Many of these roles have changed, but none have disappeared. They’re joined by a new set of participants: tech giants, streaming services, social music startups and, perhaps most crucially, developers. Every stakeholder in this new (and still emerging) digital music ecosystem plays their own important role in the creation and consumption of music. The most recent Music Hack Day spawned a total of 62 hacks. How Music Hack Day Helps the Music Industry Evolve. Audio compression: Difference engine: Music to their ears.
SoundCloud CEO Alex Ljung’s 5 Favorite Sounds. SoundCloud, the beautiful, easy-to-use widget becoming more and more ubiquitous on the web, has reached 8.5 million users--including 50 Cent and Russell Brand. The last million of them were added in the span of 45 days. For SoundCloud co-founder and CEO Alexander Ljung, a few stand out, incuding the sound of 10,000 bats gettin’ it on. Ljung also tells Fast Company he’s keen on the way journalists have used SoundCloud to capture stories--such as ABC News Radio’s Dan Patterson recording the sounds of Occupy Wall Street in New York. And he’s been impressed by the way candidates in the San Francisco mayoral race have used it to spread their messages and respond to potential constituents. SoundCloud has also highlighted the sounds of cities and towns across America (see: SoundCloud Local: Ann Arbor).
Ljung, a 30-year-old, self-described "sound geek," believes audio will surpass video on the web. [Image: Flickr user iSLD] Facebook Launches 'Listen With,' Lets You DJ for Friends. Facebook wants you to listen to music with friends — even if you're not in the same room. The social network announced a new feature Thursday called "Listen With" that gives users a chatroom in which to share songs. They get to DJ the tunes they are streaming via services such as Spotify and Rdio.
Real-time sharing from such services was introduced with Open Graph in September. Users can already see in that chat sidebar what friends are listening to, and click on those songs to play them, but they don't have the option to listen together in a unified virtual environment. The new feature, as Facebook's introductory blog post puts it, makes it so "when your favorite vocal part comes in you can experience it together, just like when you're jamming out at a performance or dance club. " The feature will start rolling out within the next few weeks. Multiple people will be able to listen in on one friend's music, and the entire group will be able chat together.
Spotify Radio vs. Pandora: Hands-on showdown. 19 Biggest Social Media Moments of 2011. These days, it seems we can't go a week without encountering a viral video, a meme sensation or a new digital movement. The year 2011 forged an unprecedented path for these such social media phenomena. Whether that meant influencing YouTube marketing with a viral advertising campaign or mobilizing the online communication of an entire political movement, people are discovering that social media is one of the most powerful vehicles for change the world has ever experienced. In 2011, people were not only affected by social media — they actually effected social media change itself. SEE ALSO: 9 Social Media Uprisings That Sought to Change the World in 2011 We've highlighted 19 influential social media moments of the year.
Some will make you giggle, while others will cause you to cringe. How do you predict social media will effect change in 2012? Pandora CTO Reveals Half of The U.S. Pays $0 For Music. Today at GigaOm’s RoadMap conference in San Francisco, Pandora CTO Tom Conrad revealed that his company aims to monetize the vast majority of listeners who pay little or nothing per year for music. Conrad explained that “Over half of the U.S. doesn’t pay anything for music each year”. He continued that another 40% of the population only pay about $15 a year, the cost of an album or two. While there are opportunities to build businesses on the 10% who are willing to pay more, Pandora’s plans to focus on monetizing the majority via advertisements. Other music companies might be wise to target the non-paying segment as well. Conrad was asked about whether the rapidly growing Spotify was a threat. That service now has 2.5 million daily active users and 7.5 million monthly active users.
Personally, if I was him I’d worry that Spotify could integrate a teachable radio feature similar to Pandora into its product. Pandora has had an eventful second half of 2011. Here Come The Spotify Apps! | Epicenter Spotify opened up its code to iOS developers on Wednesday, with big implications for music on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Starting today, developers can build Apple iOS apps that play anything from Spotify’s entire 15-million-song-plus music catalog, with support for full-track streaming, playlists, search, and so on. Want to build an iPad app that plays just about every song in the world whose title starts with the letter ‘B’? Or perhaps you’d rather create an app that lets people collaborate on the perfect music to listen to during a hurricane, like we did last weekend with a web page.
Now, you can. [partner id=”evolverfm”]Not only will this give app developers a powerful new way to build music apps incorporating millions of songs (or just a curated slice) without having to secure licenses from every major and independent label and publisher, which is all but impossible for small developers, but it enhances the value of a Spotify subscription. Go Back to Top. How music changes our brains - Music. Music has never been more accessible. Just a decade ago, we were lugging around clunky portable CD players that weighed as much as a hardcover book and would skip whenever we made any sudden movement. Now our entire record collection (and thanks to new companies like Spotify, almost any other song on the planet) can fit into our phones. We can listen to music nonstop — on our commute, at work, at the gym and everywhere else we might want to. But what is this explosion of sound doing to our brains? In their new book, “Healing at the Speed of Sound,” Don Campbell, an author who has written extensively about music and health, and Alex Doman, a specialist in technology in brain function, take an extensive survey about what the latest neuroscientific findings tell us about music and the brain.
Salon spoke to Campbell over the phone about the dangers of excessive noise, the importance of exercise music and why more children should learn how to play instruments. What about the elderly?