Hasta La Gadget!

Developer Harmonix announced last month that continued DLC content for Rock Band would be ending in April, and that time is slowly approaching, sadly. The developer has announced the last song to come off the Rock Band DLC assembly line, which will be Don McLean’s 1971 classic “American Pie”. The song will be available for download on April 2.

Of course, “American Pie” is one of the greatest songs out there that you can use to signify an ending to something, although my love for 90s rock says that Semisonic’s “Closing Time” is also up there on the list. Either way, Rock Band gamers will be able to sing off the weekly DLC of the game come early next month.

This marks the end to an over 275 consecutive week run consisting of more than 4,000 songs that have been released on Rock Band for gamers to play along with. The song was announced at PAX East during a party hosted by Harmonix. The developer also said that the song they’ll be releasing will be the full 8-minute version.

Harmonix says they have several new titles in development, and they want to start putting more focus on those in the future, which means that they have to give up some of their time and resources from other games, and Rock Band just so happened to get the ax this time around. No further plans for Rock Band have been discussed, but we’re guessing the series will be no more after the ending of the DLC.

[via Polygon]

Rock Band’s last downloadable song will be Don McLean’s “American Pie” is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Pandora, the ever-popular internet radio service, is now available for Windows Phone 8 devices. It took a while for the app to reach Microsoft’s new platform, but nonetheless, WP8 users can get in on the music-streaming action right now. Plus, Pandora is making their WP8 app ad-free until 2014, as well as tacking on a couple of exclusive features.

Both Pandora and Microsoft know that you’ve been waiting a long time for a Windows Phone 8 version of the app to come out, and they even announced plans to bring Pandora to WP8 during the platform’s launch event, so as a gift for your patience, they’re giving WP8 users an ad-free experience until the end of this year. This is a feature that only normally comes to premium subscribers of the service.

Furthermore, the app comes with Live Tile support, meaning that you can check out what artist and song is playing right from the home screen, and users can simply tap on the tile to go directly to the app. Microsoft and Pandora claim this as the app’s exclusive features, so if you were expecting anything groundbreaking in the actual app (besides the ad-free experience), you may be disappointed.

Along with the ad-free experience, however, users will also be able to play unlimited music. Pandora recently stuck a 40-hour monthly limit on its service for free users, but Windows Phone 8 users will be able to listen to all of the music that their hearts desire until the end of the year, after which you can spring for the monthly or yearly plans ($3.99 monthly or $36 yearly).

Pandora arrives on Windows Phone 8, ad-free until 2014 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Slow and steady and also yeah really slow but hey whatever—Pandora’s here for Windows Phone 8! And actually, it’s probably the best mobile version of Pandora out there. So that’s something. More »

You know how some studies on the same topic seem to contradict one another from time to time? Is it good to have a glass of wine each day, or a cup of coffee? Well, here is one for the ages – a new study which was published by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre discovered something that illegal music downloaders have been saying all this while – it does not hurt the music industry. After checking out the browsing habits of over 16,000 Europeans, the research concluded on the contrary, that a positive link existed between online piracy and visits to legal music stores. The bottomline is, music sales will actually benefit from piracy. Sounds strange, doesn’t it?

In the words of the researchers themselves, “It seems that the majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals in our sample would not have been purchased if illegal downloading websites were not available to them.” Not only that, the study also mentioned that music streaming websites like Pandora (P) and Spotify do not cannibalize music purchases, but rather complements it. This is one topic that divides down the middle, and folks can argue till the cows come home. What do you think?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Spotify Gradually Rolling Out New Social Network Features, Billboard Incorporates YouTube Viewership,

It’s only March, but 2013’s already proving to be quite the wild ride for music distribution trailblazer, eMusic. A month after eschewing its long time subscription-only model by adding direct music purchases, the site has merged with Ray Kurzweil-founded e-book distributor, K-NFB Reading Inc. The companies confirmed the move in a statement sent to record label partners, which highlights their plan to, “create a consumer-centric interface that makes discovering, interacting with, and purchasing all kinds of media content more accessible and seamless for consumers.” The move also sees the exit of CEO Adam Klein. No tears there, however — the exec (and recent Engadget interview subject) said that he’s “very pleased with the significant repositioning of the company and its future direction.”

Filed under: Software

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Source: Wall Street Journal