Apparently Christopher Lee, the guy what played Saruman in LoTR, is a fan of metal. He’s also a fan of Christmas. So, he did the only logical thing that someone who likes both metal and Christmas would do—he recorded a metal Christmas album. No, seriously. More »
The folks at Acase have partnered again with design company yantouch to create a lovely little bluetooth-connected reactionary lighting art object with the power to blast your audio out and high volume – the Black Diamond III. There have been two other Black Diamond speakers similar to this one, of course, as the name suggests, but this is the first working independent of any one line of smartphone units. Here you’ll be connecting with bluetooth or a basic line-in with your smart device’s headphone jack, and the fun will begun thusly.
I call this device an art object because though it’s being marketed as a Multi-Sensory Bluetooth Speaker, it’s able to rock and roll in silence as well. If you simply turn on the lights in this lovely object, you have the option to turn on everything from green to orange to purple and back again, rainbow blasting included, smooth transitions between the collection included as well. But the real magic happens when you connect your tunes to the beast.
You’ve got a couple of 3W*2 speakers on the sides and a bass port right up on top and the sound is decent. This isn’t the sort of masterpiece you’ll be bringing to the college dorm during a massive party expecting to rock the house. Instead it’s the speaker with a fabulous set of lighting effects you’re going to bring to the college dorm to use while you’re hanging out over Christmas break because you want to freak out on how smooth the colors can be when they’re allowed to flow.
The colors – again, the star of the show – make for one of the most entertaining set of aesthetics we’ve ever seen in a speaker. This device is essentially a sound-reactive light before it’s a speaker – and it does react to the sound quite nicely. You can set the light (with the included controller) to sit on one color, cycle through a collection, play rainbow style colors, or bump to the beat of the audio. You can have the lights play along with the music you’re working with while you’re on rainbow color mode or you can cycle through the colors on the fly.
You’ll be using the included remote to make all the lighting action a reality. If you lose the remote, you’re going to be right on out of luck, because there’s no other way to control this orb. The creators of this machine have kindly included a lovely little port in the back of the orb for storage of the controller, thankfully, so you shouldn’t have to worry too much about loss. After that, it’s jut a matter of deciding which device you want to connect to this miniature Epcot Center Spaceship Earth-like concoction.
Notice in the hands-on video above that we’ve got the Android-toting Google Nexus 4 by LG, the Nokia Lumia 920 with Windows Phone 8, and the Apple iPhone 5 with iOS – each of them are able to connect via Bluetooth to the Black Diamond III without a hassle. Just a couple of clicks and you’re on your way.
Is this device worth the approximately $120 USD you’ll be tossing down on it if you purchase it online right this minute? I think the real question is – did you get $120 USD in holiday gifts this holiday season? I think you know what to do.
Black Diamond III Multi-Sensory Bluetooth Speaker Review is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
If you’re reading this, congrats! The world is still here and the Mayans were totally wrong about the end times—or at least the apocalyptic conspiracy nuts that misinterpreted their calendar rollover were. So, to celebrate that Hunhau, ruler of the Mayan underworld, has not risen from Mitnal to end all of creation, please enjoy REM’s breakout hit from way back in 1987. More »
Yes, we know. People have been recording and remixing albums on iOS for ages. As the man who claims to have given Damon Albarn the idea to make an album on the iPad, I am intimately familiar with the concept. More »
Trent Reznor, the musician behind the one-man band Nine Inch Nails recently partnered up with Beats by Dre back in October, but projects and efforts from the partnership remained quiet. However, Reznor has announced that he’s working on a new music-streaming service to take on the likes of Spotify and Rdio.
In a profile of Reznor in the most recent issue of The New Yorker, Reznor details plans on a new music-streaming service he’s working on in partnership with Beats by Dre. Dubbed “Daisy”, the service is planned to launch early next year and will be nothing like traditional music-streaming services that users are used to, according to Reznor.
Reznor says that Daisy will use “mathematics to offer suggestions to the listener” and it will also “present choices based partly on suggestions made by connoisseurs, making it a platform in which the machine and the human would collide more intimately.” It seems that the new service will rely on better ways to music discovery than just traditional algorithms.
Reznor even compared his upcoming service with Spotify, and said that while Spotify offers over 16 million songs, “you’re not stumbling into anything. What’s missing is a service that adds a layer of intelligent curation.” He says that services that have been using traditional alogrithms to match up users with music they might like have “begun to feel synthetic.” Reznor describes Daisy as “having your own guy when you go into the record store, who knows what you like but can also point you down some paths you wouldn’t necessarily have encountered.”
Reznor is the man behind the soundtrack for several films, including The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as well as video games such as Quake, and most recently Call of Duty Black Ops II. Of course, he’s also been around the music scene since the late 80s with his most well-known project, Nine Inch Nails.
[via Pitchfork]
Trent Reznor working on music-streaming service, expected to launch early next year is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Sometimes you’ve just got to make do with what you’ve got, but that doesn’t mean you have to want for things, things like musical instruments. The upcoming documentary Landfill Harmonic (a totally righteous pun, I feel obligated to note) is about a slum in Cateura, Paraguay that still has an orchestra, and orchestra with instruments made of trash. More »
Recently I picked up a shiny new iPhone 5 and handed down my old Android smartphone to my daughter. She’s too young to really need a smartphone, but it’s nice to be able to know where she is in the neighborhood anytime. She uses it to listen to music all the time. She’s a big music fan and seems to be constantly asking me the name of a song and expects me to know it simply by her humming a few notes or telling me a few keywords from the lyrics.
I’m totally going to load her phone up with the new Rhapsody SongMatch app. The app is able to listen to music playing anywhere and identify the name of the artist, album, and song for you. You can save identified songs as playlists and share the song data with other people.
This isn’t the only app available that can identify music for you – SoundHound and Shazam have been around for quite a while – but Rhapsody’s free app is totally free of annoying ads (other than promoting the Rhapsody brand, of course.) While you don’t need a subscription to Rhapsody to use the app, if you do have a subscription you get extra benefits. You can listen to the track on Rhapsody if it’s available, view the rest of the artist’s catalog, and discover similar artists.
Rhapsody SongMatch is available on the Google Play store right now for download.
One of today’s many, many Spotify announcements was that legendary thrashers Metallica would be coming to the streaming service. As part of the announcement CEO Daniel Ek brought out the bands notoriously outspoken drummer Lars Ulrich and Spotify board member Sean Parker who, as you might remember, had a hand in founding Napster. While there was some broad discussion about the direction of the music industry and the future of music consumption, a large chunk of the half hour-long conversation revolved around the shared history of the two and the legal feud between the pioneering file sharing service and the band. The two were surprisingly cordial, if slightly uncomfortable looking, and delved deep into the details of what both described as a “street fight” between the parties. Ultimately, both admitted that things got blown out of proportion and escalated unnecessarily. But there also seemed to be some admission by Lars that there was an element of Luddism to his band’s reaction. To see the entire, extremely interesting conversation, check out the video after the break.
Continue reading Sean Parker and Lars Ulrich talk Napster vs. Metallica, hug it out with Spotify
Filed under: Internet
Since there are tons of music player options for the desktop, a lot of underrated players get left behind, MediaMonkey being one of them. However, the team is still alive and well, and they just released a beta music player app for Android that comes with some pretty cool features that a lot of music junkies can benefit from.
The new beta is packed with all of the features you would expect in a mobile music player, and it also comes with video support even. You’ll also find podcast support, handy category navigation, a car-friendly user interface, even WiFi syncing if you happen to use MediaMonkey for Windows, since that’s the only way to take advantage of the feature.
The app can also wirelessly syncs play history (play counts, last played, date added, etc.), and it’ll also sync playlists, videos, and podcasts. However, in order to take advantage of all the new features, you’ll have to update to the beta version of the desktop player for Windows as well — both are free downloads.
The app might not be for everyone, but folks who want excessive control over their local music collection should definitely consider giving it a try. It’s not available in the Google Play store, so for now you’ll have to download the APK file from the Reddit thread, since MediaMonkey decided to release it on their closed forums.
[via Reddit]
MediaMonkey beta for Android released, offers WiFi sync, podcasts, more is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
After many, many years of Metallica appearing on the opposite side of the music industry from the music pirates that exist across the earth, they’ve joined Spotify for music streaming their entire catalog. It’s time for every single Metallica album from Kill ‘Em All to Master of Puppets to be up and ready to listen to on Spotify for the whole world – even the pirates – to listen to. This was all announced this week at the Spotify conference that also saw a larger launch of the web broswer based Spotify environment.
This week Metallica’s own Lars Ulrich stepped on stage with no less than former Napster head Sean Parker, former enemies in both the public and in the courtroom. The big announcement this week was that not only was the former Napster head fully aboard with the Spotify universe, but that Metallica was aboard as well – and that they were no longer at war, as it were.
Speaking about the Napster situation back in 2000, Lars made it clear: “it was never about money, it was about control… you have to control all those elements around you in your bubble… and the control option was taken away.” Meanwhile Napster’s Sean Parker let it be known that they never wanted the situation to be about giving away music, but “free as in freedom, not free as in theft.”
In other words, the two heads here did indeed need the moderator that sat on stage with them at the Spotify press conference. That said, Metallica is indeed on Spotify now.
“Metallica has always tried to be in control of the way we present our music to our fans, which is why we’ve waited to see the way these online retailers and streaming services operate and gauge the overall fan experience before deciding to include our music. We now feel that Spotify not only has a proven track record, but is by far the best music streaming service. We are beyond psyched to unleash our music through their platform.” – Lars Ulrich
Have a peek at the timeline below to get more information on Spotify and the rest of the updates that are coming down today.
Metallica hits Spotify, Lars Ulrich speaks is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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