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Toss out your real radio–Spotify Radio will play music you actually like

Spotify has added a Pandora-like radio station to its music-streaming app. To be clear, Spotify always had Spotify Radio–it’s just that it was junk.

Previously with Spotify Radio, you’d click the little-used tab and be presented with a confusion of options. You had to pick a genre, and you could also choose set the decades you’d like the music to come from.

The trouble was, nobody but bad commercial radio stations chooses music like that, and the results were predictably awful.

The new Spotify Radio is more like Pandora or Last FM. You pick a track and hit play. Spotify will somehow come up with a playlist based on that song, and you can skip any tracks you don’t like, as often as you like.

And it works. I picked one of the pre-chosen “stations” based on my “Top Artists” (you can also choose “Top Tracks,” “Popular” or even–still here–Genre). Based on Nicholas Jaar (whose Space Is Only Noise If You Can See has been an obsession for the last two weeks), Spotify consistently returned equally downbeat, writer-friendly tracks. I even discovered some new artists.

The big advantage Spotify has is that it knows the listening habits of all ten million of its customers. That’s not a bad data pool to draw upon when making recommendations. Spotify doesn’t say just how it picks tracks for you, but I’d guess it has at least something to do with this data.

Who cares? After all, Spotify lets you pick any of its 15 million tracks directly. But what about those times when you have one track in your head? Now you can build a whole playlist around it, automatically. Yes, that’s something you can get from Pandora, too. If you live in the U.S.

To try out the new Spotify Radio, you’ll need to go grab the pre-release beta version of the app (Mac and Windows).

Discover the new Spotify Radio [Spotify Blog]

Are you a resident of Brazil and love streaming music? Have a seat, as Rdio’s packed its bags and is headed for a little séjour on the South American continent. Launching later this week, the service will be functionally similar to its US and Canadian counterparts, except it’ll lose gratis ad-free streaming and get a name change to “Oi Rdio.” That joint word-mark is the result of a partnership with Brazil’s largest telco, Oi, which should give the service headway with the former’s 70+ million subscribers. But it’s just an awareness ploy, as non-Oi subscribers can still partake in all the fun. Unlimited monthly access to the 12 million tunes on offer starts at $R8.99 (about $5) for web, or $R14.90 (about $8.50) for those seeking offline-capable admittance on their mobiles. It’s all part of an international expansion, as the service plans to visit Australia and Germany in early 2012. Spotify’s passport is plumper, but hey — you gotta start somewhere.

Rdio gets rechristened ‘Oi Rdio’ while vacationing in Brazil, has plans to visit Germany and Australia originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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$99? For a portable speaker? Yup, that was our reaction too — especially when the Mini Boombox’s larger sibling boasts four times as many drivers (eight instead of two) and costs just $50 extra. But then we gave this more suitcase-friendly version a whirl and discovered that it’s actually loud and balanced enough to do some justice to your tunes while you’re on the move. In fact, it could well make a smarter purchase than those $30 speakers you keep buying in airports and then deliberately losing. It’s available from the end of this month, works with any A2DP Bluetooth-equipped smartphone or tablet and incorporates a mic for handling calls — plus its rechargeable battery is claimed to last up to ten hours. Ears-on video and a quick round of ‘name that tune’ right after the break, along with the full PR.

Continue reading Logitech’s Mini Boombox is a $99 Bluetooth speaker, we go hands-on (video)

Logitech’s Mini Boombox is a $99 Bluetooth speaker, we go hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Nov 2011 20:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lookie here — an iPad app just got miniaturized. It’s not too often we see the progress work in reverse, but one of Apple’s flagship iPad programs has just been converted for use on the iPhone and iPod touch. It doesn’t seem as if too much is changing — outside of the shrunken display options, of course. You can still plug your electric guitar into either of Apple’s more bantam iOS devices in order to record through classic amps and stompbox effects, or record your voice or any acoustic sound using the built-in microphone. The app enables users to record and mix up to eight tracks and then share the finished product with friends or send it to your Mac to keep working on it in GarageBand (the “real one”) or Logic Pro. It’ll run new users $4.99, but if you already purchased the iPad build, it’s a free update to get the new ports. Oh, and if you’re curious, the app now runs on iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPod touch (third and fourth generation). Tap the iTunes link below to snag your own copy.

Continue reading Apple brings GarageBand to iPod touch and iPhone users, because rocking out shouldn’t require a tablet

Apple brings GarageBand to iPod touch and iPhone users, because rocking out shouldn’t require a tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on April 28, 2008 by CyberNet.

On this day five years ago, the Apple iTunes Music Store launched. The date was April 28, 2003, and ever since the launch, the store has managed to become more successful than I think anyone ever imagined. By early this year in 2008, over 4 billion songs have been sold through the store.

Taking a look back to 2003, it’s interesting to note that when the iTunes music store first launched, it was for Mac users only. It took several months for them to expand further and launch the iTunes Music store for Windows users in October, 2003. Had they not expanded and offered the store for Windows users, it would have taken them much, much longer before they would have been able to reach the 4 billion songs milestone that we mentioned earlier. They’ve got Windows users to thank for much of their success.

We decided to go back and find the original Press Release from Apple to checkout some of the original stats. At the time of launch, here’s what the iTunes Music Store was able to offer and some of the requirements:

• 200,000 songs
• exclusive tracks from over 20 artists
• iTunes 4 was required
• Users had to have Mac OS X version 10.1.5 or later

Now the iTunes Music Store has over 10 million songs! To go from 200,000 songs to 10 million songs in five years is pretty impressive and shows the growth that iTunes has experienced. Another interesting article we came across was from News.com when they were writing in October of 2003 about how the iTunes Music Store for Windows was coming. They mentioned how much revenue would be generated from the store and predicted that Apple could claim 20 percent of the market share. Then they went on to say, “Still, even those optimistic about the market don’t see Apple getting a major boost to the bottom line.”

Certainly Apple doesn’t make much money per song, but iTunes has exploded into popularity and has likely influenced more people to buy iPods which does boost Apple’s bottom line. Notice they also said that Apple could claim about 20 percent of the online market share? Well, they’ve now managed to secure their place as the number one largest music retailer in the United States. This includes online sales and those from brick and mortar stores, which is pretty impressive.

Happy Birthday iTunes Music Store, and here’s to another five great years!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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