Google has launched it's music service quietly, without much fanfare. The company has partnered up with imeem, Lala.com, Myspace,Pandora and Rhapsody. Apple wasn't invited to the party. Taking a closer look it's evident that Apple's i-Tunes just got whacked with a sucker punch. Google's service is subtle. If you search for an artist and/or song using Google's regular search engine, the appropriate match will now be displayed as number one in the results complete with a player provided by LALA that will play any song once through and then any number of times as 30 seconds samples.
Purchasing the track is made simple especially if you use GOOGLE CHECKOUT. Tracks are, on average, .40 cents cheaper than i-Tunes tracks (.89 cents instead of the $1.29) and are delivered as Mp3's for universal playability.
Coming soon: an i-phone app and wireless streaming. That giant sucking sound? That would be digital music market share being transferred to the Google side of the fence. Great times, these, since this is probably not the end of the story. If .89 cents is the new 1.29, could .49 be far away? When all the world is streaming music only, what's that cost? .10 , .05? Nothing?
It all just might become FREE.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Google Gives Apple A Run For It's Money
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Spotify: A Music App Too Good to be True?
According to an article over on Intomobile, Spotify is an application that is the best thing to happen to music since Napster, and Spotify is coming to the iPhone.
Basically Spotify you can imagine as an iTunes where everything is free, you simply click a tune and it begins playing, you create a playlist and it is assigned a permanent URL that can be shared.
Here's a video explaining this music app.
http://www.spotify.com/en/#video
Monday, December 08, 2008
Using Creative Commons To Create New Works
In the last post, I provided a link to better help (music) educators understand how they can use copyrighted material.
Taking this a step further, here's an excellent introduction about Creative Commons. Go Create!
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Matisyahu: Rock, Reggae and Religion
When Matisyahu emerged with his debut album, Shake Off the Dust...Arise, in 2004, his musical persona seemed to some a novelty. Here was a Hasidic Jew, dressed in a black suit with a broad-brimmed black hat worn over a yarmulke, and sporting a full, untrimmed beard, who nevertheless performed toasting raps about the glories of traditional Judaism over reggae beats in a dancehall style directly from Jamaica, punctuating his performances with stage diving. It may have seemed like a joke at first, but Matisyahu was serious, and he began to attract press notices to go with the enthusiastic audiences that packed his concerts. (by William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide)
This song, Time of Your Song is classic Matisyahu. You just might get hooked.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Finding Cool Wave Files
One of the projects we do is a "found sound" project. Using the internet, we search for wave files that we can use and incorporate them into original compositions.
Here are some human generated sounds that work quite well. Other sounds can be found in the following categories-human, natural, animal, music and entertainment at amazing sounds.
Friday, March 28, 2008
My Music Tech Launches Podcast
My Music Tech launched it's podcast (March 28, 2008). The podcast will contain episodes about music education technology and will specifically feature podcasts by music students as they learn about various aspects of music, podcasting and digital audio technologies.
This podcast will be of benefit to school music teachers, technology teachers and anyone interested in learning the basics of podcasting and it's application in an educational setting.
Stay tuned for future episodes. You may subscribe to the podcast at i-tunes. Do a search for My Music Tech. Subscriptions to podcasts are free.
The website for direct links to the podcasts is at: http://mymusictech.podomatic.com/
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Where to Find Money for Art and Music Education
I believe Arts/Music will become the central part of the school curriculum by the end of this century. Until then, districts often find it hard to support arts and music programs in schools.
If you're looking for funding for Arts Education but don't know where to look, here's a post listing the Top 10 Funding Sources for Arts Education.
Monday, February 19, 2007
DRM, Steve Jobs and The Future of Music
As has been discussed on this site, music copyright protection is extremely important to the RIAA and especially the four big music companies, Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI.
DRM has met with much derision and scorn by music enthusiasts who want their legally obtained music to be free of restrictions. Sony's major faux pas.
Steve Jobs writes intelligibly about the current state of affairs on his blog. He offers three future potentials:
"The first alternative is to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music. It is a very competitive market, with major global companies making large investments to develop new music players and online music stores.
The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores. On the surface, this seems like a good idea since it might offer customers increased choice now and in the future.
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music."
Read Job's post 'Thoughts On Music" here
