Digital Noise: Music and Technology

DJ app for Microsoft Surface

Matt Rosoff — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:21:00 PDT

Surface in a sauna. Imagine the applications....

Like most people who've had a chance to play with it, I've been impressed with Microsoft's Surface, the multitouch tabletop computer that the company began demonstrating about two years ago.

It drew some mockery compared with the svelte ...

Music copyright lawsuit targets Microsoft, Yahoo, Real

Matt Rosoff — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:22:00 PDT

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm well-acquainted with legal filings from analyzing Microsoft's legal travails for the last nine years. I've seen a lot of aggressive lawsuits, but a copyright infringement suit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee is one of ...

CD Baby will let bands sell singles, download cards

Matt Rosoff — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:30:00 PDT

CD Baby remains an essential part of any independent musician's toolbox, offering musicians an easy and relatively inexpensive way to sell CDs and MP3 downloads from a personalized Web page. It's not necessarily the cheapest way to sell music online, but its long track record and wide variety ...

Road to Pandora now goes through Amazon

Matt Rosoff — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:03:00 PDT

Pandora is a great music-discovery service, so it's only natural that independent bands would hope to get their music placed on it. Unfortunately for them, Pandora just made that a little harder--and a little more expensive.

As I first saw on the Digital Audio Insider blog a couple weeks ago, ...

Walkman vs. iPod

Matt Rosoff — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:07:00 PDT

This is just a quick pointer to a hilarious post I ran across this morning: BBC Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell, to wear a vintage Sony Walkman for a day. He took the challenge seriously, and wrote up his impressions of the Walkman versus the modern equivalent.

The iPod of ...

Best bassline ever?

Matt Rosoff — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:43:00 PDT

I'm not a big fan of pop music, so I must admit Michael Jackson wasn't on my iPod. (Although I do have a copy of "Thriller" on LP, which I bought for $0.99.) But as a bassist, I have fond memories of playing a 30-minute rendition of "...

Bing + RealPlayer SP = an iPhone full of ripped videos

Matt Rosoff — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:34:00 PDT

RealNetworks began public beta-testing version 12 of its venerable RealPlayer today. Like the last version, the free RealPlayer SP (which stands for "social and portable") lets you rip streaming Flash videos from the Web to your hard drive. What's new: you can also transcode them into appropriate formats for ...

Eighteen bucks for an iPhone decal?

Matt Rosoff — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:10:00 PDT

My wife has been trying to convince me to get a protector for my iPhone ever since she bought hers, a silicone sleeve made by Belkin, at the Apple Store a few months ago. But I didn't like any of the designs they had at the Apple Store. I ...

On-demand site Fizy offers huge rock selection

Matt Rosoff — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:08:00 PDT

Just days after the news broke that EMI is suing Grooveshark, another contestant popped into my in-box. Today, it's Fizy, which offers essentially the same features as Grooveshark, Meuzer, and JustHearIt: search for a song name, and Fizy will compile audio and video results from public sources around the ...

EMI lawsuit hasn't shut down Grooveshark--yet

Matt Rosoff — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:03:00 PDT

You know that old maxim about something being too good to be true? I wondered how my new favorite on-demand music-streaming service, Grooveshark, was able to avoid the record industry lawsuits that plagued its predecessors, such as Seeqpod and Imeem.

Is EMI's lawsuit just a negotiating tactic?

Turns ...