music

The link between digital entertainment and exercise seems to be fairly well documented on the Wii alone, so it stands to reason that the combination would be fertile ground for other companies. And when's the last time you saw anyone on a cardio machine at the gym without an MP3 player?

Yamaha has clearly figured that out with its new "BodiBeat," a wearable gadget scheduled for August that it says is "the world's first music player/heart rate monitor that selects and plays songs to match the pace of the user's workout." It … Read more

July 15, the start date for new and retroactive royalty payments by Internet radio DJs, has come and gone without any apparent catastrophe, thanks in part to last-minute signs that Webcasters may be edging closer to harmony with the music industry.

The consensus among the small and larger Webcasters I've been surveying Monday seems to be that nothing much has changed in their operations--for now, at least. Further unscientific checking of Internet radio streams available at individual Web sites and through Apple's iTunes drove me to a similar conclusion: from NorCal hip-hop to office-friendly Top 40 to Christian … Read more

Today's discovery: SimplifyMedia, a very handy media-sharing service. It lets friends listen to your iTunes music library from their computers, no matter which network you or they are on. It's even useful if you have no friends: if you use more than one computer and want to be able to access your music on all of them, SimplifyMedia does it.

At the moment, the service works only with iTunes, and most iTunes users probably know that iTunes already allows streaming between computers. The hitch is that iTunes restricts sharing to a local network, so music can be shared … Read more

Have your heard Rihanna yet? She of "Umbrella" fame, her hit collab with Jay-Z that's been all over the charts, radio, and Web lately. You can stream it for free on Download Music--and this week she's also the star of our ongoing Best New Music video report, a collaboration with our buddies over at CNET TV. Watch and listen as Anngie Dehoyos gives the lowdown on what makes the song so gosh-darn great. Then catch Peter Gavin's take on indie heroes Blonde Redhead and my own shakedown on the haunting new album from Charlotte … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--If there's one business where the intersection of new technology and old is creating confusion, I can't think of a bigger muddle than the recording industry.

So it is that I had a chance to listen to an interesting discussion on the future of the music business here at the wrap-up day of the iMeme conference organized by Fortune magazine.

Jerry Harrison, who used to play with the Talking Heads (and is now chairman of iLike) offered a provocative and entirely insightful comment about where things likely may be heading.

Nowadays our choices are still limited because … Read more

This Sunday may not be doomsday after all for the smaller Internet radio stations that feared the onset of new royalty fees would kill off their operations.

But contrary to some published reports traversing the blogosphere on Thursday and Friday, SoundExchange, the nonprofit group charged with collecting the payments, has not made any sort of blanket pledge to delay enforcing the contentious new Webcaster payments established earlier this year by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board, according to spokesman Richard Ades.

"There is a misunderstanding, and SoundExchange is making it very clear that everybody is expected to comply with the law," Ades told CNET News.com Friday.

The CRB ruling at issue requires Internet radio operators to pay additional fees to SoundExchange, which passes them on to artists and record labels, retroactive to 2006 and through 2010. Webcasters opposed to the new rules say the changes could drive up their mandatory payments by as much as 300 percent for larger entities and 1,200 percent for smaller ones, arguing such increases could put them out of business.

Here's where it gets complicated.

… Read more

We can't imagine why, but some might say the world really doesn't need another MP3 player. But Bang & Olufsen rarely seems to play by conventional rules--or wisdom.

True to form, the high-end company has taken yet another unexpected turn. The "BeoSound 6" is surprisingly simple, as Engadget rightly observes, given the B&O reputation for flamboyance in its various products. But sometimes, less is more: As evidenced by the "BeoSound 2," unconventional form doesn't necessarily translate to exceptional quality.

The BeoSound 6 is nevertheless sleekly designed with its silver casing, spare … Read more

The Wall Street Journal yesterday had an interesting piece [Sub. req'd] on the value of piracy to the music industry. No, not in Tim O'Reilly's classic 'Piracy is progressive taxation' sense, but rather in figuring out what people actually want to hear.

Earlier this year, Clear Channel Communications Inc.'s Premiere Radio Networks unit began marketing data on the most popular downloads from illegal file-sharing networks to help radio stations shape their playlists. The theory is that the songs attracting the most downloads online will also win the most listeners on the radio, helping stations sell more advertising. In turn, the service may even help the record labels, because radio airplay is still the biggest factor influencing record sales....… Read more

Online community Imeem launched in August 2005, and although I wasn't familiar with the service at the time, it sounds like a blend of several popular features: social networking, instant messaging, blogging and photo sharing. At some point, the company added a feature that would let users create playlists from their personal music collections, then stream these playlists to other users. By spring 2007, the service claimed 16 million active users.

The concept was a bit like MySpace.com, and like that site, Imeem eventually drew a copyright infringement lawsuit from a major record label--Warner Music Group, in this … Read more