OK, so maybe not a huge surprise, but Google is said to launch a paid, subscription-based music service, like Rdio or Spotify, as soon as this week at the Google I/O conference, reports the Wall Street Journal.
According to “people familiar with the matter,” says the WSJ, the announcement of the new service could happen as soon as tomorrow, when Google hosts it’s annual I/O developer conference. The WSJ says that Google has previewed new music initiatives at I/O in the past, so it might just announce the streaming service there, as well.
Twitter Music is launching on iPhone and the web today, and you no longer have to be a star to enjoy it. After a short period of testing with select music artists and celebrities, the music discovery service will be made available to everyone later on today.
Remember how word came down the pipeline the other day that Spotify wanted to start a video streaming service? Guess who just beat them to the punch? That’s right, Rdio — the better of the subscription music streaming services in the United States — and their new service is called, coincidentally enough, Vdio.
Last year, Twitter acquired a small music discovery service called We Are Hunted. The site was shut down, and now Twitter might be ready to use it in a big way.
A new report claims that Twitter will launch its own music discovery app for iOS called Twitter Music. If things go well, we might even get the app as soon as this month.
Rdio has today updated its iOS app to introduce new album and playlist views to the iPhone, and to make a number of improvements to the app’s user interface. You can now enjoy large album art, see what your friends have been listening to, and more.
Google is preparing to take on companies like Spotify and Rdio with a new YouTube music streaming service, according to sources in the record industry, who have been speaking to Fortune. The service, which is expected to launch later this year, could be available for free, but there will be subscription options for those who don’t like to see advertisements.
It was only yesterday that we found out that music streaming apps like Spotify and Rdio are helping kill music piracy, as the music industry reported that global revenue rose in 2012 for the first time in 13 years.
Well, according to a different report that crunched some serious numbers, Apple’s iTunes Store played a big part in the music industry’s growth, by accounting for 60 percent of global digital music revenues.
Want to hear a good argument for the possibility of Apple launching an iRadio service? According to a couple ofnew report, 2012 is the first time since 1999 that piracy is down, and the music industry has actually grown. And music streaming services like Rdio and Spotify can take all the credit.
Rdio — for my money, the best à la carte streaming music subscription service out there — just released a nice update to their iOS app, making it easier (and prettier) than ever to interact with your music.
If you’re one of those people who still uses Pandora, you’re missing out on some really great music apps that have a deeper catalogs of music. Yes, Spotify and Rdio are pretty much the frontrunners in the streaming music scene, but Slacker Radio just got a brand new look that makes it worthy to be oogled at.
The biggest problems with Spotify and Rdio is that most people (like me) are lazy and don’t want to be forced to comb through 11 million songs to find an artist to listen to for the next 42 minutes. Slacker Radio wants to step in and take that pain away by offering 250 DJ curated stations so you can just kick back and enjoy the music without thinking about what to play next.
