music - page 36

The popular Spotify music application for iPhone & iPod Touch has been updated to version 0.4.7 today for the iOS 4 software. This update brings with it the eagerly awaited multitasking support which now allows you to listen to your favourite music whilst using other applications on your device.

The update also features a new “what’s new” tab that displays new releases, the top 100 tracks in your country and a social news feed that displays Facebook posts. As well as the ability to use your headset remote, the multitasking dock buttons and the lock-screen buttons to control playback.

The full list of changes as listed in the description are:

iOS 4 multitasking! Play Spotify tracks while doing other things with your phone. NOTE: Only iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4 and iPod Touch (3rd generation) support multitasking.

Use the headset remote and lockscreen buttons to control Spotify playback

“What’s new” tab has been added showing you newly released albums, the top 100 tracks in your country, and the social feed

Share tracks and albums to your Spotify friends!

Battery consumption is improved when the app is in the foreground or paused.

You can find Spotify in the App Store here (U.K.), but please note; you need a Spotify Premium account to use the iPhone & iPod Touch application.

Apple has just unveiled iTunes Rewind 2009, a feature on the iTunes Store that lists all of the year’s best selling content, across music, video and apps. For some, the feature will be confirmation of the intractable cretinism of that mouth-breathing biomass, mankind. For others, it will be a handy primer on popular media they might have missed this year. Let’s dive in!

I imagine that in a lot of totally fundamental ways, pitching a university to let you teach a new course must be a lot like pitching a tech article to a mainstream magazine. It all starts with throwing random words at a sheet of brainstorming paper, then cynically deciding that while “iPhone: the future of music composition” is clearly ridiculous, it would look good as a headline [in the course catalog], so let’s see where it gets us anyway. Quickly inducing hyperventilation in order to simulate breathless excitement, you pick up the phone, call your editor [department head] and shout: “The iPhone is the future of music! No one else has done it before, so we’ll be at the forefront, reporting [teaching] about a fantastic new era meshing technology and art!”

Yes, go forth, my son. Fortune favors the bold! Do your job right and if you’re a tech journalist, you’ll make about $800. But if you’re a university professor, like Georg Essl of the University of Michigan? You may just have taken your first step towards tenure!

Danny Hutton, founder of rock group Three Dog Night, credits his successful 40-something years in the band because of what could be described as shuffle music.

“We basically were doing iPods in the 1970s,” Hutton said. “Our songs were all over the place. We’d go from ballads to hard rock to country songs to an R&B song.”

Not sure they embody the eclectic iPod mentality (Beck? Girl Talk? 2 Many DJs?) but It’s better than blaming the iPod for ruining your music.

Via Mlive

Too loud, too tinny, not any good. Our fault? No, way. Rusted rockers Metallica are blaming the iPod for ruining their sound, specifically the rattle and hum on latest effort ‘Death Magnetic.’ Fortunately, the WSJ is on the case (love the stipple portrait of Rick Rubin):

“The battle has roots in the era before compact discs. With vinyl records, “it was impossible to make loud past a certain point,” says Bob Ludwig, a veteran mastering engineer. But digital technology made it possible to squeeze all of the sound into a narrow, high-volume range. In addition, music now is often optimized for play on the relatively low-fidelity earbuds for iPods, reducing incentives to offer a broad dynamic range.”

Making Metallica’s clatter barely listenable on an iPod.
For better or worse, iPods have changed the way we listen.  The first time I really heard Mick Jagger singing backup on “You’re So Vain” it was on a secondhand first-generation iPod.

Anybody else?

Though the Financial Times is without question a vastly more reliable source than most places that spawn rumors of Apple’s impending moves, I just can’t convince myself to buy into reports that Apple wants to create a monthly iTunes subscription plan or all-you-can eat music business model with the purchase of an iPod or iPhone. It isn’t their style

While denials from Steve Jobs are usually a good way to spot what he’s working on, this is an area where he has remained steadfast. He believes that people want to own their music, and I believe that he’s right. Sure, I love to sample music as much as anyone else, but the songs that I keep are really personal to me. Renting music just doesn’t work out. Even if Nokia is doing it, too.

Moreover, the monthly subscription business model is one that Apple hasn’t ever offered before to anyone. Not for movies, TV, or software. In fact, Apple’s only experience of recurring payments are with the iPhone’s service fees, which the company gets just a small slice of. There are far too many accounting headaches to resolve to make it worthwhile, and the record companies are angry at Apple. At Apple’s restaurant, they dine ala carte.