Music

Spotify offers Premium subscription discount

Spotify might be finding it tough to shift subscriptions, because the music streaming service is already offering a discount on the £10 per month cost of stripping out ads and getting access to the mobile apps.

The Swedish company sent out an email offering its...

Google launching music service?

It's being reported that Google is planning to launch a music service imminently. A number of sources quoted by TechCrunch are saying that the company is securing content from major labels, and one source has named the offering "Google Audio".

At a time when the...

Sky Songs is now live

Sky's "Sky Songs" music subscription service, which we've dissected in detail previously, has now gone live and is available to consumers. It costs £6.49 each month, and that'll get you ad-free unlimited streaming and ten MP3s. There's also an £8 tier that gets you 15...

VIDEO: Spotify debuts improved MP3 purchases

Spotify will shortly be launching an improved MP3 purchasing experience for tracks on its streaming service. It's always been possible to buy MP3s through a right-click menu, but clicking that just opened a browser window that took you to 7digital's website.

From...

Is Spotify coming to the PS3?

It's no great secret that Spotify is expanding sideways at a rate of knots. Now that it's got its core desktop music-streaming experience locked down, it wants more little added benefits that it can turn over to premium subscribers to convince them to shell out an tenner...

MOG readies $5 music subscription

MOG has announced that it'll shortly be launching a music streaming service. The website, which since 2006 has offered a music-oriented community and blogging platform will be rolling out the subscription-funded "All Access" scheme by the end of November.

It'll...

Spotify CEO: Advertising devalues music

Spotify is continuing celebrations of its 1-year anniversary and as part of the jamboree, the company's founder and CEO, Daniel Ek, has taken some time out to pen a blog post about the future of Spotify, and his thoughts on the state of the global Music industry. In it,...

Spotify has 2.7 million users in the UK

A few statistics have emerged about the growth of Spotify in the UK over the first 6 months of this year. They're from a presentation that the company gave in Edinburgh jointly with PRS For Music and represent the time period from the end of January to the end of July.

At...

U2 wants their own video game

U2's bassist, Adam Clayton, has said that the band wants to follow in the footsteps of Metallica and the Beatles by starring in their own video game. The band has been extensively associated with Apple's iPod and RIM's BlackBerry products in the past, but hasn't ever...

Spotify phones coming soon?

Spotify has announced that it has signed a deal with Swedish broadband supplier and mobile network Telia. The two companies have agreed to "co-operate" for 2 years, with Telia helping to develop the streaming music service on computers, mobile phones and eventually onto...

VIDEO: Pinnacle Audio launches Folio Sound Server

Pinnacle Audio has announced the launch of a standalone music server - the Folio. It's designed to contain your digital music collection and then play it back on demand. Unlike some other similar products on the market, though, you don't have to plug it into a laptop...

Spotify is 1 year old

Gosh - how time flies. Streaming music service Spotify is 1 year old today. The company opened up its service into private beta on 7 October 2008, and was roundly ignored by most of the world's media.

Following hyperbolic blog posts from the few people who'd managed...

Spotify brings offline playback to desktop

Spotify has announced that Premium users will shortly be able to access on their desktop the same "Offline mode" that exists on mobile versions of the streaming music company's software.

Subscribers will be able to right-click their playlists and select them...

Spotify adds PayPal payment option

Spotify has finally caved in to popular demand and added a PayPal payment option to its subscription services. Until now, the site only accepted Visa and Mastercard, meaning that many people without credit cards weren't able to switch to Premium.

PalPal supports...

Avid offers Pro Tools Essentials packages

Avid, the company behind Pro Tools music software, has announced three bundles that combine the company's software wing with its hardware division - M-Audio. There's Pro Tools Vocal Studio, Pro Tools Recording Studio and Pro Tools KeyStudio.

Each combines a...

Spotify Premium subscriber percentage not double digits

Spotify's CEO, Daniel Ek, has revealed that paid subscriber numbers are still low, despite the surge in popularity following the release of applications for the iPhone and Android mobile phones which require a premium subscription.

He made the disclosure while...

Spotify goes back to invite-only in the UK

Streaming music service Spotify, which recently launched mobile applications for the Android and iPhone platforms, has been forced to go back to invite-only status thanks to the vast amounts of new people accessing the service.

In a blog post, the company said:...

HMV shutters GetCloser.com social network

HMV has announced that it's closing GetCloser.com, the social network that it launched a year ago with a blaze of publicity. The original idea was that fans would discover content through the site and buy more music as a result.

A HMV spokesperson denied to...

Offline mode for Spotify desktop app confirmed

It looks like an offline mode for the desktop Spotify application is in the works. The presence of such a feature has been long-requested by users, but appears to be finally on the cards due to wording in the T&Cs of the mobile app.

Point number 6, under "use...

Beaterator iPhone app coming

Rockstar Games, the team behind the Grand Theft Auto series, has announced that it's releasing an iPhone application called Beaterator this Autumn. It's a port of a PSP game due later in the month that allows players to create "world-class" beats and songs.

The...

Spotify makes more cash for Universal than iTunes

Universal Music Sweden has admitted that Spotify makes it more money than iTunes does. "In five months from the launch, Spotify became our largest digital source of income and so passed by iTunes", said Per Sundin, managing director of Universal Music.

"It's...

Quixpin DJ app for iPhone launched

DJs who didn't take so Samsung's Beat DJ phone have now got another option - to pick up an iPhone and grab Quixonic's "Quixpin" application.

It's an iPhone app that lets you cue, beatmatch and mix between two different tracks on one handset. Simply cue up the...

Radiohead embraces torrents for music distribution

Late last week, a new Radiohead song leaked onto the web called "These Are My Twisted Words". Today, the band officially announced the song on their "Dead Air Space" blog, which came with not only a link to the band's official web store W.A.S.T.E., but also a link to download...

3 in negotiations with Spotify

According to New Media Age, streaming music wunderkind Spotify is in "advanced negotiations" with phone network 3, in order to distribute its mobile application to 3's 4.4 million subscribers.

That's all well and good, except that 3 doesn't have any Android...

Music download price comparison site launches

A website which aims to compare the prices of music downloads across a number of sites has launched in beta - the imaginatively named "comparedownload.com".

The site scans across a number of digital download merchants, including 7digital, We7, iTunes and Amazon....