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Posts Tagged ‘music’

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Spotify rumoured to be coming to 3UK

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

So reports New Media Age and Electricpig:

The free music streaming service could also be coming to 3 Mobile’s entire range of handsets.

3 is currently in talks with Spotify with the aim of bringing a mobile app to every one of its 4.4 million customers. According to New Media Age, possibilities include pre-loading the app on all new handsets, as well as making available as a download.

via Spotify app coming to 3 Mobile? | Electricpig.

Now this is interesting. Very interesting.

What now for Omnifone’s MusicStation? It looks like Spotify is well placed to completely nail them to the wall — as, from the demonstrations I’ve had of Spotify Mobile — it’s incredibly similar, yet a heckuvalot more compelling to the standard consumer.

3UK have a history of innovation in the operator sphere — they have to, they’re the ‘challenger’ brand. It was 3UK who first ‘officially’ brought us the likes of MSN, Yahoo, Skype, eBay via ‘X-Series’. They were the first mobile operator to introduce those well known dotcom logos into their store-front literature and signage and they did benefit quite substantially from it.

As far as Spotify is concerned, the up-sale value (you’re rumoured to have to have a premium account in order to use their mobile services), will be pretty welcome — and the fact that 3’s customer base is reasonably manageable (we’re not talking a 15-20m behemoth yet), the deal could be hugely useful for them.

But what for 3UK? I think they’d benefit from a lot of consumer attention. Would you swap to 3 to get Spotify Mobile? Potentially, I’m sure. It’s such a compelling offering. It’s going to really eat into 3’s existing music offerings (they were, if memory serves, one of the UK’s largest retailers or digital music).

Spotify on 3UK? Bring it ON.

And if you haven’t checked out Spotify, if you’ve been hearing all about it and not bothering looking, now is definitely the time. Download it, type in Michael Jackson and double-click to play a song. Think iTunes without the payment bollocks (and a whole lot more — once you start getting into sharing of playlists).

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Posted in Mobile, Mobile Music | Comments

Thank you for the music

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Having got the initial news out of the way, I wanted to post a brief note to say thank you to everyone who’s supported us along our journey.

I’m going to do a larger piece next week — right now I want to get the MIR TV Rome and Prague videos finally edited and live for next week.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

Nokia’s Comes With Music DRM cracked

Monday, December 15th, 2008

It seems that Tunebite allows Nokia’s DRM to be cracked. Tunebite has been around for a while so it’s not a new system.

Tunebite internally “plays” the DRM’ed music at high speed and converts the digital output back into a non-DRM file.

It’s very unlikely that Nokia can do much about this, it’s like plugging the output of the sound card in your PC back into a recorder (though there’s an analogue conversion there). Tunebite does the same thing, but in the digital domain.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

LG Renoir only plays music alphabetically

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

I got this note in from Paul Newton, a reasonably happy LG Renoir user.

Paul saw the footage we shot at the Renoir launch and, suitably impressed with the device, took the plunge.

But there’s a glaring, glaring issue with the device.

Have a read:

Hi Ewan,

I am looking for some advice. I recently upgraded my handset to an LG KC910 after seeing the footage of it from the blogger party on your show. Overall I am extremely happy with it. However one annoyance with it is when browsing music that I loaded onto the supplied micro SDcard. When you select albums they are displayed (and play in alphabetical order) not the track order specified in the tags for the files. I can see no way of changing this. The manual doesn’t mention it. I had a quick search on the web and found a few other people reporting the same issue. I tried contacting LG Mobile Phone support. The operator I spoke to couldn’t give me an answer and has emailed the head office, but couldn’t give me a time scale for a response. I was wondering what I should do next. Do you have any contacts that could give you answer on this? I suspect that the software currently on the phone doesn’t allow albums to be played in the correct order. This seems like a big oversight on LG’s part. I hope that they intend to issue a software update and soon as this was one of the reasons I went of for this phone. You may want to mention this issue on the site so that others are aware of this. I dodn’t see it in any of the (many) reviews I read.

Keep up the good work.

Regards,
Paul Newton

Quite simply, the LG Renoir is a ‘Fisherprice’ music phone.

We were never sent a Renoir test handset so we weren’t able to test these kind of things.

On the face of it, Paul should shut right up. You’ve got music, right Paul? It does play music? What more could you want?

;-)

In reality, this is 100% ridiculous. It ONLY plays music in alphabetical order?

What chump programmed that?

Total rubbish.

Total unmitigated rubbish.

You’d think some bright spark, somewhere deep in the bowels of LG, would have thought that SOME people might like to play music in ALBUM order.

Anyway to answer your questions Paul, I do have LG contacts.

I’ve got two routes to LG. One is through the LG blog. Chris and the team there are very good — but there’s not much they can do, I suspect, in this situation. I suspect all they could do is pass your enquiry to LG in Korea.

Which brings me to my second route to LG — direct to Korea. You’ll need to give me a few days Paul, but I’ll put this issue to them and ask for a response.

If they respond with some kind of acknowledgement then that’ll be good. If they respond with a fix or a solution, even better.

Trouble is, these LG devices nowadays are literally pieces of plastic and metal. They can’t be easily upgraded, even though there’s software inside. Don’t expect a 2.2 style iPhone upgrade for the Renoir.

If you’ve got suggestions for Paul, please post them here.

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Posted in Devices | Comments

O2’s deal with LiveNation/AMG shows they’re serious about live music

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

“It’s all very well for folk in London”, I thought, as I walked through the O2 Dome the other day, “But if you’re sat in Hartlepool, there’s not much value to be got from being an O2 customer.”

The multi-year sponsorship of the Millenium Dome is rather nifty. Renamed ‘the O2′, you can get priority tickets to some rather huge gigs if you’re an O2 customer. Reasonably cool. But irrelevant if you live elsewhere around the UK.

Until today, that is.

O2 have done a deal with LiveNation/AMG. From the 1st of January next year, AMG’s venues are to be renamed. So what was once known as ‘The Brixton Academy’ will now be known as ‘the O2 Academy Brixton’.

O2 customers will gain priority access to tickets to all gigs at the venues, as well as other Live Nation events across the country. In total, O2 customers will gain special access to as many as 4,000 Live Nation produced shows a year in the UK up to 48 hours before they go on general sale.

That is set to be a persuasive pitch for those for whom live music is an absolute must. Me? I’m never that impressed standing at the back surrounded by drunk Coldplay fans. But if you’re one of those Coldplay fans desperate to get a ticket before everyone else does, would you change your network operator to o2? Quite possibly.

Here are the new O2 Academy venues:

O2 Academy Brixton
02 Academy Islington
O2 Academy Birmingham
O2 Academy Bristol
O2 Academy Glasgow
O2 Academy Liverpool
O2 Academy Newcastle
O2 Academy Oxford
O2 Academy Sheffield
O2 Academy Leeds
O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire

This is what swings it for me though: Fast track entry. I’d use my O2 iPhone account for that. Definitely.

This is also quite an interesting point:

O2 will work closely with Live Nation/AMG to enhance the concert going experience, developing technologies like mobile ticketing which is both convenient and environmentally friendly, and utilize the venues to assess the benefits of contact-less NFC (Near Field Communication) technology in the music industry.

Interesting, interesting…

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Posted in Operators | Comments

Placeshift your mobile music (and iTunes files) anywhere with Didiom

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

This note is from Tom Adler of Didiom, a very interesting new service that’s all about ‘placeshifting’ your music to any device.

Let’s get the overview from Tom.

- – - – -

Hi Ewan,

I am writing to invite you to test out a new mobile service that we’ve just launched called Didiom.

Didiom allows you to placeshift your music collection – streaming music files from your PC to your mobile phone wherever you are, which means now you can have your entire collection “to-go”, no matter how large it is.

Didiom also has a unique marketplace that lets you buy music wirelessly from our catalog of over 1.5 million tracks. Plus there’s a “name-your-own-price” button that lets you bid on music to get it at the price you want to pay.

All the facts have been incorporated into a factsheet that’s online, with flickr photos and embeddable video;

[ Here's the video ]

http://www.didiom.com/smpr/

We’re trying to get as many people as we can to try out the free application, so anything you can do to help get the word out to your readers would be very appreciated.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for your time.

Tom

- – - – -

Now, the bad news for most readers: This is US-only for the time being. That is an arse.

But let’s have a peek in the door at what handsets it works on:

That’s a good range — obviously Windows Mobile is the main platform for Didiom at the moment, but I’m very encouraged to see the Blackberry Curve on the list.

I can see myself really liking Didiom. I’ve bought a lot of iTunes music and, frankly, I think that’s somebody else’s problem. I don’t see why I should be penalised for doing business with Apple when a new moblie music service or device comes along. So good news, Didiom.

If you’re in the States, give it a go?

Thanks for writing, Tom!

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Posted in Applications, Feature | Comments

Nokia Comes With Music is probably quite good

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

To all 250,000 readers, if you’d like to check out Comes With Music, Nokia’s latest wannabe attempt to make music work for normobs accustomed to absolute rubbish Nokia user interfaces, then check out some other sites. All About Symbian might be a good start.

A Google for Comes With Music should work, also.

As always, we heard about it all after the event. Goodness knows what they’re up to at Nokia Towers. We would have brought you an entire TV show dedicated to Comes With Music had we known about it all.

But don’t fear! Don’t fret!

Oh no. Here’s the email that arrived this afternoon from Nokia:

Dear Ewan,

Please see the link below to view the multimedia news release that contains B-roll material and sound bites in broadcast quality from the NOKIA REMIX event that took place in London yesterday.

http://tinyurl.com/4mpe9f

For viewing the on demand web cast, visit http://events.nokia.com.

Should you have any questions or comments, please send feedback to Danielle Ross.

So if you’d like to watch some B-Roll of the event — that’s your link up there.

We will, whenever we can be bothered, bring you some Nokia related content.

Although, actually, I don’t think we will, come to think of it. What is the point?

Comes With Music. It’s ok. It’s certainly not brilliant. It doesn’t match the iTunes experience one jot. Is it mass market? Yeah. Your normob will soldier on and wrap their head around the rather involved UI. Your average 16 year old will put up with it. Just like they do with their current Nokias. And it’ll work. And it’ll position Nokia nicely with music.

Next.

So, if you’re up for a bit of B-Roll — that’s the link up there.

Otherwise, well.. I’ve a note from Carphone Warehouse telling me the Nokia Comes With Music handset will be retailing for just under 130 quid shortly. I’m not be disposed to Carphone Warehouse either after experiencing their not-Lifeline Insurance service. But I was thinking of going and buying a handset so I can check out Comes With Music.

It’s the right thing to do.

I just don’t feel up for shedding out the cash to both Nokia and Carphone Warehouse today.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

Nokia Music Store launches in Spain

Monday, September 29th, 2008

Nokia’s much talked about digital music site, Nokia Music Store has been officially launched in Spain today allowing all the spanish customers to enjoy portable music whenever they wish to.

The Nokia Music Store currently boats a wide catalogue of over 4 million songs, with tracks from record labels and indie artists alike. The spanish version of the store promises tracks from artists like La Oreja de Van Gogh, Pereza, Melendi, Amaral, Deluxe, Krakovia, Coti, Ismael Serrano, Extromoduro and Miguel Bosé and Nokia has already reached agreements with various local record labels to promote the local talent too.

Speaking about the launch, Manuel Reverte, Head of Services and Software at Nokia Spain, says:

With the launch of the Nokia Music Store, Nokia aims to make available to all Spanish users of all ages the music that they want at any moment they want, with all the facilities that mobility permits nowadays,

The consumers will not be able to download music, but Nokia also offers streaming services through the store. The tracks can easily be easily synchronized and managed by using the available software for PCs. Each track will cost EUR 1.50 each, while the albums have been priced at EUR 10. The streaming service will be offered on a monthly subscription of EUR 10 and will allow unlimited streaming to any type of music available through the store. The store can be accessed by visiting www.music.nokia.es
After the monumental success of Apple’s iTunes Store, more and more companies are rushing to enrich user experience by providing access to multimedia content anywhere they want. Sony Ericsson and Nokia have been doing it for a while now and Google’s Android is the latest addition to the bandwagon, offering DRM-free music from Amazon.

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Posted in Mobile, Mobile Services | Comments

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