Soundrop, the popular social and interactive “listening room” music service that first launched as an app on Spotify, continues to branch out and become ever-more ubiquitous. The latest iteration: a new web version, now out in beta, which lets users tap into existing listening rooms based on artists, genres and moods, using Spotify’s move to the web as a way of building out part of the audio… → Read More
Back in December 2012, music streaming service Spotify provided an update on how it was going to double down on social recommendations to increase music listening on its platform by launching two new features, Follow and Discover. While the Follow feature, aimed at friends, started to get rolled out in March and April, it turns out that Spotify has also been rolling out the Discover feature. → Read More
Another simple but neat Evernote hack that came out of the 24-hour Disrupt NY Hackathon earlier today was Squirrel. Created by coder duo Zainab Ebrahimi and Jabari Bell, the hack turns articles Evernote readers have saved for reading later into a personalised newsletter. So, unlike the average email newsletter, Squirrel is populated with content the user actually wants to read. → Read More
Netflix’s “House of Cards” took center stage at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, with an official spoof about the back room jockeying over seat assignments at the coveted press dinner. The clip even gave a big nod to BuzzFeed’s alternative BBQ held during the actual dinner. Despite their admirable popularity, BuzzFeed is not a member of the White House… → Read More
Games app downloads to smartphones and tablets are set to grow significantly over the next four years, according to a new report by analyst Juniper Research which projects there will be 64.1BN such downloads in 2017 — more than three times the 21 billion downloaded in 2012. Key drivers powering this high rate of growth include free-to-play releases, more sophisticated devices & smartphone… → Read More
Martin Sorrell, the CEO of WPP, today laid out a stark picture of how significant a role digital is playing for the advertising giant. Speaking at the FT Digital Media Conference in London today, he said that digital now accounts for 34% of WPP’s revenues, amounting to some $72 billion, rising “from zero to over one-third in about ten years, the age of Google,” he said. → Read More
According to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek, e-commerce behemoth Amazon is preparing to launch a set-top box this fall, in hopes that you’ll consume all of your content through its spin on the now-common device. The company is already working hard to push its Kindle line to consumers, and this box would be for people who don’t want to deal with the fanciness of Apple products… → Read More
The European Commission believes that, alongside the rise of smartphones, tablets and other TV replacements, by 2016 connected TVs could be used in the majority of European homes — up from around 40.4 million today. Today it released a Green Paper to lay the groundwork for how it might cope with that. To be clear, this is not a re-writing of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, the… → Read More
The U.K.’s BBC has launched an Android version of its iPlayer Radio app which lets U.K. users listen to BBC radio stations live or catch up on scheduled programmes they missed. Confirming that the app is now available for download on Google’s Play Store in a tweet this morning, the corporation added that it would also be available on Amazon’s app store for its Kindle Fire tablets “very soon”. → Read More
Aereo has just announced its first expansion beyond New York City, and the city it’s moving to next is Boston. Bostonians will gain access to the startup’s free, over-the-air TV services and usage-based cloud DVR subscription options beginning May 15, indicating it’s full-speed ahead for the media startup despite its ongoing legal battles with networks and broadcasters. → Read More
When Twitter #Music launched last week, it wasn’t a surprise at all to those following tech stories, since rumors had been kicking up about its existence for months. However, it was a surprise to the Frances Cone Band, which is popping up in the “emerging artists” section of the app. In a world where we focus so much on “big stars,” especially ones with millions of… → Read More
Netflix released its first-quarter earnings report today, and the company saw another period of strong growth, adding more than 3 million streaming members, bringing its total to 36 million. Domestically, Netflix saw 2 million new streaming members, which was relatively equal compared to last quarter and up from 1.74 million in Q1 last year. → Read More
Last week, we told you about an open source alternative to music services such as Rdio and Spotify, called Napster.fm. The name alone got our attention, and after using it, there were a few features that were reminiscent of its predecessor, which made it even cooler. Today, the service is changing its name to Peer.fm to steer clear of legal issues, since Best Buy acquired the service and brand and… → Read More
Back in March, Amazon Studios announced that it had ordered six comedy series pilots to debut on Amazon Instant Video, further proof that the current television model is desperate for disruption. Today those pilots are finally available, released into the hands of viewers here in the US and the UK. Based on user feedback, Amazon will decide which of the pilots will be ordered for a full season… → Read More
Netflix launched its most recent original series today, following Lillyhammer from last year and the David Fincher-created House of Cards. As with previous releases, all 13 of the episodes of Hemlock Grove arrive at the same time, so you can gorge yourself on a non-stop feast of guilty pleasure pretty much all weekend. → Read More
Another sign of the swift rise of tablets today: last month tablet usage of the BBC’s on-demand online TV service iPlayer edged past mobile for the first time, with 41M programme requests by tablet vs. 40M on mobile, according to BBC stats for the month. There were 200,000 more requests on tablets than mobiles. Overall, across all device types, the service saw 272M programme requests. → Read More
Back in February, we introduced you to EvntLive, a new startup backed by Silicon Valley veterans that’s on a mission to create a scalable platform for broadcasting live concerts, from arenas to small clubs, backed by a library of recorded shows, profiles and music info. Of course, a platform for live concerts isn’t exactly a new idea. In fact, it’s been floating around for years, but those… → Read More
Twitter #Music got its big public debut today, and at first blush the service is visually impressive, well-designed and features smart, opportunistic integrations. Those integrations, with Rdio and Spotify, completely change how the app works for users who have active accounts with either service, vs. those who don’t. And the biggest winners here might just be Rdio and Spotify, since the app… → Read More
Word of a standalone music service out of Twitter has been floating around for a week or so, but today the company took to the Good Morning America show to officially announce the service, comprised of both a web platform and an iOS app.
Twitter Music, as it were, is the brainchild of We Are Hunted, a startup quietly acquired by Twitter just last year. The app pulls in music from Rdio, Spotify… → Read More
Voddler, the Swedish film and TV streaming service that has been described as the “Spotify for video,” is going global to take on Netflix, Amazon, Vdio, BitTorrent, and the many others in this space. Live in Scandinavia since 2010, and Spain since 2012 (where all together it has picked up 1.2 million users), this week Voddler is extending its footprint to the rest of Europe and Russia; and it is… → Read More
With the Era of Over-sharing and the Social Fire Hose upon us, the heft and value of privacy is changing — and, for better or worse, many argue that it’s diminishing. Perturbed by the access many companies (inconspicuously) have to our browsing history, former Googler Brian Kennish developed a Chrome Extension to address the browser privacy issue. Facebook Connect, as it was called then, disabled… → Read More
Less than a month ago, Tribeca Film Festival opened up a sub-competition within the festival for those of us with a knack for brevity: the Tribeca Film Festival’s #6SecFilms competition. Partnering with Twitter’s new darling and video-sharing app Vine, TFF made a call for submissions from filmmakers who’d like to use the Vine platform to be featured on TribecaFilm.com, along with a nice cash prize… → Read More
BlackBerry has been hit hard by Apple and Android in the enterprise smartphone market, and now it’s making some moves to make sure that it doesn’t face the same fate in the automotive segment. QNX, BlackBerry’s operating system subsidiary that makes the new BB10 operating system, today announced that it would be adding music streaming service 7digital into its in-car entertainment and information… → Read More
BitTorrent, the content sharing and distribution network with 170 million monthly active users and 85 petabytes of content, continues to roll out more tools for artists and consumers to turn to the service for all their music, video and reading needs. Today BitTorrent is turning its attention to the mechanics of downloading. It is putting its Surf Chrome extension — which effectively turns the… → Read More
Adobe’s Lightroom is probably the best software available when it comes to a photographer’s digital darkroom needs. The company has been putting lots of time and effort into building it into something that appeals to both pros and enthusiasts, and now it’s releasing Lightroom 5 beta, representing the fastest turnaround for a major point release in the app’s history. → Read More
Kobo, the Canadian e-reader, tablet and e-book company owned by Japan’s e-commerce giant Rakuten, today unveiled its newest device, the Aura HD, a limited-edition e-reader it’s aiming it at power bookworms, with a 265dpi resolution on a 6.8-inch screen, 4 gigabytes of storage and a two-month battery life for the premium price of $169.99 (£139.99). The announcement, made in London to coincide with… → Read More
Sprint, the U.S.’s number-three wireless carrier, today issued a terse statement saying that it would evaluate “carefully” the “unsolicited proposal” from Dish, the country’s number-three pay-TV provider, to buy the carrier for $25.5 billion. Before today, Sprint had been in the midst of working through a deal to sell a 70% stake to Softbank for $20.5 billion. → Read More
Anyone who has had a computer and a connection to the Internet in 1999 quickly knew what it felt like to find any song that you wanted, and then listen to it almost immediately. Well, the immediate part wasn’t true, since you had to download the MP3s, which usually took quite a bit of time on a dialup connection. Since Napster, and it getting sued into oblivion (and then acquired for bits… → Read More
Songza, a free streaming music service that has expert-made playlists and runs on the web and various touch screen platforms, raised $3.8 million according to a SEC filing. While Amazon has long been an “unconfirmed” investor listed on AngelList, it parlayed its investment in the earlier Aime St vehicle into Songza. In late 2011 the startup closed what was reportedly a ‘seven-figure’ round of… → Read More
Y Combinator grad ReelSurfer is an instant video editor, born out of its founders frustration of trying to find clips, quotes and scenes from their favorite movies on YouTube and other video sites. The process is probably familiar to you: Search for clip, don’t find it; if you do find it, it’s part of a larger clip, so you have to download, convert and clip the video yourself. → Read More
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