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May

[Hands-On] Play Music Is Now The Template For All Future Music Services (Even If It Takes A Little While To Love)

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Google, News

At the start of this review, I was simultaneously excited and frustrated. Now I'm just plain excited. For a bit of context, I have been bouncing between cloud music services since Lala was still a thing. I had one simple desire: I wanted to pay a monthly fee for unfettered access to a large library of content, but still wanted to be able to bring my own. I know that $10/month is not going to get me every song in existence, but if I can pay for most music, and then supply the rest, I'll be happy. Today, Google finally gave me what I wanted and, make no mistake, this is the model that other apps are going to follow for a long time to come.

Feb

Slacker Radio Updates Paid Model, Adds $10/Month All-You-Can-Eat Option To Its Radio Service

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, News

As if there weren't enough contenders out there for music subscription service, Slacker Radio has updated its business model. You can still get the standard ad-supported radio station features that were always available. However the company has added a Spotify-like buffet option for $10/month. Pony up the dough and you can remove all ads and listen to as many tracks as you want.

The combination is pretty powerful, as one of the biggest complaints over Spotify is its discovery problems. Slacker Radio never really dethroned Pandora, but it did offer some stiff competition. There has been relatively little overlap between radio and subscription services.

Nov

[Update: It's Live] Rdio Beta Review: Bugs Aside, Spotify Could Learn A Thing Or Two From This App

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, News, Reviews

To call Rdio's latest beta a complete overhaul might be a bit of a misnomer. The feature set is largely the same, even if the design has gotten a facelift. However, seeing as the music streaming wars are heating up, it seems like a perfect time to take a second look at the service that always seems to play second fiddle to the behemoth that is Spotify.

Update: This version of the app is now live.

For the uninitiated, Rdio (ar-dee-oh) is a music streaming service with both web and Android-based applications. New users can get a limited amount of free music via the site.

Oct

Rdio Launches Beta For Its Upcoming App Redesign, And It Is Glorious

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, News

When it comes to streaming subscription services, Spotify has stolen the spotlight in the US, where companies like Rdio have struggled to get the attention and acclaim they used to enjoy back before the Swedish invasion. With Xbox Music looming on the horizon, promising to install 30 million free, ad-supported tracks into every computer running Windows 8, the market has never been more competitive. Which makes Rdio's newly announced overhaul to its Android app all the more timely. It's even better that it looks fantastic.

Old Versus New

^{The old version of Rdio that current users have.}

^{The slick new look.}

Dec

[New App] SoundTracking Lets You Share Your Music Taste With The Social World, With One Twist

Posted by Brandon Lancaster in Applications, News

SoundTracking made its jump from iOS onto the Android Market today boasting a new, Android exclusive (for now), feature. As the name indicates, this app allows you to keep track of songs you're listening to and post them to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare for your friends to see and comment on. Included with your post will be a snippet of the song, a photo, and your geo-location.

That Android exclusive feature I mentioned before is the ability for you and your friends to play full versions of shared songs via Rdio or Spotify, instead of just listening to a short clip.

Jun

[Review] Sonos Controller For Android And Sonos S5 Wireless Speaker System: So-So Performance In A Svelte Package

Posted by Brian O'Toole in App Reviews, Applications, Devices By Manufacturer, Other Reviews, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Introduction

Sonos is a company well-known in the tech industry for their line of wireless speaker systems, designed to let you sling music around your house without the hassle of complex setup processes or routing wires through ceilings and walls. To mark the launch of their Sonos Controller for Android application, Sonos generously loaned me a full multi-room system consisting of two Sonos S5 speaker units and a wireless ZoneBridge router. Given the buzz surrounding Sonos's products, it seemed best to review the system as a whole, viewing the application and hardware as a complete set. Read on to see how it all stacked up.

Jan

HTC EVO 4G: Fix Music Streaming And (Maybe) Boost Your 3G Speeds With A Simple Hack

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, News, Sprint

This morning, I noticed an interesting thread in the EVO subsection of the XDA forums that claimed to be able to fix music streaming (which was broken in some apps after the latest OTA), while boosting 3G speeds by .2 to .6 Mbps. As the process is very simple and easily reversible, I gave it a go - but decided that I was going to use SpeedTest to benchmark the changes. Unfortunately, what I found wasn't what I expected.

Before doing anything, I ran the test three times. Before the fix my average download speed was 938.67 Kbps. After I ran the fix, my speed dropped to an average of 782 Kbps.