TechFest Northwest is the 2 year-old self-described “little sister” to the long-running Music Fest Northwest held every fall in Portland, Oregon. One track of TFNW’s first day this year was dedicated to the relationship between art and technology, with music and musicians taking a prominent place. Although one afternoon panel was provocatively titled “Technology killed […]
Turntable.fm has announced that it is sunsetting Piki.fm, which the company described as a “laid back” alternative to its better known social networking service. Here’s from tt.fm Billy Chasen’s latest blog post: “I’m also sad to announce today that we are going to shut down Piki in a couple weeks. We poured ourselves into it […]
The “what is radio” debate resurfaced earlier this month. Do Pandora and other streaming music services qualify as “radio”? Jennifer Lane, President of RAIN Summits, pronounced the question irrelevant at her Audio4cast blog. “I say who cares whether it’s radio or not,” Lane declared. But some weeks earlier Pandora’s Tim Westergren posted a commentary explaining the […]
I am checking out this YouTube preview of iTunes radio. Seems like a pretty functional service at first glance. You can customize channels and such, just as you can with Pandora, Spotify, Google All Access and the rest. But then there is the Siri interface. “Play Radiohead Radio,” the user commands. “Station Radiohead Radio playing!” […]
Pink Floyd lodging public complaints about Pandora and Tavis Smiley moving into online radio are just two stories in this roundup of streaming radio news. Pandora announced that more than 100 car models offer smartphone integration to control its app. The service is offering free commercial-free listening to listeners using an integrated car stereo through […]
Apple has confirmed the long awaited expectations: some kind of iTunes based “iRadio” application should be available by the fall. The Washington Post article summarizes the subscription free service: “Using the firm’s Music app, users will be able to create digital radio stations based on their favorite artists or songs. Listeners can then tweak the […]
On Thursday Slacker Radio announced that it added 6 million listeners since the service relaunched with a new design in February. That’s when Slacker upped the ante with unlimited free listening to its streaming, curated stations on PCs and mobile devices, in addition to an interface overhaul. These stations include news and sports from ABC […]
I am a radio scholarship nerd and get particularly excited when I come across other college radio scholars/theorists/historians. Today I learned that the upcoming Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Chicago (March 6-10) will feature more than a dozen papers and panels about radio. The organization also recently launched a Radio Studies Scholarly […]
Earbits has been around for about two years, running a nice site full of curated music channels where independent artists can strut their stuff. Nothing earth shattering about this; we’ve been reviewing indie oriented streaming sites for years. But then someone got an idea. Why not reward the network’s listeners for extolling Earbit artist selections […]
One of the great concert pianists of the twentieth century has departed. Van Cliburn died this morning at the age of 78. He is best remembered as the winner of the 1958 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow—a victory that contributed to the “thaw” of the Cold War in late 1950s and early 1960s. Van Cliburn […]
