eMmusic is an online music store that pretty much pioneered the sale of unprotected MP3 music tracks in the early 2000s. The site has gone through ownership and business model changes over the years, shifting from its original monthly all-you-can-download plan to a number-of-tracks a month, and finally to the current X dollars a month […]
Archive | Music
Rdio challenges Pandora, Spotfiy and last.fm with ad-free music stream
Rdio is a year-old entrant into the online music streaming marketplace, offering a Spotify-like experience that allows listeners to choose the exact artist, albums and songs they want to hear. Founded by the creators of Skype, Rdio previously had been a subscription-only service with only a seven-day free trial period. On Thursday the company announced […]
Farewell to Steve Jobs, a True Child of Silicon Valley
I grew up in Sunnyvale, California, in the heart of “Silicon Valley,” and my entire life has been shaped by the ever-advancing technologies being invented in my childhood backyard. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why the death of Steve Jobs yesterday has hit me in ways that I wouldn’t expect. It was a source […]
Disgruntled Punk Fan Threatens to Shoot Up College Radio Station
Like many college radio DJs, I don’t necessarily honor the requests made by listeners. Sometimes the song suggestions don’t fit with the style of my show, other times the artists are too mainstream, but most typically I don’t have time to search the library or can’t find the selection mentioned by the caller. An unlucky […]
Future of Music Coalition to honor FCC Commissioner Michael Copps
The Future of Music Coalition is a more than decade-old organization that advocates for the interests of musicians and their livelihoods in the contemporary media and networked environment. At its upcoming annual policy summit the FMC will be honoring FCC Commissioner Michael Copps for his work on behalf of the music community. Commissioner Copps and […]
A live Jam concert from 1980 demonstrates the synchronicity of radio
I’ve written about Chicago “progressive” rock station WXRT-FM before. It’s truly the only commercial music station in the city that I can tolerate listening to for any extended period of time. Sure, its commercial stop sets can be as long and annoying as any other stations, but everything else about the station stands pretty far […]
Spotify in the US – a review: Is it a Pandora & last.fm killer?
Spotify is an online streaming music service that has been available in parts of Europe since 2008. It differentiates itself from popular US music services like Pandora and last.fm by permitting users to actually select the specific artists and songs to hear, rather than only relying upon an algorithm to choose music similar to a […]
Scrutiny of KUSF Deal Continues as USF and CPRN Respond to FCC’s Inquiry Letter
It’s been nearly seven months since the plug was pulled on the University of San Francisco (USF) terrestrial college radio station KUSF, and the FCC is still scrutinizing the pending sale of the 90.3 FM license to Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN). On August 1, USF and CPRN submitted their joint response to the FCC’s […]
Turntable.fm’s best kept secret: great classical music
Everybody’s talking about turntable.fm these days, the service that allows you to create your own music rooms and share tunes with your friends. The New York based startup is such a huge hit that it appears that Lady Gaga and Kanye West are investing their possibly hard earned cash in the application. We did a […]
Happy 30th Anniversary MTV: “Doing for TV, what FM did for Radio”
Over the weekend I was so jealous when various friends mentioned that they were tuning in to the original first hour of MTV. In celebration of the 30th anniversary of MTV’s launch on August 1, 1981; VH1 Classic is in the midst of a 3-day marathon full of retro MTV programming, including a rebroadcast of […]