July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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As the number of streaming music services continues to increase, CBS-owned Last.fm is making some big changes to its business model, the company announced today.

The most noticeable change for U.S. users is that the desktop app will now only be available to those who have a paid Last.fm subscription. (Note: A paid subscription was always required for international Last.fm users, so this isn’t that much of a surprise.)  However, non-subscription members of the site can still access a free, ad-supported version of the smart radio service via the website, and its Last.fm Discovery site.

Last.fm is also hoping to offer the incentive of a new, upgraded desktop app as a way to boost paid subscriptions, though. For $3 per month, you get no ads, access to the mobile app, and more social features. That price is less expensive than most competing services (Spotify, Pandora, etc.).

The new desktop app, which is currently in beta, features a brand new design that borrows plenty of UI elements from mobile design. My guess is Last.fm is trying to streamline all of its players to look and act essentially the same across all platforms.

The site is also cutting costs by discontinuing its streaming radio service in the majority of foreign markets, not including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Brazil. There’s some indication that this is due to music licensing fees, which are very expensive. And if CBS isn’t seeing a significant return in those other markets, it makes sense that it wouldn’t want to continue paying that kind of money.

Additionally, Last.fm is putting a greater emphasis on its scrobbling technology, which connects to third-party music services like Spotify to help recommend new music based on listening habits. Last.fm is also launching a new Scrobbler iOS app today that scans the music stored on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

Music image via DGDESIGN/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Streaming music service Rdio launched a brand new version of its iOS app today that features a drastically revamped, much prettier user interface.

The new version comes as rival service Spotify is tiptoeing into Rdio’s territory with a new web player. Rdio already rolled out a revamped version of its web player back in May. And it apparently feels the need to polish its mobile applications to keep users happily listening to music rather than abandoning ship for another service.

The new iOS app design borrows quite a bit from the web player design. The old grid-like navigation has been replaced with a new sidebar that’s similar to the website, a paradigm increasingly common among iOS apps in general (YouTube, Facebook, etc.). Users can quickly see a list of popular songs/albums, their own playlists, friend activity, and listening history. The new design also focuses much more on album artwork than in previous version. The interface also places much more emphasis on syncing songs/playlists for offline listening.

Overall, the iOS app is quick and easy to navigate.

Rdio, which has more than 18 million tracks in its library, does give listeners a limited amount of free use, but to gain access to the iOS app and unlimited music streaming you’ll need to sign up for a $10-per-month premium account.

The app is available to download for free via the iTunes store. Check out some screenshots of Rdio 2.0 embedded below.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The founders of “Twitter for music” site Blip.fm this week launched the beta version of its brand new service Fuzz, a site that offers a new slant on interacting with songs you like and the people who share your tastes.

Unlike popular services Pandora and Slacker Radio, Fuzz dismisses the idea that algorithms are the best way to discover new and good music. Instead, the site focuses on creating a very social experience that relies on users building their own radio station(s) around a unique theme or custom genre using audio files from their own music collections. Each radio station gets its own page that features all the songs you’ve listened to thus far, with the most recent on top.

A list of recent listeners also appears within the station’s info, giving you perspective on who has a similar taste in music. That might prompt you to check out their self-created stations, facilitating your discovery of still more music. And to keep in touch with those you’ve added as a friend on the service, there’s a global activity feature located on the top control/tool bar.

“On Blip, and plenty of other socially curated media sites, we noticed that about 10 percent of people were power contributors and the other 90 percent were content to sit back and absorb (and interact) with what’s already submitted,” Fuzz co-creator Jeff Yasuda said in an interview with VentureBeat. “That’s what we’re expecting on Fuzz, and also where Fuzz will succeed (in a way that) Blip really couldn’t.”

Yasuda explained that Blip.fm tied a person’s musical preference directly to their profile page instead of custom radio stations. Following a user dictated your feed of music, and you had to visit a user’s page to gain their custom playlist of music. This presented a problem for long-term social interaction, and in turn, music discovery and curation, Yasuda told me. So for instance, if “mostly classic rock Tom” suddenly went through a four-hour period of playing bad ’80s pop songs by the likes of Cyndi Lauper, Foreigner, and Genesis, he could easily lose half his followers immediately. That means fewer social interactions, and less incentive to use the site over iTunes.

Fuzz fixes this by getting people to follow custom stations, where song choices can be a bit more predictable. Yet, the site still has most of Blip’s social features.

Friends from Facebook, Twitter, and other Fuzz users can listen to music on your custom radio station(s), regardless of whether they own the track or not, and provide feedback in the form of commenting on tracks, giving “props” (Fuzz’s version of the Facebook “Like” button), and hitting the replay (repost) button on songs they want to add to their own custom stations. And like a “Blip’d” message, you can see a list of everyone who commented, listened and re-posted the track.

That means fewer followers who don’t like the unpredictable variety of random song choices. For instance on Fuzz, I could create a mostly classic rock station composed of only music that played during episodes of CW television show Supernatural. That gives me enough leeway to occasionally throw in tracks like “Heat of the Moment” from Asia without completely alienating listeners who expect a certain genre. Or, I could just create a new ’80s bad music station called “Bravery if you admit to liking these songs.”

It’s worth noting that only songs you own will appear in your custom stations, even if you repost a song to it that you don’t own. If you buy the track, it should get added to the mix though. That doesn’t mean you can’t listen to music you don’t own that’s posted to other Fuzz users’ custom radio stations. This is entirely due to music licensing fees and making sure Fuzz isn’t drowning in owed royalties to music copyright owners. But Fuzz does pay some royalties via Sound Exchange, which amounts to far lower fees than those accumulated by streaming music service leaders Pandora and Spotify.

For this reason, Fuzz doesn’t allow users to embed digital media from third-party services such as SoundCloud or YouTube. This also removes any gray area associated with copyright infringement, which plagues a lot of music startups and prevents them from really taking off.

“The old adage of ‘infringe until you get big enough’ to fix a (music service’s) problems is dead in my opinion,” Yasuda said.

If you want the ability to play a song on demand, you need to own the track. Initially I viewed this as a downside, but having spent several hours listening to music on Fuzz, I can say that the overall experience wasn’t diminished. However, I was a bit annoyed that there wasn’t a list of tracks I’d reposted but couldn’t play, more-so for a few that I actually wanted to buy.

On the upside, Fuzz lets you skip or banish tracks you don’t like or want to avoid without any limitations. Pandora and Slacker limit the number of times you can do this, both to provide an incentive to sign up for their premium subscriptions and (I’m guessing) to preserve the algorithm that helps dictate the songs that play in your radio stations. With Fuzz, someone owns the tracks, and you can skip through it without consequence.

Obviously, Fuzz has plenty of competition, including sites like Pandora, Slacker Radio, Songza, and many, many more. Still, this is a unique way to play your own music, and a great attempt at integrating social features into the experience in a way that matters.

The startup has an interesting business model that includes advertising, a future premium subscription option, and other non-traditional promotion and marketing. Yasuda said Fuzz is working on mobile apps for iOS and Android as well as a slew of new features, like a personal taste-match percentage metric that mimics what OKcupid is currently using for dating. The Fuzz team is even borrowing a few more features from Blip.fm, like the following/follower count for user profiles, and may even add the ability to embed media within the comment stream of a user’s profile. (See screenshot above.)

Fuzz — whose founders include Yasuda, Brian Venneman, Eric Lambrecht, and Matt Weldon — currently has about $500,000 in seed funding from Core Ventures and a handful of notable digital music angel investors, including former president of MTV and Fuzz Executive Chairman Mika Salmi. The site’s advisers include former Billboard Magazine head of funding Lisa Howard, former head of Yahoo Music Michael Spiegelman, Ali Avdar of Imeem and Napster, and others. The startup has plans to raise an A round of funding in the future.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Pandora investors aren’t thrilled with the news that technology giant Apple might be launching its own music-streaming service.

At the time of publication, Pandora’s stock is down nearly 18 percent today. Previously, the stock price remained relatively consistent despite tons of competition from the likes of Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, and many others. But Apple would be a far greater threat than Pandora’s other competitors if rumors of its music service plans prove true.

With Pandora, you create customized “radio” stations based on an artist, song, album, or genre by voting on what they do and don’t want to hear. The company offers a free ad-supported version of its smart radio service as well as premium subscription-based version. And while the company posted record high revenue numbers in its latest quarterly report, the expenses related to music licensing prevents it from turning a profit.

And Pandora is far from the only streaming finding it hard to make money. Spotify is also struggling to make a return on its free, ad-supported tier of service. Also, we’ve yet to see a success story from a streaming music service business, which Apple now wants a piece of.

Pandora’s investors are understandably shaken by the news, especially because Apple likely knows the uphill battle it’ll face making its own rumored music service a financial success. Some speculate that Apple’s true intentions are to keep consumers using the iPad and iPhone. A handful of hardware manufacturers are already offering a subscription-based music service, including Samsung, Sony, and (soon) Microsoft’s Xbox. So Apple (somewhat understandably) may want to join in.

P data by YCharts

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Legally troubled Megaupload creator Kim Dotcom will launch his new music-focused venture, Megabox, this year, he said early Monday morning on Twitter.

Dotcom has been vigorously fighting government charges related to copyright infringement charges since January. His incredibly popular file-sharing service Megaupload was shut down by U.S. and New Zealand authorities as part of a massive sting operation against sites that allegedly enabled copyright infringement. A recent video shows the absurdly forceful raid performed on Dotcom’s house as part of the sting.

Despite being in the middle of a legal case that could end up with Dotcom in prison, he is still working hard to open a new disruptive web-based music service. Megabox will “allow artists to sell their creations direct to consumers, allowing artists to keep 90% of earnings,” Dotcom wrote in a December guest post to TorrentFreak. You can see a photo teaser of the service above.

On top of launching a new music service, Dotcom is cooking up something else. On Twitter, he indicated that something people have been waiting for is coming and will be “better” and “faster”. He writes:

I know what you are all waiting for. It’s coming. This year. Promise. Bigger. Better. Faster. 100% Safe & Unstoppable.

The tweet suggests Megaupload will relaunch this year as well, but we’ve got no details except for the tweet. No doubt the consistently vocal Dotcom will let the world know when his service hits the web.

Megabox photo: Kim Dotcom/Instagram

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Streaming music service Rhapsody has now hit the 1 million paid subscriber milestone, the company announced today.

Rhapsody has been around for 10 years, but it is now fighting fiercely with newer competitors like Spotify, MOG and Rdio. Spotify in particular has been agressive and recently announced it now has 2.5 million subscribers. However, don’t let that number fool you, as Spotify is actually in 13 countries, while Rhapsody is only available in the U.S.

In its 10 years, Rhapsody has evolved quite a bit, with better designs and a constantly growing catalogue that now has 13 million tracks. But 2011 is the company’s biggest year, with the 1 million subscriber mark, a small indie rock music festival in Austin, a Windows Phone 7 app launch, integration with Facebook Music and most importantly, the acquisition of small-time rival Napster from Best Buy.

“We’ve accomplished quite a bit over the past decade, so it’s no small statement to say that 2011 was probably our biggest year yet,” said Rhapsody president Jon Irwin, in a statement. “I told our team that when we topped one million paid subscribers, I’d shave my head… it was probably the best free haircut I’ve ever had.”

Rhapsody is now streaming more than 10 million songs a day and is available across more than 60 devices, including PCs, Macs, smartphones, iPod touches, smart TVs and old-school MP3 players. Next on the company’s docket is finding more devices and expanding where you can listen to streaming music.

“The next frontiers for subscription music are the living room and the car,” said Irwin. “Consumers will be able to enjoy Rhapsody from even more connected audio and video systems, as well as other platforms and distribution channels-at home, in the car and everywhere in-between, domestically and abroad.”

Seattle-based Rhapsody was spun off as an independent company last year after being part of RealNetworks, a once-large media company that has had much trouble in recent years. The company charges $9.99 per month for playback on the web and one mobile device or $14.99 per month for playback on the web and three mobile devices.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

On-demand music service MOG has partnered with BMW and Mini to bring a streaming music application to cars for the first time, the company announced today.

MOG is in a seriously heated competition with other on-demand music services such as Spotify, Rdio and Rhapsody, so the company needs to do whatever it can to attract new customers. One of those ways is through Facebook’s Open Graph platform, which has increased MOG’s number of social users by 246 percent. Another avenue, apparently, is cars — the service will be included in each 2011 BMW or Mini model that comes equipped with BMW Apps or the Mini Connected option.

“It is a real thrill to be the first on-demand music service in the car, and to truly transform a powerful, personal environment for experiencing music,” said MOG CEO David Hyman in a statement. “This will make it fast and easy for drivers to enjoy the music they love, uninterrupted and unlimited, while maintaining their focus on the road.”

To get access to MOG’s on-demand service inside a BMW or Mini, the user must subscribe to the service’s $10 per month option and use the MOG iPhone application. MOG has a catalog of 13 million songs and now has access points through an in-browser desktop app, iPhone app, Android app, and Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-ray players.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

On-demand music service Rhapsody has acquired rival music service Napster from Best Buy, it announced today.

The move will give Rhapsody, one of the oldest streaming music services, more subscribers and help it contend with new aggressive players in the same space such as Spotify, MOG and Rdio. Napster subscribers and other assets will be transferred over to Rhapsody later this year after the deal closes.

Napster is best known as the peer-to-peer program that started the rise of digital music piracy, but it has been a paid music service in some form since 2003. Best Buy bought Napster for $121 million in September 2008 and turned it into a surprisingly decent on-demand service with a catalog of more than 14 million songs. Best Buy will receive a minority stake in Rhapsody.

Rhapsody currently has more than 800,000 subscribers paying at least $10 per month for access to a catalog of over 12 million songs. We don’t know how many subscribers Napster has, but this it will give Rhapsody more heft and better negotiating power when it talks with music labels.

In the face of challengers like Spotify, MOG and Rdio, Rhapsody has evolved by adding better social media integration and strong mobile applications for iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7. The biggest area where Rhapsody loses points compared to its peers is sound quality by only offering 128 kbps streams.

Are you a fan of Rhapsody or Napster? What do you think about this move?

There is a fundamental disagreement about the value of and revenue models for distributing recorded music. The Spotify music streaming service was a runaway success in the U.K., but took well more than a year to gather the rights it needed to launch stateside. The lingering question about Pandora is how much it will pay for music rights when it renegotiates the rate in 2015. Turntable.fm, the media darling product launch of 2011, has an abundance of backers, but a scarcity of rights, something it’s actively working to address.

Meanwhile, investment dollars in the music space are slowly starting to rebound after a long quiet period. But are investors buying good properties low, or just throwing good money after bad? As these dynamics shift, the opportunities to discuss them need to shift as well.

Billboard’s FutureSound — taking place November 17-18 in San Francisco — will get decision-makers from all sides of this equation into focused, drill-down discussions on the major stumbling blocks and opportunities in the digital music and entertainment space. This will not be panel after panel of leaders in just one sector preaching to themselves in 20,000-foot platitudes.

Instead, this event will have a series of focused keynotes from the top minds in investment, technology and music today. A handful of presentations from thought leaders will offer specific solutions structured around answering the most pressing questions, then workshopping these ideas further backstage with additional experts to produce solution-oriented recommendations. The results will be published in the following week’s Billboard magazine and on Billboard.biz.

VentureBeat readers get 15 percent off by using promo code VENBEAT11.

Keynote speakers:
Ron Conway, Investor, SV Angels
Seth Goldstein, Chairman/Co-Founder, Turntable.fm

Billboard will also showcase both under-the-radar digital music startups defining tomorrow’s competitive landscape and cutting-edge musical acts during a party after the day wraps on Nov. 18, pulling in top names from what’s next in music in the way only Billboard can. Register today to learn and shape the discussion that will shape the music business.

Confirmed speakers include:
Jed Carlson, COO, Reverbnation
Tim Chang, Managing Director, Mayfield Fund
Paul Geller, EVP Strategic Development, Grooveshark
Jack Isquith, SVP, Strategic Development, Slacker
David Israelite, President, NMPA
Steve Jang, Founder/CEO, Schemantic Labs
Jolie O’Dell, Writer, VentureBeat
Jeff Roberto, Director of Consumer Marketing, Shazam
Mitch Rotter, SVP Marketing/Product Development, UMGD
Michael Schneider, CEO, Mobile Roadie
J Sider, CEO/Founder, RootMusic
Jeff Toig, Founder & General Manager, Muve Music
…And Many More!

Register now and use the promo code VENBEAT11 for a 15 percent discount.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Just ahead of the launch of Facebook’s much anticipated music service, Internet radio service Pandora has unveiled a slick new HTML5 website and removed the cap on how much music free users can stream each month.

“In late 2010 we started with a clean sheet of paper, challenging ourselves to create a new Internet radio experience that was fast, social and easy while still being familiar to the tens of millions of people that listen to Pandora each month,” Pandora CTO Tom Conrad wrote in a blog post. “The result is ‘New Pandora’.”

Streaming music services have been making quite a few headlines as of late with the hyped U.S. launch of Spotify, the aforementioned Facebook service and MOG and Rdio offering free versions of their services. With such a crowded field, Pandora has decided to reinvent its site and the way users experience music in hopes of keeping people coming back.

The new HTML5 version of Pandora looks much cleaner and more modern than its old implementation. Look at the above photo and you can see the easy-to-access play controls on top and colorful high-res album art in the center. One click on the left-hand column changes your artist, song or genre-created radio station. Another helpful feature shows lyrics below the song information.

There are also new social features included in the redesign that help with music discovery. You now have enhanced profiles and access to a music feed that lets you see what your friends and like-minded members are listening to. Stations will also now have their own URLs, which make them easier to share on social networks.

Along with the redesign, Pandora has thankfully removed the 40-hour streaming cap that used to plague all non-paid users. Still, to get the most out of the service, users have to pay for a premium Pandora One account. A premium account costs $36 a year, removes advertising and lets users listen to higher-quality audio.

What do you think of the new Pandora layout and site changes?

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

There’s a digital music revolution afoot. For the price of a single iTunes album, you can stream a month’s worth of songs from millions of choices while at home or on the go. But there’s so much movement and so much competition that it’s hard to keep track of all the companies worthy of your hard-earned cash.

This week, MOG introduced a new approach to free streaming on its service while Rdio said it planned to offer a free element to its service soon. Both companies, along with Spotify, are expected to take part in Facebook’s upcoming music service, which I expect to be Facebook letting you stream music from several companies through Facebook itself rather than needing to go to another site or download other software. The new Facebook offering is expected to be announced at its f8 conference next week.

Even if you can stream your music through Facebook, you’ll still likely be beholden to the pricing and plans to get the most of each partnered service. On that note, let’s take a closer look at the best companies allowing you stream millions of songs to PCs, tablets and smartphones. In this article, we’ll only be considering music companies that let you subscribe monthly and listen to anything in the catalog at a single click. This leaves out big-name services like Pandora, Turntable.fm, Last.fm and iheartradio because they aren’t truly on-demand. We’re also leaving out music lockers like Amazon Cloud Drive and Google Music.

Let’s get down to business.

#1: Spotify

Price: Free version w/ ads, $4.99/month for web, $9.99/month for web and one mobile device
Catalog: Over 15 million songs
Sound Quality: Between 192 kbps and 320 kbps
Mobile Apps: iOS and Android

Spotify has been given a ton of headlines and hype since its launch in Europe in October 2008, based mostly on the fact that it let users stream a lot of music for free. But the service has changed and evolved since then, and it finally launched in the U.S. in July. At present, it’s the best streaming music service running today.

The best feature the service offers is integration with your personal music library on top of its 15 million streaming songs. I have a ton of music and some of it simply isn’t available through streaming services. (Artists like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, for example, don’t have their music licensed for streaming anywhere.) The other aspect where Spotify shines is social integration with Facebook and the ability to collaborate with friends on playlists. You can also subscribe to other people’s playlists that you find on the web.

Spotify loses points for making you download a native application to stream, but I’m willing to accept that so I can also play songs off my hard drive. It also loses a little clout for having mobile applications that aren’t as robust compared to its peers. To get the most out of the iOS and Android apps, they must sync with playlists you make on the desktop rather than being truly independent in letting you find and access music.

#2: MOG

Price: Free version w/ ads/incentives, $4.99/month for web, $9.99/month for web and one mobile device
Catalog: Over 12 million songs
Sound Quality: Web default at 320 kbps, mobile streaming and downloads up to 320 kbps (must be manually turned on)
Mobile Apps: iOS and Android

MOG comes in at a very close second on this list. The company has been trying to make a name for itself since 2009, and it has evolved quickly into one of the best music services around. It features a recently launched HTML5-based interface (see above) that is all around excellent, making it easy to create playlists, maintain a long queue of songs, search for music, and create a calibrated radio station based on an artist you pick.

MOG’s greatest aspect is that it has best-sounding catalog, with music streaming at an enviable 320 kbps. It also gives you the option to manually set up your mobile iOS or Android app (BlackBerry is coming soon) download songs at 320 kbps for offline playback. If you’re an audiophile like me, this is your service.

The service’s biggest detraction is non-existent social integration. Because Spotify and Rdio feel designed for sharing and interaction with friends, MOG makes you feel isolated in comparison. Using the service’s new HTML5 interface, you don’t have social networking features besides being able to post what song you’re listening to on Facebook or Twitter. However, if you’re only using a streaming service for tunes alone, MOG’s lacking social features may not be an issue.

#3: Rdio

Price: $4.99/month for web, $9.99/month for web and one mobile device, bulk family plans
Catalog: Over 11 million songs
Sound Quality: Will not officially disclose
Mobile Apps: iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7

Rdio was launched to some fanfare last year by the founders of Skype and Kazaa, with the intention of combining a good streaming music catalog with powerful social networking features. While its 11-million-song catalog is smaller than some of its peers, it helps makes up for it with a well-designed user interface and above-average mobile apps that promote discovery and sharing.

The social side of Rdio really is worth highlighting. Rdio makes it easy to explore playlists and artists from big names and friends alike, create and share your own playlists, and it even can embed songs into your Twitter posts.

The biggest drawback of Rdio is sound quality. The company said it offers up to 320 kbps streams if it is “available,” but would not be more specific than that. So we don’t know how many songs are actually encoded at 320 kbps and what the lowest bitrate its songs are encoded at. In my own testing, I thought Rdio’s bitrate usually sounded somewhere between Spotify and Rhapsody.

#4: Rhapsody

Price: $9.99/month for web and one mobile device, $14.99/month for web and three mobile devices
Catalog: Over 12 million songs
Sound Quality: 128 kbps on web and mobile, 192 kbps on Verizon LTE-enabled phones and tablets
Mobile Apps: iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7

Rhapsody is one of the oldest players in streaming music, and surprisingly enough it’s still relatively good. It boasts that it has more than 800,000 subscribers, and it’s the only company on this list willing to admit how many subscribers it has. Rhapsody has a hardy selection of songs, a well-rounded interface and easy ways to explore genres. To help it keep up with the likes of Spotify and Rdio, the company just added new social features, including Facebook and Twitter integration and playlist sharing.

Rhapsody loses points when it comes to pricing because it does not offer a $5 a month plan for web-only listening, though the unique $15 per month plan option with three mobile devices is interesting. It also lacks in the area of sound quality with its paltry 128 kbps streams, which during my tests easily sounded worse than the rest of the services.

#5: Napster

Price: $5/month for web, $10/month for web and mobile devices (cheaper annual plans available as well)
Catalog: Over 14 million songs
Sound Quality: Between 128 kbps and 256 kbps
Mobile Apps: iOS, Android and BlackBerry

Napster is best known as the peer-to-peer program that started digital music piracy, but it’s now a pretty decent streaming music service owned by Best Buy. While it’s somewhat unexpected, the service has a strong catalog, several ways to explore genres and a way to stream music directly from Billboard’s charts going all the way back to 1966.

Napster’s best aspect is its catalog of more than 14 million songs (17 million(!) in the U.K.). That sort of wealth means you’ve got an even better chance of finding that obscure track you used to enjoy 15 years ago. Another admirable aspect is the option to pay a lower monthly cost if you pay yearly rather than month-to-month.

On the downside, the service has the most lackluster interface of its peers with a separate browser window pop-up for playing music. It also does not feature a considerable amount of social integration outside of sharing single songs on Facebook and Twitter and allowing you to use your Facebook photo for your profile.

Honorable mention: Grooveshark

Grooveshark is a strange beast that lets you search and stream a massive catalog of manually uploaded tunes for free. It technically counts as an on-demand music service, but it’s not as robust and accurate as its peers. Predictably, the company has been in legal trouble as of late because it doesn’t have the licences to the songs it streams. It’s seen so many complaints that its native iOS and Android apps were pulled from their respective stores. Still, it deserves an honorable mention for ease of use, the ability to upload and listen to songs, and a good radio player that streams similar tracks to ones you’ve played.

But enough about us. What’s your favorite streaming music service?

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Not to be left out of the streaming music hubbub this week, music subscription service Rhapsody announced today that it has added Facebook and Twitter integration to its web service as well as an improved radio recommendation engine.

Rhapsody is one of the oldest players when it comes to on-demand streaming music and has come under fire recently from the likes of Spotify, MOG, Rdio and Grooveshark. The company likely hopes adding social features will help it stay relevant in a constantly evolving landscape. Rhapsody is also rumored to be launching some sort of partnership with Facebook next week at Facebook’s f8 conference.

The biggest aspect of Rhapsody’s announcement today is stronger integration with social networks. Users will have the ability to see playlists and songs played by their Facebook friends and let Facebook friends see their musical tastes even if they aren’t Rhapsody subscribers. Facebook “Like” buttons will also now appear throughout the service’s web interface.

“Rhapsody members can now tap into a music community that is 800,000 members strong to share, recommend and find music,” said Rhapsody president Jon Irwin, in a statement.

The company also has a new “My Radio” feature, which will let users hear a mix of the latest 150 songs a friend has been listening to. In addition, Rhapsody will provide access to the profiles of the company’s “Editors,” music journalists who offer curated playlists of the newest buzz-worthy music and old favorites.

Rhapsody spun off as an independent company last year after being part of RealNetworks, a once-large media company that has had much trouble in recent years. In March, the RealNetworks’ CEO resigned after only being with the company a little more than a year.

Rhapsody’s catalog has more than 12 million songs. It charges $9.99 per month for playback on the web and one mobile device or $14.99 per month for playback on the web and three mobile devices.

Are you a fan of Rhapsody? Do you think it can stay relevant in the new streaming music landscape?

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Subscription music service MOG on Wednesday announced it will launch a free on-demand component to its service tomorrow, in a move that will help it better challenge players like Spotify and Grooveshark.

MOG has been making a name for itself with unlimited streaming since 2009, but it has been slightly less prominent since Spotify’s hyped U.S. launch in July 2011. One of Spotify’s biggest assets is its free service, which lets users hear what Spotify has to offer while enduring some ads between songs. Now MOG can play on a similar plane and introduce more new users to its service, which has a library of more than 11 million streaming songs.

The new free service from MOG will be a little different than the simple ad-supported model Spotify is currently touting. MOG users will have what the company calls a “virtual gas tank” in the top left corner that tells them how much free music they have available for listening. To get more gas in the tank, users can perform actions like sharing playlists with friends on Facebook, referring friends to the service or listening to promoted artists in MOG’s library. MOG’s free service will be ad free for 60 days while users get acclimated.

Like other subscription music services such as Rdio and Napster, MOG charges $5 a month to access unlimited music through the web and $10 a month to access unlimited music through the web and mobile apps. Ideally, the company wants users to try the free service and then sign up for premium features that guarantee unlimited streams without advertising or jumping through any digital hoops.

The Berkeley, Calif.-based MOG last raised $9.5 million in funding in February 2010, with the round led by Menlo Ventures and Balderton Capital. It has raised $24.9 million total.

To me, MOG’s premium version is one of the best subscription services today, along with Spotify. Ever since MOG launched its slick HTML5 beta at the end of June, it has featured one of the best interfaces compared to its peers. Another area the service excels is sound quality, as it uses 320 kbps streams — something that is sure to attract audiophiles.

Will you give MOG’s free service a shot?

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion is working on its own digital streaming music service that would run specifically on its smartphones and tablets, according to CNET.

RIM is currently in a tough position, as its once-great smartphone market share slips away quickly to Google Android and Apple iOS smartphones and tablets. Adding another option for accessing media on its devices could, in theory, be another way to attract new consumers and retain those who are still loyal.

The article says RIM is well on its way to finishing the music licensing deals. The company has signed a deal with at least one of the four major U.S. record companies, and it is close to signing with at least two others. Exact pricing was not announced but RIM intends for the service to be cheaper than Spotify and other streaming music services.

RIM did not immediately respond with an official comment.

The company would integrate the new service into BlackBerry Messenger, which is one of the most widely used services on its smartphones. But Messenger could be taken down a notch by upcoming messaging offerings from Apple and Facebook, so additions to the service would help it stand out.

To be fair, music services already exist that offer applications on most major smartphone platforms. Rhapsody, Grooveshark, Rdio, Pandora, Slacker, and iheartradio all offer streaming music apps for the BlackBerry, iOS, and Android. And Spotify and MOG are both available for iOS and Android devices.

On the device level, RIM has been struggling to make the case that it is innovating at the speed of its competitors. Last week Sprint cancelled plans to make a 4G BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. In early August, RIM launched seven new BlackBerry phones running OS 7, but the devices didn’t appear to be different enough from previous offerings to stand out. Hopefully its new line of QNX OS phones will pack more innovative features.

What do you think of RIM’s proposed music service? Would you subscribe to a music service specifically for your BlackBerry?

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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European music service Spotify has only been available in the U.S. for a few weeks and it’s already being hit with a patent infringement lawsuit from little-known mobile media company PacketVideo.

The patent in question, No. 5,636,276, was filed in 1995 and is listed as a “device for the distribution of music information in digital form.” The vagueness of the patent makes it applicable to almost any streaming music service.

Spotify said it will strongly contest PacketVideo’s claim. The company’s full statement reads:

“In just under three years, Spotify has become more popular than any other music service of its kind. This success is, in large part, due to our own highly innovative, proprietary hybrid technology that incorporates peer-to-peer technology. The result is what we humbly believe to be a better music experience – lightning fast, dead simple and really social. PacketVideo is claiming that by distributing music over the Internet, Spotify (and by inference any other similar digital music service) has infringed one of the patents that has previously been acquired by PacketVideo. Spotify is strongly contesting PacketVideo’s claim.”

PacketVideo was an active startup several years back that focused on streaming video to mobile devices, and in 2010 the company was acquired by Docomo. PacketVideo had nothing to do with the patent originally and only purchased it a few years ago, according to TechDirt.

Sweden-based Spotify initially launched in Europe in October 2008. It currently has more than 10 million users worldwide, with 1 million paid subscribers. The company has raised $120 million thus far and is valued at around $1 billion.

What do you think of Spotify? Do you think the lawsuit is fair?

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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The much-hyped European music service Spotify is launching today in the U.S. We covered the news yesterday, but a few of the more important details, such as pricing and levels or service, weren’t available until now.

Spotify will launch with three tiers for pricing and service. First, there’s Spotify Free, which lets users listen to music from the service on their computer for nothing and pays for itself using advertising. To get access to the free version, users must have an invitation.

If you’d rather not wait, Spotify offers $5-a-month and $10-a-month subscription plans. For $5, users can listen to Spotify’s catalog on their computers without ads. For $10, they can listen to high-quality music on their computers and on mobile platforms like the iPhone and Android.

To join the service, you have to first download Spotify’s software.

Sweden-based Spotify initially launched in Europe in October 2008, and much to the envy of U.S. music fans, Europeans talked about the 15-million-song service as if it were the greatest thing since the invention of the Internet. Finally U.S. users are getting a taste with today’s launch.

“We’re so excited to bring what we humbly feel is the best music service in the world to the U.S. today,” said Ken Parks, Chief Content Officer and Managing Director of Spotify North America. “The response has already been amazing and we hope that people in the U.S. will love Spotify as much as they do in Europe.”

Two areas Spotify hopes to stand out with are social experience and the catalog. With social, the company lets users share tracks and playlists with friends with a single click. Users can sign into Facebook for even more integration with already established connections. The other area is the company’s music catalog, which consists of 15 million tracks.

The biggest established competitors to Spotify in the U.S. are MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody, and Napster. Spotify hopes to challenge those properties with hype, the promise of free music, and a strong financial backing that includes support of the all the major U.S. record companies.

Spotify currently has 10 million users worldwide, with 1 million paid subscribers. The company has raised $120 million so far and is valued at about $1 billion. It recently finished raising a round of financing from Russia’s DST, the investment company that has previously backed Facebook, Groupon and Zynga.

Spotify’s U.S. introduction video is below:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

European online music service Spotify has enough deals penned and funding in place that it will likely launch next week, according to All Things D.

Spotify provides cloud-based steaming music in Europe but announced Wednesday that it would finally hit the U.S. “soon.” The service offers three models: a free version supported by ads that allows 10 free hours of streaming per month, an unlimited subscription for €4.99 (about $7.22) a month, and a premium service, which lets customers access music on their mobile devices and costs €9.99 (about $14.46) a month.

The biggest established competitors to Spotify in the U.S. are MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody, and Napster. But other companies are quickly jumping on board the cloud music service bandwagon and developing new products. Google and Amazon are also testing streaming music services that let users stream their own music to other devices. Apple is expected to offer something similar in the future because it purchased streaming music service Lala in December 2009.

After hearing Europeans hype up Spotify since its launch, we can’t wait to give it a spin. And we’ll see next week if its launch prediction comes true.

Are you looking forward to Spotify’s U.S. launch?

When launched, Facebook users in Spotify-enabled countries — such as Sweden, France, and the U.K. — will see a Spotify icon appear on the left side of their newsfeeds. When you click on the Spotify icon, it will first install the service on the desktop and then let you stream millions of songs for free through Facebook.

Another interesting aspect of the service is the ability to let you and your Facebook friends listen to music at the same time. It could be pretty neat to listen to new music and talk about it in real-time with multiple friends in one online spot.

No money will be exchanged in the partnership, but the deal has obvious benefits for both parties. Facebook will have a popular and well-liked music service, and Spotify will likely see a dramatic increase in new customers.

The Spotify deal isn’t the first time (and likely not the last) we’ve seen Facebook try to add professional media content to its platform. Back in March, Facebook and Warner Bros. worked out a deal to stream blockbuster movies on Facebook.