A full 7.5 million years later, it arrives at the answer: 42.

Google appears to be referencing that bit of geek cult humor in a new device, the H2G2-42, that it is currently submitting to the FCC for regulatory testing. H2G2 is a Wikipedia-ish guide to “life, the universe, and everything” inspired by Adams’ books.

There’s little data available about the device, but Google does say it is a “media player,” and a “fixed base station” with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, which would make it almost certainly a replacement for Google’s failed Nexus Q. The Q was Google’s ”first social streaming media player” that met with almost universally negative reviews, underwhelmed users, and is no longer for sale.

Source: FCC

Google device H2G2-42 is in FCC testing

One change that seems likely: It appears that the H2G2-42 will allow users to plug in external monitors via provided USB ports:

Source: FCC

Google’s H2G2-42 may be connectable to external monitors

As The Verge notes, Google’s new streaming music app broke compatibility with the Nexus Q. The Google Play Music All Access product is impressive, enabling personalized “radio stations” and inexpensive streaming music. Google calls it “radio without rules,” and it seems reasonable that Google would want a shiny new device to go with this major new music push.

Photos are not yet available and more details will have to wait until 45 days after certification. And it’s unlikely that a music streaming device will be the ultimate answer to the ultimate question.

But meanwhile, enjoy:

Image credits: Google, FCC

Clear Channel-owned streaming radio service iHeartRadio announced today that it has surpassed 30 million registered users less than two years after its relaunch.

iHeartRadio streams customized radio stations and more than 1,500 live radio stations for free on apps for the web, iOS, Android, and more. It competes alongside streaming radio powerhouse Pandora, which announced that had hit 200 million registered users in April; and Slacker Radio, which claims to have recently attracted record growth. And soon, these services will likely have to fight it out with Apple.

While it faces tough competition, iHeartRadio claims its growth has been huge. The iHeartRadio app has been downloaded 175 million times in five years, but it only requires people to register if they sign up for customizable radio. Because it hit 30 million signups in less than two years, “iHeartRadio becomes second only to Instagram as the fastest-growing digital service in Internet history,” the company said in a release. As you might expect, that’s a bit overblown. The iHeartRadio brand has been around since 2008, and the first iHeartRadio app hit the iPhone that year. So it accumulated many fans before requiring people to register for customized radio stations in 2011.

“This latest milestone is another clear indication how our full-featured iHeartRadio experience resonates with tens of millions of people — with more coming every day,” Clear Channel Media President Brian Lakamp said in a statement. “Being able to draw on Clear Channel’s unparalleled range of resources allows us to continually innovate and improve on the user experience, while giving listeners access to both live radio and custom stations.”

Man and dog listening to the radio via Shutterstock

Ever felt like your favorite music app just doesn’t get you? With its latest iPhone app, Songza wants to get to know you better than ever and help find the perfect music for your mood or activity.

Songza is best known for curating playlists with more intelligence than that of Pandora or other radio services. For example, the app knows what day and time it is and pairs that with info with your current activity (working, relaxing, exercising, etc.)

On top of improving performance, the new iPhone app takes this intelligent playlist a bit further by letting you tell the app what you are specifically doing rather than it giving you pre-set options. In the App Store, Songza says:

Doing something special? From the Concierge screen on iPhone or iPod Touch, shake your device and tell Songza exactly what you’re up to; Songza will then find the right music to make it better. For example, you could enter ‘Entertaining’ and Songza will find you music to soundtrack the perfect party.

While the company has a decent web app, its mobile apps are the arguably the best way to interact and experience the service. The iPhone app has been downloaded more than 6 million times to date and has a 4.5 out of 5 rating in the App Store. It also has apps for Android and Kindle Fire.

Songza is based in New York City and was founded in 2007. The company recently raised $3.82 million in new funding, according to an SEC filing. (The company had “no comment.”)

Check out a few more photos from the new iPhone and iPad apps below.

Photos via Songza

After a month of speculation, Twitter has finally launched a full-fledged application for the iPhone and web dedicated to music discovery, the company announced today.

Twitter bought the music app We Are Hunted last year with the intention to use that startup’s tech, which focuses on music discovery and finding new music to listen to. Now that tech is on display in the new Twitter #Music app.

“Today, we’re releasing Twitter #music, a new service that will change the way people find music, based on Twitter,” We Are Hunted founder Stephen Philips wrote in a blog post. “It uses Twitter activity, including tweets and engagement, to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists.”

The Twitter Music app lets you see songs that have been tweeted by artists and people you follow on Twitter. You can also use the app to listen to music other people follow. Twitter uses rapper Wiz Khalifa as an example — you can search for his name and then see the artists he is following. When you find a song you really love on Twitter Music and want to share, you can compose tweets from inside the app.

Songs playing on Twitter Music come from three sources: iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio. The songs playing will by default pop up as a preview in iTunes, but if you login with either Spotify or Rdio, you can listen to the song in full on those services.

The service is available first in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. Access to the app will be rolling out to all Twitter users over the next few hours.

Twitter says it also wants to bring the app to more countries and eventually launch an Android counterpart to the iPhone app.

Check out a few more photos of Twitter Music below:

Top photos via Twitter

I guess time flies when you’re having fun.

After all those years, Apple’s iconic music service is still the largest music online music retailer, and in fact it’s the largest music retailer of any kind. As of February, the service has sold over 25 billion songs out of Apple’s 28 million-strong global catalog, and well over 435 million people have active iTunes accounts.

According to the NPD, eight out of 10 people who buy digital music have bought music from iTunes, and on an overall unit basis, iTunes owns 63 percent of the music download business.

On the cusp of a possible Apple digital streaming service, that dominance could continue for quite some time.

“Since the launch of Apple’s iTunes store, digital music downloads have become the dominant revenue source for the recorded music industry and iTunes continues to be the dominant retailer,” the NPD Group‘s Russ Crupnick said. “There’s a belief that consumers don’t need to buy music because of streaming options, when in fact streamers are much more likely than the average consumer to buy music downloads.”

The NPD surveyed 5,400 Internet users to build its digital music report, and while 38 percent of the sampling said that it is still important to own music, 41 percent of those who listen to Pandora and other free music-streaming platforms said the same thing. In addition, many of those streamers said they’ve bought songs because they discovered them on a streaming service or on the radio.

That’s important for Apple, because an iTunes streaming music service has been rumored for years, and just last week it appears that Apple and the number one music label in the world, Universal Music Group, came to terms on a streaming music payments agreement.

Though the number of American music listeners who buy music online has remained relatively unchanged, the amount they are spending has gone up about 6 percent since last year. That number could rise in 2013 if Apple does launch a streaming music service and it is well-integrated into an iTunes purchase capability.

photo credit: aagius via photopin cc

Apple is currently the largest music vendor in the world, having sold over 25 billion songs via iTunes as of February. Well over 435 million people have active iTunes user accounts, storing their credit card information with Apple, and Apple has over 28 million songs in its global catalog. In addition, there are probably well over half a billion Apple mobile devices – iPhones, iPads, and iPods — in the market today.

But, despite  rumors for well over two years that Apple is going to launch a streaming music service, and the fact that over 200 million people are using iTunes in the cloud, the music giant doesn’t have a streaming music product to compete with the likes of Spotify and Pandora.

Yet.

Today it looks like those rumors might finally come true, as Apple and the world’s largest record label, Universal Music Group, appear to be close to a streaming music agreement.

According to The Verge, Apple and Universal are just days away from an agreement. The stumbling block that has scuttled previous agreements is cost — Apple has been asking for a royalty payment schedule that’s about half of the 12 cents per 100 songs streaming music leader Pandora pays.

(Spotify apparently pays 35 cents, iHeartRadio pays 22 cents, and even at 12 cents, Pandora can’t seem to turn a profit.)

Apple wanted six cents per 100 songs, but apparently will not get it. It’s likely, however, that Apple’s size and market position has enabled it to drive a harder bargain than any existing music streaming business.

Last time rumors of an impending Apple streaming music service reached this level, Pandora stock took a nosedive. Today it’s down slightly again, but not nearly as severely, suggesting the bad news is already priced in, or that Pandora’s strong subscriber growth — topping 200 million registered users just days ago — is building a competitive hedge against any future Apple product.

I’ve asked Apple for comment, but it is unlikelyApple will say anything about negotiations that, while they may be close to complete, are not yet finished.

photo credit: Orange_Beard via photopin cc

Popular streaming music service Spotify has launched its first real advertising campaign, with a one-minute ad that will run across TV and social media and several web-only ads.

Spotify recently announced that it has 6 million paid users, but the company needs to continue to get more members so it can eventually make a profit. Launching a large ad campaign could help with awareness among average consumers.

The ads were developed by Droga5 New York, and the one-minute slot will debut tonight on the premiere of the NBC show The Voice. Droga5 also worked on two stand-alone digital ads Spotify will be running across the web and social media.

The three ads all show people enjoying music and contain voice-over narration describing music and the emotions of people listening to it. I personally don’t find the video ads that compelling. First, it would be nice if the videos actually contained some fun music. Second, it’s unclear how Spotify actually works and how it enables these experiences. Third, the one-minute ad indirectly references “I am the Walrus” by The Beatles, but that song isn’t even on Spotify. The stand-alone digital ads aren’t much better.

On top of the new ad campaign, a new report from Business Insider says Spotify is looking to add a streaming video component to its music service. Anonymous sources “briefed on the company’s plans” told Business Insider that streaming video content was in the works and it could compete with the likes of Netflix and HBO.

The report seems a little fishy to us because Spotify is already spending so much of its cash on music licensing that the pursuit of high-end video content seems out of reach. We could see Spotify expanding into the realm of streaming live concerts and maybe even music videos, but that would be on a much smaller scale and not aim to compete with big-name streaming video providers.

In response to the report, Spotify said that it does not comment on rumors.

Check out Spotify’s video and stand-alone ads below.

Popular online radio service Pandora has launched a Windows Phone 8 app, with the added bonus of hearing no advertisements with songs through the end of the year.

Pandora offers its service across nearly every platform it can to reach the widest audience possible. The service has more than 150 million registered users in U.S., but it has struggled to make a profit. The biggest news coming from the Pandora camp as of late was the resignation of long-time CEO Joe Kennedy. This happened just as Apple is reportedly looking to stomp on Pandora’s turf with its own radio service.

But today Pandora’s focus in on the future, with the addition of Windows Phone 8 to its lineup. The company writes in a blog post:

For the last six months or so we’ve been working hard to bring Pandora to the Windows Phone 8 audience. Happy to announce the day has finally come.

While of course Pandora on Windows Phone 8 features the same listening experience you’ve come to expect from us, we really wanted to embrace the unique features of the Windows Phone 8 platform. For example, you can pin your favorite stations directly to the Start screen. Even cooler, the tiles are live and show you what’s currently playing without having to actually launch the app. If you have kids, we’ve also integrated into what Microsoft calls “Kid’s Corner” – just launch Pandora from that starting point and we’ll make sure that no explicit content plays during that session.

From a design perspective, we constantly strive to keep the Pandora user experience as easy and consistent as possible across an ever-increasing variety of platforms — computers, mobile phones, tablets, set-top boxes, cars, and more — all while taking into account the additional capabilities and design patterns of each individual platform. With its visually flat elements and unique panorama concept of navigation, designing for Windows Phone 8 while keeping our consistent Pandora aesthetic was an exciting challenge and we’re thrilled with the results.

The best part of the Pandora experience for most users, however, will be hearing no annoying ads while listening. Microsoft is actually footing the bill so Windows Phone 8 users don’t have to hear ads.

While the app isn’t available as of this writing, Pandora said the app will be available some time today in the Windows Phone Store.

Top photo via Pandora

Streaming music service Spotify has added another million paying subscribers in the past few months, bringing its total number of paying users to 6 million — far more than any competitor.

Spotify announced that it had 5 million paid users back at an event in December, so it’s a bit of a surprise to have added another million paying users so quickly. It’s a good sign for a company that has a serious sustainability problem — Spotify hasn’t yet become profitable because it pays too much to music royalties (reportedly 35 cents paid per 100 songs streamed). It also doesn’t make up the cash it loses for offering free streaming to more than 15 million people, a move designed to introduce people Spotify and get them to subscribe.

While other unlimited streaming services are out there, such as Rdio and Rhapsody, neither have come close to collecting Spotify’s numbers. Rhapsody has more than a million paid users in the United States, while Rdio has never released its number of free or paid users.

Rumors point to Apple and Beats launching streaming services soon, but it is unclear when they will launch and what each service will offer. Apple is apparently leaning toward a Pandora-like streaming radio approach, while Beats’ “Daisy” service will likely be more like Spotify’s all-you-can-listen-for-one-fee service.

Top photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Streaming music service Rdio has made its service available in seven new countries — Mexico, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, and Austria — and has opened up free music streaming to users in Brazil.

Rdio has had trouble collecting new listeners compared to competitors Spotify and Rhapsody, and so it has been expanding its service all over the world to find more people to jam out to its 18 million song catalog. In late January, it opened up a free music streaming option to the U.K., Canada, Australia, and 11 other countries to get more people on board. Rdio is now available in 24 countries, some with free streaming and others only by paid subscription.

“Rdio is the best product on the market for discovering music, and we will continue to improve that discovery experience by developing smarter tools to surface artists and songs our users love,” Rdio CEO Drew Larner said in a statement. “By opening the social circle to seven new international markets, we’re making Rdio an increasingly global way to play, discover, and share music.”

By comparison, Spotify is available in 23 countries with free and paid options and has more than 5 million paid users. Rhapsody is only available in the United States, but it has accumulated more than one million paid users and will finally launch in Europe this year. Rdio has never released its paid user numbers, but it is widely suspected to be less than one million.

Rdio’s free music streaming is not unlimited, and you eventually get cut off and need to pay. Rdio in the U.S. costs $5 a month for web streaming, $10 a month for web and mobile apps, and $17 a month for family pricing. Pricing in other countries varies.

Additionally, Rdio also used today to launch a minor update to its iOS app. The new version of the app features a full-screen player and “social listening” so you can see which of your friends have listened to what albums.

Apple has made the decision to delay its upcoming streaming radio service over royalty-payment disagreements, according to reports by the New York Post and the New York Times.

The Apple streaming radio service has been rumored since September, and it could harm Pandora, Spotify, and other similar offerings because the service would be easily accessible on the many millions of iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches around the world. Apple’s iTunes store is already the number one place to buy digital music, so this new service would act as an extension to that.

The New York Post reports that Apple made an opening offer to pay “6 cents per 100 songs streamed,” which is half of what Pandora pays for its songs. Clearly the music industry didn’t like that Apple — which is sitting on about $137 billion in cash — was trying to be cheap.

“Apple wants a rate that is lower than Pandora’s,” an unnamed “high-level executive” told the Post.

Terrestrial radio-backed services including iHeartRadio reportedly pay about 22 cents per 100 songs streamed. Spotify incurs the highest rate around and pays 35 cents per 100 songs streamed. So Apple’s offer is an even further cry from those rates.

Another thing to consider: Apple reportedly started discussions with Beats, which is launching its own streaming service with help from musician Trent Reznor. That could be part of the discussions Apple is having the industry as well.

Apple very well could bundle the new service with iTunes Match, which costs $25 a year and makes it possible to stream your personal song catalog across iOS devices, Macs, and PCs. The streaming radio service could also help Apple’s iAd platform find new ways to push advertising.

Reports also suggest that Apple originally wanted to launch the streaming service along with the iPhone 5 last September, but it couldn’t get its agreements in order.

Apple with headphones concept via Daniel Gilbey Photography/Shutterstock

Music streaming service Rhapsody has launched a sleek new app for Windows Phone 8 — just a week after competitor Spotfiy launched its app on the same platform.

Rhapsody is the oldest player in streaming music in U.S. and it has more than a million paid users in the U.S. But it has lost mind share to Spotify, which is raising copious amounts of money to build buzz and acquire customers all over the world. Still, Rhapsody keeps collecting new users and will soon launch in Europe. High-quality mobile experiences will also help.

Version 3.0 of Rhapsody for Windows Phone is specifically built with Windows Phone 8 in mind and has a lot of improvements for people looking to rock out with the service’s more than 16 million tracks.

Heres’s what you’ll get in the new version of Rhapsody for Windows Phone 8:

• Offline playback of downloaded tracks, albums, and playlists.
• Support for My Music, including the ability to add or remove tracks, albums, and artist—plus check out other people’s libraries.
• Add and remove stations from My Stations.
• Add and remove playlists from My Playlists.
• See your listening history.
• Improvements to audio playback, album art, and search.

Rhapsody doesn’t offer a free version of its product like Spotify, so it focuses its efforts on the experience of its paid subscribers. It costs either $10 or $15 per month depending on your needs, but most folks will be fine with the $10 plan.

Photo via Rhapsody

Streaming music service Rdio has finally launched its free-streaming option in countries outside of the United States, a sign it is serious about fishing for new users around the world.

Services like Rdio and Rhapsody have struggled during the past few years to get as much attention as Spotify, which puffs its chest often and has celebrity endorsers. Spotify has offered users a free version of its product for quite some time, which has helped it get to 20 million users around the world. Rhapsody has more than a million paid users in the U.S., but it is just now beginning to look at international expansion. Rdio doesn’t disclose its user numbers, but it is at least available in 17 countries and needs more exposure.

While Rdio has offered some free streaming of its service in the United States since October 2011, the service hadn’t opened that feature up in the other countries Rdio is offered.

Rdio will now offer up to six months of free streaming in the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. Interestingly, Germany and Brazil have paid Rdio service but will not get a free option.

Like other services that offer on-demand music streaming, Rdio’s free streaming is not unlimited; you eventually get cut off and need to pay. The free streaming allows you to get familiar with the benefits of streaming from a catalog of more than 18 million songs.

When you get cut off, Rdio in the U.S. costs $5 a month for web streaming, $10 a month for web and mobile apps, and $17 a month for family pricing. Pricing in other countries varies.

Rdio screenshot via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Streaming-music business Rhapsody is finally bringing its service to 16 European countries before the end of the second quarter, GigaOm reports.

Rhapsody has been the longest-running player in streaming music in the United States and has more than 1 million paid subscribers. But it faces a serious challenge with the rise of Spotify, which continues to burn through capital to grow its subscriber base. Spotify recently announced it hit the 1 million U.S. paid subscriber mark as well.

While Rhapsody somewhat has a presence in the U.K. and Germany via its Napster brand, it hasn’t done much internationally. With the launch of Rhapsody in Europe, it can finally fish for users that aren’t just in the U.S. It provide no exact timing or specific countries where the service could appear. But when further announcements hit, we’ll let you know.

Rhapsody also has an opportunity to grow via the use of partnerships and getting its apps on more platforms. It was one a handful that launched an app at CES 2013 that would work with Ford’s AppLink program. The app lets you use your voice to control it in some Ford cars. It also launched a slick iPad app (pictured) in December.

Rhapsody for iPad image via Rhapsody

Streaming music service Rhapsody has launched an attractive new iPad app that could steal a little attention from its biggest rivals, the company announced today.

Rhapsody reached one million paid users in the U.S. far before Spotify did, but Spotify has attracted more attention during the past year or two, thanks to celebrity endorsements and a push to rapidly innovate its products. Spotify has five million paid subscribers and 15 million free users around the world. Rhapsody, on the other hand, has been more methodical — it only offers its service to paid users in United States and focuses on their needs.

While Rhapsody has had an iPhone app for a long while, today’s launch of an iPad app could bring a few more people over its service, especially those who like lounging with their iPads at home. Paul Springer, senior VP of worldwide product and design for Rhapsody, writes:

Our customers are going to be big fans of the latest tablet additions to Rhapsody’s growing product suite. Rhapsody has never looked or sounded better. We built this app from the ground up optimizing for speed, reliability and an effortless discovery experience for our members. We obsessed – and will continue to obsess – over making this the best way to enjoy music on your iPad, whether you listen through the internal speakers, headphones or external speakers using our Airplay and Bluetooth integration.

Rhapsody has more than 16 million songs available on its service and costs $10 per month. Rhapsody for iPad lets you use the service 30 days for free.

Check out the new Rhapsody iPad app from the Apple App Store here.

Nine Inch Nails front man and Oscar-winning musician Trent Reznor will soon launch a streaming music service in partnership with Beats by Dre that will compete alongside services such as Spotify, Rhapsody, and Rdio.

Reznor revealed his plans in a profile in The New Yorker. While that article is behind a paywall, Pitchfork has pulled out key details.

The service will be called Daisy, and it will be launched early next year. Reznor told The New Yorker that it “uses mathematics to offer suggestions to the listener… [but also] would present choices based partly on suggestions made by connoisseurs, making it a platform in which the machine and the human would collide more intimately.”

He compared Daisy to Spotify, the cool kid on the music block, and said Spotify has curation problems. “‘Here’s sixteen million licensed pieces of music,’ they’ve said, but you’re not stumbling into anything,” Reznor said. “What’s missing is a service that adds a layer of intelligent curation.”

Instead of listening to music you already know, Daisy will focus on helping you find things you wouldn’t normally find yourself. It’s “like having your own guy when you go into the record store, who knows what you like but can also point you down some paths you wouldn’t necessarily have encountered,” Reznor said.

While Reznor talks a big game, I’m not sure I believe Daisy will be all that different from what’s already being offered by Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, or even popular radio service Pandora. Spotify recently announced new discovery features and confirmed to VentureBeat that its “Spotify Apps” will move over to mobile devices in January.

Trent Reznor photo via Ed Vill/Flickr

Streaming music service Spotify is bringing the Spotify Apps third-party ecosystem to its new web-based player and mobile apps in January, a move that should make it easier to discover music in Spotify’s many applications.

Spotify chief product officer Gustav Söderström told me today after Spotify’s New York event that the third-party apps that have been available inside Spotify’s desktop app — which includes great apps like Pitchfork, Soundrop, TuneWiki, and We Are Hunted — will indeed be moving to the web and mobile apps.

“We’ve been working on this for more than a year,” Söderström enthused. “I can’t wait for people to experience it.”

We’d heard previously that Spotify Apps would head to the iOS and Android platforms eventually, but we did not have a timeline. Now we know Spotify Apps should land on mobile and the web player early in 2013.

The first three apps integrated with the web player are Pitchfork, Songkick, and Tunigo,  Söderström said. Other apps should be announced soon. “We have convinced a bunch of others to get on board, but we don’t have timing yet,” he said.

As a big fan of Spotify Apps (check out five of the best Spotify Apps), I believe they are essential to the future of the service. The apps greatly simplify finding new music from a variety of publications and music labels. They also can help connect you with other people who like the same music. It will be exciting to see how these apps function inside web and mobile.

Spotify also used the event in New York today to announce that it now has 5 million paying subscribers and that its web app would be available to most users in January. The event also featured a lively back-and-forth between former adversaries — Metallica’s Lars Ulrich and Napster cofounder Sean Parker — talking about piracy and the future of music.

NEW YORK CITY — To celebrate Metallica’s music now being available on Spotify, two former rivals — Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and Napster co-founder Sean Parker — took stage today at a Spotify event to talk about their crazy past and the future of the music industry.

A little background: Back in the late 1990s, Napster and Metallica had a loud and bitter fight against each other over Napster sharing music for free. Metallica was portrayed as greedy scumbags, and both Napster’s Parker and Shawn Fanning were viewed as either Internet folk heroes taking on the man or clueless, greedy punks, depending on who you ask.

“Back in 1999, we were depicted as these greedy pirates who supported the wholesale stealing of music,” Parker said. “We just wanted to make music more free — freedom, not free as in theft.”

Ulrich said the fight really hurt Metallica’s image with its fans, but it felt the need to fight because it wanted to control how its music was distributed. At the event, Ulrich said:

“It was never about money, it was about control. It was about being in your bubble and controlling the access. If Napster had approached us first and given us options, it might have been a little different. Instead, control was taken away from us. It turned into, ‘If you fuck with us, we’ll fuck with you.’ … Instead of Napster versus Metallica, it became Metallica versus its fans.”

Both Parker and Ulrich agreed that they did not come off well in the battle. But now, the two can sit on stage together acting chummy and making jokes, because Metallica has agreed to put its library of songs on the  streaming music service that Parker is an investor in.

Parker and Ulrich used the spotlight as an opportunity to give Spotify a lot of credit for bringing artists to the table and paying music royalties. (Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said today that Spotify has paid out more than “half a billion dollars” to artists and labels.) Ulrich praised Spotify for being easy to use and making it easier for fans to access music.

“When I was trying out Spotify for the first time, I was stunned at the ease of it,” Ulrich said. “This was so easy and set up for the fans.”

Adding Metallica to its song library is clearly a big win for Spotify, and Parker said it shows that Spotify was the right company for him to invest in. His belief back in the Napster days, he added, was to “make music social,” which Spotify has done by being aggressive.

“Once I became an investor, after Facebook, I started looking at every music service. None of them had the right model around music. Most of these companies were taking plain vanilla record deals from the industry. [Spotify was] very stubborn and made the right deals,” Parker said.

As for the future and bringing even more major bands to Spotify, Ulrich suggested it would take these acts to fully realize how the younger generation experiences and interacts with music now.

“The ones that are left out don’t have children,” Ulrich said. “I have kids and they interact with music so much differnetly than we did.”

Photo: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

NEW YORK CITY — Popular streaming music service Spotify announced that it has reached the 5 million paid subscriber milestone, with 1 million paid users in the U.S., the company said today at a private event. It also said a web-based player would arrive early next year.

Spotify pulled out all the stops to celebrate its progress at a classy event at New York’s Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet on the west side of Manhattan. On top of a smoke machine, the company had nine different large screens flashing different images of musicians and concerts.

“We’re punks because we’re restless and we tell it like it really is,” Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek said on stage. Ek said unlike other disruptors, Ek said he didn’t want to “kill” what came before, but to reshape it for the better, speaking of the music industry.

Ek said Spotify has 20 million total active users and more than 1 billion playlists. The one million paid users in the U.S. matches Rhapsody’s subscriber count. With the subscriber numbers in mind, Ek said if Spotify was not the largest, it was at least the fastest growing music service in the U.S.

On the contentious topic of royalty payments, Ek said Spotify has paid out “half a billion dollars in royalties” to artists and labels.

Ek also used the event to show off the features of the new Spotify web-based player. The player lets you browse through similar artists to one you like all on the same page. You can click the image of different artists and songs will start playing. Ek said the player’s” Discover” page is personalized so everyone’s page looks different and recommends different artists to check out. “If you really like metal, you’ll have a metal page,” Ek said.

The new web player will also include the ability to “follow” influential people, which will also help with discoverability. Ek followed Pres. Barack Obama’s account on stage as an example.

He also followed Bruno Mars as an example of following an artist’s music picks. This way you can listen to what your favorite artist is listening to while he or she is writing a new record, Ek said. Other people you can follow, for example, include Justin Bieber and Paul McCartney.

The event was capped with a performance by Grammy-nominated artist Frank Ocean. He performed the song “Pyramids.”

Streaming music startup Spotify will begin rolling out a beta of its first web-based app today to a small number of users, according to a report from The Verge.

Spotify has offered a desktop-based app for streaming music since the beginning of its company, and it has collected more than 4 million paying customers since that time. Those Windows and Mac apps, along with mobile apps for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, and BlackBerry, show a long-standing dedication to native development. The desktop app also enables great Spotify apps that create exciting new experiences.

The new web app reportedly looks a lot like the desktop apps, with search, radio, playlists, and a “What’s New” section all available. Almost certainly, the web app will provide some free usage as long as you listen to audio ads and see banner ads. The web app will roll out to all users over the next several months.

Offering a web app will encourage more usage of the service. No matter what computer you want to use, you’ll be able to start streaming music without downloading an app. This is a similar strategy to what Pandora, Rdio, and other online music services have embraced.

Spotify told The Next Web that the web app beta is being “testing with a small number of users” and that the company will “have more detail on the web player next year.”

Today’s news comes on the heels of a report that Spotify has raised a new $100 million funding round based on a $3 billion valuation. Along with lead investor Goldman Sachs, the company is rumored to be receiving investments from Coca-Cola and Fidelity. Prior to this new cash, the company had raised about $188 million in funding.

Photo via The Verge

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Good news, streaming music fans. Pandora is finally making its way to Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform.

The Pandora app will land early next year on Windows Phone 8, Microsoft’s Windows Phone head, Joe Belfiore, announced today at a press event in San Francisco. The app will also come with a year of free ad-free music.

Belfiore noted today that there are now 120,000 apps available for Windows Phone, and he was proud to announce that the platform will have 46 of the top 50 apps as well. It’s important for Microsoft to land popular apps like Pandora, because they’re often essential to users of other platforms. Without Pandora, Microsoft would have a hard time convincing iPhone and Android music fans to jump ship.

Unfortunately, Belfiore wasn’t able to demo the app, which makes us think it’s not ready for showtime just yet.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Free is the ultimate weapon — for the world’s biggest advertising company.

More than a year after Apple introduced iTunes Match, technology that lets you sync all your music to the cloud and enjoy it on any device (errr, any Apple device), and three months after Amazon announced similar capabilities with its Cloud Match service, Google is following suit:

We’re also launching our new matching feature to streamline the process of uploading your personal music to Google Play. We’ll scan your music collection, and any song we match against the Google Play catalog will be automatically added to your online library without needing to upload it, saving you time. This will be available in Europe at launch on November 13 and is coming to the U.S. soon after. This will all be for free — free storage of your music, free matching, free syncing across your devices, and free listening.

According to CNet, Google was going to announce the new service at its October 29 event. Then, of course, Hurricane Sandy happened. So Google announced the news on its blog instead. This was expected … but the big news is coded into the last sentence of the announcement.

Can you say “free?”

The announcement’s last sentence uses the word “free” no less than five times: free storage, free matching, free syncing, and free listening. Without mentioning any competitors, Google is emphasizing as hard as it can the fact that iTunes Match costs $25/year and Amazon’s Cloud Match, while free for up to 250 songs, also costs $25 for up to 250,000 songs.

That may force Apple — and Amazon — to make some changes. Both Apple and Amazon make money when people buy stuff from them — digital or physical stuff. Google, on the other hand, makes money when people give their attention to its services — it sells that attention to advertisers.

Google’s version of the music matching services will allow users to add up to 20,000 songs from their existing music collections to their Google Play account. One other key difference from Apple’s matching solution is that Google will enable music streaming of those songs to Android devices or web browsers (Apple’s version is not exactly streaming; it’s download and play).

That’s huge, since you’ll be able to access your music whenever and wherever you want, on just about any device, as long as you have an Internet connection.

Some music execs have called matching services “legitimizing” piracy, but the main goal is to enable consumers to finally leave behind those mounds of plastic-encased music for the digital world. In order to offer this service, Google needed the approval of the major music labels.  The Europe-first strategy is likely a function of the status of contract negotiations with various labels.

The question now is: How will Apple and Amazon respond?

photo credit: darren131 via photopin cc

Sorry hipsters, the headline above isn’t signaling an underground resurgence of 8-track tapes, the music format that was popular in the ’70s. And if that disappoints you, I have to apologize again because it means you’re a massive toolbag.

However, 8tracks, the streaming music service with a retro-sounding name, did release a slick new version of its iOS app today that promises to enhance your music listening experience.

8tracks is an Internet radio service that lets you create your own custom mixes (aka playlists) based on a specific mood, theme, or subject. You can upload  from your personal collection or pull tracks from cloud-music platform SoundCloud. Mixes, which must be a minimum of 30 minutes in length, can be shared with the 8tracks community and played on a variety of connected devices. And if you don’t feel like building your own playlist, there are over 600,000 pre-existing  mixes created by popular 8tracks user DJs.

As for the new iOS app, 8tracks features a brand-new user interface that’s far more responsive and intuitive than the previous version. You can now use gesture controls to browse through stations and mixes, view full-screen album artwork, and use a new discovery tool based on musical genre and mood. The app is compatible with the new iPhone 5 and currently doesn’t contain any advertising.

After playing with 8tracks iOS app for a few hours, I have to say it provides a nice mix of new and undiscovered music without making me work for it. The mixes and stations I streamed were somewhat similar to indie radio stations minus the unnecessary radio host banter, weather and traffic updates.

Much like rival music services, 8tracks generates revenue through a combination of advertising, ad-free paid subscriptions , and special promotions. Yet, one thing that makes 8tracks stand apart from competitors — not just in features or method of music discovery — is its success in making the service profitable. 8tracks CEO David Porter told me that the startup made a “modest profit” during the last quarter.

8tracks has an average of 5 million active users per month that listen to more than 10 million hours of music collectively.

Founded in 2006, the San Francisco, Calif.-based startup has previously raised a total of $1.4 million in funding to date from Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, SoftTech, SPA, English DJ Pete Tong, and 7digital founder Ben Drury. It faces competition from Pandora, Songify, Fuzz, and many others.

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.

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

Handset manufacturer Nokia is offering its Lumia customers access to its free music service, the company announced today.

The service, appropriately called Nokia Music, will be available to all U.S.-based owners of the company’s Windows Phone-based Lumia 900 and 710 smartphones via an app. The service first launched last year at the Nokia World event for its international customers.

Nokia Music will have its own set of U.S.-based musicologists helping to curate music as well as 150 playlists of tracks across all genres and styles of music. You can even download playlists to listen to music offline. And like popular streaming services Pandora and Spotify, Nokia Music also offers users a way to create “smart” radio stations based on musicians/bands or specific songs.

But unlike Pandora, you won’t have to sit through periodic advertisements after every few songs, which is a huge perk considering that the service doesn’t cost anything extra.

The announcement, which comes just before this year’s Nokia World, is the latest example of how companies are using music services to drive their business. Last week Cricket announced that it was bundling the Muve Music streaming music service with all Android smartphones. Sony is also ramping up its efforts to pair its Sony Music service with its own Hardware — releasing new service plans that go beyond mobile devices.

The Nokia Music app can be downloaded via the Windows Marketplace today. Let us know if you plan on using the service in the comment section below.

In a strange turn of events, streaming music service Grooveshark has had its Android app removed from the Google Play store just days after it showed back up in the store.

Grooveshark would not tell us the reason why Google kicked the app out. However, we suspect it has something to do with its constant legal battles with major music labels. Grooveshark doesn’t have broad licensing agreements to play the majority of its music (like Spotify and Rdio do) and relies on DMCA rules, just as YouTube does.

Grooveshark has filed a notice with Google and is attempting to get its app back in the Google Play store. A company spokesperson writes:

We have filed a counter-notice and are working with Google and their Google Play reinstatement process to get our app back in the market. Until then, our Android app remains available for all at http://mobile.grooveshark.com/android, and we thank all the users who continue to support open music, open markets, and open Internet.

As mentioned in the statement above, Grooveshark craftily launched an HTML5 web app for streaming music through iOS and Android web browsers in response to bans from some app stores. Looks like Android users will once again be reliant on that mobile app or a direct download from Grooveshark for listening to music with the service.

A Google spokesperson told us that Google has not been working with Grooveshark to get the app reinstated in the store, and that it removed the app because it violated its Google Play policies. Google said it notified Grooveshark about what policy the app was violating and provided details about how it can appeal Google’s decision.

Google would not tell me what policy Grooveshark was violating. My personal guess is intellectual property. Google’s policy states:

Intellectual Property: Don’t infringe on the intellectual property rights of others (including patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, and other proprietary rights) or encourage or induce infringement of intellectual property rights. We will respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. For more information or to file a DMCA request, please visit our copyright procedures.

Shark on beach photo via gadgetdude/Flickr

Streaming music startup Spotify has started offering physical gift cards at Target, a sign the service is serious about obtaining mass market exposure in the vein of iTunes.

Gift cards are available in denominations of $10, $30, and $60. With the cheapest Spotify subscription costing $5 per month, a $60 card could get your loved one a full year of service. Spotify’s top tier runs $10 a month, so the cheapest gift card would cover that. The cards can be redeemed for new or current Spotify premium subscriptions, and they are only available at Target stores.

While this is a small step for Spotify, it’s also a smart one. Apple’s iTunes service has become so popular and pervasive not only because it’s easy to use, but also because you can easily buy people an iTunes gift card for birthdays and holidays. Now Spotify can join that club.

Stockholm, Sweden-based Spotify has raised around $188 million in funding. It now has more than 4 million paying subscribers around the world, and 15 million total active monthly users.

Photo credit: Spotify

Despite being hounded by lawsuits from the biggest U.S. music labels, Google has reinstated popular streaming music service Grooveshark’s Android app in the Google Play store.

Back in January, Grooveshark craftily launched an HTML5 web app for streaming music through iOS and Android web browsers in response to being banned from some app stores. The company has been in legal hot water with the major music labels because it doesn’t have broad licensing agreements to play the majority of its music and relies on DMCA rules, just as YouTube does.

The company’s official statement blames the app’s initial removal on “rogue apps” instead of legal issues. The company wrote in a statement to VentureBeat:

After working closely with Google to get rogue apps removed, we’re delighted that the official Grooveshark app has been reinstated in the Android market. Grooveshark is dedicated to helping music fans search, discover and share music while pioneering new artist promotion, distribution and monetization techniques. We look forward to continuing to build a relationship with Android and leverage this fantastic platform for our partners.

The company has two pricing tiers for listening to music through the app. The free app gives you unlimited radio station listening (similar to Pandora and Spotify), while the premium subscription ($9/month) gives you on-demand streaming of any song in Grooveshark and much more. The company writes in the app’s official description:

Always free features, no paid subscription needed:

• Unlimited streaming of over 20 genre Radio Stations, with hand-tagged selections from the millions of songs in our library.
• Launch a custom Radio Station based on any song you choose, and tailor it further to your taste by skipping and liking songs.

Features for Grooveshark Anywhere subscribers ($9/mo.) or those using the free trial:

• Free, unlimited on-demand music streaming.
• Take your music collection with you everywhere: Favorites, Playlists, Radio Stations, and the community of music fans on Grooveshark.
• Offline your most frequently played songs for uninterrupted listening even when there’s no stable connection.
• Choose from one of our genre Radio Stations or launch a personalized station based on any song in your queue, with no song skip or listening limits. Save particularly good sessions as Playlists for continued listening later.
• Create, save, and share unlimited Playlists with friends.
• Connect your social media profiles to easily share your music with friends.
• Explore Popular songs and see what the Grooveshark community is listening to.

Grooveshark on Android photos: Grooveshark

Streaming music service Pandora has updated its popular Android app with a new interface, song lyrics, play history, and more.

Pandora’s new Android helps it stay competitive in the busy digital music landscape. With more than 50 million installs of the app in the U.S., it has a significant reach. It also gives people a reason to keep jamming to tunes on Pandora rather than other services.

The new app includes a more polished interface with the capability to better explore and assess the music you listen to. First, it has a song history, so you can review, rate, or bookmark previously played tracks. You can also see song lyrics to whatever is playing, read artist or band biographies, and view similar tracks and artists. It also claims to include various bug fixes.

The app update comes at a time when Pandora has an incredible number of users and growth but can’t seem to turn a profit. In first quarter of 2012, Pandora’s active listeners grew 53 percent to 51.9 million. The total number of hours listened to for the quarter hit a staggering 3.09 billion.

Competition has increased recently, too, with new Pandora-like apps from Spotify being launched recently on Android and iOS. There’s also TuneIn, which provides a digital access point to 70,000 terrestrial radio stations around the world.