Can The Wild West Of Music Discovery Be Tamed By One Startup?
Twenty years ago, you discovered music on the FM dial. End of story. Now there’s an uncharted frontier of outlaw torrents, renegade bloggers, on-demand gold miners, and fur-trapping radios. The zeitgeist has splintered, and there’s no piecing it back together. And I think we’re doing just fine without the robber barons of old.
Just ask rock band The Silversun Pickups. I did (below). Best known for the low-fi, garage blur and piercing crescendo of their first hit single “Lazy Eye”, The Silversun Pickups say right now they have to be best friends with the music tech companies. And while they did perform that night at the Slacker party, they truly believe there’s no clear front-runner yet worth tying their horse to.
Until recently, the three pillars of music discovery — on-demand, automated radio, and human curation — were fragmented across different services. There was Napster and then iTunes and then Spotify. There was Pandora. There were blogs. But now we’re seeing companies like Slacker and Spotify attempting to unify these into a single service.
Slacker’s recent redesign highlighted this convergence, making it easy to swap between searching for specific songs, radio that evolves to your preferences, and hand-picked music selections from actual DJs. Spotify went from being strictly on-demand to adding radio, and now is starting to roll out a new Twitter-esque following system to help you get recommendations from real people. Slacker’s far behind in traction, leaving Spotify the most likely company to bring order to the music discovery space and make us comfortable settling down.
In some ways that might not be a good thing. Without a single company in control, competition forces innovation and low prices. Decentralized and self-determined music discovery liberates us. We can chase what uniquely resonates with us rather than surrender our tastes to mass media. It may not be civilized and easy, but true music fans like life with a little edge.
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WordPress Video Tutorial 3 – Dashboard, Posts & Pages
http://wiredintotheweb.com/wordpress-web-development/ – A 13 minute WordPress 3.5 video tutorial explaining the basics of WordPress posts and pages and an introduction to the WordPress dashboard and a great workflow blueprint from design to the actual build. Find more videos and articles on our Wired into the Web WordPress web development blog.
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Microsoft’s 128GB Surface Pro Sells Out At MS Online Store Just Hours After Launch
Microsoft’s $999 128GB Surface Pro has sold out in the online Microsoft Store in the U.S. (via WinBeta), just a few hours after going on sale today, February 9. The 64GB version is still available as of this writing, and the Surface Pro is still likely in stock at physical retail locations like Best Buy, where it also went on sale today, although checking the stock levels via their online tool reports the Surface Pro as “Unavailable” across the board.
The Surface Pro is Microsoft’s more powerful, Intel-powered Windows 8 tablet, which runs the full version of Windows 8 unlike the Surface RT and can handle full-fledged Windows desktop applications. In the TC review, John Biggs said that the Pro was a much more compelling device than the RT, in part because of its ability to run software that enterprise IT departments depend upon from legacy windows installations.
The Surface RT sold out of the $500 32GB model within one day, but the Pro’s more expensive model has sold out even faster. That could indicate that users are placing a higher value on storage with the Pro, which is marketed as a device much more suited to getting serious work done than the Surface RT. The 64GB model remains in stock for now, and given that there’s only a $100 price difference to trade up to double the storage capacity with the 128GB version, that’s not surprising.
Storage was recently the subject of a number of back-and-forth reports regarding the Surface, with some claiming Microsoft left little room on-device for personal files once you accounted for the Windows 8 OS install. Ed Bott reported earlier today on the actual storage numbers, which beat the original estimates by a fair amount, but the free space on the 64GB version still represents a 200 percent increase from the actual usable space on the base Surface Pro model.
The 128GB Surface Pro is still available to order from the Microsoft Store online in Canada as of this publication date, and you may still be able to grab one by visiting a physical retail location.
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Apple Sold 2M Apple TVs In The Holiday Quarter, Up 60% From A Year Ago
Apple announced on its earnings call today that the company sold more than 2 million Apple TV devices in its fiscal first quarter. That’s up from 1.3 million sequentially, and up from 1.4 million during the previous holiday period. Altogether, that means Apple has sold more than 10 million Apple TV units over the years, making it one of the most popular streaming devices out there.
The growth in Apple TV sales shows continued demand for an understated device that is now five years old. It also comes as users and analysts alike continue to wait for Apple to produce an actual TV. For years, prognosticators have forecast Apple would get into the HDTV market. But with no real timeline for building its software into a streaming display, its streaming box continues to sell well.
In many ways, its strategy seems smart now: Connected TV adoption hasn’t been as great as some may have expected, but the market set-top boxes continues to grow. Take a look at Google TV, for example: While it launched with Sony producing actual TVs a few years ago, nowadays most of the takeup for devices running the OS seems to be coming in the form of boxes produced by the likes of Vizio, Netgear, HiSense, and others. And, at least for now, Apple seems to be the market leader.
But that doesn’t mean Apple can’t do more. On the earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company was exploring new ways to distribute video content in the living room. “I tend to believe that there’s a lot that we can contribute in this space and so we continue to pull the string and see where it leads us,” Cook said. “But I don’t want to be more specific.”
Rather than build more smarts into the device, the company continues to connect it to other devices that leverage AirPlay and can stream or navigate content that can be displayed on the box. Last summer Apple added AirPlay mirroring to computers running OSX Mountain Lion. It’s also added better support for developers who wish to build dual-screen apps that leverage their iPhones or iPads for control of the Apple TV.
Link: Apple Sold 2M Apple TVs In The Holiday Quarter, Up 60% From A Year Ago