Music

Beats Music updated with native iPad support, adds Find Your Friends feature

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

As teased yesterday, the new streaming music startup from music mogul Jimmy Lovine and musician and producer Dr. Dre, called Beats Music, has been updated with support for the iPad. The 17.1MB download is now live in the App Store and universal so a single binary now supports all your form-factor iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices. As a bonus, regardless of the device you can now easily add Beats Music users from your Twitter friends...

Beats Music is coming to iPad soon

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 24, 2018

Beats Music, a new streaming music service from music mogul Jimmy Lovine, musician and producer Dr. Dre and other industry figures, is about to extend to the iPad soon.

According to the startup's teaser image shared on Twitter - captioned with the 'Something Big is Coming' tagline - the iPhone-only app should soon be available on Apple's tablet, too.

The $9.99 per month service launched on January 20 and is still struggling to hit the ground running despite an impressive set of features and a library of over 20 million songs that can be streamed on-demand to the iPhone, Windows Phone and Android devices and to your web browser...

Sprint news: 6 free months of Spotify Premium, LTE covering 225M people, Harman Kardon partnership

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated July 18, 2017

Sprint held a 'Hear It For Yourself' media event earlier today that saw the announcement of a Harmon Kardon version of the HTC One M8 handset.

As part of the presentation for select members of the press, executives with the nation's third-largest wireless carrier have said that all new and existing postpaid customers on Sprint's 'Framily' plan will get six free months of Spotify Premium, iPhone owners included.

Android and Windows 8/8.1 smartphone owners are eligible for this offer, too.

Premium Spotify subscriptions start at ten bucks per month, which buys you higher-quality unlimited streaming with no advertising...

Opinion: the clock is ticking on Apple’s rumored on-demand streaming music service

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 27, 2016

If you need another proof that download sales are declining steadily as music lovers increasingly rent their music rather than buy it, here's one.

Spotify's head of label relations in Europe, Kevin Brown, revealed last week to an industry outlet that his company is earning more cash across Continental Europe from sales of music subscriptions than iTunes does by selling individual song and album downloads.

As a reference, iTunes back in the summer of 2004 enjoyed a commanding 62 percent share of European music sales.

But having added more than a million active users in the United Kingdom alone in the last four months, Spotify seems poised to beat iTunes. Small wonder Brown is adamant that it's only "a matter of time" before the Swedish startup overtakes Apple's digital music store in Europe in terms of revenue.

Why isn't Apple doing something about it? Doesn't the firm see the signs on the wall already? Didn't Tim Cook and Co. get the memo that music downloads are dying a slow death? Read on...

Vevo launches revamped iOS app with new design, real-time feed and more

Cody Lee ∙ Updated October 13, 2018

Vevo launched a new version of its iOS client this morning, bringing the app to version 3.0. The update brings about an all new design, inspired by iOS 7, as well as various other improvements including new real-time feed and mini-player features.

For those unfamiliar with Vevo, it's a video hosting service that is often referred to as the 'Hulu' of music videos. A joint venture of two of the 3 major music labels, the company offers access to more than 75,000 music videos from over 21,000 artists...

Spotify picks up new Repeat One and Your Music features, bug fixes

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 22, 2014

Following up on a recent Spotify revamp that has painted it black with an all-new look, the Swedish music streaming service has issued another update to its iOS app, bringing out a better way to organize your music, a Repeat One functionality and several bug fixes for a few nasty issues that were introduced in the last release.

Spotify version 1.1 is available free in the App Store. Jump past the fold for the full changelog and additional notes...

Beats Music app updated with new Offline mode, in-app subscriptions and more

Cody Lee ∙ Updated March 20, 2018

Beats Music updated its iPhone client late last night, bringing the app to version 1.0.7. The update brings about a number of improvements, including better Facebook and Twitter account management, a new Find Your Friends feature for locating and following your Facebook friends, and more.

Perhaps the biggest change, though, is that the app now supports in-app subscriptions. This means that users now have the ability to bill their monthly subscription fee directly to their iTunes account. There's also a new Offline listening mode and thousands of new tracks available for The Sentence...

MiniPlayer iOS jailbreak tweak is now available for Mac

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 19, 2019

MiniPlayer, a gorgeous jailbreak tweak by Italian developer MPow, has been available on iOS for quite some time and with time, it's gotten even better.

As Jeff noted in his review of MiniPlayer 2.1 last May, this tweak makes it ridiculously easy to control your music directly from the app's interface with a simple tap and hold gesture on the now playing album art.

Subsequent updates have added more stuff like Play Next, enhanced scrubbing and search and what not. And yes, it's an iOS 7 compatible tweak.

If you've been loving MiniPlayer on your jailbroken iOS device, you can now have that compelling experience and minimalist user interface (courtesy of Surenix) on your Mac, too! Read on for the full reveal...

Harmonix announces upcoming ‘Record Run’ game for iOS

Cody Lee ∙ April 12, 2014

The name Harmonix is legendary in the console gaming world, as it was behind a number of popular games in the early 2000's—Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Dance Central to name a few. And now it's hoping that success will translate into the mobile world.

The studio announced its first mobile game yesterday at PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) East called 'Record Run.' It's an endless runner of sorts that asks players to avoid various obstacles and collect vinyl records, while jogging to the beat of a custom soundtrack...

Apple bans UK’s iTunes Radio competitor from iAd

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 11, 2014

Bloom.fm, a London-based music streaming service, on Friday made it known on Twitter that Apple's blocked it from advertising on its iAd platform, citing competitive reasons.

"Apple just banned our ads because we're 'a competitive service to iTunes Radio and it is against Apple policy'", reads the tweet.

The service has a catalog of 22 million tracks that can be streamed for as low as £1 a month (about $1.67).

It's easy to see why Apple has taken a stance against the service: its own iTunes Store sells individual song downloads for the price of a month's worth of unlimited streaming on Bloom.fm. The development has prompted Bloom.fm to boast that "We must be big time now", adding the team was surprised to learn that Apple even noticed what such a small company was doing...

Apple looking to beef up its iTunes team amid ‘overhaul’ rumors

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 16, 2018

According to recent reports, Apple is looking at various ways to remedy declining music sales, and better combat the competition. Billboard says the company is considering everything from launching an on-demand streaming music service, to giving its iTunes Store a dramatic overhaul.

And it certainly appears Apple is working on something big in regards to the media manager. A number of iTunes team-job listings have popped up on its website this week calling for iTunes Software Engineers, Senior Software Engineers, and an iTunes Recommendation Platform engineer...

Apple said to be considering adding high-resolution music to iTunes soon

Cody Lee ∙ April 11, 2014

Rumor has it that Apple is considering taking drastic measures to reverse declining music sales. Billboard says the company is looking into several options, including giving its iTunes store a 'drastic' overhaul, opening up iTunes to Android users, and launching an on-demand streaming music service.

Apple may also be planning to add high-resolution audio to its digital library soon as part of its turnaround efforts, according to music blogger Robert Hutton. Citing sources familiar with the company's plans, Hutton says the iPhone-maker could launch new hi-res music downloads as early as WWDC...