I never understood why Apple decided to make the iPhone like the iPod touch — separating the iPod app into Music and Videos — but I guess they are wanting to move away from the "iPod" moniker.
If you hate having separate Music and Video apps as much as I do, then you'll certainly be interested in Unified iPod for iOS 5 — a jailbreak tweak that brings the iPod app back in style on iOS 5...
During its "Let's Talk iPhone" event earlier this month, Apple announced that its highly anticipated iTunes Match service would launch by the end of October. And seeing as how it's October 27th, we can't be too far away from a public release.
Apple is certainly moving the pieces into place. Last week we reported that an iTunes Match toggle popped up in the iOS Settings application, and last night developers received an email stating that their Match libraries would be reset today...
NowListening is a jailbreak tweak for iOS 5 that makes it so you can receive banner notifications whenever your iPod app begins playing a new song.
Unfortunately, there is no default option to enable this function on a stock iOS 5 installation, so you must have a jailbroken iPhone to enable music banner notifications.
If you meet this criteria, then take a look inside for a video walkthrough of NowListening...
Remember Google Music? Back in May, Google unveiled a beta version of its cloud-based music service that allows users to upload up to 20,000 songs to its servers. Users can then access that music from almost any device with a web connection.
A major downside to the service is that it hasn't had a native iOS app. It's had a web app of sorts, but never an actual application. Until now. Macgasm is reporting that gMusic, a native Google Music app, has just surfaced in the App Store...
MacRumors has made an interesting find in iOS 5. Apple has enabled a toggle for iTunes Match in the Music section of the Settings app.
Also, an iTunes Match page has been added to the iTunes Store on the desktop. Apple has said that it plans to launch iTunes Match in the US by the end of the month...
Steaming services like Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio are all the rage these days, but before those we had something called Internet radio.
All you needed was one of the many streaming radio URLs, and you could stream music, talk shows, and virtually everything in-between.
Believe it or not, Internet radio still has a huge following, as evident by WeeRadio — a Notification Center widget for iOS 5, which places your favorite Internet radio stations right at your fingertips...
Popular music streaming service Rdio recently added a free plan. Like Spotify, Rdio lets users stream, cache, and share songs across devices.
Now that Rdio is free with limited use, users will have access to millions of tracks for free on Rdio's apps. The service is ad-free, but you do have a limit of how much music you can play each month...
Want a quick way to play your favorite playlists without venturing into your iPod app? Then check out SBMusic, it allows you to create bookmarks to your favorite playlists, and save them on your Home screen.
SBMusic is a jailbreak tweak that not only allows you to create custom bookmarks, but custom app icons as well. It's a great tool for those of you who want a quick and easy way to play your favorite tunes...
I have to admit, I really didn't see much of a need for LSMediaControls in my jailbreak repertoire...until I happened to use it while driving.
My experience using this tweak while on the road has opened my eyes to how incredibly useful it can be.
No longer do you need to glance at the iPhone to make sure you're tapping the right button.
LSMediaControls makes it simple to play, pause, skip and listen to previous music, from virtually any music app. Check inside for the video details...
For those of you who aren't familiar with Shazam, it's a music identification service that can tell you song information just by hearing a sample of the music. The service has followed the smartphone's rise to popularity with multiple successful mobile apps.
In fact, Shazam was the first song I.D. app I downloaded when Apple launched the App Store in 2008. It worked great and even more importantly, it was free. You could tag as many songs as you wanted and it didn't cost a dime. But then things changed...
Pandora is one of those companies that really doesn't need an introduction. The popular streaming music service has garnered over 100 million registered users, and it just went public in June of this year with a stock price of $16/share.
But it hasn't always been smooth sailing for the company, according to Pandora's CTO Tom Conrad. Conrad spoke at GigaOM's Mobilize conference earlier this week about the company's rocky start, and how jailbreaking the iPhone changed everything...
Just like they did last week with the reset of iCloud backups, Apple has now scheduled a reset of iTunes Match libraries for beta testers on September 26th 9AM PST. At that time, all iCloud libraries will be deleted.
To get ready for the big reset, you will simply have to turn iTunes Match off on your computer and iOS devices. Obviously, this will not affect any of the songs that are physically stored on your computer or your iDevice...