Search Results for: soft play

Kazaa, the wildly popular free music-swapping service that emerged in the wake of Napster’s decline, may finally have shown a chink in its armor. Consumer Empowerment, the Amsterdam-based company that developed Kazaa and the Fasttrack file-sharing network on which it operates, has suspended all new downloads of the software, pending a decision by a Dutch judge in a copyright suit filed against the company by a European publishers’ rights group. The move doesn’t affect users who have already downloaded the Kazaa software; they were still able to swap music and other digital files via Fasttrack last week. Consumer Empowerment also… Read more »

Pressplay, a Web music service owned by Sony Corp. and Vivendi Universal Thursday said it hopes to make its online service available to Apple Computer Inc.’s Macintosh computers sometime this year. “We are hoping that sometime this year that Pressplay will be available (on Macs), although we can’t guarantee,” said Andy Schuon, chief executive officer of Pressplay, during a conference call hosted by research firm Jupiter Media Metrix. Heads of other subscription services such as Pressplay’s big label-backed rival MusicNet and independently owned FullAudio and Listen.com also joined the call. The commercial services are launching in hopes of tapping the… Read more »

Pressplay (www.pressplay.com), the online music service launched Dec. 19, is an order of magnitude better than rival MusicNet (www.musicnet.com), which launched Dec. 4. The gap is so great that I don’t think MusicNet deserves to sign up a single additional subscriber without first undertaking a major overhaul to match pressplay. Not that pressplay is perfect; the major record labels are still struggling to figure out how to sell their music online without opening the door to further piracy. But pressplay succeeds at delivering all three components of the online music experience: “streaming,” where you listen to songs without putting them… Read more »

Though the annual South by Southwest Music Conference is known as a place for up-and-coming bands to get noticed, there’ll be several artists at next year’s 16th annual festival who already have hits under their belts. Hanson, who were discovered at 1994’s SXSW and played at last year’s fest as well, will return again to the music industry schmooze extravaganza in Austin, Texas. They’ll join such other airwave veterans as Marcy Playground (“Sex and Candy”), Girls Against Boys (“Kill the Sexplayer”) and Jesus Jones (“Right Here, Right Now”). Of course, the underground is still represented in full-force, as the lineup… Read more »

Pressplay, an online music joint venture between Sony Corp. and Vivendi Universal, yesterday said it will launch to consumers in the United States on Wednesday, December 19. The service, which will offer fans streaming, downloading and CD-burning of music from Sony Music, Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, EMI Group as well as several independents. It will be available to the first several thousand consumers through Microsoft Corp.’s MSN Music, Roxio and Yahoo! and will soon be offered through MP3.com and other affiliates, the companies said. Pressplay said it plans to widen the availability of its service after the New Year.

Everyone at some point has dreamed of being a rock star. Now even the least musically inclined among us can feel like a real rock star – actually playing the guitar and drum parts of our favorite songs thanks to a one-of-a-kind interactive music experience from MusicPlayground. Available now at www.MusicPlayground.com, MusicPlayground makes use of virtual instruments – plug-and-play USB peripherals – that simulate their real-world counterparts, allowing users to literally take over the guitar, bass or drum parts of their favorite songs. They simply plug in their virtual instruments to the back of their computer and start playing along… Read more »

Apple Computer Inc. unveiled on Tuesday a portable music player that can hold an entire music collection and takes Apple outside its core computer business for the first time in eight years. Apple’s “iPod” is the size and shape of a deck of cards, with a small LCD screen and round dial on a white front and a stainless steel back. It holds about 1,000 songs in the MP3 music format and has a battery life of 8-10 hours. Apple will begin selling iPods, which only work with its Macintosh computers, on Nov. 10 at a suggested retail price of… Read more »

Pressplay, a online music joint venture between recording giants Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music and Sony Corp.’s Sony Music, is still on track to launch this fall, a spokesman said Friday. The Pressplay spokesman declined to comment on a specific launch date for the service, which was originally earmarked to launch in September by Vivendi Executive Vice President Edgar Bronfman Jr at an industry conference in July. Many of Pressplay’s employees are based in New York City, where business has been severely disrupted by the attacks on the World Trade Center, the spokesman said. Pressplay and MusicNet, a competing music joint… Read more »

Microsoft Corp. said Monday it is enlisting three companies to sell plug-ins to enable its upcoming media player software to record music in the MP3 format and play DVD movies. Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, a new version of which will debut in the software giant’s new Windows XP operating system in late October, has not supported high-quality music recording in MP3, the most popular format for storing songs and CDs as digital files on a computer. Critics have said lack of MP3 support was evidence that Microsoft was trying to drive users to its own format, called Windows Media Audio,… Read more »

Songbird, the software brainchild of a 20-year-old Internet entrepreneur, was launched on Wednesday with song-swap company Napster firmly in its sights. The technology, billed as the first offered to everyone as an Internet search tool, enables artists and musicians to track down who has done what with their compositions. The software, invented by Utah-based Travis Hill, won the backing of the record industry’s IFPI watchdog and 10 organizations representing artists, songwriters and publishers. Songbird was introduced at IFPI’s London headquarters. “Songbird gives music copyright holders a completely new insight into how Napster is using their music and, if they want… Read more »