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Posts Tagged ‘artists’

FreeAllMusic inks 2nd major in free, DRM-less music venture

EMI has become the second music label to sign onto ad-supported music startup FreeAllMusic.com, after Universal Music Group signed on last week. The site, which takes ad-supported music in a different direction than most, has not yet launched, but could have a strong launch if it has major artists from EMI and UMG on board.

FreeAllMusic doesn’t restrict music to the browser (or an otherwise Internet-connected client) like streaming services such as Last.fm or Pandora. Instead, it plans to let users download DRM-free MP3s of songs—legit, legal versions of the songs—that are paid by advertisers. The catch is that users must watch a commercial for each download, and downloads will be restricted to 20 per month (with a cap of five per week, starting every Tuesday).

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Apple documents iTunes LP and iTunes Extras for developers

Filed under: iTS, iTunes, Developer

After seeing the intent by developers and artists to create iTunes LP and iTunes Extras for their music, Apple has opened up the availability to develop these features to third parties. However, automatic submission for iTunes LP and iTunes Extras is not expected until early 2010; in the meantime, it’s still a limited process and uploads must be performed manually.

If you’re an iTunes contributor and you’re looking forward to developing an iTunes LP of your own, Apple has posted several resources for Extras & LP, including a best practices guide, a development guide, asset delivery tips and a testing guide.

There’s also templates to get you started, and documentation on the TuneKit framework used by iTunes LP and iTunes Extras. These make extensive use of the WebKit framework, while using many new web standards.

Are you going to be more interested in these features since it’s now open for development? Let us know in the comments below!

TUAWApple documents iTunes LP and iTunes Extras for developers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Audience: A New York Event Where Technology And Art Collide

There is a cool new event in New York this November being organized by my friends Loren Feldman and Anton Mannering called Audience that I’ll be speaking at.

It’s a lot different than any other tech event I’ve spoken at. The speakers (just a few have been announced so far) include tech people, artists and others: “Bringing together some of the most exceptional people in the world. From the entertainers who engage audiences directly to the statisticians who measure them, to the technologists building tools to help us reach new and larger audiences and engage with them.”

We’ll post more on the event later, but the site just went live and the Audience team is offering up to 100 TechCrunch readers a $100 discount off of the regular $549 price. Use the code “TECHCRUNCH.”

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

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The iConcertCal app gets you to the show

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, App Review

iConcertCal is a new app for the iPhone that lets you track where and when all your favorite musicians are performing. Using some of the new features in the APIs of iPhone OS 3.0, it reads all the artists in the iTunes library of your iPhone, uses the built in GPS to find your location and then displays results dependent upon how far you are willing to travel.

A while back we reviewed the non-iPhone version of iConcertCal which, acting as an iTunes visualizer, created an iCal calendar of the artists in your library while creating a separate calendar appearing when the visualizer is launched. This new app takes that technology and brings it to a new level.

After setting a location either through “use my location”, or choosing from a number of pre-set cities, and setting how many miles should be searched, finding a concert is a snap and can be done a number of ways.

Choosing “My Shows” displays a day-by-day list of all matches found in your iTunes library. Choosing “All Shows” brings up a list of all concerts in your specified area, and tapping on “Venue” lists all music venues in your area along with how many shows are scheduled. Tapping on a venue, affords you a list of all of those concerts.

When you find something you like, you have the option of buying tickets, which takes you to the authorized ticket seller site, emailing the information, bringing up a map to get you to the hall or getting transferred to the iTunes store to buy some of the artist’s music.

This alone is cool enough, but the best trick isn’t immediately apparent. What happens if you have many songs on your computer that aren’t on your iPhone? Or what happens if your largest iTunes library lives on another computer? They’ve got you covered.

By going to their site on the computer containing your largest library, and setting up an account, all artists on that computer will be indexed. Next go to the app and use the same settings. Automatically all the artists on the computer will be transferred to the iPhone app whether or not the artists are on the iPhone, and that information will be used by the iConcertCal app.

With over 60 gigs of music on my MacBook Pro and deciding to have my iPhone 3GS sync to my MacBook holding around 10 gigs of music, I authenticated my MacBook Pro and now the iConcertCal app shows me all the artists my the 60 gig library. Sweet!

Take a look at the gallery of screenshots and see if you can figure out which band I’m seeing four times this week from seat DD 6.

TUAWThe iConcertCal app gets you to the show originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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