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Posts Tagged ‘Listening To Music’

Mac Pro users reporting performance hit linked to audio use

Filed under: Mac Pro

Nehalem-based Mac Pro users are reporting in Apple’s discussion forums and other locations that some audio tasks are causing performance issues. There is up to a 20% drop in performance while doing tasks as simple as listening to music in iTunes. Other users are saying there are similar issues when utilizing Logic and Flash.

The issues are also causing internal temperatures to skyrocket. One forum user showed how playing a 4-minute track in iTunes caused the internal temperature of his Mac Pro to increase by 11 degrees.

Several users have shown that booting into Windows 7 on the Mac Pro resolves these issues, pointing the finger at OS X as causing the problem.

Forum members are saying that pleas to AppleCare are falling on deaf ears. A Facebook group is now tracking the problem, offering advice and performance test suggestions.

[Via MacNN]

TUAWMac Pro users reporting performance hit linked to audio use originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kids who smoke pot like to listen to music that mentions it

All of us are awash in various media cues that exert subtle influences on our behavior and choices. But even when a correlation is found, separating cause and effect is extremely difficult—have we adopted a habit, such as smoking, because of exposure to it in (for example) movies, or does a separate personality trait predispose us to both the habit and certain movies? This is especially true in adolescents and teens, whose personality traits are still evolving. A new study on cannabis use and musical listening habits doesn’t delve in to cause and effect relationships, but it does find a correlation between musical references to the use of the drug and the tendency to actually use it.

The study involved about 1,200 high school students in the Pittsburgh area who completed a survey that included a variety of questions about demographic information, drug and alcohol use, grades, parental involvement, etc. Included in the survey were some basic questions about the students’ listening habits, such as who their favorite artist is and how much time they spent listening to music.

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MOG Launches All Access, Sets New Standard For Online Music

MOG’s much anticipated All Access music service launches today for anyone to come and give it a try. I’ve been using the service for the last few weeks and, despite my initial skepticism over the fact that users must pay for the service, I’ve been impressed. MOG makes millions of songs available users on demand over the Internet. The user experience and social aspects of the service put it far ahead of any online music service available today, and it’s well worth the $5/month.

All Access is a nearly flawless product that is an absolute joy to use.

MOG, founded in 2005, was essentially a social music portal and advertising network until today. But they’ve been working on this All Access product for well over a year now, hoping at first to provide it free to consumers. But the big music label’s willingness to dabble in free streaming music to consumers is clearly waning – and so MOG was forced to charge users for the service.

And I think a lot of users may just be willing to pay for the service once they realize how much better it is than it’s most obvious competitor, MySpace Music.

For whatever reason MySpace has been slow to iterate on its year-old service. The service remains slow and buggy. Getting to and listening to music requires more steps than it should. And the advertising is often intrusive. Perhaps it’s the fact that they have to pay every time a user listens to a song, but sometimes it just seems like MySpace Music is trying to slow you down rather and add friction to the music experience.

MOG, by contrast, just flies. Searching, discovering, saving and listening to music is intuitive and fun. The social aspects of the service let you share and discover new music with friends. And the user experience will be an inspiration to the next generation of web designers.

And as if that wasn’t enough, MOG Radio, a feature of All Access, is just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Or rather, heard.

Our complete overview of the service is below. But don’t rely on us, give it a try. MOG is letting people test the service for free for an hour, without any obligation (no credit card required). And we’re also pleased to give 250 TechCrunch readers a one month free membership to MOG All Access. Just email TechCrunch@MOG.com, first come first serve.

Overview Of MOG All Access

Music Library: MOG has songs from all four major labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI Music. And they also a deep collection of indies as well. If the music is legally available anywhere online, it’ll likely be available on MOG.

Overall user experience: Prepare to be shocked. Everything is as it should be. Music is played via a fully controllable pop up window, so you don’t have to stay on the full site. You’ll see album art and information on the song currently being played. Related music is listed below the song, or, if you’re listening to a playlist, other songs on the list. There are no restrictions on skipping or changing songs at all, and the service responds as quickly and crisply as if it were a desktop application.

One feature I love – lyrics for whatever song you’re listening to are one click away.

Search & Discovery: It’s awesome. Search by artist, album or song. Or a combination. Search is very fast – as I said above, it’s a lot like using a desktop application like iTunes to search for music sitting on your hard drive.

And if you can’t think of what you want to listen to, check out the playlists that others have created and made public. MOG ranks them using an algorithm to push the most popular and most played lists to the top. Or find other users who you share music tastes with and follow them. You’ll see what they’re listening to.

MOG Radio: This is worth the $5/month alone. If you’re a Pandora fan you’ll know the joy of typing in a song or artist you love and listening to music from other related artists. It’s an amazing way to discover new music. But MOG goes way beyond what Pandora offers. Not only are there no ads and you can skip songs at will without limitations, they let you decide exactly what you want to listen to.

Only want to hear David Bowie songs? No problem. Just keep the slider (see image) all the way to the left. But if you want a more Pandora-like experience, slide it to the right and get some Iggy Pop, Queen, Duran Duran and other artists you might like as well.

Pandora doesn’t let you just listen to one artist because it changes the nature of their music license from radio to on-demand. MOG doesn’t care because they pay a set fee per user per month to the labels no matter how much music you listen to. So if there’s band you love and don’t want to bother creating a playlist, just type it in, set the music slider to the left, and listen to as much of their music as you want.

Library And Playlists: If you stumble onto a song you love, you can one-click save it to your library or put it into a playlist. See more on playlists in our post here.

Wish List: As I said, MOG is nearly flawless. But I do have a few requests. First, I’d like to be able to type two or three artists into search and create a radio station on the fly that only plays those artists. MOG says that is something they’re considering. Another request – I’d love it if MOG could scan my iTunes collection and automatically add all those songs and Playlists to my MOG library.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Study Reveals More Details About The iPhone Mom

A few months ago, we wrote about mobile ad network Greystripe’s study that placed “iPhone moms” (mothers of young children who own iPhones) as one of the new and growing mobile advertising demographics on the street. In August, Greystripe claimed that iPhone moms made up 29.5% of all iPhone users. Today, the ad network is releasing a follow-up report which offers detailed behavioral characteristics of moms in their iPhone ad network. Similar to the “soccer moms” demographic, iPhone moms are a consumer segment that has vast potential for advertisers and app developers.

The report shows several interesting patterns. For example, over 59% of iPhone moms surveyed say they let their children use their iPhone. And 41% of moms who own iPhons download apps specifically for their children to use.

Shopping is another key use of the iPhone for moms. Close to 60% of iPhone moms depend on their phone to locate the nearest store around them while 41.94% of moms use the iPhone to keep track of shopping lists. Other shopping activities include comparison shopping, (39.43%) downloading coupons (19%) or keeping track of items on sale (22.94%).

When it comes to actually shopping at the grocery store, a little over half of iPhone moms use their phones at the grocery store, with 40.14% using it as a shopping list tool and 22.58% using it as a recipe resource at the store.

Unsurprisingly, close to 90% of moms who have iPhones use it for personal entertainment which includes listening to music, browsing the Internet or using entertainment apps. Email comes in at a close second place with over 79.57% of iPhone moms surveyed using their phone for checking messages. And it seems that many moms use the device as an organizational tool with over 64% of iPhone moms using their phones to manage their calendar and schedule, which is 9% higher than the rest of the iPhone community as a whole.

Moms are looking to the iPhone and other smartphones as both a valuable organizational tool and an entertainment portal, making the iPhone a valuable advertising platform. While Greystripe says that this demographic have tended to be late adopters, I’m not so sure if this is true considering the rapid growth of “Mommy bloggers” over the past few years. There’s a blog that’s devoted to iPhone Moms and offers recommendations for kid and baby-friendly iPhone apps for moms to download.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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Sony Ericsson’s motion activated MH907 headset really could change things forever

See that? That’s the device that will forever change the way you to listen to music. At least that was the promise made in the teaser running up to today’s press event. The buttonless MH907 buds are the world’s first “Motion Activated” headphones with Sony Ericsson’s “SensMe Control” tech: bung them into your ears to automatically start listening to music, remove one bud to pause. The buds are activated by body contact and mimick the way we control sound now. What’s cool is that the headphones seem to use your body as an electrical conduit (a Body Area Network) based on this quote from the webinar:

“Requires conductive surface to activate the controls – i.e. your ears, hence it won’t turn things on in your pocket by just squeezing the ear buds”

If so, this is a first consumer application of this technology that we can recall. Available globally this week for any Fast Port equipped phone for just €39. Video fun after the break.

Continue reading Sony Ericsson’s motion activated MH907 headset really could change things forever

Filed under: Portable Audio

Sony Ericsson’s motion activated MH907 headset really could change things forever originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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5 ways to listen to music on the iPhone without using iTunes

One of the major functions of the iPhone and iPod touch is, of course, music playback. The iTunes app has been designed in such a way to take advantage of the iPhone’s touchscreen. But what if you want to listen to music that doesn’t reside in your iTunes library, or you want to discover new music while not sitting in front of a computer?

Thanks to the incredible success of the App Store, there are plenty of ways now to access streaming music even when you don’t have the files. Not everyone knows what options are available, though—either that, or there are so many options that sifting through everything can be tedious. For these reasons, we are offering the top five ways we here at Ars like listening to music on the iPhone without using iTunes.

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