Music subscription services

Spotify acquires The Echo Nest and its musical smarts

Streaming music service Spotify has acquired The Echo Nest and its graph of musical data spanning more than 35 million songs and 2 million artists. It’s an easy way for Spotify to match companies like Google and Pandora on the data science front.

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Why Apple would want to move into music streaming

With the popularity of Spotify, Pandora and others, Apple probably wants to find a way to keep its customers from wandering outside its ecosystem just because it has no cloud-based music streaming service. Attitudes are changing about owning media, which Apple must recognize.

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Spotify gets more social with Soundrop relaunch

Spotify app Spoundrop relaunched over the weekend, adding features that make collaborative listening on Spotify even more social. This should help Spotify to bring more curation to its music catalog, making it possible for users to tune into a more radio-like listening experience.

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TuneIn Radio rises to the top among streaming music apps

Pandora went public,bit.ly/vI6vQC and Spotify successfully launched in the U.S. So which streaming music service tops them on smartphones? Try TuneIn Radio. Onavo, a mobile data management and compression service, has done some work to figure which are the most popular mobile music apps.

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Spotify comes to Boxee

Spotify wants to be in your living room, and it’s using the Boxee Box as a vehicle to reach your TV screen: Users of the music subscription service can now use a dedicated Spotify app on the device to access their favorite songs and playlists.

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Spotify comes to the TV screen with new WD player

Spotify is expanding into the world of TVs, partnering with WD for its first-ever connected TV experience for U.S. consumers. Music services have been hugely popular on set-top boxes and other connected devices, where consumers use Pandora almost as much as they use Netflix.

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No more iTunes Match streaming in iOS 5 beta 7

With the release of iOS 5 beta 7 for Apple’s mobile devices, the company has turned off streaming in iTunes Match. People can still listen to music as it downloads, but it will remain on the device. Is the change likely to affect the product’s appeal?

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Made in America: The state of U.S.-based music services

Spotify’s journey to the US has been highly anticipated almost since the on-demand music streaming service first launched in its native Europe in October 2008. But with all the Spotify buzz, let’s not forget about the great music services that were born here in the US.

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Confirmed: Spotify US will launch Thursday

UPDATED. Spotify U.S. is now in T-minus territory. A spokesperson for Spotify has confirmed that the popular European on-demand music streaming service will be available stateside on Thursday morning. GigaOM reported last month that Spotify’s U.S. launch would occur in mid-July.

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Confirmed: Spotify raises $100M

UPDATED. Spotify, the European on-demand music service, has closed on about $100 million in a new funding round from DST, Kleiner Perkins and Accel Partners that values the company at $1 billion. The fresh funding will be put toward Spotify’s highly anticipated US launch.

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Would You Pay for Apple’s Cloud Music Service?

Apple might charge for its rumored cloud-music storage service, according to a new report from CNET. The tech site says that “music industry insiders” are saying cloud-storage for iTunes libraries won’t be free, at least not after an initial trial period. But would you pay?

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Spotify Runs Up Against Apple in U.S. Expansion Attempts

Setting up a streaming music service in the U.S. isn’t easy, thanks to the company holding the music industry’s purse strings. That company is Apple, and according to Spotify’s head of business development Faisal Galaria, it’s a force that may be impossible to reckon with.

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Will Streaming Content Drive Scale-out Storage?

Gluster today announced streaming music pioneer Pandora as a customer, which is telling in a couple ways. It helps validate the billions that large vendors and investors have poured into scale-out storage providers, and it suggests a possible target market for these providers going forward.

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Hands On with mSpot, an iTunes in the Cloud

mSpot, a new music streaming service for your own audio collection, recently launched on Android 2.0 or better devices. Thanks to local caching, mSpot offers playback even when your phone has no data connection. But seamless on or offline playback is hurt by one main issue.

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Apple in Talks to Acquire Lala: Report

Apple is reportedly on the verge of acquiring streaming music site Lala.com, known for its 10-cent streaming songs and digital music locker service. Terms aren’t being disclosed, but the report implies that an agreement is in place, with only a final sign-off needed.

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