Technology News

Senate Passes Webcaster Settlement Act 2009

Source: HypeBot
June 20, 2009

The U.S. Senate has passed the Webcaster Settlement Act of '09. A similar bill passed the House several weeks ago. If signed by the President, the bill would suspend controversial royalty rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board while online broadcasters negotiate with labels, publishers and other rights holders. Many webcasters say that the current proposed rate increase would put them out of business.

“The Webcaster Settlement Act provides webcasters an opportunity to ...

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Your Online Music Marketing Report Card

Source: HypeBot
June 19, 2009

This guest post is from Nick Crocker who runs Native, a digital agency based in Australia. You can read his blog or follow him on Twitter.

Not every artist needs an A+ online. But everyone needs at least a C-.

The challenge for independent artists, label managers, artist managers and anyone working with artists in online marketing is deciding where to apportion effort.

Am I doing enough online? Should I tweet?

Should I blog on ...

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Sirius XM Launches iPhone App

Source: PC Magazine
June 19, 2009

Just in time for the release of the iPhone 3.0 software, satellite radio giant Sirius XM on Thursday made official its new app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The app provides subscribers with access to the content provider's 120 channels of music and talk like NPR, CNN, Fox News Talk, Oprah Radio, MLB Home Plate, and Martha Stewart Living. The app will offer access to exclusive content like Bootlegs, Talk Showcase, and Comedy Showcase. Users can also tag songs ...

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Google Still Tops in Search, Will Bing Change That?

Source: PC Magazine
June 19, 2009

Google once again topped the list for search engine share in May according to data from comScore. The company captured 65 percent of all core searches, up about 0.8 percent from April. Yahoo came in second with 20.1 percent of searches and Microsoft was third with 8 percent, a drop of 0.3 and 0.2 percent respectively. May's numbers did not include statistics for Microsoft's Bing search engine, which launched in June, but preliminary results from comScore said Bing helped Microsoft's ...

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New Jazz It Up! Episode Features: Chico Hamilton, Grace Kelly, Vintage Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Radio Deejay Russ Davis, and Coverage of the Freddie Hubbard Memorial at St. John the Divine

Source: All About Jazz
June 18, 2009

New York, NY -- From elder statesman Chico Hamilton to rising star Grace Kelly, the current episode of Jazz it Up! bristles with a cool edge that tempers the warmth of summer. On one of her two featured numbers, alto saxophonist Kelly arranges Bill Withers' “Aint No Sunshine" into a jazz showcase; during the second, she tells host Greg Thomas when and why she starting playing music and relates her instrumental influences. Drumming legend Hamilton leads a young ensemble with ...

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Despite Troubles, Poll Shows Myspace Still Important to Social Music

Source: HypeBot
June 18, 2009

Earlier this week May stats were released that Facebook has passed MySpace in users and pageviews both in the US and wordwide. Yesterday, MySpace announced a re-organization that will see 420 people or 30% of staffers loose their jobs. Despite these troubles, as of Wednesday morning almost 78% of Hypebot readers responding to an ongoing poll say that MySpace is still an essential part of their music social networking efforts. 26.2% say that MySpace still “rules ...

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Obama Favors Dumping Work Cell Phone Tax

Source: PC Magazine
June 18, 2009

The Obama administration on Tuesday said it will back repealing a hard-to-enforce tax on personal use of work cellphones, appeasing the business community, phone makers and users. A 1989 law requires companies seeking to deduct worker cellphones as an expense to track personal use with painstaking documentation of minutes. The government, in a notice last week sought public comment on making compliance easier, but now says the law should be scrapped altogether. Treasury “Secretary (Timothy) Geithner and I ask that ...

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Apple's iPhone Os 3.0 is Late; We Say: Wait

Source: PC Magazine
June 18, 2009

Ladies and gentlemen, start your iTunes. Just not yet. The new iPhone OS 3.0 update for all existing iPhones is scheduled to come out today, but it still hasn't arrived on iTunes as of 10 AM ET. According to general Web scuttlebutt, the update will arrive around 1 PM ET. Expect Apple's servers to be slammed, so if you can possible wait until tomorrow, do so. Friday will be another bad day for Apple's servers, because of the arrival of ...

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