Technology News

Last.FM Radio to Charge Outside U.S., U.K., Germany

Source: All About Jazz
March 25, 2009

Last.fm Radio will soon require a monthly subscription fee of €3.00, unless you live in Germany, Britain or the United States.

The site has long offered a paid subscription option ($3 per month in the United States) that removes advertising and adds playback flexibility. Soon, that fee will be mandatory for listeners in unsupported countries who want to access the 7 million songs on the interactive music service.

The reason, according to a source close to the situation, is that ...

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China Blocks YouTube, Google Tries to Reinstate Access

Source: All About Jazz
March 25, 2009

On Monday, traffic from China to YouTube began dwindling until it dried up nearly completely today, due to a site-wide block of the popular video sharing site in that country.

Google says it has no idea why it's being blocked. China has demonstrated the ability to block access only to certain YouTube URLs as part of its ongoing censorship of the internet, so this site-wide ban represents a significant change in strategy.

“We do not know the reason for the ...

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Mixtape.me Strikes a Chord with Music Junkies

Source: All About Jazz
March 24, 2009

The new web service MixTape.me fills a gap left by MuxTape. You can't upload your own tracks, but you can pull MP3s from all over the web, build a playlist and share it with your friends.

We still miss MuxTape. The popular MP3-streaming service was shut down by the RIAA last year, and while there have been quite a few similar projects since MuxTape went off the air — OpenTape, the revamped FavTape as well as an RIAA-sanctioned ...

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Austin Sound Guys Share Secrets of Knob-Twiddling

Source: All About Jazz
March 24, 2009

While musicians soak up applause at South by Southwest, the unsung heroes of the festival make them sound as good as possible.

Austin's thriving club scene attracts some of the best sound engineers in the business, and these world-class console jockeys get a real workout during SXSW. The annual festival brings thousands of musicians and industry players to town, with multiple bands from around the planet trooping onto club stages one after another, with very little time between sets. ...

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Playboy Posts Unedited Back Issues Online, for Free

Source: PC Magazine
March 23, 2009

Sex sells, especially when it's free. Through a partnership between Microsoft and Bondi Digital Publishing, Playboy Enterprises has put 53 back issues of Playboy on the Web, viewable through Microsoft's Silverlight viewer. The images are free to access at PlayboyArchive.com, with no age verification required. The issues cover the years 1954 through 2007, and appear as they did in the print version, with advertisements left intact. To do so, Bondi Digital Publishing - the software pioneers that developed the platform ...

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Bandize Puts Web Tools in Musicians' Hands

Source: All About Jazz
March 23, 2009

Think it's hard writing the perfect pop song? Try keeping track of the number of T- shirts buried in the back of your band's van.

Bandize, a new web service for musicians that's currently in closed alpha, gives bands a suite of online tools to manage everything from tour bookings and social networking to mundane tasks like accounting and monitoring merchandise levels.

The five musician/web developers behind Bandize say they are trying to cover all the bases in an ...

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Feds Want Your Help with Broadband Policy

Source: All About Jazz
March 23, 2009

There's a bandwidth gap between the United States and the rest of the developed world that President Obama wants closed.

The feds are about to ask for help devising a plan to catch up to the Japans of the world. Epicenter will make it easy for you to be heard.

The FCC announced Thursday that at its next open meeting, April 8, it will discuss a notice of inquiry (.pdf) — essentially an open call for comment on what the ...

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Feds Dig More into Proposed Ticketmaster-Live Nation Merger

Source: All About Jazz
March 23, 2009

The Department of Justice has announced it will take a closer look at the proposed merger between the two companies.

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino testified on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 26 with Ticketmaster Entertainment CEO Irving Azoff.

The Department of Justice is asking Ticketmaster and concert promoter Live Nation for more information about their proposed merger.

It is the second request from the DOJ, indicating that it is scrutinizing the deal closer than most. Representatives for the ...

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