Google Chrome feature helps you silence noisy tabs
Google has helped lower the blood pressure of internet users across the world with an experimental Chrome feature that makes it easy to identify which of your open tabs is blaring out noise.
The feature, which is available in Chromium and the bleeding edge "this might crash horribly" Canary build of Chrome, puts a little visual indicator in tabs that are playing noise.
The technology lays a six-frame bitmap of a throbbing EQ over the website's favicon, making it a lot easier to find tabs that are playing music. Read more...
SeatGeek Signs Its First Big Music Partners, Including AOL Music
Ticket search engine SeatGeek is best known as the place to find good deals on sports tickets, but it’s working to dominate ticketing for any live events, including concerts. It just announced its first partnership deals on the music side, with AOL Music (which is, yes, owned by the same parent company as TechCrunch), Pollstar, and Emusic. Read more...
Grooveshark opens up its data with Beluga, offering insight into the listening habits of its users
Grooveshark has just launched a brand new service tapping into the information they’ve gathered over the years giving insight into musical artists and their fanbase.
Beluga allows users to search for any artist in the Grooveshark database, giving some interesting tidbits of information on the kinds of people that listen to that music.
The data has been compiled based on “extensive market research”, surveying music fans – Grooveshark users are encouraged to participate in surveys in exchange for points which can be used to upgrade to a paid account on the site. The data has also been enhanced by tapping into the listening activity of Grooveshark’s 20 million monthly users worldwide Read more...
Korea’s K-Pop music industry joins Facebook and Google+ to extend global reach
Have you heard of K-Pop?
Two years ago the answer would almost certainly be no, unless you were living in Korea and other parts of Asia, but today the Korean music genre is increasingly followed the world over, thanks TO its online reach, which just got extended further still.
The Korean pop (K-Pop) industry has taken two significant steps towards growing its already impressive online footprint after industry-wide content pages were established on both Facebook and Google+. These moves will help bringing stars, music, news and multimedia to millions of existing and potential new fans across the planet.
Social networks and the Internet are opening the world like never before and K-Pop, a genre of pop music from South Korea, is fast becoming an example of the international opportunity that the Web can offer. Read more...
Half A Million Musicians Now Rock Facebook With BandPage
BandPage, Facebook’s top app for artists trying to stream and promote their music to fans, now powers 500,000 musician Pages. Just 6 months ago that number was 250,000, showing the rapid shift in focus of bands from MySpace and standalone websites to Facebook where fan retention is better. BandPage also just announced new features that allow listeners to tell friends about favorite songs through their Facebook Timeline and the Ticker feed with a single click.
Publishing to Ticker helped Spotify score massive growth and it could do the same for BandPage. BandPage needs to do whatever it takes to keep growing its artist count since it can’t rely on big checks for custom development work from the world’s most popular acts — a model that’s helping other musician marketing services turn quick profits. Read more...
Swiss Govt: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal
One in three people in Switzerland download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet and since last year the government has been wondering what to do about it. This week their response was published and it was crystal clear. Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won’t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products.
In Switzerland, just as in dozens of other countries, the entertainment industries have been complaining about dramatic losses in revenue due to online piracy.
In a response, the Swiss government has been conducting a study into the impact downloading has on society, and this week their findings were presented.
The overall conclusion of the study is that the current copyright law, under which downloading copyrighted material for personal use is permitted, doesn’t have to change.
Their report begins with noting that when it comes to copying files, the Internet has proven a game-changer. While the photocopier, audio cassette tape and VCR allowed users to make good quality copies of various media, these devices lacked a in-built distribution method. The world-wide web changed all that. Read more...
Sony chairman credited with developing CDs dies
As a young man, aspiring opera singer Norio Ohga wrote to Sony to complain about the quality of its tape recorders. That move changed the course of his life, as the company promptly recruited the man whose love of music would shape the development of the compact disc and transform the Japanese electronics maker into a global software and entertainment empire.
Sony's president and chairman from 1982 to 1995, Ohga died Saturday in Tokyo of multiple organ failure, the company said. He was 81.
Ohga's connection to music steered his work. The flamboyant music connoisseur insisted the CD be designed at 12 centimeters (4.8 inches) in diameter to hold 75 minutes worth of music — in order to store Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in its entirety. Read more...