Music

I love the concept of streaming music around the home. There are a lot of great wireless Bluetooth speakers for wireless music on the move, but it’s still unclear what to choose for a static home environment. Apple’s answer is AirPlay, but it has flaws: no multi-room support from iOS devices, limited adoption by speaker manufacturers, and spotty reliability at best.

I’ve been trying an AirPlay alternative, called Play-Fi, which is a competing industry technology for home Wi-Fi music streaming from DTS. Specifically, I tested the Definitive W7 wireless speaker which integrates Play-Fi. Read on for my review  ….

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Since its launch last summer, people have been calling for Apple’s streaming music service Beats 1 to offer up more unique content like live streams of concerts and listening parties. At long last, it appears as if that request is coming to fruition. The Apple Music Snapchat account has recently been promoting a Beats 1-sponsored concert by popular band ‘The 1975,’ whose new album comes out this Friday.

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After launching in public beta last December, Sonos has revealed that it will officially add support for Apple Music to its connected speaker lineup tomorrow, February 10th. We had an opportunity to go hands-on with Sonos support for Apple Music when the beta was announced last year and noted that in some cases, using Apple Music through the Sonos Controller app is better than Apple’s own app.

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According to a report this morning from The Wall Street Journal, Spotify is getting ready to finally launch its video content offerings. The rollout is set to start with the Android app getting video by the end of this week, but the iOS app is following suit by the end of next…
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Following its onslaught of music updates this morning, Apple this evening has rolled out updates to two more of its Mac audio apps. First is Logic Pro X, which has been bumped to version 10.2.1 with this evening’s update. Next is MainStage 3, which is now at version 3.2.3 thanks to its most recent update. Both apps have received a handful of new features, under-the-hood changes, and performance improvements with their respective updates.

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The iRig Keys Mini is an electronic MIDI music keyboard that connects to iPhone and iPad with a Lightning cable. Although it isn’t regularly advertised, iPhones and iPads have had great support for MIDI input instruments and other devices for a long time. Since iOS 4 in fact, Apple gave the developers the ability to interact with MIDI peripherals. Simultaneously, the App Store has bloomed a wide ecosystem of sophisticated music creation and audio production apps. This makes for a perfect storm of capability and functionality: not only are MIDI accessories possible, they can really be used to make music on iPhone and iPad.

Read on for my full review of the iRig Keys Mini piano keyboard for iOS ($79.99).

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For me, coffee at Starbucks is secondary to the great music you discover courtesy of your twenty-something barista’s Spotify DJ skills. The good news is you can now easily save those Spotify playlists for listening later through an update to the Starbucks iPhone app today.
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Apple continues to talk high praise of Apple Music, most recently leaking that the service has 10 million paying subscribers, but it has remained somewhat quiet about its Beats 1 online 24/7 radio station. Beats 1 launched to much fanfare with Zane Lowe leading the effort, and while it seems to be doing decently, it isn’t a sensation in the music business yet. It’s especially timely to talk about Beats 1 now that Apple has retired the iTunes Radio ad-supported stations, leaving Beats 1 as the only way to get free streaming music from Apple. I’m intrigued by the uptake of the station — there’s a poll to find out how often you tune in below the break — as it seems Beats 1 has an awareness issue.

I tend to like the music that is played but I just forget to tune in. I think Beats 1 is good but Apple needs to support it better within iOS and iTunes to make it stickier. Here are some suggestions …

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A new patent awarded to Apple today suggests that the company’s audio plans for future iPhones may go beyond reportedly ditching the 3.5mm headphone socket in favor of Lightning and Bluetooth. The patent is very densely-worded, but seemingly describes a method of getting higher-quality and higher-volume audio from speakers built into slimmer devices.

Apple’s statement of the problem is clear enough.

Given the area constraints imposed on many portable electronic devices, it is increasingly difficult to provide high-quality audio sound output and pickup without hindering the ability to make portable electronic devices smaller and thinner. Consequently, there is a need for improved approaches to provide high-quality audio sound output and/or pickup from portable electronic devices as they get smaller and thinner.

The language describing Apple’s proposed solution is less clear, but from a combination of this and the accompanying diagrams, I at least have a working theory of what is being suggested …

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Prior to the launch of Apple Music, I had a Spotify Premium subscription. Although I listened to my own music a good 80% of the time, I considered the equivalent of one album purchase a month to be decent value to have access to other music when I felt like something new.

But while Spotify didn’t much change the way I listened to music, Apple Music really has. Its ‘For You’ recommendations – especially the playlists – are so good that the 20% streaming I used to do has now grown to 50%. As I mentioned in my Apple Music Diary series, the service has introduced me to more new artists I really like than Spotify did in all the years I used it – despite my initial concerns that it wouldn’t do so.

But the very effectiveness of Apple Music in introducing me to so much new music has thrown up a couple of problems …

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One of the most common gifts every year is an iTunes gift card. For the techie that already has everything, it’s often the gift that many give out of a lack of other options. Nevertheless, it’s a gift that any iOS user will certainly put to use. iTunes gift cards can be used for basically anything, including music, movies, apps, TV shows, and subscriptions. If you’ve got some money to spend on iTunes now thanks to a gift card, keep reading for some of the best things on which to spend it…

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Update: It’s now official.

Building on a report from Billboard last week, Re/code now says that starting on Christmas Eve, The Beatles will be available on Apple Music. The report from last week said that the hit British boy band’s catalog would launch on one streaming service on December 24, but left out specifics.

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A well-known music industry analyst is estimating that Apple Music will hit 8M paid subscribers by the end of the year, and will reach 20M by the end of 2016, reports Music Business Worldwide. The prediction was made by Mark Mulligan, co-founder of digital content specialists Midia Consulting, who previously held senior research positions with Forrester and Jupiter.

In raw numbers terms, that would put it just behind market leader Spotify by the end of next year, but that may not quite present the true picture …

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Take a break from all the Christmas music and check out another new featured station from Apple Music’s Radio section today: Star Wars.

The stellar movie-themed station features tracks picked from the soundtrack of each film in the collection (even the prequels) so you can get hyped for The Force Awakens opening this week.

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While it undoubtedly drives the rest of my family crazy, I sure love Christmas music and don’t mind one bit that it takes over radio stations on November 1st. FM radio is okay in the car and I’ve used Pandora and iHeartRadio the last few years to find a variety of Christmas music, but ads and skip limits are no good when you’ve got access to a streaming music catalog everywhere you go. This year I’m all in with Apple Music and finding it terrific as my own personal Christmas music station.

Apple Music does a pretty good job of serving up a variety of ad-free Christmas music through stations and playlists … if you know where to look. Here are a few tips to set you in the right direction if you want to feel festive and spread the Christmas mood:

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