Nine years ago Sunday, a federal judge made a decision that changed everything

Considering the shear unsuccessfulness of most streaming music platforms, one might thing that streaming music can’t be more than a novelty. Napster is barely a thought in today’s music marketplace, Rhapsody shares a laughable market, and the Zune Marketplace is just sort of puttering along in the background. When users [...]

There are two pieces of software out there that are more greedy and bloated than Apple’s music-playing, music-downloading title: AOL Instant Messenger and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
I hate iTunes.
I’m sick and tired of Apple getting a pass on quality control just because they gave us the Holy Roman iPod Empire and, by a roll [...]

With its customary flair for sexing up the art of gizmo glorification, Macworld 2009 didn’t disappoint with some big reveals today.
Topping all the charts was Apple’s latest update to its iLife suite, touting major retrofits of iMovie, iPhoto and GarageBand. The changes range from a better system for organizing photos in iPhoto to more powerful [...]

The music coming out of your iPod doesn’t sound as good as it would coming from a CD. Period. [...]

One of the funnest things about the Logitech Squeezebox Boom is listening to Radio One London from an apartment in Boston.

When you get something like the Altec Lansing Orbit Mp3 and a crisp, clean sound with great bass and highs (read the back of the box, they quoted me) it’s easy to realize why name is still the first thing audiophiles look at when they buy a toy.

Apple proudly boasted on Thursday that their highly successful iTunes Store has passed Wal-Mart as the top music retailer in the US.
iTunes has sold over four billion songs to over 50 million customers since opening in 2003.
“We launched iTunes less than five years ago, and it has now become the number one music retailer in [...]

Calgary-based Peapod Toys has released a children’s MP3 player called the SweetPea3. It’s a fully-functional, yet remarkably simply music device that plays 256MB of MP3 or WMA audio.
The SweetPea3 is battery-operated with an A/C adapter for charging/plugged-in use. It’s meant to be used by ages 0-8 — school age children, toddlers and even infants.
“MP3 [...]

Apple announced Tuesday that they are adding new models of the iPhone and iPod touch with double the storage capacity.
The iPod touch now comes in a 32GB model for $499, joining the 16GB model for $399 and the 8GB model for $299.
“For some users, there’s never enough memory,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of [...]

An 80s child, I grew up during the last days of cassette tapes (the term mix-tape had to come from somewhere, it’s not just the CD you burned from your iTunes downloads).
With cassette tapes, we had boomboxes. They came in all shapes and sizes, and depending on the age, they were very, very analog. [...]

Belkin’s new RockStar ($20) is out to make everyone feel like their own personal DJ.
The device lets you mix your music on your iPod or other music player, and up to six people can listen to it on their own headphones. You could also select to mark other audio jacks as inputs an allow [...]

It’s got a good little “thump” to it. [...]

Internet security firms are reporting a new trend in the “pump-and-dump” spam world — e-mails containing MP3 advertisements.
McAfee Avert Labs reported the phenomenon yesterday. “The spammed MP3 attachments promote a company enjoying huge success in Canada and expecting amazing results in the USA,” wrote McAfee’s Vinoo Thomas “These audio files are of very poor quality [...]