All you need to do is select from these beta clients:

• Windows users download here
• Mac users download here

• Infographic: Smartphone Apps – June 15, 2011
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• How to Build Real-time Apps with Backbone.js Models, Node.js and Socket.io – February 22, 2011
• Make your Applications Portable with Cameyo – September 11, 2010
• Portable Linux Apps – July 23, 2010

How to Download Spotify App Clients for Windows and Mac originally appeared on: Crenk
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Spotify is about to release their own version of Gift cards that will be in store in time for Christmas.

Gift cards will come in £10, £30 and £50 options. You can redeem the cards for Spotify subscriptions or download tracks.

To redeem a card just head over to our ‘Redeem your code‘ page and enter the PIN number on the back of the card. Starting today Morrisons will be the first store to start selling our gift cards. Spotify will be dding many more retail shops in the near future, stay tuned.

• Spotify Gapless Playback – October 17, 2011
• Share and Listen to Music on Facebook with Spotify – September 23, 2011
• Spotify Conversion Rate is at 12.5 Percent in the US: Major Labels Rejoice – August 9, 2011
• 2 Tools to Turn YouTube into a Genre-Based Radio Station – October 3, 2011
• Pandora Launches All New Website – September 21, 2011

Spotify Gift Cards Available to Buy in Retail Stores in UK in time for Christmas originally appeared on: Crenk
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• Spotify Gift Cards Available to Buy in Retail Stores in UK in time for Christmas – November 1, 2011
• Share and Listen to Music on Facebook with Spotify – September 23, 2011
• Spotify Conversion Rate is at 12.5 Percent in the US: Major Labels Rejoice – August 9, 2011
• 2 Tools to Turn YouTube into a Genre-Based Radio Station – October 3, 2011
• Pandora Launches All New Website – September 21, 2011

Spotify Gapless Playback originally appeared on: Crenk
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p.s. Facebook Music was a joke and never existed. Most of the top tech blogs really need to check their sources.

• Spotify Gift Cards Available to Buy in Retail Stores in UK in time for Christmas – November 1, 2011
• Spotify Gapless Playback – October 17, 2011
• Spotify Conversion Rate is at 12.5 Percent in the US: Major Labels Rejoice – August 9, 2011
• 2 Tools to Turn YouTube into a Genre-Based Radio Station – October 3, 2011
• Pandora Launches All New Website – September 21, 2011

Share and Listen to Music on Facebook with Spotify originally appeared on: Crenk
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This is amazing news for the music industry, because MOG, Rdio and other music streaming services have been having trouble gaining traction.

Spotify is all about conversion rates! The major labels want to see highest possible conversions to the premium service from the free option. In Europe Spotify has a conversion rate of 15% and so far in the US they are seeing 12.5%. Very promising signs for Spotify.

• Spotify Gift Cards Available to Buy in Retail Stores in UK in time for Christmas – November 1, 2011
• Spotify Gapless Playback – October 17, 2011
• Share and Listen to Music on Facebook with Spotify – September 23, 2011
• 2 Tools to Turn YouTube into a Genre-Based Radio Station – October 3, 2011
• Pandora Launches All New Website – September 21, 2011

Spotify Conversion Rate is at 12.5 Percent in the US: Major Labels Rejoice originally appeared on: Crenk
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Google Music beta is here and you can request your invite here (only if your in the USA).

So what is Google Music? Google Music is a very basic music locker and music player. Google music allows you to store your music library in the cloud (simply just add your mp3 files) and then play your music on both PC, MAC and Android phones. Google Music is currently free but has an upload capacity of 20,000 songs.

It seems like Google are trying to get into the music industry, but the product itself seems to have a limited shelf life. I really think music streaming of an unlimited library is the way forward. Owning your own mp3 files is very limiting and is going to cost a lot to the consumer in the long run (that is if they dont torrent the files in the first place). It seems like a music subscription service on every possible device is the way the industry is moving. I think it is going to be very difficult for the leading technology companies (Google, Microsoft, Apple) to win in this market, because they will have to get their products on all platforms through very difficult negotiations.

Google Music seems to be exactly the same as the recent Amazon Cloud Drive, so Google will need to match and beat them on price.

Overall, Google Music seems to be like a poor mans Spotify.

• Install Google Music on Ubuntu – August 30, 2011
• Listen to Your Music on the Google Music Player – August 9, 2011
• iTunes, Amazon and Spotify Controlling Digital Music Revenues in the UK – March 29, 2011
• Google Offers Available in Charlotte, Kansas City, Milwaukee, San Antonio and Tampa – January 25, 2012
• How to Download Spotify App Clients for Windows and Mac – December 2, 2011

Google Music Beta Now Available: Average Music Locker Service! originally appeared on: Crenk
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Spotify will be limiting their free service to 10 hours of listening per month, down from 20 hours. What’s more, they’ll only be able to play individual tracks five times ever, before they are made greyed out and unplayable.

Upgrading to the Spotify Premium service will obviously remove both of these limitations and provide better quality streaming.

“We’ve got to balance a number of priorities,” says chief content officer Ken Parks. “Chief amongst those priorities is to keep the free service, which is what makes Spotify unique, and what you’re seeing here is a balance of these priorities. We’ve shown that the model is doing extremely well, but as things stand we need to tweak the service to ensure everyone has access to legal music in the long term.”

It seems that these changes are down to rightsholder demands, but I know first hand that this is because of the major labels not liking the free service! Independent record labels and aggregators seem to be onboard with Spotify’s free service, as long as it brings people off illegal services and allows rightholders to generate at least a little royalties.

• Spotify Gift Cards Available to Buy in Retail Stores in UK in time for Christmas – November 1, 2011
• Spotify Gapless Playback – October 17, 2011
• Share and Listen to Music on Facebook with Spotify – September 23, 2011
• Spotify Conversion Rate is at 12.5 Percent in the US: Major Labels Rejoice – August 9, 2011
• How To Use Spotify if your based in USA or Other Countries – August 16, 2009

Spotify Decreasing Free Music Streaming Service to Only 10 Hours of Listening Time originally appeared on: Crenk
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It has been reported by AIM (Association of Independent Music) that iTunes, Amazon and Spotify, make up 94.4% of all indie digital revenues in the UK. Thus, the other services arent really worth worrying about at the moment.

Alison Wenham, head of the UK-based consortium, pointed to a lopsided logjam. “There are now a series of monopolies and it is jolly hard for anyone else to get a slice of the market”.

In the US there is still no Spotify presence and it seems as though eMusic is the third largest player, but Im sure they will change when Spotify finally enter the US this year.

via RouteNote

• Google Music Beta Now Available: Average Music Locker Service! – May 11, 2011
• Amazon Cloud Drive as Dreamy as it Claims? – April 29, 2011
• Nokia E7 Has Finally Launched in the USA: Buy From Amazon Now – April 8, 2011
• Google Offers Available in Charlotte, Kansas City, Milwaukee, San Antonio and Tampa – January 25, 2012
• How to Download Spotify App Clients for Windows and Mac – December 2, 2011

iTunes, Amazon and Spotify Controlling Digital Music Revenues in the UK originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

It seems like Sonos is now on every controller and has a leading partnerships with up and coming music streaming startups (Spotify and Rdio). Sonos will now launch their own Android client which looks brilliant.

The Sonos Android app has the same features as most other Sonos controllers, but it has been mapped specifically to take advantage of the Android menu keys.

Sonos is bringing the Android client to demo at MWC next month, and the public release is set for the end of March.

• Spotify Conversion Rate is at 12.5 Percent in the US: Major Labels Rejoice – August 9, 2011
• Rdio Music Streaming Now Available on Sonos – February 2, 2011
• How to Download Spotify App Clients for Windows and Mac – December 2, 2011
• Rdio Television Ad From Walmart and Samsung – November 24, 2011
• Spotify Gift Cards Available to Buy in Retail Stores in UK in time for Christmas – November 1, 2011

Sonos Launching Android Specific Controller originally appeared on: Crenk
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This would allow users to access their Spotify accounts easily from their android devices. However, they have a competitor.

“I can’t believe it’s not Spotify” has just launched and is taking on a lot of users as they wait for the official app to be released. It packs much of the same features as what we expect in the official version but lacks in one – offline playback. However, the developers say that this may come later if it continues to grow in popularity.

While I can’t see this app lasting as people tend to veer towards products with an official stamp on them, I can definitely see its use at the present. The developers deserve their time in the limelight because they plugged a gap in the market. But soon the official app will push them out with no really effort.

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I Can’t Believe it’s not Spotify! originally appeared on: Crenk
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A few people have been reporting that they have used the following steps to get a Spotify account when they are based in the USA.

1) go to http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/
2) enter the following URL: https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/
3) Create your account, for UK postcode – check http://www.postcodesearch.org.uk/

Let us know if this still works in your country!

• Spotify Gift Cards Available to Buy in Retail Stores in UK in time for Christmas – November 1, 2011
• Spotify Gapless Playback – October 17, 2011
• Share and Listen to Music on Facebook with Spotify – September 23, 2011
• Spotify Conversion Rate is at 12.5 Percent in the US: Major Labels Rejoice – August 9, 2011
• Spotify Decreasing Free Music Streaming Service to Only 10 Hours of Listening Time – April 14, 2011

How To Use Spotify if your based in USA or Other Countries originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Spotify are the biggest at the moment. They are the ones to go to for video and music streaming. Recently however, Microsoft announced that it would launch its own music streaming service. This was originally intended for July but has become delayed.

Several other companies are now catching up quickly with streaming services already launched or in the works.

TechCrunch.com contacted Microsoft and this is what they had to say for themselves:

We don’t have much detail to disclose on this subject but what we can share is that, in the coming months, MSN is planning a new music service in Beta via its Music channel in the UK.

“At this stage we won’t be confirming the details behind this but more information will be available soon and will be communicated in due course.”

At any rate, Microsoft had better hop to it if they want to succeed in what it becoming a crowded market. If they let users get too comfortable with one source (as we have see happen in the past with iTunes) then they will not want to move onto any future service provided by Microsoft.

• New Virus “Erases” Files and Folders: Panics Users – April 27, 2011
• Google is Offering $4 Billion Dollars to Buy Twitter? – November 20, 2010
• Unveiling Windows Live Messenger for iPhone – April 28, 2010
• Windows Mobile 6.5.3 Caught on Film – January 14, 2010
• I Can’t Believe it’s not Spotify! – August 19, 2009

Microsoft’s Music Streaming – Where is it Bill? originally appeared on: Crenk
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So how does Muzzic differ from it’s competitors, and how does it hope to gain users’ loyalty? They’ve got the content issue fairly well covered; their program crawls YouTube’s catalogue, logging all the songs by title and artist. The search seems pretty comprehensive – even odd little things like Kutiman’s Thru You series, and Swede Mason’s hilarious oddities are recognised.

There’s also a little sidebar to browse user’s upload channels by genre – this is pretty limited though, and there’s no way of knowing what you’re going to find in one particular person’s upload list. They work fairly well as mini radio stations or preset playlists though. You can build your own playlists, a single track at a time, or pick tracks to play from your search results. Muziic’s player also brings down the video for whatever you might be watching and plays it in a tiny little window next to the progress bar.

So is it any good? It’s better than last.fm for the fact that you can pick your own specific tracks, rather than have to listen to something like what you had in mind, but essentially it’s like a miniature version of a YouTube quicklist, nothing massively innovative, and more limited than SongBird in that it only draws down from YouTube – a massive catalogue,  granted, but not compared to pulling down tracks from the whole web, especially now YouTube has vowed to take down all the content from PRS artists. Not having any audio ads is nice, but the playlist management is so much more comprehensive and cool on Spotify that I’d bear Roberta whining on at me, as well as their more limited catalogue for the privilige of playing through my search results and not having to add tracks to a list one at a time. There’s no music discovery functionality, and worst of all, the tracks occasionally just stop playing for no reason.

All in all a nice try, and probably worth experimenting with before you go back to Spotify.

• Spotify Gapless Playback – October 17, 2011
• TubeRadio Redefines Online Music Listening – November 20, 2009
• How to Download Spotify App Clients for Windows and Mac – December 2, 2011
• Watch YouTube Playlists on iPad – November 27, 2011
• Hajj Pilgrimage Live to Watch on YouTube for Free – November 4, 2011

Muziic – Playlists from YouTube’s Catalogue originally appeared on: Crenk
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Tunerec is a web based service, that ‘records’ songs off  internet radio streams and then tags them all for your convenience.  Since it has to ‘record’ the streams first, it takes some time to save them in your database. But the patience is eventually rewarded. It has an iTunes like interface, where you can search for artists, songs and albums; Make playlists and also share them with friends.

Although I don’t understand why it has to ‘record’ songs for each user, and not just once for all its users, it probably doesn’t take much time as the number of songs i had last week jumped a whopping 100K this week, taking the total, as of now, to 1 Million.

It may not have all the songs you want, and likely demands patience even for those it has, the audio quality is commendable with very less buffering interuptions. As for the ‘legal’ thing you may be wondering about, the site mentions that it is completely legal and RWW also notes that Tunerec “ has worked out an agreement with the Swedish songwriters association STIM and the musicians (or at least the labels) get paid for every every song played on the service. ”

You can also invite your friends to the service and share your playlists with them.

Tunerec is currently in currently in closed beta but i was able to get into the service right away after i signed up. People living in Europe have a better option than Tunerec and that is Spotify. But sadly, Spotify is only available in Europe and will take some time untill it opens up to the U.S and rest of the world. Untill then, you have Tunerec. If you don’t like it, go buy your own CDs

(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Keshav Khera is young geek from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog and makes unsuccessful efforts to avoid twitter.

• 26 New And Awesome Web Apps You Probably Don’t Know About – March 3, 2009
• Download MP3 Music for Free – September 26, 2010
• Convert your Files Online with Fileminx – September 18, 2010
• Spotify Gift Cards Available to Buy in Retail Stores in UK in time for Christmas – November 1, 2011
• Spotify Gapless Playback – October 17, 2011

Don’t Get Sued… Use Tunerec originally appeared on: Crenk
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