MySpace Music Launches In The UK

MySpace Music is already up and running in the United States, and aims to combine music content in the form of songs, videos, artist profiles, playlists and charts with social networking allowing fans to share their discoveries online.

Access to the site is free, but News Corp-owned Myspace aims to make money through advertising and by taking a share of sales of concert tickets and merchandise, reflecting broader diversification in the struggling music business.

Users can also purchase and download songs and albums on Apple's iTunes digital store.

"This is indicative of the direction we want to go," said Courtney Holt, president of MySpace Music.

"We want to be a social content and media platform and we believe heavily in the socialization of content as core to our future strategy," he told Reuters in a London interview.

"It's not about just a passive listening experience. We want you to be active, we want you to go places, we want you to search for music. Music lives in places that require you to work to find it. We know our audience is hungry for discovery."

The website is a joint venture with the four major record companies -- Vivendi's Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music Group and EMI Music -- and features catalogues from independent labels and unsigned bands.

Vibrations Could Recharge Your MP3 Player

Scientists are now one step closer to being able to harvest energy from everyday environmental vibrations, such as those made from household appliances, trains, helicopters flying overhead, or human movement, to power electronic devices like MP3 players, cell phones or even heart monitors.

While some such commercial energy-harvesting devices already exist, they are limited in that they can only exploit vibrations that have a narrow range of frequencies. For instance, there are devices which use vibrations from industrial pumps to power sensors monitoring the pumps' condition, but they work only because the vibrations are predictable and controlled.

 

But now researchers at the University of Bristol are working to develop new technology which can harvest energy from the small, fluctuating vibrations which occur haphazardly all around us everyday. If they succeed, it could mean that our portable electronic devices could charge naturally as we wander about.

 

"Vibration energy-harvesting devices use a spring with a mass on the end," explains Dr. Stephen Burrow, who is leading the team at Bristol. "The mass and spring exploit a phenomenon called resonance to amplify small vibrations, enabling useful energy to be extracted. Even just a few milliwatts can power small electronic devices like a heart rate monitor or an engine temperature sensor, but it can also be used to recharge power-hungry devices like MP3 players or mobile phones."

 

The team believes new technology can exploit a wider range of frequencies by harnessing the properties of non-linear springs, which are better suited to capture unpredictable vibrations as they occur naturally. 

 

Even better, devices which generate power from energy-harvesters will eliminate the need for batteries and reduce the potentially harmful pollution that comes from improper battery disposal. "Wider-frequency energy harvesters could make a valuable contribution to meeting energy needs more efficiently and sustainably," said Burrow.

Spotify Music App For Symbian Devices

Spotify has arrived on Symbian - the music service du jour is now complementing its Android and iPhone offering with a Symbian S60 client. Available only to premium subscription members (£9.99 a month), the client will let you stream music on request to your handset, or you can download music to listen to when you are offline and out of coverage (ie on the London Underground). [NB. comment thread broken and awaiting Rafe attention]

We'll be having a more detailed look at the client this week and how it compares to Comes with Music and other streaming music services, but for now Spotify members can head over to http://m.spotify.com/ on their handset and give it a whirl. For now, here's the preview video Spotify demoed last month of the service.

Sonic Beyond Podcast Episode #56 - Accross The Universal

In this weeks show....Music Tech News From, Universal Music and Guvera launching free music site. Vevo music video site coming in Decembe and EMI and Hulu are teaming up. Your Gear News this week from Propellerhead and Lexicon. Plus your FREE software download!

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Sony’s Music Store Won’t Start Out A Serious iTunes Challenger

Sony keeps flip-flopping over adding music downloads to the PlayStation Network. After scrapping plans to add a music store to the gaming network—complete with the ability for gamers to port tracks to the handheld PSP—comes news that the company will indeed expand the PSN into a full digital download store, with music, books, as well as mobile apps available. It has been tentatively (and blandly) named the “Sony Online Service.”

SCEA President Kaz Hirai said the company was thinking about charging PSN members for “premium content,” since they currently can use the network to play games with each other for free; the new music and content store would be in addition to the growing library of movie and TV show downloads, as well as streaming content from Netflix that people can already get through the PSN.

Full details, like when and how the online store will launch, are scarce. BusinessWeek is already calling it Sony’s “answer to iTunes,” but if it’s tied to the PSN initially, then the Sony Online Service won’t have nearly as much reach as Apple’s music platform. (The company says there are currently 31 million registered PSN accounts worldwide. In contrast, iTunes has a global install base of over 100 million, per a recent Credit Suisse research note). At a presentation in Tokyo, Hirai said that Sony would “target quite a few” of the PSN users, though the company wasn’t even sure whether they would all “migrate to the new service.”

There’s also a question of how to make the logistics work. Sony will be able to feed music content in from its own BMG labels, and then work to license content from others, but its previous attempt at an online music service, Total Music, crashed and burned earlier this year.

Still, it’s an ambitious plan that makes financial sense in the long run. Sony expects to generate around $500 million in revenue from the PSN for this fiscal year, triple the amount from last year, per BusinessWeek. By adding music, e-book and and even mobile app downloads, the company could definitely increase that revenue, as well as demand for its new suite of e-readers.

The Sony Online Service will also include photo and video-sharing capabilities—giving people the ability to store content in “digital lockers” on the PSN—and reasons, perhaps, for them to perhaps buy more Sony digital cameras and camcorders. The company also said it was considering letting third-party developers create apps for the service, much like the iPhone App Store. Hirai said the service would be “one key factor” in the company’s plans to launch new mobile products, as well.