Sunday, March 25, 2007

Tech stuff: Subscription music, XM, and slacker

As I mentioned in my first post, I'm a technology nut and usually an early adopter. Right now, one of my favorite technologies is the subscription music service to go. Two years ago I started by subscribing to Napster, but I have been on Yahoo unlimited to go for the last year and a half. As both a mac and pc user, I will admit that the ipod/itunes combo is tough to beat, but as a music lover I can't think of a better opportunity to find new artists and download albums that have a lot of buzz around them. With the subscription service, once you download songs to your computer you can transfer all of your music to a compatible mp3 player. (I use a dell dj 30gb and Anne has a creative zen vision m). I am hoping that this type of service becomes more and more popular and that eventually Apple will offer the option as well. (Although I'm not holding my breath since Steve Jobs has said he is not a big fan of the model.) Anyway, another one of the cool features of Yahoo unlimited is the Launchcast radio service. Since you are able to rate artists, songs, and albums, launchcast will create a radio station that streams music to your computer while you're connected to the Internet based on your own preferences. It's like having your own personalized radio station. It's really a great feature, but I don't use streaming music that often because I usually don't listen to music while I'm sitting at the computer. (Pandora is another good FREE personalized streaming service to check out as well.) Sometimes I have thought that I would love to be able to take that personalized radio station on the go with me. I do have XM radio in the car, but I'm just not all that impressed. There are still too many songs that I don't care for on the stations that I listen to, and now they are starting to have commercials on their music stations too. So, the other day I heard about this new service that's going to be coming out this year. It's called Slacker and it promises to allow you to create customized radio stations and then take them with you on the go. I haven't investigated all of the details yet, but it sounds promising. If they can make all of the pieces work, it could be a disruptive technology. I'll let you know as I learn more about it.

1 comment:

Dave Timmons said...

Mark,
Congrats on getting your blog going. I appreciate knowing more about music downloads and I have not heard of most of these new tools. I also agree with you about Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue' - One of the best albums of all time!
God Bless.
Dave