Twitter #Music – What Is It?

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Twitter Music

Twitter launched Twitter #Music about a fortnight ago, a new service and app to discover new artists and music through Twitter. The system uses a platform which was acquired last year by Twitter, oWeAreHunted, but has been refined and expanded through integration with Spotify and Rdio, two large music streaming services.

Currently, the system extracts songs from iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio, but other sources will be added in the future. By default, users can only listen to short snippet of songs – 30 seconds – directly from iTunes but for Rdio and Spotify, you will need to use your credentials to log in.  Based on the recent acquisition of “We Are Hunted” by  Twitter, the system will help us to discover new songs and artists based on custom criteria, including the artists followed by us or our followers. [Read more…]

Apple Pings Your Music Tastes

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Apple Social network PingApple’s new Ping network has debuted with the most recent release of iTunes.

Ping, not to be confused with social network updating service Ping.fm (or the web site Ping.com, which has nothing to do with music or social media whatsoever), is Apple’s new niche social networking service dedicated to connecting people based on their tastes in music. Ping is not a standalone web site; it comes packaged only with the software, which is available for both PC and Mac.

Interestingly, Ping is disabled by default and is therefore an opt-in user experience. One might think that Apple would be pushing for users to try the free service, but Apple is promoting social interaction by making users’ details such as name and hometown visible to the public unless specifically set to private. Furthermore, the types of music you enjoy, based on your iTunes statistics, can be hidden – so that embarrassing fetish for show tunes need not be known to the world. [Read more…]

Apple TV shipment starts now

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Apple is now shipping Apple TV, an easy to use and fun way to wirelessly play all your favorite iTunes content on to your widescreen TV, including movies, TV shows, music, photos and podcasts.

With Apple TV’s interface, anyone can quickly browse and view their entire collection of digital media from across the room using the simple and intuitive Apple Remote. Apple TV easily connects to almost all modern widescreen televisions.

“Apple TV is like a DVD player for the Internet age-providing an easy and fun way to play all your favorite iTunes content from your PC or Mac on your widescreen TV,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Apple TV allows you to wirelessly play your content from your PCs or Macs using your existing WiFi network as well as the newest and fastest version of WiFi-802.11n.”

The seamless integration of Apple TV and iTunes lets users choose from over 400 movies and 350 TV shows in near DVD quality; over four million songs; 5,000 music videos; 100,000 podcasts; and 20,000 audiobooks from the iTunes Store.

Enticing, true. But the next question, just like the gizmos that came out in the not so distant past is looking for supply. Start lining up now or better yet, wait until excitement dies down.