We’ve written previously about how you can redownload your iTunes purchases, which is great if you don’t have that music on your current computer, smartphone, or other device. But what about if your purchased music files are on your computer drive or smartphone but have been damaged or otherwise corrupted? For example, a song always abruptly stops midway through playing, and iTunes won’t let you redownload the file? Here’s what to do.
Not only is Bruce Springsteen the Boss, but he’s a class act, as well. Scheduled to play Madison Square Garden yesterday, the concert had to be postponed owing to the blizzard of ’16. And so, he and the E Street Band have made available for free download, in its entirety, last week’s Chicago concert, including the debut of their cover of the Eagles’ ‘Take it Easy’, as a tribute to Glenn Frey (entire playlist below). Now that’s class!
It’s a story old as time – David and Goliath, Taylor Swift and Apple. Only the slingshot that Swift used was the withholding of her music from Apple Music, Apple’s new streaming music internet radio service (as contrasted to iTunes). Here’s what’s going on and what was in her love letter to Apple.
If you have purchased something from the iTunes store, and seen that it said that it was the “non EU version”, and wondered what that meant, well, you’re not alone. We recently set out to determine just why some iTunes music has this “non EU version” designation, and here is what we found.
Some iPhone 4, 4s, and 5 users who are running iOS6 are finding that they have a rather annoying issue – iTunes music or podcasts automatically starting to play after they receive a phone call.
Streaming radio service, Pandora, may soon be regretting opening its music box. Apple is apparently sticking with what should be their official mantra, “anything you can do, I can do better,” after reports began to leak that they are working on a streaming radio option of their own. With this one announcement, Pandora shares went into a tailspin, plunging 19%.
Nothing in life is free, and with Walmart’s latest iTunes gift card deal – $100 of iTunes credit for $80 – that is especially true. Sure you receive $20 of “free” turns through this deal, but it’s going to cost you – your personal information.
Music app Songza is quickly proving itself to be a worthy opponent of Pandora. This free music app is available on Android, iPhone, and Kindle Fire, and plays music based on what seems an endless bank of playlists.
Google has just announced a companion to Google Music, which graduated out of beta today, with the new Google Music Store, available through the Android Market. With this move, Google officially takes iTunes on head-to-head. And as Google Music is a cloud-based service, allowing you to store all of your music (including Google Music purchases) in the cloud and listen to it from any Android device, this seamless integration also has them matching iTunes stride for stride. In fact, because you can buy music directly from your Android phone or tablet, they have leap-frogged iTunes in that department, as you still cannot buy music from the iTunes store from your iPhone or iPad.
Spotify is an online streaming music service that has been available in certain countries in Europe since 2008, but Spotify in the USA has only been available since July 15th. Spotify differs from some other online music services in that 1) you don’t have to own the music to listen to it – Spotify music is streamed directly from Spotify’s own enormous online music library, and 2) the music Spotify offers is a vast collection of commercial music from well-known artists, any of which you can add to your Spotify playlists. Users can get Spotify for free by signing up at spotify.com, then you download from Spotify the correct Spotify app for your computer. And speaking of your computer – Spotify also lets you listen to your own music as well as that in their library – the best of both worlds! There are also Spotify apps for most mobile platforms, so you can use Spotify on Android phones, iPhones, and Windows Mobile phones. And, of course, it took just two weeks for the official Spotify United States welcome: a lawsuit for patent infringement by PacketVideo. Welcome to the U.S., Spotify.
The netosphere is a’buzz with the announcement of Apple’s new cloud-based streaming music service. The Apple music service is actually part of a cloudy storage service called iCloud (what else?). iCloud is an online storage and “syncing” service which allows you to “sync” calendars, contacts, email, photos, documents, ebooks, and yes, your music, across multiple devices. The music part of it basically allows you to store your iTunes library in ‘the cloud’ and access it from any capable device. (We put “sync” in quotes because technically it’s not really syncing, it’s having your data “pushed” and downloaded to each of your devices, on demand, but many users still think of it as syncing.)
Yesterday’s announcement by Apple that the music of the Beatles was finally available on iTunes brought cheers around the world (along with a few “So what?”s, it has to be said). And, it isn’t just a smattering of Beatles tunes – it is all of the Beatles music – every last bit of it. You can buy the albums individually, or in a compilation Box Set. Plus there is an exclusive “iTunes only” video of the Beatles’ very first U.S. concert, Live at the Washington Coliseum, 1964, (which you can watch for free through the end of the year)! Maybe now, at least, we will get that Beatles iPod, which has been rumoured for nearly 4 years.
Now you can listen to free music online without downloading it, thanks to Google’s new music-playing search result feature! Goodbye music download, hello instant music gratification! Instead of searching for downloadable music, now you can just search for the music you love, and play it! Being called by some the Google Music Service or the Google Music Player, here’s how it works: when you search for music online through Google, the search results offer you the ability to play that music – for free – directly from the search results, with a little ‘play’ box. This is all the result of a partnership between Google and music streaming sites such as Pandora, Lala, MySpace Music, and Real Player’s Rhapsody service.