Last week, I posted about Spotify; the insanely scary and cool application which streams pretty much any song to your PC legally, and for free. I was under the impression that the app didn’t seem to care where you were.

Unfortunately, turns out, Spotify allows users to go on a “holiday” for 2 weeks away from their home territory, but after that, they shut you down. Currently, Ireland is not a territory where you can use the free service. Thus, as a citizen of Ireland, I am deSpotified, unless I agree to pay the (frankly quite reasonable) €10 a month to subscribe. Tempting, but somehow, I feel robbed as my UK friends use the service for free. In the music world, the valuable lesson here is that perception of value is more an issue than price. Record companies, take heed!

I was in the UK last week for a welcome break, and everyone there, from my tech-savvy gearslut mates in Brighton (”Silicon Beach” to the rest of us) to my 11 year old Read the rest of this entry »

RTE have released a beta version of their RTE Player, a catch-up web TV service. And it works! Even on a Mac!

Programmes will be available for 21 days after broadcast on the system, so you can “see what you’re missing”, as the blurb goes.

Of course, you probably won’t be watching some of RTE’s bought in programmes, for copyright reasons, and it sounds like, thanks to cutbacks at the national broadcaster, there’ll be a lot more bought in programmes, and a lot less indigenous material.

Still, this is a great development, and it should catch on, much like BBC’s iPlayer, which sadly, is not available here, again, for copyright reasons.

Check it out at http://www.rte.ie/player/

…and it’s shocking news for everyone in Ireland. See the Independent article.

So, I’m finally getting some quality time to myself, sitting down listening to some music on my Media Center, controlling iTunes from my iPod Touch. Maybe I’ll listen to the new Duffy album I just bought. (I like buying music. Hell, if I’m not gonna buy someone else’s, why should I expect anyone to buy mine!) Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Spiralfrog croaked, making it the second major “ad-supported” music site to close its doors in as many months. Well, obviously, this means ad-supported music sites don’t work, right? To my mind, that’s not exactly true. These sites had more than their ad-supported nature in common.

They both also used DRM (Digital Rights Management) which stopped people using the music on many common players.

When will the music business finally wake up to it. DRM Doesn’t Result in Money!

…do us all a favour. If you think that there is ANY chance that this mail is a hoax, copy and paste some of the content into Google and see what comes in. Read the rest of this entry »

Just a few weeks ago, Eircom gave in to pressure from the big 4 record labels by agreeing to implement a “three strikes and you’re out” policy to people allegedly uploading or downloading music illegally. One would have to agree that Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been tearing my hair out for a couple of weeks trying to find the best way to stream internet radio to my iPod Touch. Every single free internet radio app, and many of the paid ones, say much the same thing, “Over 5,000 radio stations”. Of course, what they don’t say is most of them are Read the rest of this entry »

Orbicule have upgraded Undercover, their anti-theft software, to version 3. The most important upgrade in this new release is the integration of Skyhook Wireless technology.

If you have a Mac, particularly a laptop and you don’t have Undercover, all I can say is, buy it now. It’s cheap and it’s clever. Apple should just buy this company and make the software standard on every Mac.