On Tuesday, eMusic released a beta version of the download manager, a slick new incarnation that automatically syncs your music to any player, among a few other bells and whistles. Best of all? It has an incredibly small footprint, and won’t hog your machine. Instead, it largely runs in the background, and seamlessly gets you [...]

On Tuesday, eMusic unveiled two big additions to the site: audiobooks and the new download manager, eMusic Remote. Unfortunately, some problems with the 1.0 release of eMusic Remote have caused headaches for some iTunes and Mac users. We apologize for this, and our first priority right now is a patch to enable eMusic Remote and [...]

By now you have heard about the plight of internet radio (if you haven’t, check out this 17 Dots post or Save Net Radio). It’s a serious and urgent issue that will have dramatic consequences for the future of free, legal music on the web.
We also wanted to take this chance to debut a cool [...]

As eMusic’s CEO David Pakman noted in his 17 Dots post about the future of DRM-free music, eMusic is a music retailer. Our job is to provide consumers with an easy, pleasant and affordable way to help people purchase music that they like, thereby supporting the artists who create music and the labels who distribute [...]

As multimedia convergence becomes reality, new forms of entertainment continue to develop in unexpected ways. Consider the case of the young Lasse Gjertsen, who has created music videos using nothing but a video camera and video editing software. Then go watch your favorite album in 5.1.

I think we need something other than new releases posted today. How bout some lederhosen with a built-in MP3 player? You can see the transport controls built into the side of the garment. Now we just need some traditional German music to crank. Here is a fairly useless translation of the linked [...]

Star Power

Occasionally a video game company might bring in a “celebrity” to help on a games soundtrack or audio. This is not always a good thing. BT’s contribution for Tiger Woods Golf feels phoned in and dull compared to his solo work, Paul Oakenfold’s FIFA theme sounds like it could have been written [...]

Over at eMusic.com, we just re-launched an (unfortunately) seldom-used feature: the Neighbors page (or check out my neighbors if you’re not an eMusic user). “Neighbors” are eMusic users who have shown they have similar tastes to you, through shared downloads and ratings. We take a handful of these users, and show you a few of [...]

A Wednesday morning link dump for you fine folks, with some 17 Dots-endorsed entertainment around the web.

So, this is my second post in as many days about dying. My coworkers might start worrying soon. But this one is fun. Yeah, it’s not about music or anything, but I figured people would enjoy it.
Check out Adult Swim’s brilliant new viral game, Five Minutes To Kill (Yourself). Basically, run around the office and [...]

song libraries

For a long time the song library was a favorite of mostly producers of racing and sports games, often time seeking out high energy rock, electronic and hip-hop material instead of composing original music for their games. Sometimes the tracks are picked from collections that publishing companies put together with the sole intent of [...]

Need a change of scenery? Want to spruce up your desktop wallpaper? Download this eMusical mosaic for hardcore eMusicheads. It’s the eMusic logo made up of about 5000 eMusic album covers. The hand-picked collection of eMusic album covers I used to make the mosaic is worth an afternoon of browsing on [...]

As an avid gamer since my childhood, I have likely logged thousands and thousands of hours listening to the music contained in video games. Now that games are complete multimedia experience and memory issues are a thing of the past, it has become increasingly common to find video games with fully orchestrated scores, huge [...]

There’s a post on TechCrunch today by Michael Arrington that really got my blood boiling. Arrington writes:
The faster music labels realize their massively profitable days are over, the better it will be for them, as well as the bands they represent and us, their customers. Digital music sales are not going to make up for [...]

From the Museum of Lost Interactions (click the link for more pictures):
In 1925, the Acoustograph was a music downloading device well ahead of its time. The upper class city families that owned these devices would request a musical composition with the Morse key, down telegraph wire.
(Link courtesy the wonderful Morning News.)

An actually useful iTunes plugin! Who knew? iConcertCal matches the artists in your iTunes to concert listings for your area, generating a monthly browsable calendar listing gigs.

According to a recent study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf, illegal music downloads were found to have no noticeable impact on music sales, a finding that contradicts the collective assumption of the major record labels.
“Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing [...]

If you’re looking for some of the weirdest, most distinctive synthesized sounds around, try “SIDs,” vintage chiptunes crafted on the Commodore 64’s SID (Sound Interface Device) chip. The SID was the first computer sound chip with real thought put into it. It wasn’t just tacked on as an afterthought. It didn’t just beep on and [...]

Lovers of Pandora personalized radio and eMusic DRM-free MP3’s rejoice! Here’s an unofficial eMusic + Pandora mashup for your enjoyment.
It works as you’d expect. As Pandora plays away, the corresponding eMusic page is automatically displayed so that you can download the MP3, read artist & album reviews, or find similar artists on eMusic.
Launch [...]