February 7, 2013
When the Internet was small and young, file formats were pretty much limited to image types and media file types that the browsers of the time could handle. At the very beginning, text was almost exclusively meant to be presented on the Internet in HTML format, or provided as a file download via FTP protocol. Pictures were JPG or GIF across the board, and sound files were these strangely embedded WAV files and those pathetic electronic MIDI files.
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January 3, 2013
When you look around today, you'll notice that virtually everyone now uses some digital device, whether it be an iPod or other generic MP3-capable device, to listen to their music. This is very different from a decade or two ago, where most people would carry around portable CD players to listen to their music on the go. As the technology for MP3-playback and storage became dirt cheap, more and more people started adopting the new devices.
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December 19, 2012
What would you say about an audio player that’s rounds up to a size of an average Chrome extension? What would you say about this MP3 player that is not only tiny in size, but is actually tiny in the space it occupies on a screen’s real estate as well? Well, you can say that good things come in small packages, or you can simply say – CoolPlayer.
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December 4, 2012
It was only weeks ago that I posted about Songr, an awesome and easy way to stream and download free music from multiple online sources. Since then, I may have found a little gem to completely replace it. Who would need any alternative to Spotify though? While Spotify seems to be head of this class, lots of people are still fixated with downloading and keeping music.
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October 9, 2012
I don’t like to see things out of place. Lately, my music collection has been. Thankfully, there are many music organization tools that can ease the spadework if one is falling behind. MP3Tag was my tool of choice till now. Just to perk up my motivation, I thought I would try out TagScanner and see how friendly it could be with my haphazardly organized MP3s.
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October 1, 2012
Sadly enough, the famous MP3 format for music is a proprietary product, and all devices which can play them have (or at least should have) a license to legally play them. In order to make a statement that you don't support something proprietary, or to make sure that you are being 100% legal with your playback of music, it's best if you convert your MP3 and similarly proprietary music files into a free format.
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September 12, 2012
This is pretty new ground - what happens to your legally purchased MP3 collection when you die? When one of the least trustworthy British newspapers around reported that Bruce Willis was going to sue Apple because he couldn’t bequeth his digital music collection, the Internet at large jumped at the chance to spew their vitriolic Apple hate. The story was completely false of course - but it raised an important question worth considering - who does own that mp3?
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July 29, 2012
Every so often I stumble across a piece of software that will eventually end up on every computer that I touch from there on. Such names would be Dropbox, Spotify, uTorrent, Skype, Steam, and so on. One of the lesser-known applications that belong in this same category for me is mp3DirectCut. While audio software like Audacity isn't foreign to most of us, this little tool has some major advantages.
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May 25, 2012
One of the more popular open source audio applications, Audacity, has recently upgraded to version 2.0 and is now no longer in Beta. Audacity has some great tools and effects that can be used to deliver great results. However, despite the facility to save your audio in a number of different formats, Audacity doesn’t natively allow you to export data as MP3.
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May 17, 2012
Quickly edit any MP3 or AAC file on your Mac. If you need to make a quick edit to a file–like creating a ringtone or cropping a hidden track from a song–Macsome Audio Editor is a great free tool. It's certainly not the most advanced audio editor on the planet, but it's perfect for quick jobs.
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March 12, 2012
Back in 2001, the release of Apple's iTunes brought me back to listening to jazz, and a little of rap and R&B music. A few years before then, I was reluctant to shell out $15 for music CDs only to get a couple of great songs. And above all I wanted iTunes go with me wherever I went. Toting around CDs in the trunk of my car wasn't my idea of music appreciation. But then a few years later, the iPod changed everything.
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December 11, 2011
Windows users looking for an easy way to convert their FLAC files to MP3 format are in luck this month as FLAC to MP3 drops its usual $29.95 price tag and goes free for the festive season. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec and provides superior sound quality to "lossy" MP3 files at the expense of disk space.
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October 17, 2011
I've been a long-time user of streaming music services – from Pandora, to the now defunct online music locker Lala.com, and now as a monthly subscriber to Rdio.com. If you have a computer and a good Wi-Fi connection, streaming music services are arguably a better way to listen to music than downloading MP3s. Allow me to make my case.
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July 25, 2011
The long awaited streaming music service, Spotify landed in the U.S. last week. Unlike other streaming services, however, Spotify offers an ad-supported free option, which makes millions of albums and songs available to you through the Spotify desktop client. Let’s explore what else you get for free and what you don’t.
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July 16, 2011
If you‘re on the lookout for more streaming music over the Internet, AOL provides yet another option. It has just released its PLAY app for iOS devices. Originally available for Android only, PLAY by AOL is an application for both listening to free songs and albums and sharing them with your friends and followers.
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