Yesterday Shazam announced a new iPhone application called Shazam Encore. Shazam Encore is a premium version of the company’s existing iPhone app.
New features include:
Quicker tagging
Music recommendations
Charts
Car mode to automatically tag tracks that are playing on your radio.
The Encore version costs a one-off download fee of £2.99 / $4.99, although Shazam says it will continue to support the free version too – albeit limiting new users of that to five tags a month in an effort to persuade them to upgrade. That free version is one of the most popular music applications in the iTunes store which has 10 million downloads so far.
“We have listened to our iPhone and iPod touch users and have created a new app which answers their requests to take them on an enhanced music journey that will change the way music lovers experience and learn about music,” says CEO Andrew Fisher.
Music streaming service Spotify is trying to build a viable strategy for US entry. Currently the ‘freemium’ phenomenon is active in Europe only, and is trying to tinker it’s platform into a fully balanced, financially viable form before allowing it’s user base to expand at the incredible rate they saw before they limited sign-ups to invitation only. In the brief period between the end of ‘08 and September of this year during which they opened the floodgates, they upped their roster to 5 million users, roughly 2% of which havesigned up to the premium service, happily shelling out £9.99 a month for ad-free streaming, access to tracks offline and on hand-held devices (synching with desktops/laptops rather than streaming live on mobile broadband). Their costs can currently be estimated to outstrip their revenue, so they’ve got to find a way of enticing more of their free users onto the paid for platform, which they can principally do by adding value to the paid for package, reducing the price (which they may consider to be a mistake, given the huge amount of music that people will still stream), or just waiting for loyalty to induce a purchase (we all love them here in the RN office). An interesting point to consider is that the major labels that have signed deals with Spotify have also been given equity equal to roughly 18% of the company, so a win for Spotify is worth more to them than building on Apple/iTunes success in the long run. From a consumer’s point of view, I don’t think a better deal could possibly come along; all the music in the world for the price of a single CD purchase a month, available to put in your pocket on your phone (for which you’re probably paying £30 a month already), seems like a silver bullet to me, generating revenue for the industry and keeping costs down for the user while cutting the pirates out of the loop. I know free is very tempting, but as most music pirates are supposedly music lovers (I enjoyed the contradiction between the IFPI and the Daily Mail’s bubblegum reading of this survey), I’m hoping that the majority will see the light. Take the money you would have spent on the terabyte hard-drive to fill up with stolen music this year, and use the money to pay the premium subscription fees and fill your ears with lovely legal music instead. There’s also the possibility of Spotify expanding into video; I for one would throw the TV out, and stop paying the license fee if I could cache music TV and film in a Steam type model. We’re one of only a handful of distributors giving our artists the opportunity to get music onto Spotify, so we really hope they can balance the model and expand their user base, making more moeny for our contributors. I’m hopeful; their advertising team is still fresh and new to the problem, and bound to increase revenues as time passes, and further innovation and the addition of bells and whistles to the premium service will only become more enticing.
Our second-cousin-once-removed blog, Inappropriate Bunny posted this about Little Boots and her Tenori-on a while back, and now TheNextWeb, has dug up a couple of apps that compete with the $1,000 synthesiser for less than a GBP£. Admittedly you have to have an iPhone, and it’s not going to have MIDI control or anything like it, but if you just want to twiddle around making tunes on the tube while you go to work this looks like a pretty good option.
“TuneMaker has the look and feel of an £800 Tenori On in a 59p iPhone app. What’s more it sounds really good.” – TheNextWeb
If you don’t know what a tenorion is, check this video out:
Rhapsody has had a hard time lately as they aren’t really growing their site as much as they would like. However, Rhapsody has just announced that their new iPhone application has been downloaded over 500,000 times. “Over 500K shrewd users have decided that unlimited access to practically any song, practically anywhere ain’t such a bad idea,” wrote Rhapsody’s Garrett Kamps on the company’s blog.
However, in the announcement Rhapsody didn’t mention how many of those 500,000 were paying $12.99 a month for the Rhapsody Unlimited subscription service.
Tapulous has had the music rhythm game scene to itself on the iPod for a long time, but now Harmonix and EA have ported their phenomenally successful Rock Band game to Apple’s iPhone, meaning that you can embarrass yourself pretending to be a Rock star on the train now.
The iPhone game will feature the same 4 instruments (guitar, bass, drums, vocals) as the console version, so if you’ve got 3 friends with the game you can nerd out in the doctor’s waiting room, or on the schoolbus. Rock Band costs $9.99 in the US app store and features the following songs:
Ace of Spades ‘08 – Motorhead
All The Small Things – Blink-182
Attack-30 Seconds To Mars
Bad Reputation – Joan Jett
Bad to The Bone – George Thorogood & the Destroyers
Cherub Rock – Smashing Pumpkins
Debaser – Pixies
Everlong – Foo Fighters
Girls Not Grey – AFI
Give It All – Rise Against
Hanging on the Telephone – Blondie
Hymn 43 – Jethro Tull
Ladybug – Presidents of The United States of America
Lazy Eye – Silversun Pick Ups
Learn To Fly – Foo Fighters
Move Along – All American Rejects
Sabotage – Beastie Boys
Simple Man – Lynard Skynard
Take The Money and Run – Steve Miller Band
We Got The Beat – The Go Go’s
If you don’t have any mates with iPhones, or your mum drives you to school, Tapulous have released the 3rd version of their Tap Tap Revenge Game, which looks equally shiny, flashy and comprehensible only to Japanese people and those under the age of 20. Tapulous’ offering costs a tenth of EA’s game (99c), and has 100 free songs, as well as ‘premium‘ tracks from bands like Blink 182, Fall Out Boy, Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, No Doubt, Tiesto, The KillersKorn, Megadeth, QOTSA, Weezer, AAR, AFI, Keith Urban, Crystal Method, and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
After launching a new app to the world to benefit from more music on your phone Spotify and found themselves with increasing demand, forcing them to revert back to invite only. The application, which is available in the iPhone and Google Anroid headsets was released only a few days ago, is almost certainly responsible for the explosion in visitors and subscribers which has forced the company to start limiting the amount of visits to the site.
Premium users however can still use the service as normal and you can invite a friend to join. On the companies blog, Spotify’s spokesman Andres Sehr wrote:
“The huge demand in the UK over the last few days since we launched our mobile service means we are going to have to temporarily reinstate our invite system, Premium users will of course still get instant access as per usual and all current users will be able to use Spotify as normal”.
Spotify, who has approximately 8 million users worldwide, 2 million of which are in the UK alone. The company plans to launch in China and the US in the next few months. Users can access millions of tracks for free in exchange for listening to the occasional radio style advert, or pay £9.99 per month for ad-free listening. The new Spotify phone app is included in the price.
Disclosure: RouteNote is currently a Spotify partner
The Ocarina from Smule synthesizes sound in real-time based on your “wind input” (fancy talk for you blow on it), tilt, and finger placement over four graphic “holes” overlaid on the multi-touch pad. Unlike some iPhone audio apps, the sound is not pre-compiled but is generated by the individual performer. As a result, “it allows an iPhone user to explore and master the musical sounds of an entirely iPhone-native version of an ancient flute-like instrument.” Its available for $.99 at Apple’s AppStore. Here’s a demo and be sure to check out “Starway To Heaven” after the jump. You can purchase the Ocarina Application on iTunes here.
Yesterday Shazam announced a new iPhone application called Shazam Encore. Shazam Encore is a premium version of the company’s existing iPhone app.
Music streaming service Spotify is trying to build a viable strategy for US entry. Currently the ‘freemium’ phenomenon is active in Europe only, and is trying to tinker it’s platform into a fully balanced, financially viable form before allowing it’s user base to expand at the incredible rate they saw before they limited sign-ups to invitation only. In the brief period between the end of ‘08 and September of this year during which they opened the floodgates, they upped their roster to 
Our second-cousin-once-removed blog, Inappropriate Bunny posted 
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