Spotify

iPhone 4S, Ford Focus, Spotify, Siri, Turntable.fm – who (or what) comes out on top? 10. The New Ford Focus Ford (NYSE: F) is known for making beautiful cars. From the Mustang to the F-150, it is one of the strongest automakers around. Last year, the company released the latest redesign of the...

Spotify is enhancing and repositioning its radio feature as a Pandora-killer. But is it enough to take out the leader in online radio? Up until Spotify came around, there were only a handful of ways for people to acquire music on the Internet: (1) by legitimately paying for music downloads on...

Joe Kennedy, the Chairman, President and CEO of Pandora Media (NYSE: P), spoke on Wednesday at the "IGNITION: Future of Media" conference in New York City. He said that Pandora's aspiration is to "fundamentally change the way people listen to music." The Pandora music service is a unique and...

Google's ad business may get a lot stronger, and it's all thanks to you, the willful consumer. Earlier this year, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) got into trouble for recording users' location data in their iOS devices. A few months later, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) was accused of doing the same thing. Why...

Google Music has so many problems, not even the death of iTunes could guarantee its success. It's no secret that I'm bored with and disappointed by Google Music. The service is a no-frills iTunes knock-off with little value. It might have looked good on paper, and it might sound good as a Google+...

Google + bad idea = … Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is a great company. Well, a good search engine, a solid ad network, a cell phone powerhouse, a grand collection of analytics, and a likable e-mail client. Google is also pretty darn good at parodying itself on April Fools. Beyond that, I can't say much...

There has been a lot of love for Spotify this year. But you know what they say: if you love something, you have to set it free. I'm starting to wonder if this applies to entertainment services. I look at what happened to Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and cringe. This was the company that took down...

Something fishy is going on underneath the sheets of the music industry's hottest new service. There's an interesting thread over at getsatisfaction.com involving Spotify's sign-up process. Respondents claim that you now need a Facebook account to use Spotify. When my colleague told me about this...

Was it the boring presentation or the lack of excitement that turned people off the most? In typical Mark Zuckerberg fashion, F8's live stream began in the most hilariously bad way possible: with a view of people walking, sitting, and reading while lousy music played in the background. After...

Did Spotify purposely choose to announce this figure just before Facebook announced its music initiative? Whatever the case, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek reportedly gave CNBC an exclusive interview and revealed that the company has acquired more than two million paying subscribers. At $5 and $10 a month...

Contrary to popular belief, imitation isn't the sincerest form of flattery. It's the sign of a company's death. This doesn't mean that Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM), which is looking more and more like a patent warehouse, is going to fold anytime soon. The company still produces one of the...

Turntable.fm has added another 6.5 million songs to its collection of streams, adding to the 1.25 million it added earlier in the week, according to Betabeat. This is great news, as anyone who has used Turntable will tell you, the service rocks. It is a great way to share and discover new music...

It could be the future of music, but is it a future that we want? Last week, Turntable.fm took over the Benzinga offices. We were obsessed, and with good reason: the site combines the joy of playing music with the cool and addictive aspects of being a DJ. On paper, it sounds ridiculous. “What's...

Spotify, the long-awaited, over-hyped streaming music service, has finally come to the United States. While its arrival has been promoted all week via YouTube (NASDAQ: GOOG), Spotify waited until today to open its doors to American music listeners. Upon visiting Spotify.com, users will be greeted...

Does MySpace have any value left in it? Remarkably, yes – it does. And that value goes beyond whatever price Specific Media paid to acquire the social networking entity. Everyday, when millions of people sign into Pandora and other online radio stations, I sign into MySpace. I don't use the site...