Internet Music Services

KING

Thursday, April 25, Bluebird Theater, 888-929-7849; Sunday, April 28, Fox Theatre, Boulder, 303-443-3399.

Are mixtapes even a thing anymore?

Even the most casual music fan has made or received a mixtape at some point. For the kind of people who see music as the soundtrack of their lives, assembling a list of songs for a friend or lover is a compulsion that is difficult to deny. But in the age of file-sharing and iTunes, does this form of ... More >>

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Thursday, December 6, Ogden Theatre, 888-929-7849.

Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe on Beck, living in Germany and Bright Channel

The Brian Jonestown Massacre (due tonight at the Bluebird Theater) has been through ups and downs since 1990. But through it all, singer and primary songwriter Anton Newcombe, has steered the band through releasing more great albums per decade than most bands have across entire career. For the unini ... More >>

Boulder's Big Gigantic has taken some big steps in the past year

Apple Store Rewind 2011 includes the Best Of... iPhone app

​It's time to dust off the Westword glitter cannon, because the Best Of... iPhone app has earned some rather prestigious year-end acclaim.

Beatport's new Baseware Distribution aims to spread electronic music to the masses

​Late last month, Beatport announced its newest venture, Baseware Distribution, a service geared toward helping the electronic musicians who already use Beatport to get their music to more outlets, including iTunes, Spotify, Rdio and Stompy.

At f8 conference, Facebook announces integration with Spotify, Turntable, Rhapsody

Via FacebookZuckerberg announcing Facebook's new music integration at f8 today.​At the F8 Developers Conference today, Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of a new music service that allows you to listen to music with friends through Facebook or just see what all of your frien ... More >>

Music streaming service MOG goes free, provided you're willing to work for it

​Up until this morning, MOG was one of the few streaming services that didn't offer a crippled free version for people to try out. Sure, you could score a fourteen-day trial, but there was no version of the service that was ultimately free. Now, through a combination of ads and a rather clever ... More >>

Century Media exits Spotify: Is there value for indie labels in making their catalogs available?

​In a press release last week, Century Media announced it would be pulling its music from the streaming music service Spotify. The metal-centric label is certainly not the first to express its distrust of streaming services, and it probably won't be the last. As fans and consumers have been pu ... More >>

Music App Roundup: Play by AOL, Pixies Official, Spotify, VinylLove and Björk: Biophilia

​The music app business has been booming enough recently that we decided it was time we start sifting through it all on a regular basis. It's a strange digital world when everyone out there can create a mobile application for whatever purpose they desire, but that also means there are a lot of ... More >>

Spotify finally launches in the U.S. What is it?

​It might not have been on purpose, but Spotify's constant delays in coming stateside have somehow managed to create an organic buzz for the streaming music service unlike anything that could have been done intentionally.

Homeless busker Dred Scott will brighten your day (VIDEO)

Dred Scott may be homeless, but he's also got a real gift, a gift for performing R&B covers as if he were Marvin Gaye himself. The guy has chops, and thank god Tyler Ward, a Denver pop/rock artist, found him on 16th Street one day and chose to feature him on his Tyler Ward Featured Artist series on ... More >>

Will cloud storage help indie labels?

​We've already taken a look at the big three cloud services from Apple, Amazon and Google, but what does any of this mean to local bands and labels? With talk of Apple paying $100 million to the major labels for the rights to store content in the cloud and the launch of its paid service immine ... More >>

How does Apple's iCloud compare to other cloud services? No streaming option, for starters.

​Yesterday, Apple described and semi-launched its newest service, iCloud, an online storage locker that will automatically sync all of your Apple devices together with music, apps and books purchased through the iTunes store. What does that mean, exactly? Well, we break it down and compare its ... More >>

Björk's new album, Biophilia, slated for simultaneous iPad app release

​Björk has a relationship with technology that rivals that of Joe Satriani with his guitar -- the two cannot exist without each other. It has always seemed like Björk has been waiting for technology to catch up with her, and when Apple launched its iPad, she finally had a place to experiment ... More >>

Alki David gathers some hip-hop and R&B acts and trolls CBS over Limewire distribution

​This might be some of the weirdest copyright related news we've run across in a while. FilmOn founder Alki David has teamed up with a slew of musicians to file a lawsuit against CBS Interactive and CNET over CNET's distribution of LimeWire. Back in November, a federal judge had to issue a res ... More >>

What's killing the music industry? Auto-Tune? The Internet? American Idol? All of the above?

​The music industry has been marked for death for a long time now, but amazingly, nobody has managed to come up with a concrete reason as to why. Sure, it's easy to assign blame, but the real reason the music is dying is still a mystery to most people in the industry. Thankfully, plenty of sta ... More >>

LimeWire wins legal consolation prize, but remains screwed

​File sharing site LimeWire is currently at the front lines of the battle over online media distribution. They've already lost the suit brought against them by thirteen record companies, the site is boarded up and now they're negotiating damages. This is where things get interesting for the ca ... More >>

Rhapsody, Spotify headed for showdown

​Music streaming services look more and more like they'll eventually do to MP3s what MP3s did to CDs, and what CDs did to tapes, and so on. We're still a long way from a paradigm shift, but as the popular European streaming service Spotify makes headway in its mission to invade America, Rhapso ... More >>

Mountain Dew signs the Cool Kids to "the best deal in the world"

​The Cool Kids have been stuck in label hell for over a year now trying to get their debut full-length released. Their relationship with previous label, Chicago's Chocolate Industries, went bad, and none of the majors interested in the album could figure out an offer that worked for everyone. ... More >>

Sony's new Qriocity streaming service launched yesterday, is it enough to kill iTunes?

Sony's hoping to pique your qriocity (sorry) with it's new streaming music service this week, by offering a free thirty day trial, tons of different streaming options and a library of over six million songs from the four major record label and most everyone they distribute. We spent the day with t ... More >>

How the music industry will change in 2011

​In the past decade, the music industry has seen a lot of changes, but it has struggled to keep pace with technology, piracy and consumer demands. Already this year we've started to see a few more changes take shape, from crackdowns on piracy websites, a resurgence of interest in the currently ... More >>

Nielsen study shows off how people are consuming music

​Nielsen just dropped some stats about music consumer behavior that will probably make record labels a bit more nervous. The study uses a bunch of futuristic sounding terms like "hyper-fragmentation" and "digital natives," but when it boils down to it, reveals what we already know: People are ... More >>

Britney's "Hold It Against Me" -- currently number one on iTunes -- is all right, we guess

​Unless you've been sleeping on your gay friends' Facebook status updates, Britney's back. Again. Her new single "Hold It Against Me," was exposed last week with substitute diva Bonnie McKee's vocals acting as a placeholder, but yesterday, a glossy, radio-ready version (complete with Britney's ... More >>

Beatles on iTunes? Big deal. There's still a number of artists missing

​Last week, the Beatles finally caved into to the digital model, joining other once-holdouts like Pink Floyd and Metallica on iTunes. There are two reasons why artists are still withholding their music from iTunes: They want full-album/no-single purchases, and they want more money.

LimeWire shut down by permanent injunction

​Looking for WMAs of Third Eye Blind? You're going to have to look elsewhere. Effective immediately, LimeWire, the popular peer-to-peer file sharing service, has gone the way of pagers, payphones and the Walkman. In 2006, the music industry filed a suit against the service for a "massive sca ... More >>

The French are fighting piracy in a new and interesting way, but could it work here?

​The French government has revealed a plan to combat piracy that could either be the most brilliant gesture ever or the most monumental waste of government resources of all time (okay, maybe not all time, but close). The proposal: French residents can buy a 50-euro gift card with which they ... More >>

Fueled by venture-capital funding and a love for unknown bands, can Boulder's Next Big Sound predict the next rock star?

Check out "Julia," the first track from Naeem Oba's new album, Unorthodox

​ Naeem Oba should already be on your radar. But just in case he isn't, feel free to get up to speed on the Minneapolis-bred MC by reading the Q&A we posted with him and brikAbrak this past December. Dude is deep. Real deep. Right now, he's working on an album based on 1984, George Orwell's p ... More >>

Court cuts peer-to-peer file sharing penalty by a factor of ten

​Back in college, perhaps you found yourself loading up Kazaa and Limewire after a drunken night of revelry, trying desperately to find a copy of "Man! I Feel Like a Woman," before passing out at your desk, not realizing you were sharing an entire library of music the whole time. If you manage ... More >>

Five ways to stave off an iTunes store monopoly

​ With the disintegration of Lala coming May 31st, we've been left with one less choice for downloading. Lala was one of the best digital music distributors in town, offering full album streaming and low prices for downloading. After the website was gobbled up by Apple in December of last ... More >>

B.o.B. (sort of) wins the week

As expected, B.o.B.'s Adventures of Bobby Ray is the number one album in the country this week. Of course, it only needed to sell 84,000 copies to do it. As Billboard notes, this is the first three-week run of no albums breaking 100,000 since February of last year. Cue alarm bells, death of The I ... More >>

I Need That Record: The Death (or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store -- have you seen it yet? You should.

In case you haven't gotten your quotient of feel-like-shit yet today, check out I Need That Record! website, a documentary about the death of independent record stores. For a limited time, you can stream the doc for free in its entirety on Pitchfork or you can purchase it directly for eleven buck ... More >>

Hearsay bits: 3OH!3 tops the iTunes charts, Little Fyodor's cassette release

​Pop Tart Charts: 3OH!3 is atop the iTunes chart, thanks to their collaboration with Ke$ha. The pop tart's wittily titled "Blah Blah Blah (feat. 3OH!3)" might be "face-shooting pablum" (as we called her work the other day) but this "unholy, completely sexless union of Katy Perry and Lady Gaga" ... More >>

Ke$ha rules the airwaves -- and makes us want to shoot ourselves in the face

"Just listened to a "song" from Ke$ha. Fucking shoot me in the face! That was the worst 3min of my life. I am going to kill puppies now." Best. Tweet. Ever. Hands down. Couldn't have said it any better, numberthree. Not only do you swing the sticks with the zest of Papa Zita, clearly you've also bee ... More >>

3OH!3 releases Live Sessions ep on iTunes

​Ever wonder what a languid version of "Don't Trust Me" would sound like drained of its vitality with completely earnest, singer-songwriter styled vocals? Actually, if you've ever wondered what 3OH!3 would sound like hopped up on tranquilizers and stripped of its hyperactive delivery and ever pres ... More >>

Denver-based Max3 launches artist-friendly digital distro with free beer

The Photo Atlas and the Still City will be playing this Thursday night at the Marquis Theater. In itself, that might not seem so noteworthy. Sure, the Photo Atlas has been receiving some great national press lately, and the Still City is one of the best bands I haven't seen. What makes this show r ... More >>

Ingrid Michaelson

Flobots' eMusic... Uh...Conversion?

Beatsource.com Sets the Pace

The hip-hop arm of Beatport.com is ready for the big takeover.

Girl Talk

Gregg Gillis can’t understand what all the fuss is about.

Chriscross

MC Chris's rap career gets a boost from Adult Swim -- or is it the other way around?

The Beatdown

Beatport.com turns the tables on the art of deejaying.

The Beatdown

For your ears only: You can listen to the music, but by God, don’t share it.

Consumer Aborts

Don't look for DJ Spooky's new CD in his slot at the record store. It's not for sale.

Industrial Revolution

Napster's gone, but the record industry's copyright woes aren't.

Limp Bizkit

Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (Interscope)

Ransom Notes

Can one man convince millions of people to pay for their “free” music?

Backwash

The downfall of Napster is wussifying the Web.