Review: Musique is the simple and beautiful music player you've always dreamed of

When listening to music on your computer, you can go several different ways. The first is to use a huge, well-known music player such as iTunes or Windows Media Player; the second is to opt for streaming using Spotify, Pandora, Last.fm, and others; and the third is to go for a smaller, lesser-known player that suits your exact needs. Musique (€8.99/$12 after 20-day free trial; Linux, Mac, and PC) is just such a player, and one that is definitely worth your attention.

Simple yet eye-catching, Musique is everything you always wanted from iTunes and were afraid to wish for. Interface-wise, it loosely resembles old versions of iTunes without any of the confusing elements. Right from the get-go, using Musique is completely straightforward, with clear buttons and keyboard shortcuts to accomplish any task.

The tiles and playlist make it easy to find and play what you're looking for

The free version of Musique is a demo that lets you add up to 15 tracks at a time, and pops up a nag screen every few songs. It also expires after 20 days, so it's really only a trial version. When you first launch Musique, you'll need to point it to your music folder for a scan. Musique uses Last.fm to catalog your music, bringing up album covers, artist information and photos, etc. Once done, Musique will present your collection in beautiful tiles which you can view by artists, albums, or folders.

Browse by artists, albums or folders to find your music

The right side of the screen is where your playlist goes. Simply start dragging artist tiles, albums tiles, folders or individual songs to this pane to create your playlist. Alternatively, you can hit the play button on the tile itself to automatically start playing everything it contains. You can also use the search function to find specific songs, albums or artists you're looking for. The playlist supports all common functions such as shuffle and repeat, and you can easily control everything from your keyboard or use the buttons and menus. For any song playing, you can also load an info screen full of artist information and photos, album covers and the song's lyrics. The playlist is very easy to follow: even if you add a single song from an album, Musique will automatically give it a separate albums and artist title to make it easy to recognize.

A treasure trove of information can be revealed by clicking the "i" button

Things are also pretty much perfect when it comes to formats. According to its website, Musique takes advantage of VLC on Windows, and thus supports all common audio formats. While at first I had problems playing OGG and FLAC files, the developer promptly fixed these bugs. In general, any format that can play on VLC should also work in Musique. If it doesn't, it's a bug, rather than a design.

One glaring problem with Musique is its inability to open any files aside from the folder you've scanned on startup. There is no File -> Open option, and even if you set it as the default music player on your system, double clicking a file will merely open the program, without actually opening the file you clicked on. If your music is concentrated in one central folder, and you don't mind using a different app to open the odd audio file that's not in that folder, you shouldn't run into problems with Musique. These issues aside, there are more than enough reasons to fall in love with the app, and even pay for it.

Why pay $11.75 when you can get iTunes or VLC for free, you wonder? Musique is a one-man effort, and is a far better one than most big companies have produced. It's well worth your support.

Note: The Download button takes you to to the vendor's website, where you can download the edition of the software appropriate to your system.

Yaara is a foodie, horse-lover, and biologist who enjoys being a geek as a full-time job.
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Review: Helium Music Manager 9 jazzes up music management

You don't have to be a hard-core audiophile to appreciate Helium Music Manager, but music fans with will get the most out of this application. This music organizer and player that helps you stay on top of extensive collections of files. It features an attractive design, but sometimes it's just a bit harder to use than it should be.

Helium Music Manager features a wizard that makes it easy to add music files.

I like how easy Helium Music Manager makes getting started: Launch the application, and it displays a wizard that lets you select which files you'd like to add to its music library. The process is quick, though adding thousands of files obviously takes a bit of time.

Once your files are available through Helium, you can see its organizational features at work. Chief among them is Helium's tag editor, which lets you work with individual files or batches, to speed things along. Casual users may be overwhelmed with how many options there are for tagging audio files, but music aficionados will appreciate the choices.

The application lets you monitor its progress as it adds music files. Unfortunately, many of Helium's other management features are not available in the free version. You have to upgrade to either the $29 Premium or $49 Network (up to 5 users) versions to take advantage of the features that allow you to analyze and repair MP3 and FLAC files, and locate and manage duplicate files. Rival MediaMonkey offers this kind of de-duping feature in its free version.

Helium makes syncing with mobile devices more complicated than it should be. Helium proved more difficult to sync with mobile devices than MediaMonkey. That application synced easily with both an iPhone and an Android phone. Helium, meanwhile, made the process disappointingly cumbersome, requiring that I choose a folder on the phone into which I'd like to transfer the music—and it didn't let me specify exactly which music to tranfer. A more automated, streamlined syncing process would go a long way toward increasing Helium's appeal.

Helium Music Manager Premium does offer additional features that make it worth the upgrade for heavy users, including the Music Browser, which allows you to browse through your music collection in different ways. It displays lists of recently played files, top artists of the week, and tag clouds that let you see visual representations of artists and genres. It's a neat way to find new music that might otherwise be buried in your collection.

Helium's design is attractive and modern. I like Helium Music Manager 9's design. Its slick black and fuschia look is appealing and modern. But I do wish the application itself were easier to use and that more of its features were available in the free version.

Liane Cassavoy is a veteran technology and business journalist. She contributes regularly to PCWorld and has written about business issues and products for Entrepreneur Magazine and other publications. She is the author of two business start-up guides published by Entrepreneur Press.
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Review: iPod Copy Master can't master music management

iPod Copy Master $20.00 iPod Copy Master will help you copy music from your iOS device to your PC, but be prepared for an unattractive design and a higher price tag than that of its competitors.

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Copying music from your iOS device to your PC is not as easy as it should be, thanks to the limitations of iTunes. Neither is it made much easier with iPod Copy Master, a $20 application that promises to streamline the task. Fortunately, its rivals do a better job.

The free version of iPod Copy Master is so limited as to be almost useless.

iPod Copy Master sounds promising, as it offers to transfer 1,000 songs from your iPod, iPhone, or iPad to your PC in less than 30 minutes, and touts its ability to copy playlists and ratings back to your PC, too. But you'll have to hand over $20 to access any of those features, as the free version is so limited as to be almost useless. It allows you to copy only one track from your iPod to your PC, and not just one track at a time—one track only.

iPod Copy Master's default skin is supposed to resemble wood, but it's neither realistic nor appealing.

iPod Copy Master also sports a design that looks as though it's supposed to resemble wood, but comes no closer to real wood than those station wagons with faux-wood panels on the side that you used to see back in the 1980s. You can change the skin, but the only other option in the free version sports a black background with white text, which quickly irritated my eyes.

The black design is more attractive, but it made my eyes hurt.

And, really, even a more appealing color scheme can't help iPod Copy Master. This application has the basics covered, as it easily detects an attached iOS device, and quickly pulls up its contents on your PC's screen. And I like that you can choose between transferring the music only to a folder on your desktop or doing that and syncing with iTunes. But that's about it.

I would be more willing to overlook iPod Copy Master's flaws if the free version offered more functionality. At $20, iPod Copy Master costs the same as CopyTrans, a more full-featured iOS management tool that allows you to copy files from your iPod to your PC. CopyTrans also offers a free version that lets you transfer 250 tracks at a time. And SynciOS offers files transfers and more iOS management tools for free…in an application that looks better than iPod Copy Master.

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Review: DropTunes plays music directly from your Dropbox folder

DropTunes DropTunes lacks any real advanced features, but for basic music streaming from Dropbox, it works well.

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Dropbox is a great place for storing your digital music collection, but its music playback features are limited, to say the least. Sure, you can use Dropbox to access your music stored on the service, but if you want to actually listen to these tunes, you’ll need to download them to your device...which kind of defeats the purpose of having it stored in the cloud in the first place.

The $1 DropTunes iOS app is basic, but effective for streaming music.

Enter DropTunes. This free Web app serves as a streaming music player for the audio files stored in your Dropbox account. (A $1 iOS app takes its features mobile, too, but there is no Android version at the moment) Simply point your browser to droptun.es, and give it permission to access your Dropbox account. It automatically finds any audio files stored there, and allows you to play them back without downloading them using its basic but effective audio player.

Its interface is basic, and it lacks any real advanced features, but DropTunes makes it simple to stream music.

DropTunes displays your Dropbox folders in a column on the left side of the screen. Click the folders there, and any audio files they contain will appear in the main window at the center of the Web app. You can click on any of the tunes to begin playing them all in order. DropTunes lacks any real advanced features (such as the ability to create playlists, or scramble the order of the songs you’re listening to) but for basic music streaming it works well.

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Review: DriveTunes adds a music player to Google Drive

DriveTunes If you use Google Drive to store oodles of MP3 music, then you may long for a built-in music player. Enter DriveTunes.

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Cloud storage provides a very simple way of ensuring that your music is always there, wherever there is an Internet connection...but Google Drive doesn't provide a default music player upon. Sure, the files are there, but to actually hear your tunes you must rely on either portable music player applications, or whatever is installed on the host computer. Google's Chrome app DriveTunes provides another option.

Chrome app DriveTunes plays your music in Google Drive. It doesn't do anything more, but that's more than Google Drive does on its own.

If you use the Chrome browser (either the full installation or the portable version), you can install DriveTunes, which places a music player inside your Google Drive folder.  It automatically detects all MP3 and M4A music files inside your Drive and lists them in an easy-to-view interface. Simply double-click a song to hear it

DriveTunes is a pretty basic player with just a play/pause button, a skip track button, and a volume button.  Don't expect anything fancy like album art, equalizers, or playlists. It plays your music and that's it. But isn't that enough?

Note: The Download button takes you to the Chrome Web store, where you can install the latest version directly into your Chrome browser.

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Twitter Launches #Music for iPhone

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Review: Name, tag and sort your MP3 music files with Mp3tag

Sometimes when you rip a CD onto your computer to make backup MP3 copies, the ripping app neglects to export the tags and album art, leaving you with a messy-looking file. If you have ripped a lot of CDs, all without their identifying tags and album covers, then retagging them can be a tiring and tedious process. Free program Mp3tag is here to make that process a lot faster and a lot easier.

Choose the folder where your MP3 files are located and they will appear on the right hand side. The boxes to add the tags and album art are on the left.

Mp3tag 2.54 is an absolute delight to use, and my MP3 files are finally starting to look halfway organized. What Mp3tag does is give you an extremely easy-to-use user interface in which you can add the information you need to identify the file. You can also drag and drop album art with your mouse directly onto the MP3tag app and it will automatically attach.

The tags—which you can edit—include the title of the song, the artist, the album, the year it came out, what track number that particular song is, and the genre. When an album cover is attached, you can alter the aspect ratio in case it is not the right size or if it is distorted.

You can really save time with the batch editing. Use your mouse to select as many of the files in the folder as you want and add information and album art to all of them at the same time. Remember to click the save button afterwards though, otherwise any changes you made will be lost. This is one of the very few downsides of Mp3tag: no automatic real-time saving by the app. You have to press the button yourself and if you forget…whoops, back to square one.

But if you use it right, batch editing can make all the difference. Highlighting all the files at once, I was able to search for the tags and album art, add it and save it all in just under 30 seconds. That's for a standard 12-track album. If you did it by hand individually, you'd be lucky to do one file every 30 seconds, never mind all 12 at once.

The features go on: Generate playlists, generate HTML, RTF or CSV reports showing a list of all the files you currently have in MP3tag, as well as support for iTunes-specific tags like media type or TV Show settings.The jewel in the crown, as far as I'm concerned, is MP3tag's ability to search external sources such as Amazon USA, Amazon Germany, and two other sources called Discogs and Musicbrainz. By entering search terms in the box provided, Mp3tag will go to the source (such as Amazon) and bring back the relevant tags and album art for you.  If you like it, you can click "OK" and it will all be automatically inserted for you.

There's no need to go searching for album art as MP3tag will do it for you. They will even add your tags as well, courtesy of Amazon.

Mp3tag program that MP3 collectors should have on their PC by default.  It's free and it's easy to use. The days of messed-up MP3 files are long gone, thanks to babies like this.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
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Review: AlbumPlayer really lets the music play

AlbumPlayer is not trying to be everything to everyone. Instead, this audio software focuses its attention solely on music playback, on being jukebox software for music aficionados, and it succeeds. Its tabs let you switch between viewing all of your music, to sorting by artist, genre, composer, moods, and more. You also can create custom collections of your favorite tunes for easier access, though I found it unfortunate that you had to do so in a separate menu, rather than right in AlbumPlayer's main window. AlbumPlayer costs 30 Euros ($39 on 2/26/13) and has a free, playtime-limited demo.

The first time you run AlbumPlayer, it asks you about your input device. AlbumPlayer is designed to work with touch screen controls as well as the more standard mouse and keyboard combination. After you make your choice, the software loads, and you'll see that it includes a few music samples. The developer says he put these samples (which are very small snippets of tunes) in there so you can see how AlbumPlayer will look when content is loaded. To add your own content, you have to point AlbumPlayer in the direction of your music collection. It located and added tunes quickly, but it balked at adding much of the content from my iTunes library before I downloaded and installed a dll that it suggested. (AlbumPlayer says that this step is necessary because of licensing restrictions.)

AlbumPlayer's interface is attractive, and it makes it easy to play back your favorite tunes.

Once your music is added, you can use AlbumPlayer's slick controls to browse your collection. AlbumPlayer will allow you to rip CDs, but not burn them, nor will it sync with any portable devices (although you can copy music to a memory card). This is not an oversight, the developer says: AlbumPlayer is designed solely as a music organization and playback tool. And in that it succeeds: its slick interface lets you search through album covers, almost as if you were using a real jukebox. I tested AlbumPlayer using a mouse and keyboard and was impressed by the experience; I imagine it would be even more impressive using a touch screen.

AlbumPlayer would make an excellent addition to a party, as you could create custom collections of music and allow party guests to do the same. It includes a Party Mode, which allows guests to select songs and create playlists, but uses a password to prevent them from editing your actual music collection or messing with the contents of your PC.

Another cool party trick: if you have an iOS or Android device, you can take advantage of the TunesRemote version of AlbumPlayer. It's a 15 Euro upgrade over the Personal License, though you can purchase them as a package for 39.50 Euros ($52.89 as of 2/10). That's pricey for a music player, but it does give you the cool option of controlling the jukebox software remotely, from your mobile device.

AlbumPlayer lets you create collections of music, akin to playlists, but unfortunately, you have to do so using menus that are less attractive than the app's main interface.

Still, the bottom line is this: even the most basic version of AlbumPlayer is quite expensive at 30 Euros, which is close to $40. The demo is limited to 15 minutes of continuous play. And if you'd like to use it in a commercial setting, such as a restaurant, you'll have to pay 53 Euros for the commercial license. With that price—and its limited feature set—AlbumPlayer isn't for everyone.

Note:The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

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Review: TuneUp cleans up your misnamed music files with a few clicks

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Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
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If you have a huge CD collection from pre-digital days, you may have decided to convert it all to MP3 format for listening on the computer or on the go, via your phone.  But the CD ripping software may have not found all of the correct track names and album art, so you may have ended up with files full of "unknowntrack1.mp3", "unknowntrack2.mp3", and so on. This looks messy, and how on Earth can you find a particular song if it's not named properly? Songs without metadata or album art are absolutely impossible to index and find.

Listening to the song and then renaming it by hand is a long, slow, and very tedious process. That is why it is worth investing $50 to buy TuneUp. TuneUp has a huge extensive database of music, and by listening to your tracks, it can identify the track, rename it for you, provide album art, and even fix the metadata, including inserting the music genre and track numbers for you.

What's more, TuneUp's success rate is startlingly high. It does not recognize every song, but it seriously impressed me by finding all of my Scottish bagpipe music and standup comedy tracks. So it isn't all Justin Bieber and Britney Spears. It has a lot of obscure stuff tucked away too.

After installation, start up either iTunes or Windows Media Player, and TuneUp will automatically start at the same time in its own window. When you have some files you want renamed, use your mouse to drag the songs into the TuneUp window and it will begin scanning them.  When it finds possible matches, it will display them for you to see. This is one of the most important things to emphasize here: TuneUp does NOT change anything unless you tell it to.  And if you tell it to change something and realize you've messed up, there's an "undo" button to put everything back the way it was.

Drag the music files into the TuneUp interface, and they will be scanned by TuneUp's extensive music database. Suggestions will then be made and you have to approve or decline it.

After scanning, it will divide results up into three separate categories: Matches, Likely Matches, and Not Found (all pretty self-explanatory).  With Likely Matches, it is fairly certain it is correct but not 100% certain.  So you would need to take a look and see before making any changes to your music files.

If there are multiple results, you will want to individually click the checkmark for the ones you want.  Or if you can see that everything is correct, just click the "save all" button for everything to start.

If you want to review the album art before anything gets changed, you can mouse over the proposed album art and click on the downwards facing arrow. That will open up a selection of what is on offer and you can choose which one you prefer.

When you have chosen the correct album names, artwork, song names and so forth, watch as the files are magically renamed and reformatted right in front of your eyes. TuneUp does the work that would take you at least double the time if you were to do it manually by hand, and does it in ten seconds or less.  I am still amazed about the technology, weeks after I first started using it.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Control Your Music With the Palm of Your Hand Using Flutter

Anyone who grew up watching the Star Wars movies knows how cool it looked to be a Jedi and control things with a simple movement of the hand. For a long time, it seemed as if this would remain firmly in the realm of science fiction along with lightsabers. Now a new app that relies on hand gestures is available for controlling your music. Called Flutter, this free Windows software lets you start and stop your music simply by showing the flat palm of your hand to your webcam.

You need to use either iTunes, Spotify, Winamp, or Windows Media Player for your music playing. Anything else, such as Miro or Zune, is not currently supported.

Starting and stopping the music is at present the only thing Flutter can do, so look upon this as simply proof that the concept works. Apparently, according to the company website, next up in the pipeline is a beta version (currently for Mac OS X only) that allows you to change music tracks, simply by swiping your hand in front of the webcam. I'm sure they are also working on a version that increases and decreases the volume (at least, I hope so).

The pros to Flutter are ones that will appeal to efficiency freaks. If you're sitting in front of your computer typing away, and you want to change the track on iTunes, then you would have to stop typing, look for the mouse, find iTunes, then the track…that all takes time. But with Flutter, when you want to change tracks, you just stop typing, hold up a hand in front of the webcam, then go back to typing as the Rolling Stones track flips from not getting any satisfaction to singing about Angie. There's no need to click the mouse or to search for tracks. Your webcam and Flutter do it all for you.

Flutter has cons, though. Throughout the few weeks I tested this app, sudden hand movements at times started my Spotify desktop app. Supposedly Flutter should start Spotify only when I show my flat palm to the webcam, but I've had Spotify starting when I scratched my ear or swatted a fly away from my head. In subsequent tests, I failed to recreate this problem, so maybe it was just a temporary glitch. Nevertheless, when you have Flutter on, you should be cautious with your movements in front of the webcam. Plus, until the next version comes out, Flutter has only one function.

Despite these limitations, if you are a music fan who uses one of the supported music players, Flutter is a great app that gives you a glimpse into the future of what is coming and what is possible.

—Mark O'Neill

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What’s New in Streaming Music Services?

Streaming music services offer more ways to listen than ever, and they’re far more economical than paying for downloads or CDs. But the steadily growing number of options can make your head spin. Some streaming services, like Pandora, use automated recommendations, while others are more connected with seeing (and hearing) what your friends are into. 

What can I listen to?

Most services that have deals with all or most of the major record labels offer at least 10 million songs. But there are a few holdouts, such as Metallica, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. If you can’t find most of what you’re looking for on one of these services, maybe you to try the vinyl section at your local record shop.

Do I have to pay for it?

You can listen for free, but you’ll have to endure radio-style ads, monthly listening limits, or only “radio station” streams based on a genre. Subscription fees of $5 to $15 get you features such as on-demand song selection, unlimited ad-free listening and access on mobile devices and Internet TVs. Some premium plans let you store songs on your computer or mobile device so you can listen offline. That could help keep you under the monthly data limit for your smartphone or tablet.

Can I share music with friends?

All services let you post your listening to Facebook (sometimes automatically), and most support Twitter. Some let you send song links directly to friends, but the savviest ones let you see what other folks are listening to in real time.

What’s the next big thing?

Apps. They’re a huge hit on Internet-connected devices like computers, smartphones, TVs and set-top boxes. All of the major streaming services offer apps on Facebook so you can listen from within your profile page. Spotify recently took it a step further and introduced apps for its own service, giving you access to editorial content, integration with other services like Last.fm and much more.

What services can I choose from?

You’ve probably heard of Pandora’s customized Internet radio stations, but here are a few other services worth checking out:

Grooveshark.com

 Free: unlimited listening on your computer or mobile device, with adsPlus: ($6/mo.) no adsAnywhere: ($9/mo.) adds playlist creation and offline listening on mobile devices (Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia Symbian, Palm webOS)

MOG.com

FreePlay (free): limited amount of listening per month on your computerBasic ($5/mo.): adds Roku TV set-top box access and LG TV access on some modelsPrimo ($10/mo.): adds Sonos wireless audio system access, iPhone/iPod Touch/Android access, and offline listening on mobile devices and computers

Slacker.com

Basic (free): unlimited listening on your computer, smartphone or tablet with ads and limited song skipsPlus ($4/mo.): no ads, offline listening, ABC News, ESPN News, lyrics access, unlimited song skipsPremium ($10/mo): adds the ability to choose specific songs and create playlists; offline listening on devices (Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia Symbian, Palm webOS)

Splash.FM

Free: unlimited Web listening of songs uploaded by independent artists.Major-label tracks are limited to 30-second streaming samples, but you can purchase the tracks for download

Spotify.com

Free: unlimited Web listening with ads;Unlimited ($5/mo.): no adsPremium ($10/mo.): higher-quality streams, offline access on your computer and mobile devices (Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia Symbian, Palm webOS)

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Control Your Music With a Wave of Your Hand: Flutter Hands-On

Music players such as iTunes and Spotify have gone through numerous updates to make the user experience as pleasant and seamless as possible. Hotkeys and key combinations exist for just about every function in these programs — one of the most obvious being the spacebar for playing and pausing music. A limitation of using the spacebar to start and stop your music, however, is the fact that you must be in the app for the hotkey to work. Enter Flutter, a new app that allows users to play and pause their music just by holding their palms up to the webcam. While it’s still in alpha, Flutter already shows lots of promise. We went hands-on with the app to see for ourselves how well it works.

Installing the app is easy. Just head to Flutter’s website and click on the large “download” button at the top of the screen. This will take you to a page asking for your email address and whether or not you’d like to be kept up-to-date on program’s the development progress. Once you’ve finished downloading the app, just follow the installation instructions.

After you’ve installed Flutter, a very brief tutorial explains how the app works:

Using Flutter is as intuitive as it seems: Simply hold up your hand to the webcam to start or stop your music. Impressively, the app responds immediately — we didn’t notice any delay when pausing or playing. Flutter recognizes the palm of your hand easily enough, so we decided to test the limits of its hand-recognition:

When displaying our hand palm-out, the app responded immediately.

Not surprisingly, the app didn’t recognize our hand when we used just one finger.

Switching to two fingers, however, caused the app to work correctly (about half of the time).

To our surprise, displaying our hand palm-in caused the app to work correctly, with immediate responsiveness. 

Overall, Flutter is a neat little app that makes listening to music on iTunes or Spotify that much easier while multitasking. Perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates the potential of using laptops’ built-in webcams for a host of gesture-based controls. A future in which laptop users barely need to touch their keys doesn’t seem so far away.

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Listening Post Concept Brings Music to Paper Posters

Posters aren’t simply meant to be read anymore. First QR codes took us one step further, giving our mobile devices a link to extra content on the web, and now a new technology is set to bring music right to the words before our eyes. A prototype called the “Listening Post,” demoed at this year’s SXSW in Austin, Texas, is a guide to local bands–with the ability to sample their music built right into the poster’s ink.

Developed by British research firm Novalia in cooperation with scientists and musicians, the Listening Post incorporates mini-circuit boards equipped with speakers and a small amount of memory into conductive ink, letting those who interact with the poster activate song clips when they touch the appropriate spot on the paper.

Because the cost of paper and printing is relatively low, Listening Post-style posters, postcards and stickers could someday be the norm, though according to BBC News this process may take a few years. Still, advertising that addresses more than one of the five senses is a future we’d like to believe in (especially if the embedded music is halfway decent).

via BBC News

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Cricket ZTE Chorus Review: A Simple Phone, but Good for Music

The ZTE Chorus for Cricket is a handsome, compact phone with a diverse, built-in music library courtesy of Cricket’s MuveMusic software. Although reasonably priced ($50 without a contract plus $45 per month for a music plan, as of February 13, 2012), this prepaid phone falls short due to poor touchscreen sensitivity and a low-end display.

Design

When you pick up the ZTE Chorus, you’ll immediately notice its slick feel--as well as its less-than-sturdy construction. The glossy piano-black cover is nice to the touch, and attractive in appearance. The rounded edges convey a soft look, and allow the phone to fit more comfortably in the palm. Measuring 4.40 by 2.20 by 0.60 inches, the Chorus is a little squat for my liking, and feels bulky in my pocket. Weighing 3.7 ounces, it has a light plastic frame, which is a bit troubling: The phone seems like it would break easily if it were to fall. The battery backplate comes off in a snap.

The 3.2-inch WQVGA resistive touchscreen display is the phone’s biggest weakness. The screen hardly responds to touch unless you press firmly and precisely (with your fingernail); typing is difficult to the point that texting or browsing becomes a chore. In addition, the screen has a low resolution of 240 by 400 pixels.

Below the display is a touch-sensitive volume control, along with a home/back key. Annoyingly, the Chorus requires you to push the home/back key repeatedly to switch from the MuveMusic software (see below) to the home screen.

The MuveMusic button, which is located between the volume and home/back buttons, is a useful control for quickly accessing the MuveMusic software. A physical key, the MuveMusic button bears a music-note emblem.

MuveMusic

Music is the Chorus’s strongest feature. The MuveMusic software offers a huge selection of songs to download--millions of tunes, ranging from the latest hits to classics to more obscure songs. You can download as many songs as you wish with your monthly music data plan. As for audio quality, the sound is not as clear as what you might hear on a PC. Testing the phone's external speakers, I listened to Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games” and encountered some white noise; the effect became more prominent when I put headphones on. I liked having the option of turning on SRS (Sound Retrieval System) in Standard Mode, which enhanced Del Rey's voice and the background music.

Android...Or Is It?

The interface for the Chorus is easy to navigate; as this is a budget phone, however, it uses a generic Linux OS in place of Android. I found the sparseness of the three-by-four apps menu unimpressive, and the icons lacked detail and sophisticated shading.

Since the Chorus isn’t an Android device, it doesn't provide access to the usual suite of Google apps. You do get Cricket’s Storefront for apps, but they lack the variety that the Android Market offers. If you want to try Cricket but you absolutely need the Market, you should purchase an actual smartphone--such as the ZTE Score--and the MuveMusic plan for Android phones, which costs $55 a month.

Camera and Video

Since the Chorus is equipped with only a 2-megapixel camera and camcorder, I wasn’t expecting world-class image quality. After taking a shot on Bryant Street in San Francisco, I noticed a bluish tint throughout the photo. Images I took indoors lacked sharpness.

Test photos taken with the Samsung Focus (left) and the ZTE Chorus (right).

The camcorder recorded with some lag, and quick movements produced video with jellylike aftereffects.

Performance

Call quality over Cricket’s network was rather uneven. Sometimes the calls I made to friends’ cell phones and landlines went through fine. I could hear voices well, with the exception of a low static sound, which resulted in some fuzziness. In one instance, the static was so intense that I needed to stop the call. Web browsing was also a bit irregular, because I couldn’t connect at times. When I did, Cricket’s 3G network speed was decent, loading the PCWorld.com homepage in 14 seconds. Battery life, however, was poor: The Chorus survived little more than 4 hours of continuous music play.

Conclusion

Although the ZTE Chorus has a low-quality camera and camcorder, a cheap display, and a resistive touchscreen, this phone isn’t a bad fit if you’re on a tight budget and you primarily want to listen to music on the go. If you do decide to use the Chorus for communication purposes, you get 1000 minutes each month and unlimited texting (but you may have to buy a small stylus just to type comfortably). And if the Chorus doesn’t work out in the end, you're not obliged to stay with it since it is a prepaid phone.

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Retrieve Your Entire Music Library from Your Google Music Account

For a while now I've been using Google Music as a kind of cloud-based backup for my music library. Except that it wasn't really a backup, because I couldn't easily retrieve all the songs I'd uploaded. In the event of a system failure, I'd have to download tunes in batches of 100. Bleh.

Thankfully, Google just made it possible to download all the songs in your library--or just those you've purchased. (The latter is a handy option if you want to quickly add purchased songs to, say, your local iTunes library.)

This requires Google's Music Manager, the Windows utility that automatically uploads your song collection from iTunes, Windows Media Player, or select folders to your Google Music account.

If you're running it for the first time, keep in mind that the initial upload can take a long time--perhaps several days, depending on the size of your library and speed of your Internet connection.

If and when the time comes that you want to download your library, just open Music Manager on your desktop, click the Download tab, and then click Download my library (or Download purchased music, if that's what you prefer). FYI, these options appear only if you've uploaded music from your PC first.

Interestingly, when you download via the Google Music Web interface, you're limited to two times per song. But with Music Manager, there is no such limitation.

So here's how my setup works. I have an iPhone. I sync various playlists to it via iTunes. I purchase most of my music from Amazon; its downloader automatically adds the new tracks to iTunes. The Google Music Manager detects those new tracks and uploads them to my Google Music account. Crazy, right? But the system works, and it's now a fairly bulletproof backup for all my music.

Oh, and Google Music is pretty nice for streaming my tunes from the Web, too.

Contributing Editor Rick Broida writes about business and consumer technology. Ask for help with your PC hassles at hasslefree@pcworld.com, or try the treasure trove of helpful folks in the PC World Community Forums. Sign up to have the Hassle-Free PC newsletter e-mailed to you each week.

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Music Business Tunes for Next Copyright Fight

If you've been worried about the financial health of the music business, especially since last Friday, when Congress shelved indefinitely the SOPA and PIPA bills music-business moguls were counting on to halt the global pilfering of their products and profits, you can stop.

The music business is actually in pretty decent shape. Much better shape, in terms of digital sales, than any other part of the entertainment business, according to execs at the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), the industry's professional association, Washington lobbyist and apologist.

During 2011, the number of consumers using paid subscription services rose 65 percent to 13.4 million, according to a tweet from Jonathan Lamy, SVP of communications for the RIAA, who was passing along the good news from a new report issued byIFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), the global version of the U.S.-based RIAA.

Paid digital music services are up and running in 58 countries, bringing in $5.2 billion in revenues, Lamy also pointed out via tweet.

Total revenue from digital music sales is up only 8 percent compared to 2010, but the number of countries in which digital music services sell it went up 242 percent between 2010 and 2011, from 24 countries in 2010 to 58 in 2011, according to Cara Duckworth, VP of communications for the RIAA, who was also quoting IFPI figures.

"W/more than half of all music sales coming from digital services, we know how Internet works. "Music=Innovation. Declare THAT. #CES #SOPA," Duckworth tweeted.

The news gets better, at least for the music business.

Key findings of IFPI study on music-industry digital revenues and health:

Demand for downloaded digital albums went up 24 percent;The number of subscribers to paid digital music services rose 65 percent to 13.4 million;A "Hadopi" anti-piracy law in France gets credit for cutting content piracy by 26 percent in 2011;The number of people downloading music from P2P services dropped by 2 million in France in 2011 due to Hadopi;One in four digital-music consumers "regularly access unlicensed services;"The 8 percent increase in digital-music revenue is the first year-to-year growth in digital music since IFPI began tracking it in 2004;Digital downloads now account for 32 percent of record company revenues globally, up from 29 percent in 2010;In some countries digital music makes up more than half of record-company revenues, including the US (52%), South Korea (53%) and China (71%).In 2011 consumers paid for 3.6 billion pieces of downloadable music, 17 percent more than in 2011.

Record companies are building a business in digital music "in spite of the environment in which they operate, not because of it," according to Frances Moore, chief executive of IFPI, in a statement (PDF) that accompanied the report.

Record companies are working with ISPs, search engines, governments, and law-enforcement agencies to reduce the number of illegal downloads and ensure that an ever-higher percentage of the music that is downloaded is bought legally, she wrote.

"Our digital revenues, at one-third of industry income (and now more than 50 per cent in the US), substantially surpass those of other creative industries, such as films, books and newspapers,"

Which just begs the question about SOPA and PIPA: If the music industry is doing so well, why is it so important that Internet-censoring, consumer-incriminating, Constitution-violating new laws like SOPA and PIPA be passed quickly and without much debate?

Is it because adding new laws that put all the burden of enforcement on companies or individuals other than the copyright holders, especially when the copyright holders are raking in money hand over fist, seems gratuitous? Excessive? Just plain rude?

Maybe.

Maybe it's just because RIAA wants its cake and to eat yours, too.

Within all the good news about how much more money RIAA members are making were a series of demands (ably summarized by Ars Technica) the IFPI and RIAA believe the industry needs to be able to put the appropriate amount of pressure and assumption-of guilt on their customers:

Graduated response laws (punishment graduated according to grievousness of the offense. (Grievousness refers to the number of illegal music files, not how bad they are. They're not promoting laws that carry greater penalties for downloading Justin Bieber, for example. Unfortunately.)

Site blocking: everyone should block sites RIAA and IFPI have decided are detrimental to their business and not ask questions about how they came to that conclusion.

Search engines should be required not to search for things music execs don't want them to search for (repeat the part about 'no questions' from item No. 2).

Credit-card and other payment processors should cut off those accused of hosting illegal downloads, or downloading music illegally, even when (usually) payment processing had no part in those transactions.

Ad networks should cut off pirates – MegaUpload and its ilk shouldn't be able to profit from ads.

Mobile operators should also try to punish illegal downloaders by monitoring their customers' traffic to identify and cut off files RIAA and IFPI believe customers shouldn't be able to access.

Lawsuits. More lawsuits against big downloaders.

All those demands are shaped as public priorities that support public safety and prosperity, even though none of them have anything to do with either of those things.

If they're passed into law and other people are forced to enforce copyrights owned by music producers, the only thing producers have to do is occasionally post onto sites other companies pay to maintain new content other people (bands) write and produce, and rake in money other people (consumers) pay to download.

How much better is that than the days when record companies had to actually produce records, promote them, ship physical media around the world and get people to buy and play it? Think how much effort went into convincing people to throw out their record players, buy CD players and re-buy all those albums they'd been collecting?

Think the industry wants to go to that much trouble again? Absolutely not.

At first, from the perspective of public policy, ethics, Constitutional law and avoiding the coddling of greedy idiots, none of the RIAA's political positions makes any sense.

From this perspective – the desire to profit even more by doing even less – it all makes sense. Not for anyone other than a few dozen executives in the record industry, of course. Certainly not for the Internet companies, law enforcement agencies, customs agencies and other organizations that would be doing all the work for music publishers without any of the profit.

But if your point of view is so narrow and ethics so warped that it makes sense to not only overcharge, but abuse, insult and belittle your customers for the small amount of work you have to do for a large amount of money, sure. It all makes sense. 2012 will be a good year for 2012. The rest of us will be paying enough money in enough different ways to be sure of it, at least if the RIAA gets its way.

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