If you don't fancy battling through the frantic last minute shoppers over the next few days, then try giving a gift that your loved ones can receive virtually. There are lots of options out there from different retailers and brands, but as we assume 99.999% of the nation are music lovers, then you can't go wrong with a gift card from the likes of Spotify, fairshare music or iTunes. Plus if you're really struggling on Christmas Eve (or even Christmas morning) they're so so easy to buy.

Spotify

With Spotify's e-cards you can give your loved ones the gift of premium listening, meaning no ads, access to everything on your mobile and exclusive features from the Spotify team.

You can choose to give premium access for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months or 12 months and we can guarantee that if someone's been using Spotify's free services for some time, they'll really value the chance to be bumped up to premium!

To find out more, go to: http://www.spotify.com/uk/get-spotify/e-card/

fairshare music

fairshare music is a music library with a conscience, it's got more than 16 million tracks in its vaults from just 79p and for every download that's purchased half of the profit will go to a charity of your choice.

You can easily and instantly send a gift card virtually to any recipient and then they can use that to buy anything in the store.

You could also gift songs, albums or playlists too or even create a quick wish-list so other people know what to buy for you.

To find out more, go to: http://www.fairsharemusic.com/gifting-wish-list-tips

iTunes

Earlier in the week we showed you how to give an app as a gift this Christmas and that process works for music too.

However, if you'd prefer to let the person you're buying for choose what they want, then buy a gift certificate that can be emailed out to them and used whenever they please.

All you need to do is fill out a simple form and choose whether you want to give a gift certificate of anywhere from £5 to £30.

To find out more, go to: http://www.apple.com/itunes/gifts/

Today a new digital music streaming service called Rara has been launched, which is set to rival Spotify. Hmm, we've not heard that one before...

What is it?

Aside from the fact it's got a ridiculous name (which is both a skirt and slang for a posh person), Rara looks pretty interesting. The service offers users around ten million tracks, including all the major labels, and it sets itself apart from the rest by not aiming at the tech-savvy early adopters, but setting its sights on those with a casual interest in music.

Rara's founder, Rob Lewis, said:

"The vast majority of music services today are designed for people who know a lot about music and are technically literate.

"If we're going to make digital as mainstream as the CD was (which is what we need to do with CD revenues heading in the wrong direction), we need to reach people who know less about music and less about technology."

How's it different?

According to Rara's research, these more casual tech and music lovers account for 80% of the potential streaming market and the service aims to reach them through simplifying its interface and collecting tracks into a UI full of colourful, customisable music hubs.

To set Rara apart as a respectable music discovery tool as well as a streaming service, the company has enlisted the help of a number of high-profile associate editors, kicking off with musician Imogen Heap, who's huge online following (and talent, obviously) must be particularly appealing to Rara.

How can we get it?

Interestingly, Rara has teamed up with HP and will come pre-installed on all 2012 HP computers with a bookmark "quick-link" directing users to the web-based service straight out of the box.

As well as the browser based offering, Rara can be accessed as a mobile Android app too, with Windows Phone 7 and iOS apps to arrive sometime soon.

So we know you're all mostly interested in how much it's going to cost. Well, the first three months access will cost just 99p, and £4.99 for the months following. To add in mobile music-caching functionality to ease the strain on your data plan, those prices jump up to £1.99 for the first 3 months, then £9.99 for the months thereafter. End your subscription and a short "grace period" allows access to your saved playlists for a limited time.

Who needs a bit of Rara in their lives?

One of Rara's main draws is its colourful, inviting interface, which displays its curated music. It's simple and may appeal to those who have been turned off from iTunes or Spotify in the past because it looks a little confusing, but is anyone really confused by Spotify enough for a new simple offering to be created? I'm not so convinced, even some of my older relatives manage to use it with ease at the moment.

If you're looking for something a bit different and want to get on board with Rara now before its big plans are announced early next year (there are some significant announcements coming at CES according to Rob Lewis), then give it a whirl. Otherwise stick with Spotify and iTunes for a few months to see how everything pans out...

Go visit www.rara.com now to give the service a try.

After Spotify and Facebook became BFFs at the f8 developers conference the week before last, the popular music streaming service introduced a controversial way of signing up new users, which required them to have a Facebook profile.

This really wasn't a surprise considering how heavily integrated both Spotify and Facebook are becoming, but all kinds of people (OK, so mainly angry Twitter users) got really mad about this and many threatened to cut all ties with both platforms. Brave. Very. Brave.

However it seems that the new integration actually helped Spotify, as its subscriber base has grown from 3.4 million users before f8 to a HUGE five million this past weekend according to Evolver.fm.

This goes to prove two things, that Spotify made a very good move by teaming up with Facebook AND despite how many people complain about changes, the mob mentality online rarely has a big impact on figures in the long run.

So what the hell is Deezer? And do you need another music streaming service in your life? Well, chances are you hadn't heard of Deezer before last night when the French company announced its role as part of Facebook's music package. Deezer however has been around for a while. It was launched as a service back in 2007 in France (before Spotify) and since then has signed up more than 20 million users and 1.3 million subscribers. It actually debuted in the UK earlier in September, but will have got a massive new number of subscribers yesterday.

But what if you have Spotify already - do you need another music streaming service? Well here are the differences between the two.

1 Deezer is web-based. Spotify is client based.

The big difference is that Deezer is a web based service. So you don't have to download any software, you simply go to the website, create your account and the music - all 13 million tracks - is waiting for you.

With Spotify you have to have a computer with the client on board for it to work. The Facebook upgrade, which lets you listen to Spotify songs on the social networking sites, doesn't actually change this. If you try to listen to a song it then downloads the client on to the PC. Very cleverly it doesn't matter who has been using the Spotify client as it automatically logs you out of someone else's account and connects to yours.

I guess the browser based nature of the service might mean that Deezer can go a few places that Spotify can't as it might be able to skip through some work firewalls.

2 The free options are different

As you probably know the free Spotify service is one, ad funded and, two comes with a few restrictions on the number of times you can play a track. With Deezer things are a little different. You can access the radio channels and Smartradio, but music on demand is limited to 30 second clips rather than the whole song. To listen to whole albums etc you have to subscribe. However when we signed in this morning we were offered a few weeks of the service for free. I am not sure how long this will be available for.

3 The mobile service is different

Deezer wins on this one. Its mobile options are easier to use and more detailed than Spotify's and includes extra features such as radio and Smartradio. You can also listen to music on your mobile via Deezer (well the radio and Smartradio) without having to pay for a subscription, Spotify only offers its mobile service to its paying customers.

Other than those three biggies the services are fairly similar.

Spotify has the edge in number of track 15 million to 13 million, however I did keep finding things on Deezer that are not on Spotify. The big names are John Lennon (his catalogue was removed from Spotify a few months back) and Pink Floyd (whose albums are being rolled out on Deezer in the next few weeks). Neither service has The Beatles or Led Zeppelin.

The interfaces and general features (like social sharing of tracks) work in a similar way. Deezer looks a little more MySpacey to Spotify's iTunes influenced design. Deezer does have Soundcloud integration, which is a very nice touch. I guess Spotify will get this soon.

The subscription deals are virtually identical with both charging £4.99 for full PC service and £9.99 if you want to take tracks with you on your mobile. Slight moan about Deezer though - their service is 4.99 and 9.99 Euros which makes it even cheaper in France. Shame they couldn't have saved us Brits a few pence too.

Overall then, do you need both? Well probably not. Is one better than the other? Not really, it is too close to call. There might come a day when one of them offers a feature that will make me change my mind, but for now both services are well worth considering. Five quid a month for all that music? Bargain!

A new online recommendation tool called Spotalike lets you quickly and easily find Spotify playlists that'll suit you.

It's very much like the music version of film and TV recommending gem Jinni (if you haven't tried Jinni yet do it NOW). Spotalike asks you to enter just one track by one artist and it'll recommend a playlist that you'll like gathered from the Last.fm vaults.

Now Spotalike can't read your mind, so if you enter a song that you know doesn't fall in line with the rest of your music tastes it won't be able to tell.

Although there are similar recommendation tools integrated within other programmes, we love Spotalike because it's just SO simple, making it ideal for a Spotify beginner who wants some ready-made playlists, or even a seasoned user searching for a little bit of inspiration.

Most people seem to have a favourite music service that they always come back to for discovering, storing and sharing their favourite tracks.

The likes of iTunes, Spotify and Soundcloud are already firm favourites, but we've come across a few music apps and services recently that are a little different.

1. Flowd
What is it? An app which has been dubbed "Foursquare with a musical twist".
Why is it different? By using your phone's GPS, Flowd allows users to 'check-in' to gigs and festivals. Artists can then run all kinds of promotions to interact with and reward their fans. Flowd now also has Soundcloud integration too, so it's not just all about location, location, location.
How much is it? Free.

2. Songkick Concert
What is it? Songkick Concert makes sure you never miss your favourite artists when they perform in your area.
Why is it different? It scans through your music collection and creates a personalised calendar of concerts and events that you'd love. It then gives you plenty of information when you get there too, like a venue map and line-up details.
How much is it? Free.

3. Discovr
What is it? Like Jinni but for music, Discovr lets you explore new artists that are similar to the ones you already like.
Why is it different? Start by inputting the name of an artist or band, then you can see how others are related through a kind of big, shiny, mind map. You can go as deep into the world of music as you like by clicking on more and more artists.
How much is it? £1.49.

4. MusicDrop for Dropbox
What is it? A way to listen to the music collection stored in your Dropbox account.
Why is it different? It gives you a fuss-free way of listening to everything in your Dropbox account, along with browse and search functionality, a directory browser and Facebook integration all within a slick interface.
How much is it? £1.49.

5. Roqbot
What is it? Kind of like a little jukebox in your pocket.
Why is it different? It lets you control the music that's playing in a venue, as well as buy what's already on, vote on what you want to hear next and integrate all of your social networking channels. The only issue with Roqbot is that it looks like the venue needs to be in on the game too, so it might take a while for this to catch on.
How much is it? Free.

Spotify is increasingly becoming a love-it-or-hate-it kind of service, much like Marmite or the Twilight franchise.

In my experience, those that avoid it tend to fall into one of two, or both, of these categories:

1. "My music taste is just so obscure that Spotify doesn't have any of my favourite tracks."
2. "I'm not paying money for that."

However, it's undoubtedly been hugely successful and those that love it aren't alone, as the service has more than 10 million (both free and paying) subscribers, including the likes of Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears and Trent Reznor.

Spotify's free offering has always been of a fairly high quality, but the brand is increasingly making more and more changes so those that don't cough up the pennies every month are getting more ads and less freedom when it comes to what they can listen to and where they can listen to it.

So the big question is, is it really worth paying a premium for Spotify?

At the moment, Spotify's offering is split up into three different types, open, unlimited and premium.

Open (Free) is the free service and includes access to Spotify's library of tracks if you're online, but there are lots of ads breaking up your listening and restrictions on how often you listen to certain tracks. If you're not planning on using the service often, or you want to scope out exactly what's available before you commit to buy, then try Open first, but I can guarantee you'll get frustrated very quickly.

Unlimited (£4.99 per month) is the cheap and cheerful option, which allows users to get rid of ads and restrictions, but you can't listen to Spotify on your mobile or access tracks offline. This would be the perfect option for those that only want access to the service when they're at work or on their computers. If you like to have the little green Spotify logo smiling (it kinda smiles, right?) at you from your smart phone but you never actually listen to it, don't pay anymore than an Unlimited subscription.

Premium (£9.99 per month) is the ultimate Spotify experience, allowing you to listen to anything however many times you want, without ads, on your mobile, online, offline, running, walking, in the office, at home, at night, with a few added extras, like exclusive content and (allegedly) better sound quality. If you listen to music on the go and want access to all of your Spotify playlists on the move now now now, then this is the option for you. It does make you feel a little guilty paying that much a month just to please your ears, but the other two aren't going to do it for you otherwise.

So really the decision as to whether you need to be a paying subscriber or not is all down to personal preference, how often you actually listen to music and where you want to listen to it.

I personally have a pretty serious Premium addiction. I couldn't live without it, but resent paying the subscription fee every month. I know soon I may have to break that tuneful habit, but until then I do love having access to all of my playlists everywhere I go and I can't get enough of the intuitive interface, the way users can so easily make playlists and the colour scheme (I know, I know how shallow of me).

However, despite Spotify being the current love of my life and such a popular force across the globe, if you still don't like it (whether it's the lack of freedom or Roberta's voice), then there are plenty of alternatives out there:

Soundcloud is an online service with access to a range of mixes and smaller tracks you won't find elsewhere, it also has a free mobile app.

We7 is a browser based service which does have some advertising, but currently no limits on the tracks you play and how often you play them.

Last.fm cleverly builds playlists that will suit a user's tastes from more than 7 million tracks and there's an app to go with it.

The Hype Machine aggregates tracks mentioned by music bloggers and then lets you explore them online or via the brand's dedicated free app.

Rdio is currently only available in the US, so we haven't had chance to try it out yet, but it looks like a very slick in-browser and mobile app service with a huge range of tracks.

We don't count getting your willy out as a creative use of Chatroulette. No, boobs don't count either.

But, this concert by Ben Folds does count. This is a creative use of Chatroulette. The singer sits at a piano in a humungous concert hall, lets Chatroulette roll and sings some incredible improvised stuff riffing off the randomers that turn up. It's a pure joy. We want to go back on Chatroulette just to see if Ben is doing this again and we catch him.

Oh wait though - we'd probably just see lots of naked men and get scared again though.

While we're on the topic this was a great use of Chatroulette too: Chatroulette for good? HealCam connects patients.

So was this: Finally, someone has a Chatroulette Party

This was a dreadful use of Chatroulette though: French Connection in rubbish Chatroulette competition

Sales of Vinyl music rose a thumping 55% in the first half of this year pushed up by Radiohead and Adele according to data from the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).

Vinyl album sales have been rising in the UK every year since 2006, but this is one of the strongest rises. The trend is the same in the US too: Nielsen showed vinyl sales up 41% in the US in the same period.

Why are we buying it? Well it could be because it sounds "warm", because we like the big pictures on the front, or just because we're really nostalgic.

Kim Bayley, Director General of ERA, said:

"Vinyl may still be a niche format, but it is growing fast. Whether it is the "warmer" sound many music fans appreciate, the large-scale artwork of a 12" sleeve or its sheer retro appeal, vinyl seems to be capturing the imagination of buyers despite the fact it typically costs twice as much as a CD containing exactly the same music...Much of the focus in the music industry has been on cutting prices, partly in response to the rise of internet piracy. The success of vinyl shows music buyers will pay a premium if we deliver them a package they really love."

The top ten biggest sellers on vinyl were all recent releases.

Top 10 Vinyl Albums Jan-June 2011
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Beady Eye - Different Gear Still Speeding
Adele - 21
Arctic Monkeys - Suck It And See
Elbow - Build A Rocket Boys
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
Noah & The Whale - Last Night On Earth
Vaccines - What Did You Expect From The Vaccines
Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

Oh Mumford and Sons...

[via DrownedinSound]

Youtube superstar - Rebecca Black is releasing a new music video today that will chart the 14 year old's "rocky rise to fame".

It's going to be called My Moment and is going live on Youtube and on her website at 8pm. It's the follow up to her viral hit Friday - which was loved, reviled and played over 150 million times before it was taken off the internet.

But is the story of her path to fame is what we want? I fear that the teen might have lost what made her so real. Surely Rebecca's true genius lies in singing eternal truths about normal life. Things like this:

"Yesterday was Thursday / Today is Friday / Tomorrow is Saturday / And Sunday comes after that"

The mixture of home truths and the little happenings of the everyday - eating breakfast, going to the bus stop - all set to heady pop was what made Friday so globally appealing.

Let's remember the epic opening lines:
"7am waking up in the morning / Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs / Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal"

Can My Moment match it? I only hope so...

If not, why not try your hand at making a Youtube hit? See - Ten Tips for Making a Hit YouTube Video: What we learned from Rebecca Black's Friday

It reminds us of Our Favourite Rebecca Black Memes

When Apple took out a patent on software which would stop people using their iPhones to film at gigs, it got Brit singer Tinie Tempah all riled up. He said it was wrong for Apple to stop people doing what they wanted with their phones. The new technology would allow venues with an infra-red signaller to shut down camera apps on all iPhone/Pads/Pods in range.

We looked into Apple's motivations in a story here, but it got us thinking - how long can Apple keep doing things like this without starting to lose its cool? They make great gadgets - iPods, iPads, iPhones - they sell cool stuff - apps, music and films. But here they are intentionally crippling the functionality of one their devices and controlling not just what's on the phone to start with, but also what users can put onto the devices that they have shelled out £100s of pounds for.

What venues would Apple allow to use the infra-red signallers? Could anyone with enough money buy one? It's easy to see how these could get misused by anyone wanting to prevent information or footage getting out - celebrities, the Syrian government, you name it.

Apple have been censoring things for a while. We wrote about how they were censoring the iPad editions of fashion magazines back in 2010. And geeks have always been aware that a sandboxed, controlled experience was the price they paid for the smooth operation of their Macbook.

But this camera disabling feature goes further than Apple's previous forays into censorship - because it doesn't just curtail your right to find/consume certain content, it curtails your right to make it.

Apple is no longer niche. They're huge and mainstream: for example it has finally become worthwhile for hackers and scammers to make a virus for Mac. And more significantly the computer company now controls large areas of other industries - music distribution, apps and increasingly films and magazines.

The problem is that with their interests lying in so many diverse areas, Apple aren't just trying to make the best computer devices anymore. They're also trying to protect their music stores, their links with the film business, their shop fronts, their revenue streams.

As we said before: "it's one of the dangers of one company having control over so many aspects of an industry: it starts distorting one market to protect its interests in another one.."

Apple has gone far on its reputation as the must have computer brand for creatives and their devices are great for consuming and creating media, but their control freakery has to stop somewhere. I hope it's here and that this ridiculous idea gets blown out of the water.

Otherwise I'm thinking twice about iPhone 5.

They have a record of censorship, but Apple are taking it to the next level by trying to control what you film on your iPhone. Why? It's simple really - Apple sell you devices, but they also sell you music. They don't want you recording music on your phone that you could buy off them on their iTunes stores.

So Apple have taken out a patent on a software technology that could prevent their devices recording live events like gigs. It would use sensors to determine what you were pointing your camera at, and could kill the application if it considered you were filming something Apple didn't approve of. The device would work in venues or areas which had installed a particular infra-red sensor. Apple devices would be sensitised to the infra-red signal and it could over-ride user controls to shut down the camera app.

Videos of gigs often end up on Youtube, owned by Apple rival Google, where people consume a lot of music.

Still - it seems a pretty severe reaction from Apple, given that the quality of music recorded live on an phone is always going to be inferior to professionally recorded tunes. Is the company that made $70bn profits in liquid assets in the last quarter of this year really that troubled by this? Have they been pressurised by record labels into exploring this feature?

Will users stand for something that curtails the usefulness of their phone/iPod so much? How will Apple regulate or decide who gets to use the knock-out infra-red signallers? Can just anyone get one?

Though the feature hasn't been confirmed, Apple are only looking into it, it's one of the dangers of one company having control over so many aspects of an industry: it starts distorting a market to protect its interests in another one..

Related: Apple's no-nipples policy means fashion mags are censoring their iPad editions

How do you get 160 million views on Youtube with one single video, as Rebecca Black did with her mind-blowing, music-industry-redefining vid 'Friday'?

Rebecca came from nowhere to being one of the most watched Youtube videos ever. She is only just shy of the top ten despite only being live for a few months. Rachel has a third of the views of the most watched video on Youtube of all time - Justin Bieber's Baby with 530 million hits, (as of April 2011).

'Friday' was taken down from Youtube yesterday due to a copyright dispute between 14 year-old Rebecca and her "label" Ark records. It lives on in our hearts though. And our minds. But besides reminding us to "get down" on the weekend and giving us minutes of harmless fun every once every week

What can we learn about making hit Youtube videos from Rebecca Black? Here are 10 takeaways from 'Friday'

1) Make it about something everybody experiences
We all experience Fridays. Other common human experiences include breathing, eating and thinking baby animals are cute. Focusing on something like this widens the the pool of your possible listeners to the whole world.

2) Make it about something everybody likes and likes to talk about
I guess we all experience pain and the common cold etc, but they are not good experiences we like to dwell on. "Looking forward to the weekend" is a good experience, so are looking at kittens, talking about first love - that kind of thing.

3) Tie it to a recurring event
You know the way Christmas songs always come out at Christmas? That Wham! song has been every year since its release in 1984. In a master-stroke of genius, Rebecca chose an event that recurs every week. That means that in offices and bedrooms across the world, Friday gets played every Friday - until someone swears at whoever is in control of the office stereo.

4) Quality
I'm not saying that the music or the concept are quality with Rebecca Black's video. Consensus is that they're pretty shit. But the basics of easy watching are there: it's nice camera-work, it's recorded properly, the sound is good. Get this bit right if you want lots of people to watch it again and again.

5) Make it quotable
People love to quote on the internet. They also love to make remix videos and these will boost your legend more than anything else. If you have little quotable chunks that other people can pick up and remix, that will help your spread.

6) Make it meme-worthy..
Kind of similar to quotes, this will guarantee you a spread way beyond your original youtube vid.

7) Make it a music video
We really love tunes. It's noticeable that of the top ten most watched videos ever, 8 are music videos. Stick in a catchy tune even if you aren't doing an explicit music video.

8) Make it stupid but enjoyable
The tune is good. The words are stupid. I don't know exactly how to hit this balance - but you know it when you see it. Think lolcat factor.

9) Make it genuine..
It's hard to define this quality - but you want your video to be genuine, about something real. That's why babies and cats do so well on the internet, because they're not acting, they're not faking - they just like doing their stuff. AND IT'S CUTE.
Rebecca has a naive genuine quality that is somehow compelling. She really does care about "having her bowl" and choosing the right seat in the car. So just, you know, do your thing.

10) Get some haters
Much better than lots of people loving you, is lots of people hating you. And best of all is having both people who love you and hate you having massive endless arguments in the Youtube comments sections and across blogs all around the internet. That creates something viral.

As Spotity is rumoured to be joining forces with Facebook, another music service is eyeing up social networks as a way to get ahead. Last.fm's plans are that its users will be able to sign in from Facebook, and they can also share tracks with their Facebook friends. The same system will make it easier to find your friends on Last.fm and see what they are listening to.

Sounds like we can expect some competition in the music streaming arena. Last.fm has about 30 million monthly users, and charges £3 per month in subscription fees. The group faces strong competition from Spotify and free services, meaning plans are in the works to make itself unique:

"I know we have a lot of work to do, but we want to become the connective tissue between services like Spotify and iTunes and the place where people publish their music taste online," Vice President of Product at Last.fm, Matthew Hawn, told BBC News. "If Foursquare is where you publish your location, and Facebook is where you socially connect, Last.fm should be where you publish your taste in music."

Last.fm is now going to try and make its service more mainstream, added Hawn - this includes a redesign of the site and again running live music events.

If sounds like something your primary school art teacher might say while waving her arms around spraying paint everywhere... well it probably is, but there might be something in it. I came across a cute example yesterday of how sharing can make you more creative.

It came up at digital music festival NetAudio London when musician Tamara Barnett-Herrin was talking about her project Calendar Songs. It was a collaborative dance music project she launched because she was frustrated at not being able to find people to work with in dance music . The project dates from a little while ago - 2006-08 but it was pretty avant even for now.

Calendar Songs was a collaborative music project that really fle. She posted a new song on the site once every month for a year - the song had to be composed that month and relate to something that happened that month and then opened it up to remixers.
At the end of the year she created a 12 track album choosing one remix of each of the songs. She got 400 remixes, and invitations to perform all over the place.

And it wasn't just a way to meet new contributors - Tamara said that the discipline actually made her do better stuff.

She said:
"you throw something into the void and someone would throw it back to you, better. Writing in secret creates an inhibition and a preciousness so being forced to collaborate like that was an intensely liberating experience."

Of course - there could be downsides too. Someone else just nicking your work for example, without attributing. Someone doing a really bad remix. The fact that you don't make any money out of what you do.

Music is a natural subject for creative work like this - it would be harder if this were words, or maybe pictures.

Still: interesting.

Listen to all the songs here

Related: The cut to Spotify Free makes the service worse for paying users too

The noose has tightened around Spotify free users - who have now had their free listening allowance cut from 20 hours a month to 10. That, plus the service's limit of only 5 plays per song - ever - means, I imagine, that many Spotify users will be pushed to make the jump to the subscription service.

Well I guess we can't blame them. The service has been very popular across the UK and Scandinavia, but has failed to make a profit. I've been paying 10 pounds a month since Christmas and I've never looked back.

So will you cough up, free Spotify users? Or will you just go back to Pirate Bay and Youtube?

The Last Republic - Augmented Reality - Air Guitar from FauvelKhan on Vimeo.

I like to think technology makes the world a better place. But sometimes it doesn't. The interactive air guitar t-shirt from Welsh company FauvelKhan premiered SXSW today doesn't really do that much for the world. Though it did pick up an award at the festival.

What it does do is tell you how accurate your air guitar movements are. If you stand in front of a computer with a webcam, wear this t-shirt and do some air guitar, it will pick up how accurate your motions are for a given song.

There you go.

FauvelKhan the company was born out of a friendship from Swansea Metropolitan University. They have applied for a worldwide patent on the T-shirt.

It's not a good day for MySpace when one of their key competitor is a music start-up that's not yet profitable - but it looks that way right now. Old competitor Facebook is now streets ahead and squaring up to tech big boys Google and Apple, and MySpace is facing competition in another area - its cachet as a platform for new music.

Bands still turn to MySpace to promote themselves and fans still go there to listen to new songs but perennial problems with MySpace - buggy loading, poor design and a busy user interface are letting simpler, faster and better-connected services get a new lead in this area.

SoundCloud is one of the new services snapping most closely at MySpace's heels. It's a place where users can upload sound files to the internet cleanly and simply and then embed them anywhere else on the internet. The way it makes stuff so easy to share has had it dubbed the Youtube of Internet Audio files.

And that's just how it works - individual users have short profiles and channels, just like Youtube, but the core is the music not the social network. Grabbing an embed code from SoundCloud lets you stick it in your blog - great for music review sites, or podcasters.

By persisting in doing both social networking and acting as a music platform - but doing neither well - MySpace may see itself outsmarted on both flanks. We need some focus at the top here!

And it's going to take more than a new logo to sort that out..

Related: MySpace replace the space with a space - Opinions on the New Logo?

A little Hammertime can be the perfect addition to a dancefloor when the clock has well gone midnight and you really should be saying no to that next drink. The iPad is not the first connection to pop into your head when hearing the name MC Hammer, but this is the medium with which the retro-fabulous rapper has chosen to release his new single.

Using newsreader app Flipboard, the single 'See Her Face' will be available to iPad owners, who may or may not want to don some wide-legged Hammer trousers for the listening experience.

While it may seem like an odd mix, the initiative is part of an ongoing project from Flipboard to bring content owners and publishers on board as partners, instead of only treating them as content producers. Mr Hammer is already a keen presence on Twitter, and the 1980s star now seems to be fully embracing the social media revolution.

With the increased number of iPad apps aimed at musicians it is no surprise that Alesis hsd brought out The StudioDock. This awesome piece of kit is the first device that enables anyone with an iPad to create, produce and even perform music, with virtually any pro audio gear or instruments. The StudioDock is basically a universal docking station designed for the iPad, that gives musicians, recording engineers, and music producers the connectivity they need to create and perform with iPad.
Awesome!