Computer Support Blog

People have been creating personalized playlists since before music was digital.  Thousands of people still remember recording personal “mix tapes” on cassettes and sharing them with their friends or giving them as gifts to loved ones.  Digital playlists are, in many ways, the modern version of these personalized mix tapes and just like the mix tapes of old, people have a desire to share the playlists they create today.  Enter cool person in technology Darius Fong who has created a new service designed around the idea of everyday users crafting personalized playlists and sharing them with the world.  Fong’s product goes by the name of weeSPIN, emphasizing the social aspect of the service by using a play on the plural pronoun “we”.  Read more »

Streaming services like Spotify have taken the music industry by storm.  For many users, it’s clear that a monthly subscription to a vast library of on demand music is a great deal, and the subscriber numbers for Spotify and similar services like Rdio prove that.  However, this is not ideal for all types of music fans.  A significant number of people prefer to own their music rather than “rent” it as they would with a monthly subscription service.  Owning digital music files and being able to use them for whatever a user wants is important to many consumers.  However, strictly owning local music files on one computer doesn’t have any of the extra conveniences or benefits that streaming services provide.  Cool product Style Jukebox provides music fans with a system that allows them to own all their own music, but still gain the advantages that streaming services provide, such as online access to a user’s entire music library on any device with an Internet connection. People can upload their music to Style Jukebox on their PC’s and have immediate access to their entire collection on their smartphone, tablet and even other computers.  Anyone who has issues uploading their song files to the service should consider getting cloud computer support for help. Read more »

Since the fall of Napster, many legitimate digital music companies have sprouted up.  One of the most successful so far has been Spotify.  Spotify has a partnership with Facebook which allowed the company to easily promote its service and provide Facebook users with hours of free digital music each month.  The partnership between Spotify and Facebook was a great strategic move for Spotify; the digital music company attributes three million new subscribers to the Facebook connection.  Spotify is looking to build upon that by growth by spreading a similar Spotify widget throughout the Internet. Read more »

In the quest to make digital music a viable business endeavor instead of just a cool idea, there have been many businesses and websites that have already come and gone.  While digital music pirating has been a huge issue for most of the services that have failed, rapidly changing hardware has been a serious issue as well.  One quarter, the dominant digital music device is an MP3 player, the next it is a smartphone!  Failure to adapt the digital music service to the new technologies has sunk some of the digital music services distributing digital music files over the Internet.  Spotify is deeply invested in making sure that does not happen.  For that, they have Oskar Stal!

Oskar Stal is the Chief Technology Officer of digital music distributor Spotify.  As Spotify developed as a website, but prepared to take its service international, the company sought a CTO who had extensive experience with mobile operating systems.  Without a CTO who knew the ins and outs of various mobile platforms, Spotify could not take their business to the next level.  Having been employed at mBlox, a company deeply invested in mobile transactions and the technical interactions between mobile platforms, Oskar Stal rose to the top of Spotify’s list of desirable candidates for the position.

Oskar Stal’s resume is more extensive than simply working for mBlox, though spending eight years as the Director of Development in the technical department at that company was the weightiest factor in Spotify hiring him.  Fortunately for Spotify, Stal was exceptionally interested in the position; he was already impressed by how much Spotify had accomplished without someone as experienced at the top of their development branch!

Read more »

People are listening to more music than ever before, and free Internet radio is all the rage these days. Millions of people rely on Internet radio like Pandora and Jango to provide their daily dosage of tunes. Internet radio continues to garner more popularity as it offers listeners free music, as well as the chance to more-or-less customize their music preferences. It’s a great way to discover new favorites while remaining in your musical comfort zone. But what happens when you don’t want to just tune into what’s playing and want to listen to a specific song? In case you are wondering, no, the answer is not to illegally download the music, a practice that poses an immense threat to your Internet security, among other inherent reasons not to. Well, one option is to buy songs and use Google Music or iTunes to organize your library, but what if you don’t own that much music and you don’t want to pay every time you want to listen to Adele in the background? The answer is Spotify, an Internet music streaming service that lets users pick the exact tracks they want to listen to!

The first question that comes to mind is price. The good news is that Spotify offers a free version. Naturally, subscribers to the free plan experience occasional radio ads and other limitations like a lower sound quality and no offline mode. According to Wikipedia, after an initial grace period, the free version supports only 10 hours of music streaming per month, which is not that much for many people. Still, most Spotify users, around 7.5 million, currently use the free version, and given the service’s popularity, these numbers are certainly going to increase!

Upgrading to an unlimited account has the advantage of better music quality, fewer ads, and ability to listen in an offline mode. Spotify also boasts smartphone apps iOS and Android. So, similar to Google Music’s online storage feature, Spotify can act as a cloud music library. Regardless of which version you use, Spotify offers more than 15 million songs, having reached agreements with the big four music labels.

The service is quickly expanding to many European countries, and despite only having been active in the United States for a few months, it’s gaining immense popularity. Spotify recently announced in a blog post that is has reached 2.5 million paying users. Another recent major development has been the collaboration of Spotify and Facebook. To register for the service, you must use a Facebook  account—there’s no way around it. Once you sign up, you can share playlists and songs with friends, see what tracks others are listening to and follow your friends’ recommendations.

There are plenty of ways to listen to music. Spotify is just one of them, sure, but it’s also drastically different. Finally, we have a service that actually lets us listen to the music we want, share it, and instantly stream it for free.

About RESCUECOM:

RESCUECOM provides computer repair and computer support, 24/7: Meeting every tech support need including data recovery, virus removal, networking, wireless services, and computer support for all brands of hardware and software. For computer support or information on products, services, or computer repair, visit https://www.rescuecom.com or call 1-800-RESCUE-PC.

For More Information, Contact:

David Milman, CEO

315-882-1100

david@rescuecom.com