Toy Makers Attach Products to IPod Craze

After bemoaning the emergence of the iPod as children's latest must-have toy, toy makers are now looking at the digital musical player as their own marketing strategy.

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When the compact disc was introduced it was hailed as the future of music for decades to come. Experts thought the new technology would have a similar shelf-life to vinyl, which dominated the industry for more than 60 years.

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10 Random Songs-- Weekend Playlist #4

1. Cayenne, The Beatles, Anthology (Disc 1)-- From April 1960, the Beatles before they hit it big.

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10 Random Songs -- Weekend Playlist #3

1. Love Supreme by The Flower Kings from Adam & Eve -- One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands. The Flower Kings has been one of those bands keeping prog music alive and well through its third wave.

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If there is a poster child for the battered Web music startup, Project Playlist is it.

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Below is the history of the application that is running more than any other on our Macs. It spawned the iPod, iPhone, Apple TV and gave us an excuse to throw out those ugly CD towers that resided in the corners of our houses in the 90s. The ever present, iTunes.

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So that's what that never-happened early meeting was going to be about. Since we never met up because we were tangled with AOL, Apple turned to their next choice, SoundJam, and the rest was, well, history.

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10 Random Songs -- Weekend Playlist #2

1. "Black Milk" by Massive Attack on the album Mezzanine: Massive Attack's third album was a success internationally, but peaked at only number 60 in the US. You'll know these guys as the group which created the opening music to the TV show House.

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10 Random Songs -- a weekend playlist

"Fighting in a Sack", The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow: pop-sounding tune from the follow up to their debut album, Oh, Inverted World. Kind of sounds like The Cure gets psychotherapy and serotonin re-uptake inhibitors.

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Imagine a music app with instant access to any song you wanted to hear. Imagine creating a playlist from those songs and quickly, easily sharing it with friends. Such an app does exist, it's called Spotify, and it could change music forever.

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Well, having just geeked-out with a pair of Zune HDs for about an hour, I am tentatively reaffirming my faith in Microsoft. This thing was worth the wait, folks.

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Like music? Like free music? You may remember my previous post about the mammoth library of free MP3s at Amazon (which is now nearing 1,000 tracks).

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They say music is the food of love, and who doesn't love food – especially a free lunch?

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(CNN) -- A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs. Illegal downloads of musical files will cost a Minnesota woman $1.9 million, a ju …

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A new crop of consumer-facing music stores is focused on helping fans resell "used" digital music the way they do CDs. But the big conundrum with digital music is that there's no way to prove sellers legally own the songs on their computers.

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Step by step guide that covers tagging and filename automation for consistent music organization. Includes video.

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Gary Krakow spends some time with Microsoft's Zune and likes what he sees. But admits that it comes burdened with being a first-generation device tied to an ill-conceived online store.

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Like subscription music services? You know, like Microsoft's Zune Pass where you pay $14.99 monthly and keep up to 10 tracks each month forever.

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There will be no judgment in this post. No sound snobbery. I'm simply asking the age-old question: At what bitrate should we encode MP3s? And I need your help.

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As of November 2008, the Zune Pass allows its users to keep any 10 songs per month. In other words, if you wanted 30,000 songs for keeps, just like the iTunes Store, you would have to wait 250 years. The cost would be a whopping $45,000, however.

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By now you've read what I love about record stores, and what I could live without. In this third--and final--installment, I'm going to throw out some ideas for how to bring record shops into the 21st century.

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Many record stores are going out of business for perfectly good reasons that have little to do with iTunes or Amazon. In general, the brick-and-mortar music retail experience is antique and frustrating, and when it's bad, it's enough to make you swear off record shops for good.

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Last Saturday, independent music retailers organized a national Record Store Day, complete with in-store freebies and exclusive releases from dozens of bands who want to see these business survive.

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BI said that those who said they download illegal music for "free" bought ten times as much legal music as those who never download music illegally. "The most surprising is that the proportion of paid download is so high,"

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Want to freshen up your music library? Amazon.com is offering a whopping 770 MP3s you can download free of charge.

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The same day iTunes raised popular songs' prices, both Amazon and Wal-Mart's digital stores also introduced "variable pricing." Amazon didn't seem to boost as many songs to $1.29, while Wal-Mart has the lowest bottom-end price.

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