Competition in the set-top box market just caught Fire -- hopefully no customers have the Nest Protect smoke alarm. With the challenge thrown down by Amazon, Roku is answering by adding another channel to its lineup, this time allowing customers to rock out in their living room.

Qello will bring concerts and music documentaries right into your home, on-demand. "Whether you’re in the mood to discover something new or want to enjoy a serenade from your all-time favorite band, Qello Concerts and Roku have you covered to stream all genres -- from Beyoncé, B.B. King and Queen to Nirvana, Mumford & Sons and Barbra Streisand", says Roku’s Ziba Kaboli-Gerbrands.

Overnight Monday, I explained how "iTunes slaps DRM handcuffs on my music". Later that day, an Apple representative proactively contacted me seeking to resolve the problem. Someone still reads what I write. That started a process that mostly removed rights protection from my music and identifies several iTunes Match benefits not necessarily obvious but useful to most any Apple music buyer.

Recap: In October 2007, I declared DRM freedom and removed all rights-protected tracks from my library. For some unidentified reason, on Sunday, iTunes presented me with option to fetch from the cloud these previously purchased but deleted songs. Downloading retrieved the long-absent music in the original 128kbps protected-AAC format, not the newer, 256kbps DRM-free files. Now I know why.

Students are sometimes in need of breaks on prices, as school eats into the time required for a job. To that end, many software and hardware makers offer discounts to allow those we consider our future to be able to attain what they need in order to get through classes. But that isn't all that's required, unwinding with some entertainment is also sometimes necessary.

Now Spotify wants to help out, offering discounts for students. The service has announced it is cutting the price in half, slashing $9.99 down to $4.99 for college students.

On Sunday, while perusing my music collection by album, I came across lots of new -- or rather, old and forgotten -- tracks purchased before Apple took iTunes DRM-free. My excitement at discovering, and downloading from the cloud, these long lost songs cannot be understated. That is until finding them not to be what I expected. Rather than crisp, 256kbps DRM-free files, iTunes delivered 128kbps protected-AAC tracks. What the frak? Apple is supposed be done with digital rights management for music.

That iTunes Match provides access to this older music, even if DRM-protected, is a benefit. Thank you, Apple, for providing an affordable means for recovering lost or deleted music. What confuses me: Being given the older, lower-quality, locked files when higher-bitrate DRM-free alternatives are available from Apple's store. I don't have an answer why this morning, but I do have some suspicions. Perhaps you're smarter than me or better at finding solutions in online support forums.

Pandora is one of the grandfathers of the streaming music service, and it has remained one of the better deals among paid music apps. Granted, being a radio-only service limits the capability and, therefore, the potential price that can be charged, but many customers find that it's quite useful and all they really need.

Now Pandora is being forced to raise prices. Even though the increase is minimal, the service is making it as painless as possible for loyal customers -- in fact, completely painless. The current subscription cost for One (unlimited and ad-free) will rise from $3.99 to $4.99 per month beginning in May, but those who already have a One account need not worry, as things will not change for them.

Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Live365... internet radio has become more normal to today's generation than that box which sat on the nightstand or kitchen counter when I was young. Now a new survey seems to show the correlation between age and the new way of listening to music.

Edison Research conducted a random phone survey, targeting users aged 12 and older and the results were rather emphatic. The numbers were collated for the 12 and up, 18-34 and 18-49 demographics and it seems many of you just may be listening to internet radio while you are reading my story.

Pandora has been rolling out new features for mobile customers, including a sleep timer and alarm clock. Both of these enhancements are handy for a device that many of us leave on the nightstand at bedtime, but that doesn’t always mean a phone.

Now the streaming service is expanding its offering, heading for Android tablets with these features that were previously only available to phone customers.

As someone who was born in the 80's and raised on Long Island, I am by default a De La Soul fan. They were the people that taught me Hip-Hop didn't have to be about violence and gangs. The trio was about peace, rhyming and having fun. Sadly, this cost them a bit of street credibility as they earned a "soft" label. However, true Hip-Hop heads know De La Soul is legit.

Unfortunately, De La Soul's music has been strangely absent from music streaming services. In fact, in my review of Google Play Music All Access, I cited a lack of the group as pretty much the only negative. While that is still an issue, De La Soul has come up with a temporary, yet genius, solution -- give all of their music away for free! However, there is a catch.

Growing up in Northern Maine, where the winters are long and the nights bitterly cold, I obsessively listened to the radio. During darkness, AM signals skip hundreds, sometimes thousands, of kilometers. WRKO in Boston, 650 km south, back when the station played music, was a fav -- and WKBW in Buffalo, N.Y. My passion for radio led me to hitchhike, at 17, with a friend to the Federal Communications Commission office in Boston to test for a Third Class license. I would need one to be a radio disc jockey. I flunked, so we hitchhiked a second time. Success!

My radio passion remains. Before the Internet, I used a Grundig Shortwave receiver to listen to news and cultural programs from around the world. Many worldband stations are silent now, choosing to stream on the Internet instead. Domestic radio remains popular, however. For example, according to new Nielsen data released last week, 242 million Americans listen to radio, which reaches more than 90 percent of every age group. Sixty-five-million Americans 18-34 years old listen to radio, spending an average 11.5 hours each week. That's right. The Pandora generation.

The struggling musician is an almost iconic figure in today's culture. For every one that makes it, thousands sadly fail. Having talent is obviously the biggest key to success, but even that sometimes isn't enough. It needs to be combined with a bit of luck to get noticed.

Pandora wants to try and help open doors for these folks by getting their music out into the world and into the ears of potential fans. Today the streaming service unveils its new Open Music Submission Process. "Our goal is to enable every talented artist to reach the audience they deserve, without regard to the style of their music or their popularity", says Pandora founder Tim Westegren.

Just yesterday Beats Music sprung into life, with a plan to compete with the established giants already in the market, such as Google, Apple, Spotify and others. The launch was greeted with much fanfare, and all sorts of artists are involved in the project.

But 24 hours into the life of the new service, not everything is milk and honey. Apparently issues have arisen with service for those who already signed up, and now the Dr. Dre-sponsored music app is pulling back to address problems.

The famous, or perhaps infamous, Kim Dotcom once ran MegaUpload before a massive shutdown effort carried out by the government. He later launched Mega, flaunting it to the very people who set out to ruin him. But the flamboyant entrepreneur has always seemed most interested in music, and today he launches his very own streaming service.

Baboom launches, promising a combination of both Spotify and iTunes. Dotcom is soliciting artists to come in and set up their own pages, which will include a bio, images and videos. It is free for them to setup their presence on the new site.

Streaming the music you want continues to become easier, with more choice of services and increasingly better pricing. But prices can’t get any better than free, and that seems to be where this market is now headed.

Today Rdio joins Spotify in announcing it will now host free streaming on the web. "That means you can listen to 20 million songs plus all the albums, playlists, and stations you love anywhere there’s a computer. Absolutely free", the service announces.

Music is my favorite hobby. Actually, calling it a "hobby" is probably a gross understatement. Whenever possible, I listen to music; before bed, while I write, in the car -- everywhere. When I think back to how much money I spent on music over the last few decades, it is actually depressing. Surely, I could have started an IRA instead and been on my way to retirement; no, I wouldn't trade my memories of listening to and buying music in record stores for anything.

However, the state of buying music has had its ups and downs over the last decade and a half. File-sharing services like Napster and BitTorrent sites have made music piracy easy. Ultimately, the music industry paid the price with a decline in CD sales. Many people blame the industry for its own woes, due to obscenely high CD prices in the late 90's and early 00's. However, all has not been lost -- there has been a digital-download purchase renaissance happening since the launch of Apple's iTunes in 2003. Year after year, sales of downloadable online music has increased -- until now. In 2013, online music sales have decreased for the first time ever. Oh noes!

While services like Grooveshark and Torch Music manage to survive, the Recording Industry Association of America is on a more or less constant attack of similar streaming sites. Now it seems the RIAA has managed to pull off a victory, strong-arming one service out of business.

HypedMusic calls it quits as a result of the cease and desist threats it has received. "I am not in any way condemning the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for what they did or claiming that in some way they 'wronged' me; they had the right to send me a cease-and-desist and I immediately complied", the developer laments.