Articles about Streaming

If you can't make it to Lollapalooza this year, there's no need to be jealous of your friends who are attending. At the music festival, Facebook has started testing a new feature that allows people to live stream events on the social network, taking on the likes of Snapchat head-on.

Music festivals are far from cheap -- a full weekend pass costs $275 and that's before you factor in travel, food, and so on -- so the prospect of a social powered livestream will appeal to many... particularly those to whom the idea of camping is abhorrent. Facebook's Place Tips feature can be used by those in attendance -- including performers -- to post videos, photos and updates that can be enjoyed by those who chose to stay at home.

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Spotify is one of the top music services in business today. It's a tough market, with a growing field of competitors aiming to get your money. It can be good, and many people love it, but how could it become even better?

How about adding If This Then That (IFTTT) support? The service has added a new channel that allows you to utilize its capabilities for many functions associated with your music.

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Twitch.TV is the most popular platform for professional and casual gamers to livestream, but it has always run slower than the competition. This is partly due to Twitch’s server support, but also due to the Flash video player it built being a clunky mess for users on slow connections.

This has been worked on over the years, but retaining Flash support is starting to become a burden for Twitch.TV, so much so the company has announced HTML5 and JavaScript support will be coming in the next few months.

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Nowadays, most people don't buy physical media; they pay their little $10 a month for Spotify premium, or similar service, to support the music industry. Apple's exclusivity approach, however, won't just disrupt the streaming market, it will severely harm consumers and lead to piracy. Hell, it could kill streaming music altogether.

Piracy is a really heinous crime. It causes artists to lose money, and make no mistake, it is stealing. With that said, more people will be doing it because of Apple Music. Exclusives from Dr. Dre, Pharell and Taylor Swift may lead to increased torrent downloads. Sadly, the artists have no one to blame but themselves.

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Netflix has had another excellent quarter, announcing 3.3 million new subscribers in the past three months. The company’s revenue continues to grow with £1.05 billion this quarter, but investment in originals and advertising is taking a bite out of the profit, with only £16 million reported this quarter.

Even with the profit issue, Netflix’s stock went soaring once again. The video streaming service has managed an 100 percent rise in stock price in six months, and announced in the financial report a seven-to-one split in revenue, bringing the price back down to $100 (£64).

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Google's Chromecast has gained quite a following of people looking for a cheap, simple way to stream content to their TVs. Part of the device's appeal is its ease of use and extensibility through the use of apps, but it is reliant on a steady Wi-Fi signal. If this represents a problem in your home, there's now a solution.

The new Ethernet Adapter for Chromecast does very much what you would expect -- it adds a wired Ethernet port to Google's streaming dongle. This is great news for anyone with a flaky Wi-Fi signal, or those looking to use Chromecast beyond their router's normal range.

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Microsoft recently rebranded its music service from Xbox Music to Groove Music, and the reason is pretty simple: consumer confusion.

In a tweet earlier this week, Microsoft’s corporate VP for operating systems Joe Belfiore said "Lots of people were saying 'I don’t have an Xbox, why would I use Xbox Music?'".

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One of the most prominent skeptics of digital music, Prince has surprisingly been off the radar on the whole music streaming debate, until now.

The Minneapolis sound pioneer removed all of his songs from Deezer, Spotify, Rdio and Apple Music earlier this week, while keeping music on Google Play and Tidal.

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Netflix wants to reach 70 million subscribers by the end of 2015, adding an additional 13 million in 12 months. The ambitious goal follows several launches in Western Europe and South America, alongside Netflix’s saturation in the United States.

In January, Netflix reported 57 million subscribers in an investor’s call. Most of the subscribers, a large 43 million, are based in the US. The second largest region is the United Kingdom, where Netflix has five million subscribers.

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Many may argue that they don't make bands like AC/DC anymore, and perhaps they'd be right. The Australian group shaped the youths of many of us with their hard sound and clever lyrics. Nobody will forget original singer Bon Scott or replacement Brian Johnson who raised the band from its ashes after the tragedy of Scott's death.

But now you can hop onto the Highway to Hell and take a ride using Rdio, the music streaming service that aims to compete in this market with many formidable rivals. The music site has announced the whole epic catalog is available to its users.

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I plopped onto my sofa tonight to watch a show using Sling TV. I love the service, despite it being a bit pricey. The one time I've called I got quick and courteous customer service. Tonight was different -- the service told me there was a problem with the login. I called and received endless messages that there were "higher than normal call volumes".

The sense that something was up popped into my head. Indeed it was, as the eventual customer service rep informed me that there was a big problem.

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A recent update pushed to Chromecast devices has caused a series of problems for users. One of the most obvious issues is that users who were signed up to the regular, stable update channel found that they had been moved to the beta channel without their permission. Although the problem started to appear a few days ago, Google has been slow to issue a fix.

The update has also caused problems with a number of Chromecast apps including YouTube, Plex, and HBO GO. Not all users have been affected by the issues, and Google insists that only "a small percentage of users" have the issue which is flagged up by a beta/developer string at the bottom of the screen.

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After months of testing, Apple revealed earlier this month, at WWDC 2015, that iOS 8.4 will be officially available in late-June, bringing us the new Apple Music streaming service and Beats 1 radio station. While those are the biggest changes, the new version of the popular mobile operating system will also feature a number of under-the-hood tweaks to improve the user experience, as we have come to expect from the most-recent iOS releases.

Quite a few of us expected Apple to launch iOS 8.4 way before the end of the month, but it looks like the company has other plans in mind, as iOS 8.4 is officially set to launch on the very last day of June.

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We last looked at the cord-cutting revolution in early 2014 and asked who planned to do so in the coming year. A surprising number of you said you'd already done it. What has happened since then that will make those who haven't switched do so now? A couple of interesting developments have happened in this time.

Before we get to those, we'll pose the question one more time. Will you, or for that matter have you, cut the cord? If you have no plans to, then why? There are obviously many possible answers to these questions and many good reasons both for and against the change in your entertainment options.

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It has been hard to avoid talk of Apple Music over the past couple of weeks. After the initial excitement of the launch, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth at the revelation that there were no plans to pay artists during the initial three month free trial period.

Never fear, Taylor Swift is here! After complaining on behalf of musicians around the world in an open letter to Apple, Ms Swift managed to convince Apple to change its mind and dip its hand into its pocket. But did this mean that a great deal was offered? Clearly being paid 'something' is better than not being paid at all, but the New York Times reveals that Apple will be paying out just 0.2 cents every time a track is streamed.

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