Having the ability to decipher any song that plays over the radio or during a commercial is a must for any music-loving fiend. That's what made Shazam so popular. Well, the Google team took a few notes from Shazam and created their Google Ears widget for Android devices. The ...more
Christmas music makes the holiday season just that much more enjoyable. And the folks over at Google must be feeling the holiday spirt since they are making Michael Bublé's Christmas album free for a limited time. The Grammy Award winning artist debuted his Christmas album in ...more
Since Apple released iOS 8, many third-party apps have taken advantage of one of its more resourceful features: Notification Center widgets. These widgets have made it easier to interact with features and settings that would otherwise require launching an app itself, instead o ...more
Apple is offering free full episodes of popular TV shows and free songs from artists with its most recent update to the iTunes Store. In the Music section, "Free on iTunes" seems to have replaced "Single of the Week," which used to give lesser-known independent artists a chanc ...more
Despite the rise of music streaming, the experience of immersing oneself in the artwork and lyrics of old school albums is alive again, as sales of vinyl records and CDs have outpaced digital downloads for the first time since 2011. Now, the latest album from Amsterdam-based N ...more
If you're a public beta tester, you woke up this morning with your iPhone running iOS 13.4.5. Today, Apple released the second beta for iOS 13.5. No, Apple didn't skip a version — 13.5 public beta 2 is essentially 13.4.5 public beta 2. So why the name change? Apple included th ...more
Guardians of the Galaxy was one of 2014's biggest box office hits, and it's thanks to a great cast of characters and some awesome music. Star-Lord's mixtape was given to him by his mother, and it provided the basis for the great movie soundtrack and hilarious plot points. So, ...more
A musical hiccup during a DJ's set can completely ruin the mood, and that same feeling can definitely translate to mobile listening as well. I usually have my phone hooked up to my car stereo's auxiliary port, and it pains me every time a song is interrupted by a new text or ...more
Look, tests are no fun, and doing poorly on them is rarely an option. Whether you're studious or a slacker, everyone needs a little boost now and again. While students have found ways to cheat as long as tests have existed, the invention of smartphones has greatly enhanced the ...more
At Google I/O this morning, Google finally announced the launch of its much awaited Google Music service. It's currently in invite-only beta mode, but they claim it will open up to the masses soon enough. To start syncing your music library with Google's Cloud now, you need ma ...more
It's been a great week for Chromecast owners. First, Google released the development kit, allowing devs to install the casting code into their apps. Then, CyanogenMod dev Koush updated his AllCast app to support the Chromecast. That means you can shoot personal movies, music, ...more
We've previously shown you an app called Floating Lyrics which displayed song lyrics in a, you guessed it, floating window. And while that app was great for any minimalist, it was pretty bare bones overall. On the other hand, musiXmatch is a full-featured lyric fetching app, ...more
Even though the Music app took a backseat during Apple's initial iOS 14 announcements, there's a lot going on in the updated app. Some of the new features and changes apply only to Apple Music subscribers, while others apply to your own music library, so there's something for ...more
Super Mario Bros. is one of the most renowned games in history. It helped resurrect a dying video game industry in the mid-'80s and still remains one of the best-selling video games of all time—one reason why the new NES Classic Edition is so popular and impossible to get thes ...more
Apple Music's Replay feature sucks. Aside from not being very accessible, it offers a fraction of your history compared to Spotify Wrapped, which does a deep dive into what you listened to over the last year. Not only that but Spotify packages data into visuals you can share o ...more
I've had the thankless duty of choosing the music for far too many get-togethers, and no matter how good you think your music taste is, or how many new tracks you have on your iPhone or iPod, you will never—ever—satisfy everyone. You're more likely to hear, "What the heck is ...more
When you're wearing EarPods or another set of headphones with built-in remote controls, pausing and playing music is as convenient as it gets. However, some of the better sounding headphones out there do not have remotes built in, so pausing a song when you need to is at least ...more
Piracy, it can be argued, is the scourge of the internet. But when it comes to music, sometimes it's best to give a listen to a track or album before deciding to spend your hard-earned money on fully supporting it. Unfortunately, there are few good ways to do this without exp ...more
When was the last time you bought a CD? Most of us listen to music through a number of digital channels—MP3s, Internet streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, and satellite radio, to name just a few. Some people still like to have the physical disc as a backup, others bu ...more
Sending and receiving files between Android devices has no shortage of options—Bluetooth, email, MMS, and Wi-Fi are just a few of the more popular ones that we use. While the choices for this functionality are plenty, problems can arise with connectivity issues and file size ...more
Apple released the fourth developer beta for iOS 11.4 on Monday, May 7, followed the next day with the public beta release. This update arrives just six days after the company seeded beta 3 to users, which fixed an 11.3 issue with 3D Touch, among other various bugs. You can d ...more
What's the latest dance trend sweeping TikTok? The Shuffle Dance. If you just watch people doing the Shuffle Dance, especially the really good ones, you might think it's a bit complicated. In reality, it's really not that hard. It's just a handful of steps. For the uninitiate ...more
Apple released the third public beta for iOS 13.5 today, Wednesday, May 6. This latest public beta update comes exactly one week after Apple released iOS 13.5 public beta 2, which, among other things, introduced Apple and Google's joint COVID-19 exposure notification API. Publ ...more
Are you finding that the Google+ features you've been waiting for are still not rolling out quickly enough for you? Although we've provided many solutions to Google+ issues with different Chrome extensions, it still seems like it's not enough. Now that we've been using Google+ ...more
If you purchased something from iTunes, the iOS App Store, iBooks Store, Apple TV App Store, or the Mac App Store and it doesn't work, didn't download, is buggy, or wasn't what you thought it was, you can get a full refund from Apple—you just have to know how to ask. Whatever ...more
When you enable Low Power Mode on your iPhone, it's not always clear what measures it's taking to reduce battery drain and conserve power. Changes to energy-hungry features you use daily may be immediately noticeable, but some things you use frequently may be disabled or reduc ...more
The new iOS 14 for iPhone arrived Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2020, alongside iPadOS 14, and there are a lot of features to uncover. Improved widgets. Better home screen customization. Exciting Messages improvements. New abilities in Camera and Photos. There's so much here that it'll ...more
Last week Amazon set their sights on the mobile app market, launching their Appstore for Android. This week they're attacking Android devices once again, but that's not all—they're getting into the online storage biz. On Monday, they launched Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Clo ...more
I love finding new artists on Spotify to listen to but hate when musicians I don't like keep popping up in recommended playlists and radio stations. For the longest time, there was nothing you could do about it, but now, Spotify lets you block specific bands and singers from e ...more
The options for finding random or specific music to listen to are vast. Spotify is excellent for streaming popular music and new releases, while SoundCloud provides a healthy dose of user-generated remixes and originals. And then there's YouTube for everything else. Only prob ...more
I regularly listen to music on my Nexus 7 while working or playing my Xbox. It's light and easy to carry around, and has basically become an extension of my body. The only thing that bugs me is having to constantly turn the screen on to pause or change music tracks. Even if I ...more
Officially, in order to use AirPlay to stream music from your iOS device, you would need either an Apple TV, AirPort Express, or an AirPlay-enabled receiver or set of speakers. Despite what Apple wants you to think, there is another way to stream music without any of those Air ...more
AllCast, from renowned developer Koushik Dutta (better known as Koush), allows users to stream personal media, such as movies, photos, and music from mobile devices to Chromecast and other streaming devices. We've covered the application in the past, but it had only been avai ...more
Apple just seeded developers and public beta testers the GM (golden master) for iOS 14 on Tuesday, Sept 15. The update (18A373) comes just after Apple's "Time Flies" event, and six days after Apple released iOS 14 beta 8 for both developers and public testers. Apple released ...more
Apple just released the second public beta for iOS 14.5 today, Wednesday, Feb 17. The update comes just one day after the company seeded developers the second 14.5 beta. Because of that, we've had 24 hours to sink our teeth in beta 2's new features, like 217 new emoji, Apple M ...more
A single movie download can consume a good ten percent of the storage on your Nexus 7 tablet, unless you went all crazy and opted for the 32GB model. Even then you're bound to run out of space fast, especially if you're like me and have tons of media files you want readily acc ...more
While the iPhone came before the first Android smartphone, every new iOS version seems to include a wealth of features already existing on Android, and iOS 17 is no exception. Apple's currently beta testing iOS 17 with developers, with a public beta coming in July and a stabl ...more
If you've ever taken apart an electronic device that uses physical buttons, you already know why these types of input methods are destined to fail. The rubberized contacts used in physical press-and-release buttons like those of a gamepad or keyboard are incredibly frail and c ...more
Google+ is nearly complete. We've got hangouts, pages, photos, games, and lots of ways to share what we love and build an audience. But it seems like Google isn't quite done yet. Since most of Google+ has been "shipped", it's now time to "ship the Google" as +Larry Page mentio ...more
The nice part about creating a song playlist is that it's essentially like your own customized album. You can organize all your different music tastes into one large collection or separate them into each of their own genres. If you're using an app like SoundCloud, then instea ...more
When Google announced YouTube Red — a paid monthly subscription service that disables advertising, among other perks — many of us thought "just use an ad blocker." But it isn't really that simple. Ad blockers give you an ad-free YouTube experience, but also take revenue away ...more
Newer gaming systems like the PlayStation 4 have a nice, subtle feature that goes a long way towards helping create a more immersive experience. Any time you're on the main menu or home screen, an ambient background music track is playing, which adds an aural appeal to an expe ...more
While Siri has never been my favorite, after using her in the new iOS 7, I have definitely become a fan. If you want to know why, check out the newest cool features that Siri has to offer! Video: . Use Siri to Manage Your Control Center & Settings Although the Control Center ...more
What could Apple be planning here? Are we going to see some revolutionary new features for the iPhone? Will we see mostly bug fixes and security patches? It's time to find out, as Apple just released the first developer beta for iOS 13.4. Apple seeded developers 13.4 dev beta ...more
Everyone listens to music. I've got over 3,000 songs in my iTunes library, but am always looking for more, and I'm sure you are too. You can never have enough tunes to rock out to, right? If you're using Windows 8 like I currently am, these are some of the best apps in the Win ...more
Apple's iOS 14 is here. With it, you'll see over 200 new features and changes hit your iPhone, including home screen widgets, inline replies in Messages, and cycling routes in Maps. Here's how you can get your hands on the brand new update. Apple released iOS 14 to compatible ...more
There are few things more annoying in life than getting interrupted—especially when you're in a groove, jamming out to your favorite song. If we can all agree on that sentiment, then why is it that our phones mute the music we're listening to for a few seconds whenever a notif ...more
When you're an audiophile, managing music is a labor of love. Metadata, like artist names, album thumbnails, and genres, is attached to many digital audio files, though some of the songs in your library might not have such tags, and others may have missing or incorrect informa ...more
Facebook essentially strong-armed us all into installing their standalone Messenger app for mobile devices, but the recent initiative that allows third-party development on the platform definitely makes it worth your time. We've been having a lot of fun with all the new Messe ...more
After a two-month delay, Apple has finally released iTunes 11, which was initially slated to be released alongside iOS 6. Video: . The new highly revamped music player is a substantial upgrade from the old version, but that isn't really saying much; iTunes has never really had ...more
While it's not a highlight of the PlayStation 3, you can actually control the video game console with your smartphone. However, only certain aspects of the PS3 can be controlled from your iPhone, and it's not very obvious what you can and can't do — but that's where we come in ...more
There are over 1.6 million apps on the Google Play Store, which makes it the largest collection of mobile apps on the planet. However, a large portion of this total is occupied by apps with overlapping functions—think social media, news, weather, music players, and various oth ...more
Say you're sending a snap to a friend at a restaurant, bar, store, what have you, but you're curious about the song that's playing in the background. You could leave the app to Shazam it, or you could ask screen-hogging Siri or Google Assistant what the track is, but why not j ...more
Apple hasn't refreshed its text tones on iPhones since iOS 7. That's six years of the same sounds. And while text tones like Bamboo and Hello have undoubtedly aged like fine wine, that's still too long to live with the same old sounds day after day. Let's take matters into our ...more
Music streaming services make it difficult to transfer your favorite songs and artists from one service to another and for a valid reason: they don't want you to leave. But when it comes to switching, playlists are a big concern, because who wants to do it all over again? Luck ...more
A majority of iPhone users, including our whole staff here, have an irritating issue with media playback from car stereos: The first song alphabetically in the iPhone's library will play automatically when connecting to the head unit either via USB cable or Bluetooth. CarPlay ...more
Waking up to buzzing alarm clock is so 20th century. Wouldn't it better if the first sound you heard in the morning was your favorite song? Whether it's a track to get you motivated or something to put a smile on your face, a song can do wonders for your mood and help you star ...more
Switching from one popular music streaming service to another shouldn't have to be a hassle, but it is if you want to transfer all your favorite music over. No popular service offers a built-in feature to export or import playlists, so if you want to move your favorite Apple M ...more
Introduced along with the iPhone X, Animoji are animated characters, mostly animals, that are rendered from the user's facial expressions using the device's TrueDepth camera system to track the user's facial movements. The first viral phenomenon to emerge from the launch of t ...more
It's finally out. After months of testing, iOS 13 is available to install on your iPhone, which means over 200+ new features you can use right now. The update, released on Sept. 19, can be installed over the air or from a restore image using iTunes in macOS Mojave and older or ...more