According to Billboard, Apple is in talks with major labels to delay music albums from hitting streaming services until after they’ve been available for download for a certain period of time.

In the meetings during Grammy Week, Apple’s iTunes contingent, led by Kondrk, even suggested the albums don’t even have to be exclusive to iTunes, and that labels could give albums to other stores as well – but not streaming services.

I actually agree with this strategy, but only when it’s voluntarily implemented. Beyoncé’s newest album was released exclusively on iTunes for its first week after it remained secret up until release.

The album didn’t leak ahead of time. No one heard it before the moment they could buy it, so of course it sold well.

If you are going to do a windowed approach, it needs to cater towards the fans and artists instead of record labels–though if you cater to fans and...

A lot of fans assume that a musician’s thoughts revolve around the music, that it’s everything to them. Founding member of the band Lord Huron sheds a different light on the process of creating music, however, explaining the importance of things like social media, videos, and interactive content.

“I think if we were just touring, playing the same songs every night that we might get kind of tired,” says lead singer Ben Schneider. “Because we have these other outlets–like working on videos and other projects–while we’re out on tour, it keeps us engaged and interested.”

“To be honest, I don’t know how long it would keep my interest, but it’s because we’ve been able to integrate all these other elements that it stays fresh,” says Schneider.

Gearing up for the second album, it’s hard to ignore the feeling that Schneider is really looking to create something that sparks all of his senses...

Of course I want to share links to songs and not worry what music service other people are using, but I’m just one person. The flip side is about artists that want to share links for their music to the widest possible audience and not worry whether someone uses iTunes, Spotify, or Amazon to get their music.

Bop.fm has been testing the waters and doing just this. The service, which shares a universal link to multiple content sources, has been providing links and testing partnerships with artists like Jason Mraz and Hot Chelle Rae, among others.

Did you notice the Grammys created playlists for each category and used Bop.fm to do it. Why? To reach the largest audience the awards show either has to choose the biggest media service, most likely iTunes, or it has to stay agnostic and cast a wide net. Using something like Bop allows companies and services a chance to incorporate more content...

It’s easy to want to compare mobile photo apps, but if Instagram is mainly about sharing, then VSCO Cam is about editing. Instead of the two mobile photo apps competing head on for users, VSCO has focused on the product the app is outputting. “We believe the devil is in the details–that the details are where quality is found,” says VSCO co-founder and CEO Joel Flory. “But, as a creative photography company, we ask ourselves the question ‘Does this honor the art and artist above all?’”

Beyond the twenty something updates and improvements in the new version of the app, the biggest addition is the implementation of the company’s publishing platform, VSCO Grid. With version 3.0 the company is not just adding social in a nontraditional way, it’s also solidifying its stance on how they think a startup should be run.

“The number one request since we launched VSCO Grid was the ability to...

You let your phone remind you of meetings and other things throughout the the day, so shouldn’t it be OK for it to remind you to affectionately text your significant other as well? A new app, Romantimatic, is offering just that proposition and in doing so is prompting a bigger debate. “What I see as a small reminder to be nice is seen by others as devaluing the entire idea of romantic love” says developer Greg Knauss. “If you need to be reminded, they say, the relationship can’t be worth much to you.”

Upon downloading, Romantimatic lets you select your “sweetheart,” provides you the ability to select the frequency of reminders, and the message options. Essentially it’s just a reminder app focused on a specific area much like the egg timers or coffee reminders also in the app store. When love is involved, however, all bets are off as to how users will respond. The backlash has been one...

CEO of Beats Music on his personal site talking about the launch of the service:

I’ll give you my personal view: If you’re the kind of person who pays ~$1,000/year for cable and refuse to spend ~$100/year on a great music service, you and I look at the world very differently from one another. If music, and a service that brings you great music experiences and playlists from everyone from Pitchfork to Downbeat to Mojo to Thrasher isn’t worth $100/year to you I’m afraid we don’t have much in common. Or put more specifically, if you are ok with the playlist below being interrupted by a loud insurance ad, music doesn’t define the moments of your life the same way it does mine.

I see music the same way Ian Rogers does, but unfortunately I think most others don’t. They’re happy, or at least fine, to use YouTube and other sources to hear specific songs at specific times.

I think music will...

The Night Terrors Of 1927 is Blake Sennett and Jarrod Gorbel, but they’d rather you judge the music as a new entity, separate from past musical endeavors. The band just put our their new, debut, EP ‘Guilty Pleas.’ Here are few questions with Jarrod Gorbel that give a peak behind the music.

Night Terrors was a little bit of a mystery band at the start, was this on purpose?

Initially, the mystery of Night Terrors of 1927 was consciously done. People’s natural reaction to new music is always to draw a comparison or similarity, it’s just how people help themselves to better understand what they are hearing. If you give someone a direct association right off the bat then you’re sort of deflecting their instinctual reaction. Long winded answer, but basically we just wanted to see if anyone would like the music for what it is rather then who is making it. Plus, when you think of Iron...

There aren’t any qualifiers, these are just my favorite albums, eps, and bands from 2013. If you don’t recognize an artist, please click through and give them a listen.

Favorite Albums

10 // The National - Trouble Will Find Me

9 // Ra Ra Riot - Beta Love

8 // Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires Of The City

7 // Rhye - Woman

6 // Hoyle - Massa Pecatti

5 // The Lone Bellow -The Lone Bellow

4 // Lorde - Heroine

3 // Andrew Belle - Black Bear

2 // Shout Out Louds - Optica

1 // Canopy Climbers - Miles

Favorite EPs

6 // Marc Scibilia - The Shape I’m In

5 // Smallpools - Smallpools

4 // Sleeping At last - Atlas: Space 1

3 // The Night Terrors of 1927 - Guilty Pleas

2 // Dallas - Dallas

1 // The Cowards Choir - Reunion

Honorable Mentions

• Roman Candle - Debris
• Air Review - Low Wishes

Up and coming artists

• The Careful Ones
• Fou De Toi
• Nonono
• Grizfolk

Writing About Music In...

No matter how good the idea of wireless–internet connected–speakers are, it all comes down to implementation. So, it was only after putting a Sonos speaker in my house that the good idea turned out to be a great purchase.

That was a year ago. Here are some thoughts on the newest speaker, the Play:1.

Price

• Sonos speakers aren’t cheap, there’s no way around it, but at $199 the Play:1 is reasonable for hesitant buyers. It’s a great way to see all the possibilities a connected speaker can bring.

• For the price, I would get two Play:1s over one Play:5.

• A Play:3’s extra $100 is actually hard to justify compared to the new speaker.

• There’s a deal currently available that gives you a free bridge (making speakers fully wireless) when you buy any Sonos speaker. [Not an affiliate link]

Size

• A single Play:1 isn’t a full party speaker, but it’s just about everything else. It’s a perfect bed...

“I did, I left the internet for an entire year.” Paul Miller says nervously as he begins his recent TEDxEutropolis talk.

Paul Miller, a reporter for the tech site The Verge, left the internet for a year starting in May 2012. The news was a little shocking at first and, for a technology journalist, it seemed almost impossible. Miller did in fact make it an entire year offline and came back to an expected information overload.

My immediate thoughts of people disconnecting themselves from the internet aren’t ones of awe, they’re ones of Skepticism. Stories like Miller’s or Baratunde Thurston’s, a former writer at The Onion, unplugging for an extended period of time always come off as extreme cases that I don’t need to seriously consider for myself. After listening to Paul Miller talk briefly–roughly 17 minutes–about a few moments and experiences during his disconnected year, however, I...