Eliot Van Buskirk

When we finally saw Spotify's new iPad app in the company's New York City offices this week, we breathed a sigh of relief on behalf of all the breathless Spotify fans who have been demanding its release.

A web search for "iPad Spotify app" on the eve of the announcement...

Spotify recently rolled out a third batch of music apps that run within its desktop software, offering new ways to find stuff to listen to on your desktop, whether you pay for Spotify or not. This didn't "just happen." Rather, it's part of a concerted effort on the part...

It's that time of year. The lists. Always, the lists.

December, originally pronounced "They Say Best" by the ancient Romans (note: it wasn't) is when some feel the need to tell others about music they preferred in the time it last took the Earth to orbit the Sun.

We could...

There are plenty of reasons not to buy Apple TV or Google TV, and some of them have to do with the people who hold many of the cards being perfectly happy with the way things are today. You can't really cut the cord if you like television programming, as many...

Music doesn't happen in a vacuum -- and not just in the physics sense.

Music comes from "scenes." Scenes arise in cities and other areas due to a unique confluence of people, timing, building blocks from previous scenes, economics, geography, demographics, real estate prices, and countless other X factors.

The iPhone, iPad, and Android smartphones may not be the best-sounding portable devices we've ever heard -- that would be this -- but they can pull crazy stunts like pretending to be a cassette player, vinyl turntable, or boombox, one of the reasons they rule so hard as music players. And...

Okay, so Radiohead didn't play Occupy Wall Street after all.

Fine. We'll just make our own playlists to memorialize the occupation of Wall Street in protest of a system some say is unfairly rigged to favor a tiny, wealthy minority, while others call it perfectly fair and wish those...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed a new line of tablets on Wednesday morning including one, Kindle Fire, that unleashes a clear warning shot across Apple's bow. It could even score a direct hit.

Here's the scoop about the Amazon Kindle Fire, which ships on November 15, based on the...

Since 2002 -- the year after the first iPod was unveiled -- Sonos has built a business around making what I used to call "the "iPod Home" that Apple never made."

Sonos's digital audio devices for the home have taken many forms over the years, but they all create a...

College is not only about learning, but learning who you are -- and that includes discovering the music you'll enjoy for the rest of your life. Yes, not only do many lifelong friendships start on campus, but it's also a place where musical taste settles after students are exposed to...

Google announced that it will buy Motorola Mobility on Monday morning, another play that seems borrowed from Apple's playbook. The reported $12.5 billion cash deal will let Google make its own hardware for its own operating system, just like Apple does. (Motorola spun off its smartphone and tablet division into...

MP3 players are so ten years ago. Devices that run apps outperform them in nearly every way imaginable.

Don't believe me? Check out the above sign of the times: the recycling bins at...

The people who built Turntable.fm (some of whom might be in this video) have reason to celebrate. Their group-listening DJ party web app, Turntable.fm, has reportedly pulled down a $7.5 million investment round from New-York-City-based venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, valuing the company at nearly $40 million.

The MP3 player became a big deal to tech enthusiasts in 1998.

Apple delivered portable MP3 playback to the mainstream with the iPod in 2001, changing the course of general computing, just as I predicted ten years ago. (It's fun to be right. It's less fun to be wrong.)

By 2011,...

Driving under the influence of a cellphone is as dangerous as driving drunk. What can we do, now that music is migrating to the smartphone? It’s a pressing issue, because as much as 80 percent of music listening happens in the car, by one estimate.

Well-heeled music fans...

If you run an FM radio station, you already have plenty to worry about: MP3 players, satellite radio, CDs, tapes, audiobooks, silent meditation, and anything else that might tempt listeners to look beyond the FM dial.

However, the smartphone threat is in a class by itself. A recent study...

We cover music apps like the waterfront at Evolver.fm. But without a solid way to turn the ones and zeros comprising today's music into vibrating air, there's no point in digital music, apps, streaming subscriptions, interactive radio, or any of the rest of it.

That's...

Starbucks Entertainment, the record label, has released everything from the ukulele stylings of Eddie Vedder to indie darlings Fleet Foxes and Death Cab for Cutie, but it missed out on a potentially big idea that one start-up is taking seriously: turning a coffee shop's WiFi network into a local music hub.

You can't use Apple iCloud yet. When you can, which should be this fall, you'll notice something really peculiar: Unlike other music lockers, iCloud can't stream music to you over the internet or a cellular connection. Instead, it downloads the files to your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or iTunes-enabled computer,...

Stop me if you've heard this one before, because I haven't.

The Mog music subscription service updated its iPhone app on Monday, introducing a strange new "experimental/beta" feature called Moggles, which lets you take a picture of an album in order to load it in the Mog app for...