Hi-res and surround-sound music is one of the key points of competition between Amazon Music and Apple Music.
Tag: CES
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Video-streaming service Quibi raises $400m of new funding
In August 2018, Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and tech exec-turned-politician Meg Whitman made waves by raising $1bn of seed funding for their startup NewTV, with plans to stream high-quality TV shows and […]
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Samsung may be creating a digital human with Neon project
Keep an eye out this week for Samsung’s announcements at the CES show, including an intriguing new project called ‘Neon’. It appears to be about creating a digital human: an avatar […]
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Podcast listening on Spotify grew by 175% in 2018
Spotify’s push around podcasts at the CES technology show last week included the release of some new figures about how people are listening to this content on its service. “On […]
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Spotify reveals more about its podcast plans in 2019
Besides having a party with posh food and Rita Ora, Spotify’s presence at the CES technology show in Las Vegas this week has seen podcasts loom large. We reported earlier […]
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Intel and Warner Bros test self-driving car entertainment ideas
The entertainment industries are very interested in a future of autonomous (self-driving) cars, because if we’re not driving our cars, that may free us up for other kinds of entertainment […]
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Sony shows off its new ‘360 Reality Audio’ format at CES
We reported the other day on Sony Corporation’s plans to use its keynote at the CES technology show in Las Vegas to flag up the importance of its entertainment arms: […]
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Hi-res music: ‘The barrier is the understanding of the value of the proposition’
Major labels are very excited about upping the audio quality of music-streaming services, under the banner of ‘hi-res music’.
Audio hardware firms are excited too, while some streaming services (Tidal, Deezer and dedicated services like Qobuz for example) have adopted the technology.
And music fans? That’s the challenge: as yet there isn’t an obvious surge in demand for higher-quality streams from actual listeners.
That’s why the most popular subscription-streaming services, Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Prime Music / Music Unlimited, haven’t leapt aboard the hi-res bandwagon yet. So what might it take to get that bandwagon rolling even faster?
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LG launches Hub Robot to compete with Amazon Echo
The two key trends at the CES tech show this year appear to be Amazon putting its Alexa voice assistant in other companies’ devices; and other companies launching their own Echo-style smart speakers.
Falling into both of those camps, LG unveiled a device called the Hub Robot, which will go on sale later this year as a competitor to the Echo and Google Home. LG is describing it unwieldily as “a home robot that doubles as a smart home gateway and intelligent home notification centre”.
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Amazon is putting Alexa in more devices this year
The CES technology show is underway in Las Vegas, and one of the early splashes has been made by Amazon – albeit through other companies’ devices.
The firm announced deals to put its Fire TV platform (and its Alexa smart voice assistant) inside 4K televisions from Chinese manufacturers Seiki, Westinghouse and Element Electronics.
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Turntables are hot at CES 2016 with Technics and Sony
The vinyl revival has already seen turntables back on sale in mass-market retailers like Tesco in the UK, and the devices are also making headlines at this week’s CES show in Las Vegas.
Vinyl-heads are understandably excited about Panasonic’s decision to revive its Technics SL-1200 turntable in 2016: it has showed off two new models: the limited-edition SL-1200GAE and the regular SL-1200G, which will both go on sale this year.
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52% of Spotify listening is now on mobile devices
A tipping point of sorts for Spotify? 52% of the streaming service’s listening now happens on mobile devices: 42% on mobile phones and 10% on tablets, compared to 45% in […]