Posted 10/13/09 at 05:49:40 PM by Bart Salisbury

 Sonos has expanded the breadth of its multi-room music system offerings with the introduction of the ZonePlayer S5. The S5 works in combination with the Sonos ZoneBridge or ZonePlayer to provide streaming music through your house. New to the Sonos system is an iPhone/iPod Touch app that allows control of each S5, individually or in unison.

The Sonos system is based on a SonosNet wireless system, which uses mesh network technology, where each device or player serves as a repeater. Because the system is standalone initial set-up and expansion is relatively effortless. Set-up and control of the system is through a free iPhone/iPod touch app or with the Sonos Controller application (for Mac or PC), included with the S5.

The $399 S5 contains 5 speakers: two tweeters, two 3-inch mid-ranges, and one 3.5-inch woofer. Each speaker is driven by its own Class D digital amplifier.

The Sonos system allows access to your personal music collection, through your home network; more than 25,000 internet radio stations, and online music services; such as Napster, Pandora, Rhapsody and SIRIUS.

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Posted 07/08/09 at 01:16:04 PM by Paul Lilly

With the threat of streaming rates for Internet radio rising to levels far above what many services could afford to pay, the future of Pandora and other Internet radio outlets remained very much in limbo. That's no longer the case, at least for Pandora, which reached an agreement everyone involved appears to be happy with.

"Pandora is finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates," said Pandora CTO Tom Conrad.

For Pandora, the resolution means a 40-50 percent reduction in the per-song-per-listener rates. In exchange, Pandora will give up either a 25 percent share of its U.S. revenue, or the per-song-per-listener number, whichever is higher.

For Pandora's user base, the resolution means that anyone who uses the service over 40 hours per month will have to cough up $0.99 for unlimited access. The nominal fee is to help offset the royalty agreement, and is expected to only affect 10 percent of Pandora's users.

Despite the 25 percent royalty rate, Conrad remains optimistic that Pandora will reach its stated goal to be profitable by next year.

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Posted 09/24/08 at 06:15:37 PM by Andy Salisbury

The online music industry has always been a touchy one, but today the world came a step closer to ending online royalty disputes. An agreement that’s being called a “breakthrough that will facilitate new ways to offer music to consumers online,” songwriters, music publishers, record labels and digital music websites have concluded a seven year dispute over mechanical royalties and limited music downloads.

Mechanical royalties are the fees paid to songwriters, composers and publishers of music, not the person that only preformed it or the record company that produced the recording. Limited music downloads are downloads with restrictions attached, such as the model used by Napster To Go. iTunes, however isn’t considered limited use because you can listen to your songs as often as you want, without a monthly fee.

As landmark as this settlement is, it still leaves a big hole on the controversial topic of Internet radio. Sites such as Pandora and Live365 remain in a high-stakes standoff with SoundExchange, the company in charge of collecting the fees for artists and record companies. The reason that sites such as these were left out from the normal Internet radio agreement is because they allow users to select the music that they want to listen to, as opposed to simply listening to a pre-determined stream of songs.

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Posted 06/06/08 at 04:13:32 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

In the PDF archive of the June 2008 issue, you can find:

• Upgrading your OEM Machine
• The MaximumPC Guide to Home Automation
• The Vista Defrag Challenge
• How To: Create a Personal Internet Radio Station
• Awesome Product Reviews, including the Alienware Area-51 m15x
• Ask the Doctor
• Rig of the Month
• The Watchdog
• And a whole lot more!

Click the big giant cover image to the right to download the PDF archive today!

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Posted 05/27/08 at 06:03:43 PM by Will Smith

Your IT department won’t let you copy MP3s onto your work PC, and your iPod won’t hold your massive music collection, but you need to listen to tunes while you toil away at the day’s labor. What’s an audiophile to do? The answer is simple: Stream the collection you have stored on your rig at home to your PC at work.

Click Read More for more. 

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Posted 11/15/07 at 08:39:18 PM by Michael Brown

Too lazy to copy music to your MP3 player? Check out the new Slacker Radio.

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