streaming music – SomeGadgetGuy

July 13, 2015

Will Apple Ever Kill the 16GB iPhone?

It’s that time folks. We’re getting close enough to the launch of a new iPhone for the rumor mill to kick into high gear. Around this time last year, many were praising the merits of sapphire for phone screens, only to have Apple omit that particular lifestyle feature.

Now with the 6S and 6S+ on the horizon, iOS fans are wondering if we’ll see improvements to storage.

This generation, Apple took a great step up for their mid-tier iPhone. Instead of spending $100 to bump up your phone to 32GB, you would receive a whopping 64GB. Unfortunately the base model iPhone remained at 16GB, which is a bit lean for a modern smartphone. Even 32GB can feel a bit cramped these days.

We’re expecting improvements to the camera, likely resulting in larger photos and video files. Phones are often a primary device for storing music, our apps are getting more demanding, and OS updates require a certain percentage of your storage to be unused and available. We ask a lot of our smartphones, and lacking the ability to upgrade the storage on an iPhone means users have to monitor their geebees very closely on that first tier iPhone. Continue reading “Will Apple Ever Kill the 16GB iPhone?”

June 2, 2014June 2, 2014

You can now take your entire Spotify Music Collection Offline

A handy little feature is being activated for premium Spotify subscribers on iOS and Android. You can now take your entire collection offline.

If you’re worried about streaming audio taking a chunk out of your precious data plan, but you don’t want to give up on the variety of audio in your playlists, the newest version of Spotify now has a setting to download the whole kit and kaboodle. You can pre-cache all that music over WiFi, and never again worry about data charges on your cell phone plan.

Of course, if you’re an avid music listener, you’ll want to make sure you have a couple gigabytes of space on your phone…

Grab it from your app store of choice.

December 10, 2013

Chromecast supporting 10 new apps, Plex and Avia media streaming!

Developers are moving forward with Chromecast integration, and it’s starting to look really good.

Announced today on the Chrome Blog, ten new apps have been officially added to the Chromecast repertoire. The list of standalone services includes VEVO, Red Bull.TV, Songza, PostTV, Viki, Revision 3, and BeyondPod.

What’s also interesting is the growing list of local streaming apps. Chromecast allows you to share a tab on your computer’s browser, but it wasn’t a great solution for streaming music or video stored on your computer’s hard drive. Now with Avia, RealPlayer Cloud, and Plex this process should get a lot easier.

Alongside recent additions like Hulu, HBO Go, and Pandora, the Chromecast ecosystem is looking a little healthier. Who needs a Nexus TV AmIRite?

Our setup and review video of the Chromecast!

December 5, 2013February 6, 2014

Quick Tip: Stream movies and music in the background on Windows 8 and RT

Reader question!

500embo has a problem. When streaming Youtube in Windows 8, he can’t find a way to keep the audio playing in the background whenever his browser isn’t on the screen.

Fret not, it’s an easy trick. Here’s how!

;aoisdn;aoisdn

December 2, 2013December 15, 2013

App Review: Nokia MixRadio for Windows Phone

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Let me introduce you to Nokia MixRadio. I ride my bike everywhere I go and this app keeps the tunes flowing without any interruption of ads. You might be asking yourself: “Isn’t there a Nokia Music app already?” Actually Nokia re-branded the Nokia Music app to Nokia MixRadio with a fresh new UI and features.

Nokia MixRadio offers up a novel way to discover new music and artists. With over 18 million songs available you should have no problem making your own custom mix of music to take with you wherever you go. This app has over 150 prescribed playlists by Nokia’s very own mixologists! You can download 4 playlists which equals about 8 hours of music. Mind you with the free version of the app you still get a ton of streaming music for free however you can only skip ahead 6 songs per hour. If you need even more music you can upgrade the Nokia MixRadio app for $3.99 a month which includes unlimited downloads. Continue reading “App Review: Nokia MixRadio for Windows Phone”

September 10, 2013

Apple Intros iTunes Radio to compete against Pandora, Spotify, Google, Microsoft, etc…

The iTunes Radio announcement was one of the first things discussed during Apple’s keynote today, but Tim Cook ran over it so fast, I think you can still see tire tread on its back.

What should have been one of the more interesting services announcement for Cupertino was largely ignored. Apple created the online music sales market as we know it today, yet even with that legacy, very little was said about iTUnes Radio. With a nod and a collective shrug, we just took it for granted before moving on to hardware announcements.

Simply billed as “coming soon” on the official iTunes site, Radio will be another streaming service designed to compete with offerings from Pandora, Spotify, Google, and even Microsoft. It will allow you to build “stations” for your favorite music, and those stations will be synced across all of your devices via iCloud, so iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV can all get in on the act.

On a personal note, it’s a little shocking that even Microsoft was able to beat Apple to a service like this. Plus, it’s uncharacteristically tame of Apple not to work being late into more of a consumer oriented selling point. In the past being late to a service, Apple would’ve boldly claimed that they waited to perfect the offerings which were obviously inferior or confusing to consumers. There was no such bravado on display here today, and lacking that confidence is a dangerous place for Apple to be in this viscerally competitive market.

Full deets on Apple.com