Music & Videos

So this is interesting. For the past several months I’ve been clamoring for Amazon to release a Cloud Player mobile app for Windows 8/RT (“Metro”) and Windows Phone 8. Nothing on that front, yet, but today Amazon surprised me with a Cloud Player application … for the Windows desktop....More

I’ve made the case that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 sales over many years do not constitute a particularly large market, especially when compared to those for PCs, tablets, or smart phones. But this week, Roku announced that it has now sold 5 million of its living room set-top boxes. What does this say about the state of this market?...More

Between Xbox Music Book and the release of Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 apps for Spotify, Rhapsody, Nokia Music+, and other services in recent weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about online music services again. And with Pandora announcing this week that it has crossed the 200 million customer mark, the service jumps, if temporarily, to the top of the list again....More

Already available for Windows Phone, Nokia Music is a Windows 8/RT front-end to the firm’s widely misunderstood online music service, Nokia Music+. It offers a bit more functionality than traditional streaming Internet radio services like Pandora, but quite a bit less than more full-featured services like Xbox Music Pass. Does Nokia Music hit the sweet spot on Windows 8/RT?...More

While it’s certainly fair to say that the Roku 3 is the best version of Roku’s living room set-top box yet, it’s also not a huge leap over previous generation devices. It includes an important update to the user experience and some minor functional changes, but no big performance gains....More