Jack White Review Royale: Total Blunderbliss

Reblogged from Little by Listen:

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Jack White

Blunderbuss

As a head of three major rock outfits (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather) and a long-time favorite all three of LxL’s constituents, Jack White (and his debut solo album Blunderbuss) is a natural to get our three-way review royale treatment. As arguably the most hyped release of 2012, the amount of discussion and hype surrounding an album such as this often gets so bloated that the album itself turns out to be a bit of a disappointment, and I will say that upon first listen I thought that may have been the case. 

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Necessary Evil? Random House Triples Prices Of Library E-Books

Reblogged from TechCrunch:

Random House, the world’s largest publisher of the kinds of books you and I read, has made some adjustments to the way it sells e-books to libraries. Notably, they have tripled the price of many titles. Librarians across the country are expressing their discontent.

The changes were telegraphed by an announcement a month ago that suggested prices would be going up soon, and most expected significant increases — but across the board popular genres and titles have gone up as much as 300%.

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Google's Plan To Compete With Apple's Multi-Platform Siri? Google "Assistant"

Reblogged from TechCrunch:

The tech world woke up today to reports of an imminent Apple TV, as Apple works to solidify deals with content providers. The rumored television product could indeed be ground-breaking, not just for television, but for computing as a whole. We’re hearing exactly what Nick Bilton reported earlier this year, that Apple is going to integrate Siri into Apple TV as well as other iOS devices.

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Twitter & Facebook share a problem: Proving social ads work

Reblogged from GigaOM:

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There’s a been a big focus recently on the advertising strategy at both Twitter and Facebook, with two in-depth profiles of Twitter in the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek that spent a lot of time talking about the company’s ad model, and increased attention on Facebook for moves aimed at improving ads, particularly on mobile platforms. Both are seeing their share of the ad market grow, but there is still one big question standing between them and the multibillion-dollar valuations they have received from investors — namely, do ads inserted into social activity actually work?

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SocialFolders plugs into Evernote to be your social media diary

Reblogged from GigaOM:

Screenshot of SocialFolders' web app (click to enlarge)

With all the time we’re spending on social media sites, it makes sense that people are starting to get more serious about being able to preserve their activity there in a way that’s easier to look back on for posterity. An app called SocialFolders is aiming to help with that.

SocialFolders, a freemium application that launched…

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Bronfman: Spotify is a real and growing revenue stream

Reblogged from GigaOM:

Warner Music Group Chairman Edgar Bronfman, Jr. is a big fan of Spotify. In fact, at the D:Dive Into Media conference, the music mogul touted the music streaming service as a complementary service on top of other sales channels.

In what is likely his final interview before leaving Warner Music, Bronfman defended Spotify’s ability to drive more value for artists and labels.

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Neil Young is right -- piracy is the new radio

Reblogged from GigaOM:

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As an artist who probably makes a substantial income from licensing his music, you might think Neil Young would frown on piracy and file-sharing, but that appears not to be the case, according to an interview he gave at the Dive Into Media conference in Los Angeles. Instead of railing against file-sharers, Young called piracy “the new radio” because it’s “how music gets around.” The musician’s comment puts a lot of the hysteria about copyright infringement into perspective — as we’ve pointed out before, file-sharing and monetization aren’t mutually exclusive, and…

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