streaming

Last.fm, the social music site that CBS Interactive purchased last year, will be seeing closer integration into one of the media conglomerate's other properties very soon. According to a joint announcement Tuesday, Last.fm and CBS Radio will be sharing audio content on the Web to provide online editions of CBS' radio stations to Last.fm users and free streaming music to CBS Radio listeners.

A collaboration with CBS Radio has been rumored since the Last.fm acquisition was first announced last May.

In what Last.fm co-founder and CEO Felix Miller said was "the first of … Read more

If you're a college basketball fan, March clearly holds a special place in your heart. It brings the NCAA tournament (also known as March Madness), along with the occasional bit of that annoying thing called work or school. If you're somehow in a position of being unable to make it to your giant, high-definition television, Joost's got you covered. The software-based video content network is streaming all of the games (with limited commercial interruption) live, as they happen.

The resolutions for the live streams is expected to fall in line with the rest of Joost's programming. … Read more

CBS Radio has agreed to share online streams from all 140 of its stations with AOL's online radio service.

According to an announcement posted to CBS's Web site, the media conglomerate will now power AOL's Web radio. Financial terms were not released.

"CBS Radio will drive advertising sales for AOL's more than 200 award-winning stations," the companies said in the statement, "in addition to its own online streams of more than 150 radio stations and custom channels."

In the spring, CBS plans to release a new online music player that will allow … Read more

Yesterday, I spoke about the history of the subscription music model, its roadblocks, and the major players committed to its success. In part 2 of this feature, I'm going to outline some areas of growth for subscription music, share some comments from Rob Williams of Rhapsody, and take a closer look at Microsoft's approach with their Zune Marketplace.

So far, we're seeing three music device trends that will shape digital music in coming months and years: digital audio on more device types (cell phones, MP3 players, UMPCs, in-car GPS, car stereos, home stereos, laptops, Squeezeboxes, boomboxes, Chumbys, … Read more

Rhapsody launched the first high-profile subscription music service in December 2001, in the middle of a revolution. The first iPod had just hit the shelves, streaming Web radio sites like Live365.com were in full bloom, and the masses were just warming to the idea that they could preview and discover music online. A service like Rhapsody, which promised subscribers unlimited access to its growing music catalog, made music junkies salivate. It also pointed the way to a brave new world where people no longer needed physical or virtual media.

The future didn't go quite as planned, however. Because … Read more

UPDATE: The full review is now up at CNET.com.

The Logitech Squeezebox Duet, our pick for the best home audio product of CES 2008, has just shown up at the office. We spent a few minutes with the system before at CES, but this has been our first chance to sit down and live with the product in our own environment. A full review will follow, but in the meantime, here are some off-the-bat first impressions: … Read more

Although streaming video on the Web is nothing new, it has yet to make its way onto YouTube. But that could change over the next 10 months, co-founder Steve Chen tells Sarah Meyers in a Pop17.com video report posted Thursday.

Meyers' report, cited on Friday by one of Pop17's sponsors, TechCrunch, highlights her personal interest in the prospects for live video on the Web and includes a brief interview with Chen at the "Videocracy" party Google threw on February 13 at the Terminal 5 club in New York.

Live video has long been on YouTube's … Read more

The problem: You've got a ton of digital music, photos, and video on your computer's hard drive, but you want to enjoy all that media on the big TV and stereo system in your living room--not hunched over the laptop screen. If you've got a network connection and one of the latest game consoles (an Xbox 360, a PlayStation 3, or--when paired with the free Orb software--even a Nintendo Wii), you may not need any new hardware--each of them can stream a wide variety of audio, video, and photo formats from your PC to your TV over your home network. However, if you're not a gamer, or you need a more robust solution--more file support, for instance--there are alternatives, such as the MediaGate MG-450HD. … Read more

As good as the Apple TV 2.0 is, it's still pretty limited on what sort of videos it can stream from a networked computer--if it hasn't been imported into iTunes, you're pretty much out of luck. If you're looking for something with more file format flexibility--and the simplicity of drag-and-drop operation--the LaCie LaCinema Premier may be just the ticket. … Read more