Music and audio

The good news is, VLC Beta was released today, giving Android users a long-awaited taste of do-it-all media player VLC. The bad news is, VLC's developers say the app is meant only for power users and hackers, meaning most of us should probably wait on downloading it.

Just like its bigger brothers on Mac and Windows, VLC is a free and open-source multimedia player that can open just about any media file out there. It offers an audio and video media library with full search capabilities, and supports subtitles and network streams, including HLS.

While VLC Beta is available … Read more

Popular streaming radio service Slacker Radio today launched a new category of stations that offers a different sort of listening experience to its users: lifestyle. Debuting as part of a partnership between Slacker and ABC Radio, the new stations offer curated talk radio content that includes advice and other stories dealing with the lifestyle interests of both men and women.

For now, Slacker's new lifestyle stations come in two flavors: Men's Life and Women's Life, with much of the content coming from sources like Esquire, Car & Driver, Consumer Reports, Popular Mechanics, Complex Magazine, and GQ. The … Read more

Amazon Cloud Player (free) for iOS gives you an option of getting all your music from the iTunes App Store, and its simple interface is easy to pick up and use immediately.

Whether you have music already from Amazon or not, you can quickly log in with your Amazon account and listen to tracks already on your iPhone. If you have downloaded music through Amazon, with the app you'll be able to listen to both Amazon- and iTunes-bought music.

Once you have music uploaded to Amazon's Cloud drive, the interface is dead simple. Two tabs let you switch … Read more

Apple has released an update to iTunes that addresses a few outstanding bugs in the program and adds support for Mountain Lion.

According to the update's Web page, the update improves performance and addresses problems involving syncing with a first-generation iPad that holds an iBooks textbook; photos syncing out of order; and unexpected deletions of apps and iTunes playlists.

In addition to these fixes, the update adds support for the iOS 6 beta that was released to developers today at WWDC 2012. The update is a 170MB download for OS X users, but is also available for Windows (both … Read more

Over a decade ago, searching for legal ways to get music on the Internet was tiresome and downright tedious. Fast-forward to today and we're left with more music services than we have fingers, all touting free or affordable ways to listen to just about all the songs you could possibly listen to several lifetimes over. Record labels may still be bickering in court, but now is a pretty darn good time to be able to enjoy the freedom of listening to practically anything you want...all without a court order. Here are five great services or apps to get … Read more

Flipboard (free) is already many people's go-to app for flipping through the latest news and social network updates. But today, a new update lets you connect Flipboard with SoundCloud to offer audio clips created by major news services like NPR, and audio clips created by your friends and people you follow.

You can sign into the new SoundCloud component by using a previously created SoundCloud account, by starting a new account, or by using your Facebook account. Once connected, Facebook and Twitter posts, and any story that includes audio, can be listened to with a handy player that resides … Read more

Apple issued a QuickTime update today that addresses a number of security vulnerabilities in the media player and its Web plug-in. This update is only for Windows-based machines that have QuickTime installed, since Mac systems have had this update applied in recent security updates for OS X.

Apple's QuickTime media player and plug-in are used by about half of all Windows PCs and all of Apple's systems since OS X includes QuickTime as a core component of the OS. Because of its popularity, attackers may use vulnerabilities in it as a vector for compromising the system on which … Read more