Digital Music Annual Review 2011: Best Digital Music News and Reviews of 2011 – About

As with every passing year, a lot can happen in the world of technology that changes how we connect with it and each other. This annual review showcases the significant events in the digital music world that we were lucky enough to cover in 2011. By reading this article, you’ll be able to catch up with the developments that you may have missed, or re-visit our previously published articles for a second time. With this in mind, we have therefore cherry-picked a range of articles covering the many aspects of digital music such as: top news stories; free music services; essential software; MP3 players and PMP players that stood out from the crowd in 2011.

Digital Music Services in The News:

• Nokia to Abandon its Unlimited Music Service — Nokia first launched its mobile music service back in 2008 to try and compete with the iTunes service. Unfortunately it never really took off in a big way and was finally phased out.
• Amazon Beats Rivals With Cloud Drive Launch — Amazon was the first major company to launch an online music locker, beating its rivals (Apple and Google) to pole position in the cloud. This Revelation came as a big surprise at the time as many assumed that Apple or Google would be the first. Amazon Cloud Drive launched by offering 5GB of free space with a special introductory offer of up to 20Gb if you purchased an album.
• Sony’s Music Unlimited Service Hit by Hackers — shortly after launching its Music Unlimited service, Sony’s PlayStation network was unceremoniously hit by hackers that allegedly comprised millions of user accounts. This was a serious intrusion into its network that resulted in Sony having to shut it down for quite some time.
• Walmart to Abandon its MP3 Download Store — retail giant Walmart announced that it would shutdown its MP3 download store August 29, 2011. The digital music from Walmart was heavily discounted, however in the end this didn’t prove to be enough to entice music fans away from the larger online stores like iTunes and Amazon MP3.
• MOG Adds Free Option to its Cloud Music Service — the popular cloud music service, MOG, announced that it would offer a free service for the very first time. The new option, called FreePlay, enabled users to try out their service without having to first subscribe. However, the most unique feature to be revealed was a refillable virtual gas tank that users could top-up by earning free music credits.
• Rhapsody Inks Deal With Napster to Acquire Subscribers — this significant piece of news effectively signaled the end of Napster (except in the United Kingdom and Germany). Originally owned by Best Buy, Rhapsody inked a deal which enabled the transfer of Napster subscriber accounts and ‘certain other assets’.
• Steve Jobs 1955-2011: One of the Greatest Digital Music Pioneers of the 21st Century — the news that Steve Jobs passed away (Wednesday Oct. 5, 2011) reverberated around the globe and there was a gargantuan flood of tributes to his memory. Looking past this sadness comes great respect and admiration for a man who undoubtedly changed the way we connect with digital music — the invention of the iPod to name but one device. In the realms of digital music, Steve’s genius paved the way for people to purchase and enjoy music in a whole new way. Apple created the very first virtual on-demand music store that was available 24/7 — this was the iTunes Store of course which is still king of the digital music services today. For the music fan, Steve Jobs will probably be remembered as one of the greatest digital music pioneers of the 21st Century.
• Google Adds Music Store to its Cloud Storage Service — it felt like a long time coming, but Google finally added a music store to its online music locker, Google Music, in November. The new online store which was integrated into the Google Android Market initially offered a modest 13 million tracks that could be purchase via an online music player.

Humorous News Reports in 2011:

• Prince Says Digital Music Goes to Wrong Part of Your Brain — as with every year, not all stars in the music business like digital music technology. In an interview with the Guardian, the outspoken pop legend, Prince, proclaimed, “I personally can’t stand digital music. You’re getting sound in bits. It affects a different place in your brain. When you play it back, you can’t feel anything. We’re analogue people, not digital.” Better ignore the fact then that his music is available on CDs too which are still digital!

Free Digital Media Services:

• Grooveshark Review — when reviewing the Grooveshark streaming music service, it proved to be an excellent resource for music discovery. With good social networking tools, mobile support, and cloud storage space for your music, it was one of the best services we covered in 2011.
• Spotify Review — this was another service that was highly anticipated in 2011. Luckily it lived up to all the hype by offering unlimited streaming music, a huge library of songs, iPod iPod Touch support, and a mobile solution for iPhone, Android, and other platforms. Its Offline Mode also raised eyebrows as a great tool to use when you want to listen to your music library without having to be connected to the Internet.
• Pandora Review — Pandora Radio had a new face lift in 2011 which promised a faster and richer user-experience, but did it deliver as before? When we tested it, the new HTML 5 interface gave a new lease of life for the aging platform and speed was good too. Overall, Pandora got 4.5 out of 5 stars, only being let down by the (sometimes) annoying skip limits.
• Myxer Review — although not strictly a music service, we felt that Myxer was worthy for inclusion in our annual review due to its great library of digital music clips (in the form of Realtones) for your phone. With it you can access a varied array of digital audio content such as MP3 Songs and ringtones. Other good features to further enhance your experience using Myxer include some great free tools for discovering, downloading, and organizing your digital music library. We also found a good Apps section on Myxer that contained software for digital music.

MP3/PMP Players:

• SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip — following on from SanDisk’s previous clip on portable, the Sansa Clip+, the electronics giant released the Clip Zip player. With a larger display screen (and in full color); new AAC format support, and a price tag of less than $50, this little MP3 player impressed us.

Software:

• MusicWrench — we have seen many music library managers that are useful for organizing your library, but not many as good as MusicWrench. We gave this MP3 tool 4 out of 5 for its smart use of built-in tools for whipping a badly organized library back into shape — even mis-typed MP3 tags were identified during our testing.
• Audials One Version 8 — RapidSolution Software’s digital media swiss-army knife, Audials One, impressed us yet again with its large set of tools for downloading and organizing your digital media library. With an improved feature-set, better user interface and new cloud storage plugins for backing up your media, it achieved high marks when reviewed.