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As the first major music service to offer caching on the iPhone, Rhapsody has managed to stay quite competitive in the mobile space. And although the company lagged a bit on getting its Android app out of beta, the final product is sufficiently impressive for us to forgive its trespasses in the timing department. Though it may not be as pretty as some other mobile music offerings, Rhapsody's features and performance on the Android OS should make it a top consideration for anyone interested in subscribing to an all-you-can-eat service (or all-you-can-listen-to, as the case may be).

Rhapsody for … Read more

Millions of wireless customers are planning to switch to prepaid service, a new study conducted by Infogroup/ORC has found.

According to the company, which conducted its study for the New Millennium Research Council, 20 percent of wireless customers (estimated to be about 24.6 million adults in the U.S.) will move to "less expensive unlimited prepaid wireless service with no early-cancellation penalty" at some point within the next six months. An additional 10 percent of respondents said they would switch to a prepaid plan if they weren't "subject to an early-cancellation penalty."

The … Read more

Shortly after announcing its gorgeous--but poor-sounding--app for iOS, Napster has released an update for its Android mobile software. Now, Android users who subscribe to the service for $9.99 per month can save playlists and albums for offline playback. With this new feature, the Android app is directly in line with the iOS app in terms of both functionality and interface. Here's hoping the former offers better audio quality, though.

Around this time last year, I was reviewing the Zune HD, Microsoft's last valiant effort to unseat the iPod as the dominant portable media player. This year, instead of a shiny new version of the Zune HD for the holidays, Microsoft is keeping last year's model on store shelves (though a 64GB version was added this year) and focusing its attention on Windows Phone 7. Arguably, it's the right move for Microsoft, especially considering that even Apple admits that iPod sales are on the decline while iPhone sales are skyrocketing.

But as the Zune HD hardware fades … Read more

Not long ago, I wrote an article aimed at helping music fans enjoy free audio from a variety of online streaming sources. Of course, I'm a firm believer in using the Internet to discover new music. But there is a threshold between discovery and entertainment for many listeners, and I think paying for a subscription music service is a great way to cross it--especially if you want to take your music "to go" on mobile devices.

There are a variety of pay-to-stream options on the Web, from Slacker's $4.99 Radio Plus service, which lets you … Read more

We've been quite excited about the potential of streaming-video game service OnLive, which forgoes any physical software or system/graphics needs and lets players play games on remote servers via streaming video. The effect is largely seamless, and for some games like adventures it's a fantastic cloud-based substitute for owning an expensive gaming laptop. The only drawback was price: OnLive's games not only cost money, but the OnLive service also levied a subscription fee.

That fee's now been waived: OnLive has dropped its monthly charge. That means that free demos can now be sampled without any … Read more

This fall, Microsoft will roll out a number of updates to its Zune desktop client and related music and video services, allowing more content on more devices, in more countries than ever before.

First announced during June's E3 conference, Xbox Live Gold members will soon be able to stream on-demand music from the Zune catalog of 11 million tracks directly to their consoles. This service will complement the Zune Video Marketplace service, which has been on Xbox Live for more than a year, allowing HD video rental and purchases.

The Zune music service itself will also see an international expansion, as well as a transition to a 100 percent MP3-formatted download catalog. New regions capable of making song purchases include the U.K., France, Italy, Spain, and Germany. Purchases can be made using Microsoft's free, PC-only Zune software, or any Windows Phone 7 device. … Read more

Slacker Radio first launched in 2007 as an intuitive online music player that let you stream a variety of preprogrammed and custom-made radio stations based on your favorite artists and songs. Since then, the service has added a continuous array of new features, from its own short-lived devices to apps for your Blackberry and iPhone to Twitter feed functionality. Tonight at an event in New York, Slacker, Inc. will show off its latest offering: Premium Radio.

Slacker Premium Radio will offer all the features of Radio Plus--no ads, no skip limits, mobile station caching--with the added benefit of on-demand functionality. … Read more

Apple will soon announce a newspaper subscription service for its iPad, a recent report from the San Jose Mercury News claims.

Citing unnamed sources, the report said that Apple could take as much as 40 percent of all advertising revenue generated by the publications' iPad apps. Its sources also said that Apple will take 30 percent of newspaper subscription fees.

In turn, Apple would make all of the subscription services available in its app store. Exact details on how users would pay for the service were not disclosed in the report.

To improve the publications' advertising revenue, Apple has reportedly … Read more