The Beginner’s Guide to Spotify | Mashable


Digital music might not have the same allure as sitting down to listen to a record on your turntable, but what it lacks in atmosphere, it makes up for in convenience — especially when you aren’t home with your collection.

It’s been five years since Spotify publicly launched and shifted the music industry’s focus toward streaming as a way to combat illegal downloading. While the streaming business model is far from perfect, even the most casual music fan should test out streaming while it’s still growing.

If you’re just dipping your toe into the stream, follow our beginner’s guide and soon you’ll be listening to Spotify’s massive library without the worry of losing precious hard drive space.

Macro topics:

  • Signing Up
  • Organizing Your Music
  • Sharing and Discovering Tunes

Read: The Beginner’s Guide to Spotify | Mashable

Infographic: The History Of Audio Equipment | Co.Design


A prominent sci-fi writer once told me that, as prescient as they’d been, he and his peers had missed one big tech trend: Miniaturization. And they really did miss it. Because as you examine Pop Chart Lab’s latest mega print of 219 sonic devices across history, The Advance of Audio Apparatuses, it’s obvious that technology has been getting smaller for a long time.

Read more: Infographic: The History Of Audio Equipment | Co.Design | business + design.

Infographic: The History Of Audio Equipment | Co.Design | business + design

YouTube Launches Free Audio Library With 150 Royalty-Free Tracks | TechCrunch


YouTube currently offers more than 150,000 audio tracks on its site that video producers can use as background music for their videos. Those tracks, however, can’t be downloaded or remixed, which makes it hard to use them in creative ways. For users who want to do a bit more with their background music, however, YouTube today is expanding this library with a selection of 150 new royalty-tracks. The music in this new YouTube Audio Library can be downloaded, remixed and used for free forever.

YouTube Audio Library

via YouTube Launches Free Audio Library With 150 Royalty-Free Tracks | TechCrunch.

Google Submits New Patent for Triggered Sounds in eBooks | GoodEReader


Google…filed for a new patent that would make eBooks come alive with sounds. The sounds would be triggered by events within the book, such as lapping waves, an ominous crescendo, or maybe an outdoor market. The new application would have the sounds stored on a server and would be pushed out to the eBook users are reading at the time.

The full story: Google Submits New Patent for Triggered Sounds in eBooks | GoodEReader.

13 Best Free Audio Editing Apps | Mashable


See the full discussion: 13 Best Free Audio Editing Apps | Mashable.

  1. Acoustica Basic Edition
  2. Audacity
  3. AudioTool
  4. Tunekitten Audio Editor
  5. MP3 Cutter
  6. MP3Gain
  7. Audio Joiner
  8. Reaper
  9. WavePad
  10. WaveShop
  11. Wavosaur
  12. Fission
  13. Nero WaveEditor

For an LIS class group assignment in 2012, we evaluated and compared a few different audio editing applications (Audacity, LMMS, Traverso and WaveSurfer) and Audacity came out the winner on the majority of criteria, usability and range of features available.

The Millions | Save the Languages


Researchers at Comanche Nation College and Texas Tech University are creating a digital archive to reconstruct the Comanche language before its 25 remaining speakers die out. Meanwhile, researchers from Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences have recorded audio and video footage of twenty isolated Alaskans who speak a unique form of the Russian language. (Bonus: An Australian researcher recently uncovered a whole new Aboriginal dialect.) via The Millions | Save the Languages.

Podcasts for Libraries (Video) – Stephen’s Lighthouse


Podcasts for Libraries (Video) – Stephen’s Lighthouse.

Startups Bet Audio Is the Next Frontier for Social Media | Mashable


There’s no shortage of apps and websites to help us share our lives through videos, pictures and text messages, but we’ve moved farther and farther away from what was once the central means of communicating: the sound of our own voice. Now, a couple startups (Dubbler and Eevzdrop) are trying to change that. See the full article at: Startups Bet Audio Is the Next Frontier for Social Media | Mashable.