Can’t wait for the current cycle of talentless pop music to end? Bebo Bands wants to hear from you. Social-networking site Bebo announced in early July that its 25 million members would have unlimited uploading and sharing of music files to its Bebo Bands site. In the last two weeks, more than 25,000 bands and …

A multimillion-dollar settlement is putting Kazaa on the straight and narrow, but it might not be enough to put the file-sharing service on the road to recovery. Once a bane of the recording industry for its popularity as a place to get music without paying for it, Kazaa now will begin using filtering technology to prevent its users from distributing …

EMI Group, as part of a larger effort to support peer-to-peer networks that allow the sharing of licensed music files, has agreed to share its digital library with P2P start-up Mashboxx. The record label, whose 1,000-plus artists include Janet Jackson, Gorillaz, the Rolling Stones and Coldplay, is not the first to license its content for use on Mashboxx. According to …

Our American counterparts have been raving about this little gizmo for ages. The Slingbox is a clever gadget that turns your home TV signal into an Internet stream that you can access from any networked PC — so you can watched recorded programming or live TV on your laptop from your hotel. Luckily, we in the UK won’t have to feel like complete technological …

Sony had a hugely impressive stand at CES, although the live music cramped our ability to film some of the new products. Sony innovated with the PlayStation Portable last year, and it’s now pushing that device with another new concept to get travellers excited. The company’s new LocationFree package is already available in the US, allowing you to send media around the world from your home. …

You wait 80 years for a device that’ll stream television from the living room to wherever you happen to be, and then two come along at once. Yesterday we were drooling over the chocolate-bar-shaped Sling Media Slingbox; today we’re ogling the paperback-book-sized Sony LocationFree base station (first encountered at CES). Both these products squirt television signals around your house, or …

SAN FRANCISCO–Tim Westergren could be thought of as a modern-day Santa Claus with a bag full of compact discs you’ve probably never heard of. The founder of Pandora, a 7-month-old, so-called music-discovery engine, Westergren travels from town to town, sharing his time and story with fans who, because of his service, say they’ve rediscovered a love of newfound music. From …

By Sunday evening, the weekend is wearing off. Usually. Last Sunday, I had my doubts: gently dozing through The Simpsons‘ closing credits, I heard a snatch of conversation so bizarre it had to have been a hallucination. Fortunately for those with reality issues, new technology now exists to help work out which side of the blood-brain barrier such voices originate. …

When Packard Bell said it has some cool stuff to show us, we should have guessed the venue would be the Absolut Ice Bar in Mayfair. The evening was pretty cool (ho hum) — we were greeted at the door by a pair of well-trained huskies, checked out some products in the warm room, then froze our ears off in the …

For those who produce commercials and television programs, finding the right background music is essential. And for the musicians who make the music, having their work used in a commercial or on a TV show soundtrack is a nice, sometimes lucrative, bonus. Pump Audio, an online service that specializes in cataloging music by independent musicians and marketing it to producers, …

We’ve all been there: stuck on the motorway, in the sweltering heat, hours later than you than you meant to be, sick as an overheated parrot because your favourite show is about to start. Meanwhile, your perfectly formed Sky+ box is sitting on its perfectly formed posterior, doing absolutely nothing because you forgot to program it. Sky+ Remote Record fluffs …

We are buying the gadgets, but not the music. While interest in MP3 players and multimedia downloads is rising, more music is being ripped from CDs than downloaded, according to a study released Thursday by Ipsos Insight. Twenty percent of Americans over the age of 12 own at least one portable MP3 player. Among teens exclusively, ownership reaches 54 percent, …

Music retailer Tower Records is preparing to take the shrink-wrap off its digital download store on Tuesday, when Tower.com/Digital goes live with a comprehensive service powered by Puretracks. Tower will market the digital alternative across all media in tandem with the chain’s retail business, which comprises 89 stores in the United States. Initially the store will offer a catalog of …

France has given the thumbs-up to the defanged version of a controversial law that would have forced Apple Computer to open up its iTunes digital rights management to players other than its iPod. The Dadvsi law, which originally included provisions to allow people to crack DRM protections and oblige Apple to interoperate with its rivals’ music download services and vice …

Early in 2005, more than a dozen Sony employees from the company’s consumer electronics divisions gathered for an unusual meeting in the tiny Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters of digital media start-up Kinoma. Kinoma Chief Executive Peter Hoddie, an Apple Computer alumnus, had been put in charge of high-profile Sony software development, including the Connect digital music project. For a company …