Online and mobile music service, Slacker, has made the jump to Android tonight. We heard about this first at CTIA, along with new twitter integration, but the app is now live in the Market. You’ll be able to stream tunes organized into expert-made or custom-built stations over the air, but also sideload higher quality versions once you’re at a computer. As usual, you’re limited to the U.S. due to licensing issues, but it’s a pain us Canadians know all too well. Slacker for Android should work fine on the new HTC Eris and Motorola (NYSE: MOT) droid, as well as the older HTC Magic, myTouch 3G;  apps are already available for iPhone and BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM).  Keep an eye on Slacker’s Everywhere page for their updated mobile offerings tomorrow.

Midomi, a sleek little music ID app for Android that I spotted at CTIA, is now available in the Market for free (for a “limited time”). The one key feature that really sets it apart from the current big name, Shazam, is that you can hum the tune into your phone, so even if you can’t get your phone out in time to put it up against a speaker, you won’t be tortured with a mystery song until you get to a proper computer. After figuring out the song, Midomi offers YouTube videos, bookmarking, sharing, lyrics, artist info, album art, and a bunch of other stuff – very handy. So go ahead an look it up in the on-device Android Market, but if you’re rocking an iPhone, a premium version is available for $4.99.

Midomi, an online community for amateur singers and music identification service, will be extending into Android soon. Until now, Shazam had struck me as the best mobile music ID service out there, but after seeing Midomi in action, I can see how handy humming a song could be when you’ve got it stuck in your head, or don’t have a chance to jam your phone right against a radio’s speaker. After either grabbing a sample of the song in question or simply speaking the artist/title, Midomi Ultra presents options for buying the track, YouTube videos, album information, lyrics lookup, and just about anything else you would want to know about a song. One of the key differentiators with Midomi is the social element – it’s heavily geared towards connecting you with people who have looked up similar music.  Unfortunately, the app will be exclusive to the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Cliq for the immediate future, but if you happen to be packing an iPhone, Midomi has got you covered.

Slacker, a great music app for BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) and iPhone, will be launching on Android and Windows Mobile tomorrow, allowing you to browse, favourite, and discover music on your smartphone. The launch will come with some new Twitter integration which will let you tweet whenever you favourite a new track, and share a link to the station you’re listening to so your followers can take a listen for themselves. While Slacker might lack the immediate convenience of over the air downloads, its sideloading setup allows for much higher-quality tracks. Just like the previous versions, the app will be free to download, but of course you’ll always have the option to buy the tracks to do what you will with. Licensing issues are still a thorn in Slacker’s side; if you live anywhere other than the U.S., you won’t be able to use the service. Otherwise, take a look at Slacker, and keep an eye on their mobile app page for some fresh goodies tomorrow.

UPDATE:  Slight miscommunication. It’s only the twitter feature launching today – Android and Windows Mobile will be arriving at a later, undisclosed date.

Shazam has announced today that their very cool ‘music discovery’ app/service is now available in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile. If you’ve never used Shazam before, it’s a handy app to have hangin’ about. Basically it ‘listens’ to music (you have to hold your device up to the music), and returns to you the song name, details, and links to buy the song. Most of the time, as long as the audio quality is half decent, Shazam will return extremely accurate results… at least that has been my experience.

Shazam is available for free right now in the Marketplace, but what is interesting here is the addition of a paid version. The free app is unfortunately very limited, allowing users to only discover 5 songs per month. Bummer. The full-featured paid version allows for unlimited song discovery, access to tag charts, recommendations, biographies, reviews and a lot more.

With the addition of their app to the Windows Marketplace, Shazam is now available in the iPhone App Store, BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) App World, the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Market, and Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s Ovi store.

Well done Shazam. Press release after the jump. For more info hit up Shazam.com.

Read the full article »

Shazam today announced that it has teamed up with O2 to make discovering and capturing music even easier for O2 customers.  The agreement will mean that anyone on O2 will benefit from an enhanced mobile music experience, discovering music with Shazam and then purchasing it through their mobile, on the move.

O2 customers simply need to dial 2580 on their mobile and hold it up to the music for a few seconds.  Shazam’s award-winning service will then text the user back with the details about the track, and O2 customers will then have a link embedded in that text that will allow them to immediately purchase that track.

“This is another great example of our strategy of working with the best companies in the world to deliver compelling music services for our customers,” said Matt Ward, Head of Music at O2. “We have joined forces with a leader in this space to allow our customers to have an even greater in-depth music experience on their mobile.”

Jonathan Symons, EVP Business Development, Shazam, continued: “O2 has a strong music presence through its relationship with The O2 and O2 Academy venues.  We’re delighted to work with such a leading company to create added value for our IVR service and we look forward to working even closer with O2 in the future.”

The agreement is part of O2’s ongoing commitment to music and will be supported by an online, viral and outdoor marketing campaign.  The campaign will include online advertising on O2 Active, interactive marketing at the O2 Academy venues and rolling on-screen advertising at The O2.

A nice move on the part of O2 methinks – they have quite a music/event-centric proposition, so adding a service that can identify tracks and then deliver them has got to be a good thing!

Vodafone has announced a deal with Warner Music which will make Vodafone the first global mobile network operator to offer its customers over-the-air access to the combined music catalogue of the world’s four largest music companies in DRM-free format.

Vodafone customers will continue to enjoy their current download service with rights to use tracks they have paid for just once across all of their personal music devices without restriction – but now with the additional benefit of having a far greater number of tracks to choose from. Furthermore, Vodafone and Warner Music will work together to offer a range of mobile music products such as value-added album bundles that contain additional multimedia content.

“Warner Music’s addition to our mobile DRM-free catalogue is really great news for our customers,” said Pieter Knook, Vodafone Internet Services Director. “The response to the DRM-free offering in all the markets where it has launched has been incredibly enthusiastic. Our customers love music and they love the flexibility that DRM-free on mobile gives them.”

“We’re pleased to be expanding our partnership with Vodafone, who share our vision of how to help foster the growth of mobile music and create further opportunities for connecting fans with artists by offering premium album content anytime, anywhere.” Eric Daugan, SVP, Digital Business, Warner Music Europe.

Warner Music’s wide-ranging inventory will start to go live for mobile in DRM-free format straight away, and will contribute to a total library of over 1 million tracks. DRM-free downloads via mobile are already available to Vodafone customers across many European markets with more to come.

For details on exactly which countries get the DRM-free format, and where the Warner catalogue will be distributed, click here.

If you’re a Slacker Radio user, a new update has been released and is ready to download. Version 2.0.49 is up for grabs, and while no changelog is available, if you’re a regular user of the app on your BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) or iPhone you might as well give it a spin. I would suspect this is a small, incremental update to fix some minor problems and bugs…

For more information on Slacker Radio you can hit up their website.

• Slacker Radio for BlackBerry >
• Slacker Radio for iPhone and iPod Touch >

Note: Of course, Slacker is free for BlackBerry and the iPhone, but if you’d like to upgrade to Slacker Plus, you’ll need to fork over $3.99/mth. This will remove all audio and banner ads, allow for unlimited song skips, give you all song lyrics, and more (details).

[Via: CrackBerry]

We’ve all seen the BlackBerry commercials, you know, the ones featuring U2. At first, sure, I thought they were kind of cool… But after having seen them about 179 times, I’ve grown tired. I have a feeling I might already be tired of any new music from U2, even well before the album is officially released.

Latest word has it that U2’s new mobile album will be released this Saturday, September 12th. It’s no coincidence that U2’s 360 tour commences its North-American rounds the very same day, in Chicago.

The mobile album is said to include a few apps as well, one in particular that will let you locate the band, read the latest U2 news, and more (yawn?). To sign up for email updates, hit up the BlackBerry Loves U2 mini-site.

Stay tuned for more on this.

[Via: MobileSyrup]

Those packing either a G1 or a new myTouch 3G and looking lustily upon iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile for their Pandora apps can retract the claws – Tom Conrad, an employee at the music discovery service, has announced that they’re working on an Android application. He’s pretty clear about Pandora’s eventual goal of getting their music onto every smartphone platform, and they’re doing pretty well so far; all that’s really missing now is Symbian, since it’s already out on webOS. It’s pretty funny that they’re working in Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s mobile operating system, considering Tom said once upon a time that he “needs Android like a hole in the head”, though he has since repented. No word on a timeline, but certainly keep an eye on the Android Market for Pandora.

[Tom Conrad via Android Community]