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Tidal launches as a hi-fi music streaming service with editorial curation and videos

Oct28
by on October 28, 2014 at 12:10 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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Aspiro Group, the company behind the WiMP Music streaming service in Europe, has launched a new service, Tidal, in the US and UK with a focus on high-fidelity audio, editorial curation and video content. Tidal costs $19.99 a month and uses the ALAC and FLAC lossless format at 1,411 kbps, 44.1kHz/16-bit. That amounts to roughly four times the 320 kbps bitrate of most music streaming services, although Deezer launched its own high-quality service in the US last month. You can listen to Tidal on the Web via Chrome and through its iOS and Android apps. The company boasts that this…

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Yelp’s European push continues as it snaps up French review site Cityvox

Oct28
by on October 28, 2014 at 10:55 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

Yelp has announced it’s acquiring French online review portal Cityvox, as it looks to gain a bigger foothold in France. Today’s news comes just a few days after Yelp snapped up Germany’s Restaurant-Kritik, and further confirms its ambitions in the European market. Cityvox specializes in restaurants and nightlife reviews specifically, covering clubs and cinemas to local brasseries. Yelp says it’s integrating Cityvox’s reviews and photos into its own platform, though it hasn’t indicated what will become of Cityvox as a standalone entity. ➤  Cityvox, Welcome to Yelp [Yelp Blog]

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Smile Clock for Android forces you to grin to stop your alarm in the morning

Oct28
by on October 28, 2014 at 9:06 am
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Insider, Product Launches

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There are alarm clock apps that wake you with phone calls from strangers, ones that force you to spin around, and others that require you to move closer to your router. But what about ones that won’t shut up unless you smile? Yup. While smiling may be the last thing on your mind first-thing in the morning, Smile Clock for Android requires that you do just that if you want some peace. The camera detects your facial expression and will turn off when it catches a glimpse of your upturned-mouth and pearly whites – though you can still snooze this…

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YouTube is considering offering an ad-free subscription package

Oct28
by on October 28, 2014 at 8:30 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Google, Insider

If those preroll ads before YouTube videos annoy you, there’s some good news – the Google-owned service could one day let you pay to switch them off. At Recode’s Code Mobile event in California yesterday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said that a subscription model was “an interesting model. … We’re thinking about how to give users options.” It sounds like this isn’t a firm plan yet, but it would no doubt find favor with at least some heavy users of the service in search of instant, preroll-free, gratification. Wojcicki also said that the much-mooted YouTube subscription music service is still in the…

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