Control music at home with Android

Control music at home with Android
BluetoothEvery decent Android phone or tablet will offer a Bluetooth connection to stream music to any compatible speaker in a 30-40-foot range. You can buy decent Bluetooth speakers for as little as $100 (pay no attention to the man in the video above), but if you already have a great home stereo, get a Bluetooth adapter. They cost around $40, and you just connect it to an AUX input on your existing stereo.The Smart Hub on recent Samsung TVs is an example of a DLNA-compatible device. With a little patience you can train other DLNA devices (phones, tablets, audio receivers) to all share media with each other across your wireless network.Brian Bennett/CNETDLNAIf you need the extra range or just don't like the audio quality over Bluetooth, there are a few ways to send and control music over your home Wi-Fi. The method that most closely matches Apple's Airplay is called DLNA. To confuse things, Samsung rolls this into their AllShare app, but it's essentially the same thing. It's an open standard that's popping up on a lot of new TVs, mobile devices and home theater receivers. Like Airplay, as long as all the devices are on the same network, they can all see each other and share media. The trouble is, most people don't know they have it, or they have it on their phone but don't have a compatible TV or stereo to send things to. If you can make it work, great. If not, let's try another solution.Wi-Fi radios like the Logitech Squeezebox pack a ton of streaming audio features into a slick little system that you can control with a comprehensive Android app.Sarah Tew/CNETWi-Fi RadiosGet a Squeezebox. Logitech sells these Wi-Fi music systems in all shapes and sizes. The Squeezebox Radio can be had for around $150 and it has a big sound for its size. It streams Pandora, Spotify and Last.fm, hooks into your computer's music collection, and it can all be controlled from a free Android app. Put a few of these around your house, and you've got a budget version of the next option...For a wireless audio system that can be expanded throughout your entire home and controlled via Android or iOS, the family of Sonos products is an excellent way to go.SonosSonosIf you have some money to throw at a top-notch solution, get a Sonos. The entry-level model is the Play:3, which will set you back $300. Once you get hooked on it, though, expect to pay twice that to expand it around your home. It works with practically every music service on the planet but you can also pull from your local music collection. The Android app does a great job weaving everything together, and you can even use it to send different music to separate speakers in your house and individually adjust the volume.Google's own media streaming hub, the Nexus Q, allows Android users to stream music and video over their Wi-Fi network.Sarah Tew/CNETNexus QFor you true Google fanatics, there's the $300 Nexus Q. This one also works over Wi-Fi, so you're getting great audio quality and wide coverage. It has a built-in amp, so it can power speakers on its own. If you're like me, though, the best speakers in your home are connected to your TV -- so I'd just use the HDMI out on the back and play it through the home theater setup you already have. At the moment, it has a tenth of the features offered on Sonos, but its value as a conversation piece can't be overstated. Plus it has a trippy music visualizer, so you're just a blacklight and a bean bag chair away from the perfect chill room.The AirSync app enables wireless syncing of iTunes playlists, videos, and podcasts, and lets you stream to your Apple TV (second-gen), Xbox, and PS3 from your Android device. This means you can keep your phone with you while it syncs instead of leaving it tethered to a computer that might be in another room.Screenshot by Joshua Goldman/CNETAppsFinally, one option I left out of the video for the sake of time are app-based solutions. You can find apps that will control music on your home computer, or even stream music to an Apple TV, Xbox 360, or PlayStation 3. A search for iTunes Remote in the Google Play store generates around 250 results. Dig around, and you could find an inexpensive solution that works with the living room tech you already have.Final thoughtsThere have never been more options on the market for streaming music around your home, and many of them are Android-compatible. But before you rush off and drop $300 on some new tech, let me caution you that the thrill of going wireless is a fleeting one. Eventually it will seem as basic to you as changing the channel on your TV from the comfort of your couch.And as the tech involved in pulling off this wireless magic gets cheaper and baked into our gadgets as a matter of practice (see DLNA), you may just want wait until your next TV or home stereo upgrade brings this feature with it. But then again, what fun is that?


Rhapsody hits 2 million paid members

Rhapsody hits 2 million paid members
For Rhapsody, being first meant the road to 1 million members was a lot longer than the hop to the 2 million milestone. Rhapsody, a trailblazer in subscription streaming music, said Tuesday it has reached its 2 millionth paying member. The company, which essentially invented the all-inclusive music subscription model in 2001, took a decade to hit its first million subscribers in December 2011. The second million comes a year and a half later. Despite its first mover status, Rhapsody has been overshadowed in recent years by the likes of Spotify, Beats Music, and the offerings by companies like Google and Amazon, which benefit from their giant size giving their new services automatic recognition. While the 2 million markerputs Rhapsody well behind market leader Spotify, which announced 10 million paying members in May, it puts it far ahead of Beats Music, set to become part of Apple in company's $3 billion acquisition of headphone maker Beats Electronics. Beats had 250,000 subscribers as of May, after four months operating with a high-profile partnership with AT&T, the second biggest carrier in the country by number of customers. "All the major player are jumping into this space. Jumping in is the easy part," said Paul Springer, chief product officer of Rhapsody, in an interview with CNET News. "Learning how to swim in the deep and growth is the hard part." Related links:T-Mobile unveils 'UnRadio' service, offers data-free musicRhapsody's UnRadio with T-Mobile: How it measures upRhapsody tells (almost) all to get you listeningTelefonica tunes in Rhapsody's Napster for streaming music Springer said that reaching the 2 million mark so quickly is significant as many entrants -- Beats, Amazon, Apple with iTunes Radio -- are competing in the same arena. Though still a relatively new and untested format, subscription streaming, in which members pay a flat rate monthly to for all-you-can-eat access to huge catalogs of songs, is one of the fastest growing sectors in music sales. The milestone also comes after Rhapsody disclosed 1.7 million members in April. Since that time, the company launched a high-profile carrier partnership of its own, "unRadio" with T-Mobile in the US in June. It's a model Rhapsody plans to move overseas. Tuesday, Rhapsody said it would launch a similar offering through its international arm, Napster (yes, that Napster), in France with the country's second largest mobile operator, SFR. Called Napster Découverte, or Napster Discovery, it will be available for 3.95 euros a month. The Rhapsody unRadio concept differed other streaming/carrier partnerships in the US by offering a modified on-demand streaming service at an outright, unending discount to T-Mobile customers. UnRadio -- which has no ads or skip limits but walls off the number of songs you can hear on-demand at 25-- is a dollar cheaper for any T-Mobile customer at $3.99 a month, and it's totally free to customers on a T-Mobile unlimited data plan. AT&T's deal with Beats Music and Sprint's with Spotify offer customers extended free trials of a music subscription service but later charge individuals the same amount anyone else would pay. (Both the AT&T-Beats offer and the Sprint-Spotify offer have discounted options for customers on a family plan.) In addition to moving the "unRadio" format to France, Rhapsody said Tuesday that it has launched its Premier subscription service in several new Latin American countries though its existing partnership Telefónica's Movistar.