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Fleetwood Mac releases first set of music since 2003

Wed, 01 May 2013 13:40:00 +0000

Without announcement, Fleetwood Mac yesterday released its first new music in a decade, available exclusively through iTunes.

The Guardian reports:

The release, simply titled Extended Play, comprises a quartet of tunes: three originals by Lindsey Buckingham and one by Stevie Nicks, written in 1973 when the pair were still the duo Buckingham Nicks. This is hardly a set of sexagenarians' basement tapes: Without You – not be confused with the Danny Kirwan-written Mac song of the same name – and Sad Angel are as shiny as Rumours, and even the lonely piano ballad, It Takes Time, has a dramatic synths/strings coda.

Buckingham revealed plans for the EP at a gig in Philadelphia earlier this month – the band have been performing some of the new songs on their current tour. "It's the best stuff we've done in a long time," he said, promising that the record would be out "in a few days". It took a few weeks, instead, but within hours of appearing on iTunes, Extended Play had appeared in the digital shop's top 10 chart, though it has since dropped.

Download it here.

Twitter launches music feature

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:41:00 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) -- Twitter has launched a service for people to find music they like and tweet songs from iTunes, Spotify and Rdio.

Twitter said in a blog post that an app will be available for download from Apple's online store Thursday. A Web version is also expected Thursday. Twitter said the service will eventually be available on Android devices as well.

The service uses information from Twitter chatter to find popular tracks as well as new artists. Users who follow musicians can see what artists those musicians follow and listen to songs by them.

Thursday's announcement about a music service had been expected. "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest tweeted about it last week. It's called (hash)music, following Twitter's practice of using hashtags to organize tweets around topics.

The music service's debut comes less than three months after the release of a Twitter video app called Vine that distributes six-second clips that can be played in a continuous loop.

The expansion into other forms of media besides text and photos is part of Twitter's effort to make its messaging service even more appealing to its more than 200 million monthly users. More frequent usage of the service creates more opportunities to show ads — the main way that Twitter makes money.

New episodes of “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” to be released online

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 21:10:00 +0000

The influence of video streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon continues to rise as more and more shows are reaching audiences through the Internet. Some of 2013's most anticipated shows -- season four of "Arrested Development" and the Kevin Spacey drama "House of Cards," for example, will be delivered straight to Netflix. Now the long-running soap operas "All My Children" and "One Life to Live," which have been off the air since 2011 and 2012, respectively, are coming back, too: Production company Prospect Park has announced a deal that will relaunch the two series with Hulu and iTunes. TVline reports: