Finding Song Lyrics On Mac & iOS

In spite of iOS devices having good support for song lyrics in Apple’s Music app and the Mac surely not lacking access to song information with iTunes and a variety of third-party apps, until last week I didn’t have a quick and effortless way to check on the lyrics of the songs I was listening to through my setup. The problem with lyrics, in fact, is that whilst iTunes allows you to import them and have them properly synced to an iPhone or iPad, those of you who, like me, have decided to shift their listening habits to streaming services like Rdio and Spotify might be out of luck when it comes to humming along the latest Coldplay hit.

Being all about access, services like Rdio and Spotify (and MOG and Deezer, to name a few alternatives) often forgo the need of having a “complete package” for the music you’re paying a monthly fee for, focusing on streaming and leaving additional information like artists’ bio, photos, videos and, yes, lyrics as second citizens on the feature checklist. Which may be regarded as a rather anachronistic choice, considering the interconnectedness these web-based services offer through APIs, web apps and add-ons. Probably also because of lyric rights being treated differently from music streaming rights by labels and publishers, services like Rdio still don’t provide users with an integrated way to check on the lyrics of the song (or entire album) they’re streaming.

The flourishing of streaming services and their obvious lack of lyrics integration has lead, I believe, to a decent if not considerable increase in Google queries for lyrics websites, which are many, often ugly, yet still the best option you’ve got if you want to know what a song is saying. These websites are generally crammed with ads, ringtone adverts, and a plethora of additional information most users looking for the latest Adele single won’t ever need. These websites are awful to navigate. The fact that a Google suggestion for “lyrics website without ads” even exists is telling.

For the reasons listed above, and because I’ve been on a Rdio collection-and-playlist building spree lately, last week I set out to find the simplest iPhone, iPad and Mac apps to give me lyrics for the songs I listen to every day. My requirements were pretty basic:

  • Rdio support
  • iTunes support (just in case)
  • Decent UI
  • Easy to use
  • A search box

As it turns out, I’ve only found three apps that might work for me in the long term. As I tweeted yesterday, the big player in the iOS music-recognition scene, Shazam, doesn’t offer the same amount of functionality of its popular iPhone app (I use Encore) in its iPad client, which is surprisingly poor and limited. You’d expect Shazam to have some kind of deal or API integration with Spotify and Rdio (and, again, possibly others), but they don’t. Shazam offers a “Play on Spotify” command, but to me it looks like they’re missing big time on the music streaming front by only providing access to microphone recognition and manual search. The same is true for Shazam’s biggest competitor, SoundHound; I could be wrong about the API offered to developers by the likes of Spotify and Rdio, but I’m firmly convinced these companies should figure out a solution together if they want to reach the millions of users that are increasingly streaming music, and want to know more about it. Still, both Shazam Encore and SoundHound (universal app) offer basic lyrics support with manual searches; the third app I’ve installed is a very simple utility called Instalyrics, which is a paid app that works on the Mac and iOS with integration between the two.

Here’s a quick look at how these three apps provide lyric access. Read more

iPhone 4S Launches In China and 21 Additional Countries On January 13

With a press release, Apple announced that its latest iPhone model, the iPhone 4S, will be available in China and 21 additional countries on Friday, January 13. Making it the fastest iPhone rollout to date, the iPhone 4S will be available in over 90 countries by next week; Apple targeted a launch in 70 countries by the end of 2011.

Customer response to our products in China has been off the charts,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “With the launch in China next week, iPhone 4S will be available in over 90 countries making this our fastest iPhone rollout ever.

On January 13, the iPhone 4S will become available in: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and Uganda.

Since its introduction in October, the iPhone 4S has seen a steady rollout to meet Apple’s expectations of availability in 70 countries by the end of 2011. Just as U.S. carriers were reportedly struggling to meet the 4S’ demand and Apple launched an initiative to reserve a model for in-store pickup, the device launched in Hong Kong and South Korea, several countries in Europe and India. At the same time, Apple began selling unlocked iPhone 4S units in the United States, and confirmed they were “very pleased” with the initial demand for the device.

In October, it was reported the 4S sold 4 million units in its first weekend. Apple hasn’t disclosed new numbers since, but the company is expected to reveal financial results for the past quarter on January 24, where they’ll likely give out new pieces of information regarding the 4S’ performances in different markets. As a side note, Apple’s press release doesn’t include any details on the carrier(s) that will support the 4S in China, which has been an ongoing source of speculation among rumor sites and Apple watchers in the past few months due to China Unicom’s (the country’s second largest carrier) reported interest in the 4S.

Apple Announces Q1 2012 Conference Call For January 24

Apple refreshed their Investor Relations page last night, updating with a placeholder that will direct investors (and listeners like us) to the upcoming conference call. For the first fiscal quarter in 2012, Apple has announced that that they will announce results on January 24.

Apple’s conference call webcast discussing Q1 - 2012 financial results will begin at 2:00pm PT/5:00pm ET on Tuesday, January 24, 2012.

In Q4 2011, Apple posted $28.27 billion in revenue with 17.07 million iPhones, 11.12 million iPads, and 4.89 million Macs sold. The company posted quarterly record-breaking revenue of  $28.27 billion and record quarterly net profit of $6.62 billion, or $7.05 per diluted share. Apple had their best iPad quarter to date, selling over 11 million units at a 166% increase over the year-ago quarter. The iPhone grew 21% over the year-ago quarter, while iPod sales were down 27 percent from the year-ago quarter. Apple also saw considerable progress in China, posting $4.5 billion in revenue for the September quarter. As of the fourth quarter, Apple has $81.6 billion in cash available.

During the Q4 2011 conference call, Tim Cook was confident that Apple would have a large supply of the iPhone 4S in the holiday quarter and expected to set an all-time record for the iPhone in the first quarter of 2012. Apple estimates they’ll post $37 billion in revenue and diluted earnings per share of around $9.30 for this quarter.

Asymco’s Horace Diedu estimates that Apple will report earnings of $12.3 on revenues of $44.6 billion, with the street price aiming at $9.75 EPS on $37.99 billion. Diedu expects a 120% year over year growth in iPhone sales, with predicted units sold at 35.7 million. Without a new iPod lineup, iPods sales expected to fall thirty percent from the year-ago quarter, with expected sales at 13.6 million units. iPads and Mac sales will continue to do well, exceeding the year-ago quarter with 100% (14.7 million units sold) and 27% (5.2 million units sold) growth respectively.

Reuters reported that Susquehanna has raised its price target on Apple’s stock and raised their iPhone shipment estimate to 30.3 million iPhones in the first quarter from it’s earlier forecast of 27.1 million units.

On October 17th, Apple announced that it had sold 4 million iPhones on its opening weekend, with 25 million users already using iOS 5. Phil Schiller said it was Apple’s most successful launch yet, doubling the sales of the iPhone 4 sold in three days last year. AT&T broke their record for first-day iPhone sales with 200,000 pre-orders, with Verizon Wireless and Sprint also seeing incredible demand.

We will provide live updates from the call on our site’s homepage on January 24 starting at 2 PM PST.

So How About that Mac Version of Star Wars: The Old Republic?

Windows partitions got you down? BioWare is well aware that there’s a Mac fan base waiting to get their multiplayer on in Star Wars: The Old Republic, which has “shattered MMO sales records” since the game’s launch on December 20th.

Massively’s Ben Gilbert writes that BioWare label leads Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk have mentioned the possibility of a SW:TOR Mac version in a recent interview. Muzyka went on the record saying, “We know there’s a big Mac audience of BioWare fans … we know that’s an important and large audience. And we want to serve that audience.”

Zeschuk replied, “Not yet!” when told that SW:TOR wasn’t able to run on a two year old MacBook. There’s currently no timetable that indicates how far away a Mac version is, but the leads want to make sure that a launch on the Mac will be successful and stable. Muzyka notes, “We’ve done a lot of Mac ports before of our games. We haven’t announced any details yet for The Old Republic, but we know that’s an important and large audience.”

So far, more than a million players in SW:TOR have racked up over 60 million hours, completed more than 260 million quests, destroyed more than 3 million non-playable characters in the game, and have participated in more than 44 million player-vs-player battles. Mac fans can install the game on a Windows partition (made easy thanks to Boot Camp) and take part in the adventure that takes place thousands of years before the Lucas films, but I’ll bet there’s plenty of patient fans who’re waiting for a proper Mac port before enlisting as a Sith Lord or Jedi Knight.

[SW:TOR for MAC via Massively | Stats via PC World] Image via IGN

Apple Planning Media Event to be Held in New York at the End of January, Says All Things D [Update!]

While a highly anticipated iPad 3 and iTV are expected by the mainstream media to be unveiled later this year, it’s a forthcoming event at the end of this month that could kick off another year full of surprises from Apple. Unrelated to the rumored products, Kara Swisher from All Things D writes that Apple is planning a media-focused event to be held in New York City at the end of the month, possibly pertaining to advertising or publishing deals.

According to sources “close to the situation”, Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue is reported to be involved in the announcement. Eddy Cue oversees Apple’s wide media domain, including the iBookstore, iTunes, iAds, and Apple’s iCloud services. Cue unveiled News Corp.’s online magazine, The Daily, at a media event in NYC last February.

Media is the key word in Swisher’s announcement, and while it’s possible that the upcoming event could detail some new deals for iTunes Match (perhaps for video), a sole event will promise and detail a longterm vision of Apple’s content strategy. As we saw with the international iTunes Match rollouts, I can’t see Apple using this event to make that that announcement. Siri currently has limitations outside the United States, but that too doesn’t seem like it would constitute its own event if it were to gain better international support. Apple is paving the way for something special, and if you asked me, I’m hoping Apple is starting to sit down with digital publishers to help create tools and develop experiences that are standardized and fluid on the iPad.

[via All Things D]

Update: Alexia Tsotsis from TechCrunch writes that she has independently confirmed Apple’s January event, which will be focused on the iBooks platform. While the details are still relatively unknown, the industry-oriented event will focus on publishing and eBooks. Alexia claims that the event itself isn’t “major,” meaning there will be no product launches. It is expected that improvements to the iBooks platform will be unveiled.

My Educated Guess On What The Next Apple TV Will Be

I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ [Steve Jobs] told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.

In the past two months since Walter Isaacson’s biography hit the bookshelves and people read that paragraph I quoted above, rumours of an Apple TV have hit a fever-pitch. Only a few people really know what Jobs meant by the quote and what his intentions were, but regardless, many people have speculated on what it is he “finally cracked”.

I’ve been following along closely to the discussion because I’m fascinated by where the TV industry is inevitably headed and because I want to see how Apple will come into another new industry and try to disrupt it (presuming they do, of course). More than that, I am some what of an outsider to the latest developments in the TV industry - living in Australia where TV content offerings are years behind that of the US and (to a lesser extent) Europe. Local TV stations have (forever) been slow in acquiring US content, taking weeks, months, if not years to show a popular US series and our online choices have been minimal - with the exception of ABC iView and some dismal options from other networks.

So it is with this point of view, that I want to take a crack at figuring out what exactly this new Apple TV will be, why Apple wants to build one and how it might change our consumption of content. Jump the break to read it all.

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60beat Has a GamePad for Your iOS Devices: It Just Needs Games

It doesn’t require batteries, plugs into your iPad or iPhone’s audio jack, and sports a total of twelve action buttons for getting your game on. 60beat’s GamePad isn’t dissimilar from a Logitech controller you may have picked up for occasional PC gaming, featuring four shoulder buttons, a d-pad, two joysticks, a mode toggle, and an ergonomic design. As the GamePad does require a free headphone port, it does come with an audio splitter if you want to wear headphones while blasting baddies.

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