SoundCloud signs royalty agreement with Merlin to gain access to 20,000 indie labels

SoundCloud you probably heard of or are already using but we’re sure Merlin might be a new name to you. Merlin works with 20,000 indie labels and distributors to work out licensing and loyalty deals, which is what they’ve done with SoundCloud. This will bring labels like Beggars Group (Vampire Weekend), Domino (Animal Collective), Secretly Group (Bon Iver), Kontor Records (Tiësto), and a lot more to SoundCloud’s streaming service. These musicians will also be offered compensation when you play their music.

SoundCloud already has a deal with Warner Music Group and is rumoured to unveil its own streaming service this year. They‘re still, however, having a tough time convincing Sony and Universal to join because the site also hosts copyrighted material without permission. We’re going to have to watch and see if this plan will push through and if they can provide a better alternative to streaming options we have out at the moment.

Source: SoundCloud | Via: Engadget

Lenovo launches first streaming media device for US $49

Lenovo launched the Lenovo Cast, the company’s first media casting device to bring content from smaller, personal devices to the big screen. The device is coming in  August worldwide. Pricing is expected at $49 USD.

The Lenovo Cast gives users the ability to share their favorite content by streaming it wirelessly from their personal screen devices to a big screen TV.

Lenovo Cast works in three simple steps: plug, link and play. First, plug Lenovo Cast into any large screen device’s HDMI port. Then link Lenovo Cast to the device’s signal. Then play and enjoy media from a DLNA or Miracast-enabled tablet or smartphone.

Click to read more ...

YouTube dumps Flash for HTML 5 as standard for video playback

Photo by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla exclusive to Canadian Reviewer

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short

--Steve Jobs, 2010

Today was a milestone for Internet video. YouTube will stop using Adobe's Flash as a default video player for its videos and will now use HTML 5 as a playback standard. YouTube now uses its HTML5 video player by default in Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s IE11, Apple’s Safari 8, and in beta versions of Mozilla’s Firefox browser. YouTube introduced HTML 5 support in 2010, possibly to support smartphones like the iPhone and tablets like the iPad which famously never ran Adobe Flash. 

Click to read more ...

Xbox One and Windows 10 integration extends functionality of consoles to PCs

One of the cooler announcements in today's Windows 10 launch event was the news that Windows 10 will have an Xbox App available on Windows 10 devices. What this enables is streaming Xbox One games to WIndows 10 PCs and tablets. They demoed this on stage with Forza Horizon running on an Xbox One but streaming without any latency to a Surface Pro 3 tablet. Using an XBox controller, you can play your game using a PC with no latency and with remote access to all your Xbox controls. This is made possible by DirectX 12 enhancing graphics performance on existing hardware devices.