Pandora App Arrives on Android Phones

BlackBerry and iPhone users have had access to Pandora's mobile app for quite some time, and now Android users can get in on the action. The Internet radio station announced Wednesday that Android users can now download the Pandora app directly from pandora.com/android or the Android Market.

The app is now available for the myTouch and the G1, and Pandora is currently working with Sprint to make sure it works with the HTC Hero when that phone is released next month, Pandora's Tom Conrad wrote in a blog post. The Android version works much like its BlackBerry and iPhone counterparts, but also incorporates many core Android features, Conrad said.

"You can control playback from a home screen widget, 'deep tap' any artist or song in the standard Android music player and jump into Pandora to discover other similar artists, make a smart folder to get quick access to your stations from the home screen, buy tracks you discover from the Amazon MP3 application, use your Android address book to share stations with your friends, and of course listen in the background while you're doing other things on the phone," he wrote.

Sony building Android-based Walkman and PND for 2010 launch?

Android will play a prominent role across Sony's portable devices starting with an Android-based Walkman and personal navigation device (PND) launching sometime in 2010. Engadget Japanese says that Sony's affection for Android is an "open secret" in Japan.

Interesting..

Spotify’s Android App Should Frighten Apple

If I were Steve Jobs, the video to the right would scare me senseless. It shows a Google Android phone running a Spotify app that appears to succeed in porting the full Spotify experience — still not available to most Americans — to a mobile phone.

We’re not alone in thinking that the Sweden-based Spotify is the best desktop music application on the planet, even though its legitimate use is currently restricted to Finland, France, Norway, Sweden, Spain and the UK. On the mobile phone, it becomes a serious threat to the iTunes/iPod ecosystem. Who wants to bother with buying songs track-by-track, when you can work with a customizable library containing millions of tracks, for free (with the occasional ad) or a monthly fee?

Is Spotify on the iPhone the “end game” for mobile music? This Google Android version of the app, demonstrated last night at the Google I/O Developer Conference in San Francisco, boasts a crucial feature we predicted Spotify would add: the caching of playlists for offline listening, which lets you play your music (or playlists other people have created) without a WiFi or 3G connection.

The video shows a user selecting which playlists to cache, listening to them, adding a song to a mobile playlist via laptop, as well as a Jobs-style “one last thing” at the end of the presentation depicting the app’s ability to play any song or album on-demand.

If Apple doesn’t allow a full-fledged version of this app into its App Store, music fans with Spotify access could switch to Android, if the message board on Spotify’s blog is any indication.

The Spotify desktop application runs on a P2P streaming architecture; as you use it to listen, you’re also uploading song data for other users to stream. This architecture doesn’t work as well in a mobile setting, with reduced bandwidth and processor speed, so if Spotify mobile apps become more popular than their desktop counterparts, the system could come under strain. Other than that, it’s hard to see how this Android app won’t be a runaway success — where it’s available, anyway.

Android makes music for local developer

Steve Oldmeadow has never set foot in Silicon Valley, but this month the software developer from Perth became one of a select few to be handed a $120,000 cheque from Google.

The windfall was prize-money for a musical application called "Rayfarla" purpose built by Mr Oldmeadow in a developer challenge for Google's new Android mobile phone platform.

Android is a free mobile phone operating system and the first handset to bear its software will be released next month in the US by T-mobile.

Much like the iPhone, Android phones will be able to download dozens of mini applications such as Rayfarla that are much more focused on fun, lifestyle and entertainment than traditional computer software.

With its quirky mix of modules including a virtual cowbell, a rhythm based arcade game, and a number of virtual musical instruments, Mr Oldmeadow said Rayfarla (a wordplay on do-re-mi) was very much the product of his own experiences as an amateur musician.

"Rayfarla was designed to appeal to variety of people because it includes virtual music instruments and a lot of games. The original thinking was that kids would come in to play the games, and in the process learn more about music. From there they could start making music and possibly even jam with friends," he said.

Other winning entries in the Google challenge include geographical applications for finding cabs and going shopping, cooking and car pooling apps and a racing challenge that lets you pit yourself against others following a similar workout pattern or location.

But while the fruits of the developer challenge should guarantee Google some interesting applications at launch, competition for developer talent may tighten given Apple's application store for its iPhone users is now up and running, and reportedly generating big returns for developers.

A recent news report in the US verified claims by developers that some iPhone applications have already earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in the few months the store has been open.

Although Google will initially give away its applications for free to users for its US launch next month, a pricing model for some higher value applications is expected to be introduced soon after.

Mr Oldmeadow said Rayfarla would follow the same model in that there will be some parts of it that are free and others that will cost a dollar or two to download.

"The virtual cow bell will always be free, and then some of the games will be expanded beyond what I submitted and may be released in a 'lite' version, which is a common model in the iPhone store," he says.

He also plans to hand over some of the software code to the developer community in the spirit of open source computing.

.. found @ smh.com.au