In their 2005 book “The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution”, authors David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard predicted that music in the future would be like water from a tap: “ubiquitous and free-flowing”.

That future arrived when music streaming services such as Spotify went mainstream a couple of years back, and I’ve been using a workaround to use it here in Singapore. That’s not an issue any longer, as the Swedish company has finally brought its popular streaming client officially to Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. …

Wireless, digital music is all the rage these days, with manufacturers rushing out all sorts of pretty one-piece audio systems that receive music from your smartphone or tablet wirelessly before piping the sound out.

For Bose, the answer is not in another newfangled piece of hardware, but a slight upgrade to its Wave line of audio systems. The familiar-looking boxes have been marketed with a Bluetooth adapter, letting you easily play music straight from your mobile device.
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Who says Singapore technologies don’t go far? One such technology, which streams music smoothly to your phone by adapting to network quality, finally got released this week as a promising mobile app.

Orastream is able to detect how good your connection is and deliver the best quality music that it can support.

For example, if you are using Wi-Fi or have a good 4G connection, the app will deliver music with a high bit-rate, retaining most of the detail in a track. If you are at the basement of a shopping centre and can only get a 2G connection, it will stream a lower quality track, but keep the music playing without any disruptions. …

Where once there were only a couple of sport earphones to choose from, these days there are quite a handful at the stores if you are looking for something tough and can withstand some sweat and rain on your workouts.

Over the weekend, I bought Audio Technica’s ATH-CKP500, which sports the very handy ear fins that help keep the earphones in place without forcing a very tight and uncomfortable fit on your ears.

The ATH-CKP500 comes with an IPX5 rating, which means it can be washed or splashed with water but is not really waterproof such that you can go diving with it (in case you’re thinking). …

It’s Formula 1 weekend in Singapore so we thought we’d check out a pair of Ferrari-branded headphones and earphones.

Not everyone’s an F1 fan, but I guess the prancing horse logo and fire engine red will likely fire up their appeal to many lifestyle-minded users. At least, that’s what British manufacturer Logic 3 hopes. …

If you’ve never heard a vibration speaker (or more accurately a vibration transducer) in action, it can be quite amazing.

The TAPPER tube is a relatively small product that can fit into the palm of your hand — it measures just 5.5cm by 5.5cm — but the sound it creates is deep-throated and loud for a small 5 Watt device.

The secret? It uses the surface that it is attached to as a sound speaker.

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Now, the little red box is joined by a bigger brother, aptly named Big Jambox. The newest member of the family is six times larger in volume and three times heavier than original Jambox. …

When the first iPod Touch was released to market, I wasted no time in getting one. I was attracted to its novel (at that time) touch screen interface and generally liked to buy into tech earlier than others.

Then Android happened, and the one question which has plagued me since was this: how come nobody is trying to eat into the iPod Touch’s market share? Apple is still selling them by the truckloads, carefully making each model obsolete year-on-year.

Samsung tried to do something about that with its Galaxy Players, but seemed understandably more focused on its mobile phones.

Sony has now stepped in to take up that mantle with its Walkman Z1050, a neat-looking device with decent hardware. …

It has taken several months to reach Singapore, but finally, joggers here can check out Motorola’s tough little Motoactv music player that has wowed users over in the United States.

The big deal about this nifty sweat-proof and rain-proof player is that it runs on Android and can fire up a number of GPS-enabled apps that better track your run or cycle. Plus it comes with Bluetooth connectivity out of the box.

Pair it with one of those cool Jabra Sport headphones we reviewed some months back and you have an excellent jogging companion, sans cable and fuss. Very crucially, the 35-gram player will be light enough to be slid into your shorts’ pocket or clipped on without dragging your shorts down, as a heavy or large-screen smartphone may just do! …

Music lovers can now check out new artistes with downloadable mobile music albums that stream the music to them smoothly by adapting the quality to either online or offline use.

Called Orastream, the technology was first tested by Techgoondu back in December 2011. It will play back at a lossless CD-like quality if a track is streamed, say, over Wi-Fi at home, but it will switch to a less demanding compressed quality if the user decides to stream the tracks over a cellphone network while on the move, for example.

Three artistes, including award-winning composer pianist Tze from Singapore, have now signed on to release their music on these mobile albums, which come in the form of downloadable iOS apps. The Singapore firm behind the technology, MP4SLS, calls these albums or apps digital catalog LPs (DLPs), in a tribute to the old record format. …