Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:
SoundCloud enters the Sonos ecosystem: Premium wireless speaker company Sonos has added SoundCloud to is portfolio of built-in apps that users can activate in the system. Sonos speakers are stand-alone WiFi units for a single room or an entire house. they are networked to each other, and to the Internet. The whole shebang is controlled with a smartphone app. Soundcloud, which seeks to be “the YouTube of audio,” is now on board, Sonos announced. [Sonos]
“The music industry is not dying…it’s just coming alive”: Music superstar Taylor Swift contributed a buzzy OpEd to The Wall Street Journal, in which she cheerily forecasts the continued importance and value of albums. That unabashedly optimistic view contradicts research pointing to the decline of albums. Her broader point is that the truest value of music (“heart and soul”) is always valuable, regardless of its product categories. she does not enter the “Spotify debate,” or argue against streaming explicitly. (Wall Street Journal)
The sounds of silence: A Journal of Music Things tipped us to a fascinating audio recording of deep space. Wait — doesn’t sound depend on atmosphere? (Also ears.) Yes, and this sound was derived from deep-space plasma. We don’t know what plasma is, exactly. but we enjoy mind-bending explorations of the universe. Listen below. [A Journal of Musical Things]