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On The Record

Jim Carroll

Music, Life and everything else

Technology

Spotify (finally) launches in Ireland

It seems as if we’ve been talking about Spotify on this blog forever. In fact, the Swedish streaming service, which launched in its home country in October 2008, first entered the OTR lexicon in February 2009. Since then, Spotify has …

Have the format wars finally come to an end?

If you’re a music fan in your twenties, thirties, forties or beyond, you’ve probably used a number of different physical formats over the course of your lifetime to listen to your tunes. These will include vinyl (still going strong), cassette …

Kicking some tyres at the Web Summit

The sound of the crowd at last week’s two-day Web Summit in Dublin? Sell, sell, sell. When you stand on the balcony overlooking the main room in the RDS and take it all in, the hubbub is impressive as a …

Moving to a post-comments world

It’s a bad time to be a troll. Most of you will have noticed by now that there’s something of a backlash going on at present against anonymous comments, cyber-bullying and general nasty online pondlife. It didn’t quite begin with …

Where do you go to listen to music?

It’s the question which appears to come up on an almost weekly basis in the talking-and-writing-about-music business. As the number of sources providing listeners and viewers with new music grows and grows, those whose job depends on turning interest in …

Is your favourite pop star dipping into the social media black market?

There are several possible reasons why a pop act or any other social media user for that matter could suddenly see a huge surge in Twitter followers. For instance, thousands of people may decide to follow a person on the …

Release the damn album now!

Two Door Cinema Club are not the first act to experience that sinking feeling which comes with discovering that someone has nefariously leaked your forthcoming new album. That huge investment of time, money and creativity counts for nothing when someone …

Time to give Spotify a break

I must have missed the memo from my record label buddies about the need to criticise Spotify at every possible juncture. That’s how it felt over the last year when talk turned to the most promenient music streaming service in …