Music

Whether its cruising down historic Route 66, taking a lazy drive down the Road to Hana in Hawaii or exploring New Zealand’s South Island Circuit, there is nothing better than belting out those favorite tunes from whatever device tickles your fancy. While the radio is always a go-to, sometimes the advertisements just kill your groove, and while the old CD player and some good old-fashioned CDs has served us for many a road trip, things tend to get boring if you listen to the same playlists several times.

Enter the world of digital streaming! Streaming services are your best source of curated playlists these days, plus on most streaming services, you can download your playlists for offline listening or listen via WiFi if you happen to lose cell signal on the road. Now the only question is, which playlists are best for beating the lull of a long drive?

Good Times, Great Oldies

Spotify’s Good Times, Great Oldies playlist is one of the finest choices if you want to relive your childhood during your next drive. Featuring nostalgic tracks such Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” and The Eagles’ “Hotel California,” Good Times, Great Oldies is one playlist that can take you back to your greatest memories growing up, while also creating some new ones. While blasting tracks like these, it’ll be impossible not to have an impromptu karaoke session.

Road Trip

Google Play Music’s simply-titled Road Trip playlist, unlike the others on this list, is a combination of several genres of music making it suitable for a variety of tastes. Featuring cool tracks such as Kelly Clarkson’s “Behind these Hazel Eyes,” Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana” and Outkast’s “Ms. Jackson,” this is a playlist for the whole family. With a mix of blues, rock and pop from the 80s up to the early 2000s, this is one incredible playlist.

Family Road Trip

If you are going on a road trip with kids, Pandora’s Family Road Trip is going to be vital. The station comes with a mix of sing-a -long classics ranging from children’s favorites, pop rock, reggae, classic rock and current family-safe hits. Artists you can expect on the playlist include Kidz Bop Kids, Bob Marley, They Might Be Giants, The Beach Boys and The Beatles. I found the classics collection quite roadworthy. Blast from the past artists such as The Temptations, Marvin Gaye and Van Morrison round out the playlist quite nicely.

The Ultimate Rock Road Trip Playlist

The Ultimate Rock Road Trip Playlist is for the hard-core rock fan. If features some of the biggest rock bands and artists to ever rock the stage. It has golden oldies such as Stairway to Heaven, Roxanne, Eye of the Tiger, Highway to Hell and Hotel California. What makes this playlist so great is that all of the songs are up-tempo stuff that will have you nodding your head and dancing your tail off, while still maintaining a first grasp on the steering wheel of course.

Road Trip Anthems

Not only does Road Trip Anthems have a catchy title, but it also has some of the catchiest songs for a road trip. From classic such as Ray Charles’s “Hit the Road Jack,” Foghat’s “Slow Ride” and Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee” to more modern tracks such as Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice,” Rihanna’s “Shut Up and Drive,” and Jay Z’s “99 Problems,” this playlist has so much variety that will keep you bumping to the beat regardless of age or preference. I also like that nearly all the tracks are related to driving, providing you much needed inspiration on a long road trip.

What other road trip playlists are you listening to? Have you created your own that you’d love to share with us? Leave a comment below for the benefit of other readers.

The information age has been a blessing for music lovers: no matter where you are, as long as you have Internet access you can listen to whatever tune strikes your fancy. This means no more trudging from store to store looking for that one album you want: you just hit up a website and you can find what you’re looking for. The downside to this is that the more you’re on the Internet, the more risk you run of having your personal information stolen. It happens all the time, so how can you protect yourself?

Piracy Doesn’t Just Hurt the Artist

Let’s start with the easiest tip: do not pirate music, be it through torrents or direct download. Besides it being unfair to the artist in question, you’re running a serious risk. The packets you’re downloading will often contain all kinds of nasty viruses and other malware which can infect your computer. Staying safe means avoiding risk, so stay away from file sharing and you’ve taken a good first step.

Don’t Give Away Too Much Information

Now that you’ve wisely decided to go the legal route, let’s look at some of the risks associated with that. iTunes is a great online store with millions of customers. A big marketplace like that is wonderful not just for music lovers but also presents a fat target for hackers. Apple is no slouch when it comes to security and yet every once in a while they get hit, like in 2010 and 2013. In both of these cases, people’s personal data ended up in the wrong hands and was most likely sold to the highest bidder.

If you want to prevent something like this from happening to you, make sure that you give as little information as you can to services that you use: try to give nothing besides your name and email address or, better yet, use fake ones. If you have an online wallet, make sure to the best of your ability that it doesn’t link directly to your bank account. Smart hackers can trace it back and raid the rest of your money if you aren’t smart about it. Whatever you do, never let websites remember your credit card. It seems convenient until you find yourself the victim of identity theft.

Strong Passwords

Even if you give away little to no information, you’d be surprised at what a smart criminal can do with next to nothing. The next step is for you to make sure your password is solid. Practically any password can be decoded given enough time, but time is not something hackers always care to spend. If you have any accounts protected with passwords like “password123” or something similar, change them today to something with no dictionary words and a lot of random numbers and symbols. If the service you use does get hacked, you’ll be sitting pretty while hackers vainly try and crack your account.

Become Anonymous

These three common-sense tactics should keep you out of harm’s way most of the time but none of them are fully secure. To make sure that you’re truly untouchable on the Internet, you’re going to need to get a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service. A VPN allows you to access the internet from a random IP address, making it impossible for hackers to locate you and remotely access your computer. A VPN can also mask your location, allowing you to bypass country restrictions so you can remain anonymous and access regionally restricted content. You’ll be safe in the knowledge that you’re practically invisible to cybercriminals.

Security is a learned behavior and any music lover who follows this advice is guaranteed to be safe from hacking and other nastiness. Do you have any additional recommendations as to how to stay safe while satisfying your musical cravings? Have you had any difficulties in the past? Please leave a comment below and tell us your thoughts!

It’s a big night for country music stars—and these newbies that are set to reign on stage are ones to keep an eye on.  Country music’s habit of keeping a low profile on the popular culture scene has officially peaked; this year’s crop of new stars is not only bringing the songwriting heat to the country genre, but also landing it’s singles on the Hot 100 charts that have the whole world crooning along.

With country music’s biggest night just around the corner, check out this year’s picks for best “to watch” music stars who are making waves in the industry and landing you with a head full of croons that you just can’t shake.

1. Chris Stapleton

If anyone was a breakaway mainstream star this year, it was Chris Stapleton. With his hit “Tennessee Whiskey” and it’s subsequent covers by Justin Timberlake, Sam Smith, and more, the country newcomer is making waves both in his genre and on the bigger pop stage, making him definitely one to watch.

Get ahead of the game by listening to his debut album Traveller, paying special attention to songs “Drink You Away” and “Nobody to Blame.” Both are showstoppers from the album and are as good (or maybe even better) than his more well known hit. But while he’s up for the Best New Male Vocal artist, it won’t be his first award. At the 2015 CMAs, he took awards home for Best New Artist, Best Male Vocalist of the Year, and Album of the Year. In fact, he’s not new to the country music scene either, having written hits for Miranda Lambert, Tim McGraw and Blake Shelton, only this time he’s making the headlines for himself.

2. Kelsea Ballerini

The country up-and-comer has had quite the upstart year, landing both her first two singles on the Number 1 charts and adding her name to a select group of female country stars (including industry queen Faith Hill) who have done the same. “Love Me Like You Mean It” and “Dibs” have become instant hits, and belong on your upstart morning playlist. But be warned, these country pop ballads are sure to be stuck in your head for good.

But she’s not just up for Best New Female Voice of the Year, she’s also set to perform a set with Nick Jonas at the awards show—for sure cementing her rising star status on the country music scene. Her recently released “Peter Pan” is set to become another platinum hit, so keep your eyes on this newcomer who has the sweetheart disposition of country music’s favorite gals.

3. Sam Hunt

Receiving two nods from the show alongside Ballerini, Georgia-born Hunt is no newcomer to the country world, foregoing a college football career to pursue music after signing with MCA Nashville in 2014. His debut album Montevallo, which went on to claim double-platinum status, included three platinum US Charts hits for singles “Take Your Time,” “House Party” and “Leave the Night On,” making him the first country music star to have all of the singles from a single debut album to peak on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

While being a wildly popular as a solo artist since he popped onto the scene two years ago, Hunt has also been amazingly successful writing hits for industry heavyweights Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, Billy Currington and Reba McEntire, and everything hints at this powerhouse not slowing down anytime soon.

4. Brett Eldredge

With three #1 singles from his debut album on the Country Music Airplay, Eldredge is no lightweight, and his nominations for Male Vocalist of the Year and New Male Vocalist of the Year prove it. In addition to his nominations, Eldredge is set to perform his single “Drunk On Your Love” at the show, and with an award under his belt already with last year’s CMA New Artist of the Year award, the soul-sounding, chart-topping singer is making waves with his country slash R&B/Blues signature.

Known for making music even with the unrefined elements of regular office supplies and his easily identifiable soul-twang, Eldredge is definitely one to watch as he takes his Ray Charles vibes on tour with Darius Rucker.

5. Thomas Rhett

Son of Akins Rhett, Thomas Rhett is no newbie to the country scene and comes by his Southern roots honest. With 8 singles from his two albums, It Goes Like This (2013) and Tangled Up (2015), and 5 that have landed as Number 1 on the Country Charts, the Valdosta, Georgia native is on a steady rise to the top. Check out his single, “Die A Happy Man,” from his most recent album for a classic country love song that optimizes its acoustic harmonies to sound just right.

He’s toured with the likes of fellow CMA 2016 nominees Brett Eldredge, Miranda Lambert and Lady Antebellum. He’s also written songs for Jason Aldean, Georgia Florida Line and Lee Brice, and co-wrote his own album. For someone who grew up with Brooks & Dunn and Garth Brooks frequenting his living room, it’s only the beginning for this singer-songwriter.

Have your own set of favorites to watch or a March Madness version of the ACM Awards on who will take home the big wins? Leave us a comment and all your predictions on what you expect on award night, and don’t forget country music song suggestions!

Nothing embodies the rapid evolution of digital music as much as Apple’s boast that the launch of the iPod would put 1,000 songs in your pocket. The modern music listener demands that their digital music has the majority of songs ever recorded, for an affordable monthly fee, on any device, and on demand.

While many services claim to offer exclusive features, many will have catalogs that offer pretty much the same features. As such, the streaming service that offers the perfect mix of recommendations, number of songs, elegance, range and quality will survive 2016. Let’s review six of the frontrunners to see which one stands the best chance?

Pandora

Released in 2000, Pandora is one of the oldest streaming services on the market. Offering a better user experience through recommendations of unexplored music according to their listening history, Pandora is a leading light in streaming technology due to inventing the Music Genome Project. But Pandora fell behind due to some issues with licencing restrictions that would not allow you to replay a song, a catalog of only about a million songs, poor social integration and the inability to play songs on demand.

However, while the platform has lost a lot of its allure, it still has pros that will ensure it remains relevant in 2016. It offers a free with ads version and a premium Pandora One option that is without the many ads. Pandora One is quite affordable at $3.99 a month and has a sound quality of 192Kbps. It comes with music recommendations from the Music Genome Project that is available on most devices. Pandora is still the best bet when you intend to use a streaming service for a party since it can keep the music playing with minimal intervention even at the free, non-subscription levels.

Pandora’s biggest downside is that it’s only available in Australia, New Zealand and the United States; though users in other countries who registered with a US Zip can still listen to the service while outside the three countries. It’s recent acquisition of Rdio, which was accessible in 60 countries, could result in a future expansion of Pandora’s availability.

Google Play Music

It is the ideal music streaming service if you use the Google Play store frequently. With 35 million songs in its catalog, it has nearly as many songs as its competitors, Spotify and Tidal. But what sets it apart from the competition is that you can download and upload songs to the service, thereby using it as a digital locker allowing you to play songs on demand.

Furthermore, with the exponential growth in Android devices, you can access the service from multiple devices, even iOS though on a limited scale. It’s best sound quality is 320Kbps, which makes it’s MP3s significantly superior to Sony’s AACs that have significantly lower bitrates. It comes with a free three-month trial and costs $10 a month after that. The subscription is inclusive of YouTube Red that gives you background play and ad free YouTube videos.

Google Play Music is currently available in the 63 countries, covering most of North America, South America, Europe, northern Asia and Australia.

Tidal

Tidal is one of the best music streaming services to watch in 2016 due to its new approach to music streaming. It is a proponent of equal and fair pay for musicians. Recently bought by Jay-Z, its aim is to realign the music streaming industry by making artists the owners.

Tidal offers the best audio quality of all streaming services at 320Kbps high-quality FLAC files for all songs in its catalog. One of its most outstanding features is the short articles and videos that inform and entertain listeners about studios, producers, artists, and music genres. Additionally, it offers expertly curated playlists by different artists and producers.

However, the service does not have any free options. The cheapest audio subscriptions start at $10 a month, while the high-resolution content starts at $20 a month. Though it does not offer any free subscriptions, Tidal is totally worth the money as it has high fidelity music, 75,000 music videos, 40 million songs and no ads. The only con is its poor integration with social networks.

Tidal is currently available in the 46 countries scattered across North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Spotify

With a 30 million-song catalog and $0 price tag, nothing beats Spotify as one of the most popular means of streaming whatever music you like whenever you want it. Integration with Facebook and Twitter makes it easy to find out what your friends are listening to. Moreover, you could easily switch to private mode that takes you offline and have nobody know what you have been listening to.

One issue with Spotify is that it fails to offer recommendations on what you should listen to. While its curated playlists are excellent, the radio station is not at the same standard. Though it does offer high-quality streaming at 320Kbps for Android, iOS and desktop.

Spotify does offer a Premium version for $10 a month that is ad free and offers the same music. It may be worth paying for Premium to avoid annoying interruptions from commercials. Additionally, Spotify allows users to upload any songs that are missing in the catalog, so the platform is likely to grow organically in 2016.

Spotify is currently available in 59 countries, covering most of the Americas, western Europe, Australia, and Southeast Asia.

Apple Music

The newest entrant to music streaming, Apple Music, launched in July of 2015. The service is experiencing exponential growth in subscriptions rivalling Spotify and Pandora, the current market leaders. Apple Music also features a radio station called Beats1 that is always on, curated playlists made by retired music journalists and a mix of curated music. But its best-selling point is that its playlists draw from Apple’s massive catalog of 26 million songs.

Apple Music could be one of the winners of streaming music in 2016 since it offers a pretentious yet edgy feel while delivering on what it promises. Furthermore, the free three-month trial (that rises to $10 a month after expiration) has seen over 11 million people sign up for the service since its launch.

Probably Apple Music’s biggest advantage is that it is currently available in 113 countries, across Africa, the Middle East and India, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the United States and Canada.

How to Stream from Geo-Blocked Countries

One of the disadvantages of the streaming services is that they are not all available in every country and some countries have yet to be reached by any of them. If you find yourself in a country that does not support streaming, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) could come in handy. With a VPN, you would simply change your location to a country that your service supports and instantly get access to all of your streaming services.

The Verdict

Overall we’d have to go with Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play Music as having the best chances of making it in 2016. Tidal is quite good, so do not count it out yet. Pandora has longevity on its side but is highly unlikely to be making big waves this year.

So what is your favorite? Which one do you think will outlast all the others and be the top dog in the music streaming industry? Join the conversation below.

Whenever a musician releases a new album, a music tour in support of that album won’t be far behind. With the release of her number one selling album 25, Adele has created an unprecedented demand for tickets to her upcoming American tour. Unfortunately, the timing of the release of those tickets and the seemingly unstoppable robotic ordering from huge ticket brokers left many fans stranded without tickets. It also didn’t help that Ticketmaster’s website was overwhelmed by the volume of traffic once those tickets were released. Does this mean the future for the average concertgoer will be left in the hands of expensive ticket brokers?

The Mad Rush for Tickets

Before buying concert tickets online became popular, fans would have to line up outside of venues to score seats for a concert. Dedicated fans had no problem camping out the sidewalk in anticipation of seeing their favorite bands and performers. These sidewalk campouts became a kind of fan club meeting, and despite inclement weather, a good time was had by all.

That all changed with the advent of online ticket purchases. Now concertgoers are given a specific date and time when tickets will be made “available.” That puts them locked to their computer ready to hit the “refresh button” as many times as needed to land those coveted tickets.

For Adele’s concert tour, tickets were made available in a surprise announcement in the early part of December. This was the height of the holiday shopping season, which required many fans to adjust their schedules in order to compete for the tickets. Once the clock struck 10 a.m., there was a virtual mad rush on the Ticketmaster website. This led to many fans being shut out. They poured their frustrations out all across social media. This did not make for a very Merry Christmas!

A Limited Number of Seats

Breaking down the number of show dates plus available seats for Adele’s concert tour, and you’re left with around 750,000 possible tickets. When you consider that by its fourth week of sales Adele’s newest album sold over 6 million copies, then it’s clear that there would be many fans left empty-handed.

In addition to the number of seats, there were other issues that hampered the average fan with their online ticket purchase. There were pre-sales for registered VIP users to Adele’s website. Right out of the gate that took around two thirds of the available tickets off the markets even before the general public got their chance to make a purchase. It’s no wonder the Ticketmaster website was swamped and stalled. Even though Ticketmaster officially stated, “They performed very well,” there were several hundred Adele fans who begged to differ.

The Bot Factor

Another issue that contributed to the limited availability of concert tickets was the sophisticated use of automatic ticket buying by ticket brokers. It was estimated by Ticketmaster that around half a million potential “botted” ticket purchases were blocked. However, with all that blocking action going on, it further slows things down even more. Despite the efforts to prevent these kinds of automated purchases, you can find evidence of their success when several online ticket brokers begin promoting Adele tickets just moments after they went on sale. Of course, these tickets are often double and triple in price because of the “handling charge.”

A Concert Alternative

Although seeing a performer like Adele live would be a memorable event, there are still many ways to enjoy her music. Obviously, downloading her albums and making them top of your playlist is the best option. However, there could be issues with your privacy when downloading music. One way to ensure that your private information will be protected is to download your music through a Virtual Private Network (VPN). This will get you the music you want to listen to and provide peace of mind knowing your identity and credit card information to be secure.

As for going to see Adele in concert, if you didn’t land a ticket and aren’t willing to pay hundreds over face value to a ticket broker, you might just have to wait for the next concert tour or try to catch the TV version of her concert. Either way you don’t have to go without Adele!

The teen country queen turned international pop star puts a stop to streaming her albums, but at what cost? In a world of free music—from the rip programs such as Napster and Pirate Bay to the conglomerate tune towns such as Spotify and Pandora—one artist takes home the Grammy’s and shuts off the free gravy train: Taylor Swift.

With the upcoming 1989 album release, Swift and her team of lawyer masterminds took the Swedish Spotify brand head on by announcing conditions for which listeners on Spotify could hear the new album for free and which ones could not.

Negotiations were reportedly heated, with Swift holding out that international listeners could have the CD for free while American listeners should have to pay the premium, and it put a wrinkle in the music streaming business plan. Swift pulled her music off the site, and no one has gotten a successful chorus of “I Knew You Were Trouble” from the service since. She shut down the streaming just like Kanye tried to shut her down at the MTV Music Awards—and it wasn’t pretty.

On basic principle, the idea that an artist should have free reign over when, where and how their music plays seems pretty straight forward. Who’s going to deny an artist’s right to choose? But after signing over licensing to a company, what artist still has the right? If you think the artist is still king, then we’ve got a problem, because it only gets more complicated from there.

Let’s start with the facts.

In 2013, Taylor Swift made over $39 million between a platinum selling record, a Diet Coke deal, a Keds deal, being the new face of Elizabeth Arden and more. It’s no doubt the girl is a powerhouse. Indeed, merchandising and sponsorships of her brand are worth many more millions, especially with the upcoming release of her new album, 1989.

And Spotify, created by a generation that grew up taking part in the illegal downloading game of music, became one of the most successful (and legal) free music streaming companies in the world. In response to Swift’s decision, Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, said, “Spotify has paid more than two billion dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists,” also making the point that without Spotify, those listens wouldn’t have ceased, but would have continued through illegal downloading, and the artists would have never received any money for those plays.

In relation, artists and producers receive no money when an album or single plays on the radio, and historically speaking, most of the money that artists make comes from the selling of merchandise and concert tours, rather than actual albums. Especially with the rise of the internet, music ripping and an ever-changing music industry bent on staying relevant, music has been the gateway to making millions in licensing. So why take Spotify down for at least paying a little bit when people were starting to lose money?

There’s a saying that goes: never do anything you’re good at for free. For a big star, with all the media attention focused on her every move, to put her foot down for herself and all the little guys trying to make their breaks out there, it’s a big deal. She has the attention, and its focus isn’t poorly placed. But the bigger problem here isn’t that Taylor Swift just wanted more money, it was that she wanted more money by taking advantage of marketing scheming rather than the “let art be art” vibe she presumed to take.

The agreement Swift attempted to come to with Spotify would have been hugely disadvantageous to her American fans who would have to buy the album is they wanted to hear it, while she was providing her music for free in other parts of the world where her fanbase is not so strong.

While it is truly ingenious marketing from Team Swift, it sets up a slippery slope for Spotify, who would have to concede to such claims by all artists or be unfair. For Americans to have the same service on their phones or otherwise, they’d have to download a Virtual Private Network to change their website source.

And while Spotify is paying a little—and certainly more than radio and illegal downloads—what’s so different about the international streaming service than the at-home waves we get from on our car FM radios?

While it may seem hard for Ek to go against such a music force as Swift, it did set a standard for the future of the streaming industry. Famous or not, powerful or not, streaming has to be the same across the globe for fans everywhere. And while it doesn’t seem fair to Swift, it certainly seems fair to her listeners, who are ultimately going to give her millions for crooning anyway.

When Swift pulled out of Spotify, it sent a pretty clear message. My music doesn’t come for free. But with the conditions she was proposing, that Americans pay while international listeners can continue to listen for free, didn’t seem to send the girl power message the artist wants us to think that it does. Instead, the Swift corporation went against the Spotify corporation, and the only people who lost were the listeners.