Tango Music Pix Returns For Its Official Launch

Earlier this year, we noticed that Tango had released a new app to the App Store called “Tango Music Pix.” It let users combine photos from their phone with a songs from a streaming library to make intimate slideshows that you share with friends over Tango, Facebook, Twitter, or email. Shortly after that post, the app was taken down from the App Store.

Today, Tango has officially re-released the app, which the messaging service is calling its first “sister application.” In a phone call, Tango vice president of strategy Chi-Chao Chang told TechCrunch that Tango Music Pix is the first product to come out of the company’s new Tango Labs effort, letting team members pitch ideas “complimenting the core goal of the messaging app.”

What makes Music Pix an interesting compliment to Tango’s main app is that it doesn’t require you to log in with a Tango account. It’s very much so the opposite of Facebook’s strategy with Facebook Messenger — instead of forcing you to use it by removing its music-sharing features in the main app, Tango is simply offering something that people can try without feeling like they’re committing to anything.

While Tango Music Pix is based on common behavior in the Tango messaging app — sending friends photos and sharing music with the app’s Spotify integration — it won’t offer the same breadth of music options as you’d get in the company’s main offering. According to Chang, the songs in Music Pix (provided by Rumblefish) won’t include much “from the top of the charts — Billboard Top 10 or Top 20.” That could definitely be a turn off for some users, though it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Tango eventually bring over Spotify integration from Tango proper.

Tango Music Pix is available on the Google Play Store now, and a Tango spokesperson says the app should hit the App Store this week (it’s likely being held up by long review times thanks to the recent release of iOS 8.)

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Tango Music Pix Returns For Its Official Launch

Earlier this year, we noticed that Tango had released a new app to the App Store called “Tango Music Pix.” It let users combine photos from their phone with a songs from a streaming library to make intimate slideshows that you share with friends over Tango, Facebook, Twitter, or email. Shortly after that post, the app was taken down from the App Store.

Today, Tango has officially re-released the app, which the messaging service is calling its first “sister application.” In a phone call, Tango vice president of strategy Chi-Chao Chang told TechCrunch that Tango Music Pix is the first product to come out of the company’s new Tango Labs effort, letting team members pitch ideas “complimenting the core goal of the messaging app.”

What makes Music Pix an interesting compliment to Tango’s main app is that it doesn’t require you to log in with a Tango account. It’s very much so the opposite of Facebook’s strategy with Facebook Messenger — instead of forcing you to use it by removing its music-sharing features in the main app, Tango is simply offering something that people can try without feeling like they’re committing to anything.

While Tango Music Pix is based on common behavior in the Tango messaging app — sending friends photos and sharing music with the app’s Spotify integration — it won’t offer the same breadth of music options as you’d get in the company’s main offering. According to Chang, the songs in Music Pix (provided by Rumblefish) won’t include much “from the top of the charts — Billboard Top 10 or Top 20.” That could definitely be a turn off for some users, though it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Tango eventually bring over Spotify integration from Tango proper.

Tango Music Pix is available on the Google Play Store now, and a Tango spokesperson says the app should hit the App Store this week (it’s likely being held up by long review times thanks to the recent release of iOS 8.)

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Beats Music Mobile App Gets Recommendation Tweaking, Verified Profiles And More

Beats Music has updated its iOS, Android and Windows Phone applications with a few new features, including a way to tune the Beats recommendation engine manually for better suggestions, a new history view for The Sentence, the Songza-like Madlibs playback engine, and Verified Badges, which add a checkmark to celebrity profiles so you know they’re the real deal.

The Beats Music app also has some player improvements that deliver better playback and general performance, as is often the case with software updates.

This is the first significant update to the music app following the announcement that Apple would be acquiring the Beats Music brand along with Beats Electronics. The changes seem to address feedback provided by users and make available some functionality that reviewers thought was potentially missing.

The app has also received the same updates across all mobile platforms, as mentioned, and not just on iOS. While the company isn’t yet officially owned by Apple and therefore probably not on any Apple product roadmap, this is potentially a promising sign for those on non-Apple hardware who are users of the service and hope to see their software updated in time with the iOS release.

Via 9to5Mac.

Tango Teases “Music Pix,” A Social App For Making Instant Photo Slideshows

Tango, the mobile messaging platform that raised a massive $280 million from Alibaba earlier this year, has quietly rolled out a new photo-sharing application called Tango Music Pix. The app lets you share your photos along with a song, in order to create 30-second customized slideshows. [UPDATED, see below.]

In the app’s description on iTunes, Tango notes that you won’t need to drag, crop or zoom your photos before sending them out – Tango Music Pix does the editing work for you. That makes the new app sound like something of a competitor to Animoto.

However, Animoto also focuses on the business crowd who want to make quick slideshows for work-related purposes – like a realtor showing off a house for sale to potential buyers, for example. But Tango Music Pix is more squarely aimed at the consumer market, as a slideshow builder that lets you quickly post to Facebook, Twitter, Tango’s flagship messaging app, or share via email.

There are several other apps that play in this general space, too, including Sharalike and Flipagram, for instance.

Music Pix is not Tango’s first effort at building standalone applications that work with its main Tango messaging app. The company follows the playbook of Asian messaging apps like LINE, which offers dozens of complementary apps that work alongside LINE, including games, as well as apps that offer other tools, stickers, cards, and more.

Tango’s app lineup today includes a variety of games, too, from racing games to cards games and even a Flappy Bird clone. However, Music Pix would be the company’s first social application to exist outside its main messaging app.

UPDATE: It seems Tango’s Music Pix was not ready for prime time. Shortly after publication, the app disappeared from the iTunes App Store where it was available as a free download.

However, if you were able to grab it before Tango pulled it out, you can still use the app to build your slideshows. One problem I had with the app during testing was that it loaded up your photo gallery from oldest to newest. That made it difficult to scroll to and select your most recent photos. The app also crashed, but that could be an iOS 8 beta bug, so your mileage may vary. In any event, it’s clear that Tango didn’t want anyone finding out about Music Pix just yet.

(hat tip: Musically.com)

Phonotonic Is A Nifty Music Device That Turns Movement Into Music

Meet Phonotonic, a new music device that you can back on Kickstarter. What’s interesting is that you don’t need to have any actual music knowledge to play with Phonotonic — it’s all about movements.

When I first saw a demo of Phonotonic, I was skeptical. The French startup then let me play with it for a few minutes, I started enjoying moving my arms around and listening to the sound that would come out of them.

At heart, Phonotonic is a simple device. It connects through WiFi to your phone or tablet and it has the same kind of sensors that you can find in a smartphone. It comes in a silicon sphere, but you can put the sensor into any object, including your pocket.

When you launch the companion app, you select the rhythm and the main line, and it’s done. You can dance around with two spheres to hear yourself play some good chiptune music, jazz music, rock and roll and more.

The team has been working on this device for two years, and you can hear it in the sound bank. It sounds very natural. If you move faster or slower, you can feel the music change. Finally, you can play music with a friend by giving them one of the two devices.

Two spheres on Kickstarter currently cost $199. The startup is looking for $70,000 and has been able to raise $13,000 so far.

This slow campaign is probably due to the nature of the device. You have to try it to understand it. Moreover, the company is currently working on more apps to follow Sphero‘s model, but the first one looks more like a proof of concept than an actual game. So if the company is able to create a nice ecosystem around these sensors, it could become a nifty little interactive device to make some music if you are not the next Mozart.

T-Mobile Un-carrier 5 and 6: Free iPhone loans, VoLTE, and unmetered music

T-Mobile Un-carrier 5 and 6: Free iPhone loans, VoLTE, and unmetered music | ExtremeTech #colorbox,#cboxOverlay{display:none !important;}#leaderboard .lboard .topad{width:auto;}.article .title h2 ,.article{font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;}.extreme-share{float:left;margin:0 5px 15px !important;}.tags .taglist li a {font:12px/15px arial !important;}.tags .title {padding:3px 0 0 !important;}.tags li a {display:inline-block !important;}.visual .switcher li {overflow:hidden;line-height:17px;}.etech-newsletter .btn-signup {cursor:pointer;}.etech-newsletter span.message {font-weight:bold;}.article strong {font: 16px/22px ProximaNovaRgBold,arial,sans-serif;}(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + (document.location.protocol == "https:" ? "https://sb" : "http://b") + ".scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js' %3E%3C/script%3E")); COMSCORE.beacon({ c1:2, c2:6885615, c3:"", c4:"", c5:"", c6:"", c15:"" }); ExtremeTechTop Searches:Windows 8AutosQuantumIntelTrending:LinuxWindows 8NASABatteriesAutomobilesHomeComputingMobileInternetGamingElectronicsExtremeDealsExtremeTechElectronicsT-Mobile Un-carrier 5 and 6: Free iPhone loans, VoLTE, and unmetered musicT-Mobile Un-carrier 5 and 6: Free iPhone loans, VoLTE, and unmetered musicBy Neal Gompa on June 20, 2014 at 11:17 amCommentShare This article

On Tuesday evening, T-Mobile held its Un-carrier event in Seattle and streamed it live to the public. To everyone’s surprise, T-Mobile launched two initiatives: free 7-day test drives with the iPhone 5S, and unmetered music streaming (much to the chagrin of net neutrality proponents). The company also announced that it has VoLTE and wideband LTE live in over 15 markets, and VoLTE will be available nationwide by the end of the year.

Un-carrier 5.0

In T-Mobile CEO John Legere’s usual flamboyant and semi-profane style, the executive announced “T-Mobile Test Drive” for Un-carrier 5.0. T-Mobile Test Drive is a free service that allows anyone (current customers and non-customers) to request T-Mobile to ship them a free trial kit composing of an Apple iPhone 5S with a temporary phone number and a 7-day variant of the Simple Choice plan with unlimited talk, text, and high speed data (and 3GB of hotspot data).

According to the FAQ on the website, it can only be done once, and the device must be returned (as the kits are specifically allocated for trial usage) to a retail store and inspected for damage. If there’s no significant damage (like cracks on the screen or water damage), then there’s no repair charges. If there is, then T-Mobile will charge a $100 damage fee. As long as you take care of the phone during the trial period this sounds like a fantastic way to get people to try T-Mobile with no risk.

But why the iPhone 5S? According to John Legere, T-Mobile determined that there is a very low awareness of the fact that the company has carried the iPhone since April of last year. T-Mobile and Apple partnered to get iPhone awareness up, with the particular goal of Apple raising its market share among T-Mobile subscribers. With that in mind, the phones are being provided freely by Apple for this program. For T-Mobile, this is about growing awareness of its improved network.

T-Mobile and MetroPCS bandwidth allocations in Dallas

Speaking of the network, T-Mobile announced that it will cover 230 million people with LTE by the end of the month, which puts it very rapidly closing in on its goal to cover 250 million people with LTE by the end of the year. Thanks to its excellent AWS spectrum portfolio, it has 16 markets with wideband LTE. In these markets, T-Mobile customers will have access to throughput of 120Mbps or more with customarily low latency that is expected with LTE. Those markets include Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle.

T-Mobile also announced that it has VoLTE (Voice over LTE) live in 15 markets now, and it’ll be live nationwide by the end of the year. In these markets, AMR-WB (the codec used for voice) bandwidth is nearly doubled from 12.65Kbps (T-Mobile’s existing HD Voice bandwidth) to 23.85Kbps. This further increases the quality of voice calls between T-Mobile customers. VoLTE is active in an number of major markets including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle.

At this time, T-Mobile’s VoLTE service is accessible only with the Samsung Galaxy Light, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, the Samsung Galaxy S5, and the LG G Flex. More devices will get access to the service over time. Presumably, new devices will have it right away, too.

Next page: Un-carrier 6.0, and its potential attack on net neutrality

1 of 2 Next Tagged In webwhats newusalte4g4g ltet-mobileiphone 5Scarriersnet neutralityVoLTEwireless spectrumstreaming musicspotifyApple iPhoneWideband LTEUn-carrierShare This Article .article {margin:0px !important;}.AR_1 {margin :0 0 20px 0 !important;}.AR_2 {margin:0 0 20px 0;} CommentPost a Comment mrseanpaul81

I love tmobile!

meddle0ne

Cool. Now about that service coverage.

Zunalter

What is this strange creature? A giant telecom company that actually appears to be trying to add value to their service instead of squeezing every last dime from their customers? Have I wandered into an alternate universe?

Ivor O’Connor

I use T-Mobile and I support this advert!

(Though I do not support Apple.)

I have been using T-Mobile for quite a long time and as a power user I greatly appreciate what they do as opposed to AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint.

java lu

I switched to T-Mobile a long time ago, was just giving a random shot hoping that I made the right choice. Well, I am super impressed every day!

RozzSummer

You may recall that T-Mobile had agreed to be acquired by ATT not long ago and the deal got shot down by regulators. I’m not generally a fan of AG Holder, but the Justice Department made the right call in this case. Does anyone think the kind of innovations T-Mobile is rolling out now would have occurred as a subsidiary of ATT? Not a chance.

I’m hoping any Sprint overture for T-Mobile gets the same treatment from regulators. Lesson learned.

fidge

This would be awesome if T-Mobile had coverage for voice and sms outside of major US cities. The coverage for even basic mobile phone usage is atrocious.

Elias Steurer

Whats wrong with you t-mobile? Here in germany you’re by far the worst internet provider 0.o

Fabius1

I’m a tmobile customer on my way out. I wish they’d dedicate these resources to building a real national network. Even along major interstates, there is close to zero data coverage if you are not actually inside a major city. The relatively short and heavily trafficked highways between Austin and Houston or Austin and Dallas? Nothing. If you ever drive anywhere outside of the city where you live, T-Mobile will not meet your needs.

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