Apple announced today the first worldwide release of AC/DC’s complete catalog in digital format on the iTunes Store.

The Cupertino-based tech firm worked with music label Columbia Records to bring out titles from AC/DC’s 16 studio albums, 4 live albums and 3 compilation albums.

All the digitally mastered tracks for iTunes give fans the option to download entire albums or purchase a favorite title.

“Fans can also choose from two specially packaged digital compilations: The Complete Collection, the complete iTunes-exclusive AC/DC catalog; and The Collection, which includes all 16 studio albums,” says Apple in a press release. “AC/DC’s music has been Mastered for iTunes, ensuring the music is delivered to listeners with increased audio fidelity, more closely replicating what the artists, recording engineers and producers intended.”

Image: Mary McCoy, via Flickr (CC)

 The full catalog which has all been Mastered for iTunes includes:

Collections
The Collection (all studio albums for $99.99)
The Complete Collection (all studio albums, live albums and box sets for $149.99)

16 Studio Albums 
High Voltage (1976)
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (1976)
Let There Be Rock (1977)
Powerage (1978)
Highway To Hell (1979)
Back In Black (1980)
For Those About To Rock We Salute You (1981)
Flick Of The Switch (1983)
74 Jailbreak (1984)
Fly On The Wall (1985)
Who Made Who (1986)
Blow Up Your Video (1988)
The Razors Edge (1990)
Ballbreaker (1995)
Stiff Upper Lip (2000)
Black Ice (2008)

4 Live Albums 
If You Want Blood You’ve Got It (1978)
Live (1992)
Live (2 Volume Collector’s Edition) (1992)
Live At River Plate (2012)

3 Compilation Albums
Bonfire (1997)
Backtracks audio (2009)
Iron Man 2 soundtrack (2010)

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Clive Davis, Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, Jimmy Jam, Trevor Rabin (composer and vocalist of Grammy Award-winning group Yes) and music and entertainment industry giants committed to fighting cancer, HIV/AIDS, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases will take part in Songs of Hope VIII, a special event and silent auction that supports lifesaving research at City of Hope. Held at Rolling Stone’s exclusive House of Rock in, Santa Monica, Calif., the Oct. 18 event will be emceed by Jimmy Jam and feature an intimate performance by Edmonds.

Recognizing their amazing careers as songwriters and composers, the Songs of Hope VIII award recipients will include the:

• Clive Davis Legend in Songwriting Award presented to Edmonds
• Electronic Arts Composer Award presented to Rabin

The exclusive Songs of Hope silent auction features rare and one-of-a-kind music and film experiences and autographed items, including the opportunity to bid on original sheet music to “Lay Lady Lay” autographed by Bob Dylan; lithographs of John Lennon ’s “On Cloud Nine” and “Ongakuku” (“Musician”); a Takamine guitar signed by the Eagles; autographed scores for “Hunger Games” and “Game of Thrones”; a guitar signed by Maroon 5; conductor’s lead sheets for the Bobby Darrin song “That’s All” with his notes; 4-person VIP scoring session experience with Danny Elfman for the movie “Oz: The Great & Powerful”; a Slash-signed guitar; and access to sound check, meet & greet, and VIP tickets to a Paul McCartney concert, to name a few.

David Renzer, president of Music Ventures at Saban Capital Group and co-event chair of Songs of Hope VIII, said, “Since its inception, Songs of Hope has been a unique event that has attracted tremendous support from the songwriter, publisher, music and entertainment industry. It’s great to see that tradition of philanthropy continue with Songs of Hope VIII, and a big thanks to our partners at House of Rock.”

“I am thrilled to be able to support City of Hope’s incredible research and lifesaving treatment by co-chairing Songs of Hope VIII, which has always been one of the most enjoyable music industry events,” said Doug Davis of The Davis Firm, co-event chair of Songs of Hope VIII.

“It’s an honor to continue to be associated with the City of Hope whose sole purpose it is to better the quality of the lives of the people it touches,” said Evan Lamberg, Songs of Hope VIII co-event chair and president, North America, Universal Music Publishing Group.

“The generosity of the music and entertainment industry allows City of Hope to create longer and healthier lives for people everywhere,” said Britta Bucholz, senior director of development at City of Hope.

Guests will enjoy a cocktail/hors d’oeuvres reception and the ambiance of the exclusive House of Rock – a historic estate transformed into an unparalleled, exclusive media, pop culture, and live music experience.

Prior honorees and participants at Songs of Hope have included Ne-Yo, Desmond Child, Stevie Wonder, Will.i.am, Mark Mothersbaugh, The Doobie Brothers, Swizz Beats, Jermaine Dupri, Dave Stewart, Glen Ballard, Lionel Richie, Gavin DeGraw, Colbie Caillat, and many others.

Songs of Hope VIII music and entertainment platinum and presenting sponsors include Clive Davis, American Express, Electronic Arts, Peer Music, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Spotify, Universal Music Publishing Group, Stiletto Entertainment and VEVO.

To date, Songs of Hope has raised over $2 million for City of Hope.

City of Hope is a leading research, treatment and education center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases.

Designated as a comprehensive cancer center, the highest honor bestowed by the National Cancer Institute, and a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, City of Hope’s research and treatment protocols advance care throughout the nation.

City of Hope is based in Southern California and is ranked as one of “America’s Best Hospitals” in cancer by U.S.News & World Report.

Founded in 1913, City of Hope is a pioneer in the fields of bone marrow transplantation and genetics.

Source: City of Hope

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Human rights organization WITNESS celebrated 20 years of collaborative activism with musicians, celebrities and human rights supporters at its 8^th Annual Focus for Change Benefit held at the Roseland Ballroom.

Hosted by award winning actor and long-time supporter of LGBT rights Alan Cumming , the evening kicked off with a journey – taking guests back in time 20 years to look at how WITNESS and its partners have used video in human rights campaigns over the years.

“I am proud to support WITNESS,” said Cumming. “Having worked in film for over 25 years, it’s inspiring to see examples of how video has been used successfully in the struggle to protect human rights.”

Music legend and WITNESS co-founder Peter Gabriel, in between stops on his Back to Front tour, performed.

Emmanuel Jal, Peter Gabriel, Feist and Alan Cumming at WITNESS 20th Anniversary Benefit. (PRNewswireFoto/WITNESS)

“WITNESS became a vision for me after the Human Rights Now! Tour back in 1988. I traveled with Amnesty International and met brave human rights defenders who suffered grave abuses. I documented their testimonies with my own handheld video camera in the hopes that their stories would not be buried or forgotten,” said Peter Gabriel. “20 years later, WITNESS is now as important as ever, helping people use video to tell their stories and giving them access to strategies and tools to create meaningful change.”

Other musicians who performed to show support for the WITNESS-led Video for Change era were Canadian singer-songwriter and Grammy nominee Feist and South Sudanese musician and former war child turned peace soldier, Emmanuel Jal .

WITNESS partners, who have worked to put a stop to slave labor in Brazil, to end rampant abuse in the U.S. juvenile justice system, and to end recruitment of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, shared their stories and explained how video changed their lives and the situations in their respective communities.

Since 1992, WITNESS has trained more than 4,500 human rights defenders and partnered with over 300 groups in 86 countries to produce campaign videos that have reached more than 260 million people worldwide.

“Tonight we celebrate how much WITNESS has accomplished over the last 20 years, but also look forward to how much more we can continue to accomplish,” said Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, Executive Director of WITNESS. “We are at a critical point in the history of human rights, where anyone with a camera can be not only a witness but also a catalyst for change. In this ‘cameras everywhere’ world, WITNESS is committed to helping grow the ranks of human rights defenders and citizen activists.”

To top off the festive evening, DJ Cassidy, a global phenomenon in the DJ world, turned the event into an iconic NYC dance party.

Video clips of interviews and musical performances, plus images from the event can be accessed at witness.org/gala.

Source: WITNESS

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Getty Images, Inc., one of the world’s leading creators and distributors of still imagery, video and multimedia products, and SoundCloud, the world’s leading social sound platform, have announced a collaboration that unites the originality of audio content in SoundCloud’s community of more than 20 million registered users with Getty Images’ global distribution channels and expertise in licensing digital media.

The partnership provides media, advertisers, designers and creatives with the ability to license fresh, unique and original audio and music through Getty Images Music the moment it is created.  In addition, the partnership removes traditional barriers in licensing music for visual projects.

The partnership provides a seamless sync licensing solution for businesses as well as a new commercial licensing opportunity for SoundCloud’s community of songwriters and other sound creators, who can now make their original content available for licensing by adding the “license” button from Getty Images Music to their SoundCloud player.

The new feature allows SoundCloud users to make selected tracks available for sync licensing directly on the SoundCloud player, and allows commercial users to request a license for any of those tracks by clicking the “license” button on the SoundCloud player.

For additional information on how to add a license button from Getty Images Music to your SoundCloud player please visit: http://soundcloud.gettyimages.com.

The SoundCloud audio content available for license will also be added to a branded collection on Getty Images Music at http://www.gettyimages.com/Music and on SoundCloud’s platform at http://soundcloud.gettyimages.com/.

“Getty Images Music and SoundCloud’s collaboration combines two great digital platforms,” said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images.

“This partnership fits directly with Getty Images strategy of making the broadest and best content available to our customers in a seamless and simple experience while providing a meaningful benefit to the creator.”

“SoundCloud’s partnership with Getty Images Music creates a powerful offering to our community of professional and casual creators,” said Alexander Ljung, founder & CEO of SoundCloud.

“Now through Getty Images Music, songwriters and audio creators can broaden their exposure and potentially monetize sounds they’ve shared on SoundCloud.”

Getty Images will be a commercial rights manager of the audio content selected for the SoundCloud collection. Getty Images will ensure all tracks are available for safe commercial use by customers.

SoundCloud members will benefit from Getty Images’ global sales and distribution teams helping to market their sounds and from Getty Images’ expertise and experience in rights and clearances of digital content.

Getty Images’ customers will benefit from the fresh, unique and individualistic sound from members of SoundCloud’s global community.

For more information on this partnership, listen to Getty Images COO Nick Evans-Lombe and SoundCloud Founder and CEO Alexander Ljung speak about the collaboration on this SoundCloud track, and please visit: http://www.gettyimages.com/Music.

Source: Getty Images, Inc.

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American singer Lady Gaga became on Thursday the first person in the world to pass the 30 million followers threshold on microblogging platform Twitter.

Thursday night, American singer had 30,033,613 followers, her Twitter account registering approximately 30,000 new fans every day, according to the website starcount.com, which monitors celebrities’ activity on social networks.

Lady Gaga Hits 30 Million Followers on Twitter

“Paving the way for other celebrities on social networks, Lady Gaga often corresponds with her fans and she even set up her own social networking platform, Little Monsters, which has several thousand users that connect regularly,” reports starcount.com.

Lady Gaga has already been the first person in the world who has passed the thresholds of 10 and 20 million followers on Twitter.

According to the same source, on 2^nd and 3^rd are Canadian singer Justin Bieber, with 28.5 million fans, and singer Katy Perry, respectively, with 27.2 million followers. Rihanna, although she has more fans on YouTube and Facebook, is still behind Lady Gaga on Twitter, with 26 million fans.

In less than three years of career, Lady Gaga has won several awards, including five Grammys (12 nominations), has set two world records and has sold over 23 million copies of her albums and 64 million singles. Billboard has named her the “Artist of the Year” and the “Best Selling Artist” in 2010. Lady Gaga was ranked 73^rd on the list of the most influential people of the decade, was also included in the Top 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine, while Forbes put her in the list of the most powerful celebrities in the world.

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On October 26, the launch of Windows 8 is not enough and neither the release of multiple compatible notebooks and tablets announced so far. For this reason, Microsoft prepares something else for us – Xbox Music.

According to The Verge, the new streaming service Xbox Music has already been confirmed by several sources close to Microsoft, occasion through which has also been leaked the date of October 26 as the official release date of the streaming service.

From what it seems, it is not about an audio content purchase service, but something similar to the classic Spotify. As a result, a subscription fee will be applied to those who want to have online access to a large database of tracks by using terminals that run Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and, of course, Xbox 360.

In what concerns the cloud part of the new service, SkyDrive will be responsible for synchronizing all tracks and playlists a user has saved in Xbox Music on all devices owned. In order to provide audio content to those who can’t afford paying a subscription fee, Microsoft will also offer a full-of-ads free version of this service.

Although shortly after the launch we will see apps for Xbox Music only on Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Xbox 360, Microsoft plans for the few weeks or months after the launch to grant access to the service for iOS and Android users, too.

According to sources cited by The News Web, Microsoft refused to comment on this matter.

Source: The Verge

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Smartphone users have no doubt enjoyed the privilege of using the thousands of apps at their disposal. These applications have enabled more efficient communication and social interaction has never been easier. But since the Apple store introduced the world to smartphone apps in 2008, these have so far been restricted to mobile phones and tablets. In fact, most of the apps being launched currently can only be used in telecommunications. However, this apps boom could soon be carried forward to TV and connected sets, according to apps developers who predict this to happen within the next few years.

A Samsung Smart TV. TV apps are the future, with hopes that users will enjoy them by 2015.
Photo: 3dguy

Apps are big business the world over now, and you can now download apps for any and everything you can think of. But with an increase in demand beyond the usual market, 80% of app developers interviewed during a survey conducted by Appcelerator confirmed that they would be working to create apps for TV by 2015. This is a highly anticipated move by industry pundits who expect these new apps to be on high demand as soon as they are released.

The question at this point is probably, just how these apps will work, especially in the connected cars. Will you be able to, say, let your car drive itself to your destination as you read a novel or listen to your favourite pop music? But regardless of how this apps war turns out, the kind of competition we expect can only be good for users.

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Out with the old and in with the new. That is what Daft Logic Studio hopes will happen as they launch their Listen music app. This app allows you to discover your playlist in a whole new way. It is well made, with many creative features and special effects. The app, which sells for $0.99, is an iOS utility that provides users with a funky interface.

A screen shot of the Listen Music App by Daft Logic

Additional control of your playlist has always been an added advantage for any music app, and Listen seems to have mastered this. Most people only get to enjoy the music experience with their ears, but with Listen, users will be able to enjoy literally hands-on control of their playlists and integrate with their preferred social media platforms.

Here is how it works: To play a song, just open the app on your iPhone, and it will randomly select a song from your playlist. If you don’t want to hear that one, simply skip it by swiping or dragging the centre icon to either the left or right of your screen. Drag the centre icon to the control icon and hold to forward or rewind to a particular part of a song. Move the icon up and down to adjust the volume.

The best part is that you can shuffle your music and play randomly selected songs, as well as share with your friends and followers on Facebook, Twitter and on email. Though with minimal features, this app looks great and is easy and fun to use. User reviews claim that it’s a keeper.

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Recent reports suggest that Spotify, a desktop music streaming application, has announced that it intends to launch a revamped web-based version of it. It is unclear whether the desktop version will remain. Said reports are also unclear on what exactly the new application will have over and above the current version, or what it will remove from it.

Spotify is set to launch its web-based application to attract more users.

The service currently allows users to stream music from a selected range of music distributors and record labels. The platform’s subscription has risen over the years and it has now amassed over 10 million users, and 4 million subscribers pay for this service. Customers can either access the service by streaming music for free with adverts in between, or pay for advert-free streaming. A monthly amount of £4.99 will guarantee you unlimited music streaming, while £9.99 will give you enhanced sound quality, ability to work on offline mode and access to exclusive content.

It is also unclear whether the browser-based version will be limited to US customers only. However, reports suggest that Spotify will lower subscription costs for mobile users in order to maximise subscription income from that growing market. Being only a year old in the US, after its 2009 launch in UK, this will definitely be a step in the right direction for the platform.

One of the highlights of Spotify’s existence was in May this year when they launched an iPad application that would allow paid users to access music from the platform’17-million song collection.

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Although it’s been 21 years since his death in 1991, Freddie Mercury would have celebrated yesterday 66 years, this being an event that cannot go unnoticed.

A personality became memorable for various reasons, Freddie Mercury will always remain in the our minds as Queen’s lead vocals and as the only visionary behind some songs became anthems in the meantime – Boheamian Rhapsody, Killer Queen, We are the Champions and We Will Rock You.

With the video below, created with great inspiration from the 1978 hit song Bicycle Race, the people at Rovio are also officiating a tribute to the singer. In addition, the end of the clip draws attention to the most important anti-AIDS causes created in the name of Mercury. Specifically, by celebrating the “Freddie for a Day” day, which consists of acquiring various promotional products, a significant portion of the funds would be directed towards The Mercury Phoenix Trust, an organization that deals with the coverage of risks of HIV – AIDS.

Also, Rovio took advantage of this opportunity and has launched a special t-shirt with Freddy Mercury, in the same way as the other products sold at this time. A part of the t-shirt price will go to The Mercury Phoenix Trust.

Although we rarely spend time commemorating artists, Freddie Mercury and Queen generally represent one of the foundation stones of our personalities. They probably marked our childhood at such a level that we still remember his death in 1991, although many of us were only a few years old at the time.

For more details about the Freddie for a Day campaign, please visit www.freddieforaday.com.

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