Usually when I think of snow and tape, I think of being nine years old and trying to get softcore VHS porn I recorded off of HBO in the middle of the night to cooperate with me. I didn’t think of Internet radio. I’m gonna bet you didn’t either. But give Snowtape a try on your Mac, and you just might.

Snowtape is Mac app and an iPhone app. The purpose of the Mac app is to give you the ultimate experience in streaming Internet radio. You can get rid of the iTunes radio stuff, and use Snowtape’s much cleaner UI and more powerful features. Aside from Snowtape’s robust channel organization features, it’s a fantastic radio recording tool. Start off with one of the preset channels, or add a streaming station of your choosing, and you’re on your way. And while it’s nice just browsing all the content that’s out there, it’s a pleasure to start collecting. Once you hit record, Snowtape will create high quality mp3s of all the music you listen to, attach the metadata being broadcast by the channel, and add it to your iTunes library. You can even check the option to auto-delete commercials.

It’s seamless and extremely easy to start amassing a lot of content. I myself hopped on the retro gaming channel and picked up a bunch of old PC-88 music quite easily. You can check for album artwork in Snowtape, and Snowtape will provide iTunes purchasing link if available. It’s pretty badass, and anyone with a penchant for listening to streaming audio will love Snowtape.

The second part of the Snowtape package, the iPhone remote app, makes it a breeze to sit back, navigate all your channels, and start and stop recording. I found myself laying in bed on lazy afternoons getting lost in discovering new music, and saving all the good stuff to my hard disk. The iPhone app redefines the Snowtape experience by untethering you from your computer and making you feel as if your just flipping through all the different music channels on your cable box. The only downside is that the remote, which can only be used with Snowtape desktop, isn’t free. That said, if you’re going all in on the Internet radio thing, be prepared to go hog wild and buy the iPhone remote to ensure you get the best experience possible. It’ll only cost you a buck. [Ed note: If you buy the Snowtape Remote app first, you can get the desktop version at 20% off, which is an even better deal]

I fully endorse Snowtape. You can download a trial of the $29 desktop version here, and the mobile counterpart can be downloaded from the App Store for $0.99.

Early this morning, as the Apple Store went down, a certain forum member with the alias Mr. X posted on the MacRumors forum that Apple was all set to introduce an new 4GB Shuffles, even posting the new model numbers. As it turns out, Mr. X was incredibly correct in his update.

Apple, today, introduced an all new iPod Shuffle model with a completely redesigned form-factor. These new iPod Shuffles are comparatively smaller in size than their previous generation brothers. Made out of anodized aluminum, the Shuffle has now taken a vertical form-factor, similar to the iPod Nano. Surprisingly, the front of the device has been left pale and bland, compared to the back that has a shiny clip with the Apple logo on it.

The new iPod Shuffle comes in only one capacity of 4GB, can hold upto 1000 songs and comes in black and silver colors. In a bold move, Apple has now eliminated all physical control buttons on the Shuffle, moving them to the earphone cord. The only physical button that now exists on the Shuffle is for the options to control continuous playback, shuffle or turning the iPod off.

The earphone cable now carries the iPod controls, with only 3 click areas – two for volume increase/decrease and the third in the center for play/pause etc.

New Feature

Apple has also added an interesting feature to these new Shuffles, that make the iPods speak to you, which is bound to please John Gruber. Dubbed as “VoiceOver”, the feature speaks out your song titles, artists and playlist names. Using the VoiceOver feature, the new Shuffle allows you to pick a choose between different playlists. This feature, it seems, is not entirely new, and already exists in the iPod Nanos.

The new iPods are set to ship in 3-5 business days for $79, although the previous generation iPod Shuffles continue to be on sale.

Update: Indian price is set at Rs. 4900, with a general availability within 3 weeks.

The Mac market has no shortage of iTunes controllers. In fact, if the mythical MacStore makes an appearance, I’m sure there will be a special category dedicated to iTunes extenders. Of course, there are a few of these that stand out from among the rest. We’ve reviewed some of them in the past, but this one escaped a good look. 

Recently updated to version 2.5, CoverStream boasts of much improved performance and a few other things so I thought I’d give it a look. Not bad for an iTunes controller, I will give it that. But first, the app refused to launch on my iMac. I had to get a special ‘non-protected’ version from the dev (they’re aware of this issue).

When the app does work, it is quite impressive. The floating CoverFlow interface is well done to the point that it can be used to actually navigate iTunes. The UI borrows heavily from the darker shades in iTunes 8 (unofficially dubbed ‘marble’). The progress slider looks especially gorgeous. Double-clicking the artwork reveals the tracklist for the album, much like the iPhone does. 

Typing in U2 narrowed down the results, and double click to show tracklist

Fullscreen mode on the other hand can be controlled using just the remote. You press and hold the prev/next buttons to scroll through the list, and press the menu button to play any track. Press and hold the play button to bring up the track list. Overall excellent implementation of the full screen view with the remote. Oh, and why would you use this instead of Front Row? Mainly because you cannot quit it without having your music stop (am I the only one totally annoyed by this stupidity in Front Row 2.0?).

Apart from the CoverFlow aspect of the app, it features the standard features like control with keyboard shortcuts, the drop down menu from the menubar, Last.fm integration, and notifications every time you switch a track. It even features a music search, one that I’ve come to find indispensable for my iTunes experience with CoverSutra. I’m still confused as to which music search I prefer, as both approaches are very different from each other. Time will tell which one I use more often.

Cover Stream costs €14.95 for a single license (exactly the same as CoverSutra), a trial version for which is available. Check it out and do let me know which one you’ve set your sights on.

If you’ve been holding off on upgrading the favorite tracks in your iTunes Library tracks to Apple’s new DRM-free iTunes Plus version, after Phil made the announcement at Macworld ’09, simply because iTunes only allowed you to upgrade your entire Gigabytes worth library at once, this may come as the day’s best news.

Apparently, Apple is now allowing users to upgrade their tracks to the iTunes Plus version on a per-track basis. Chris Breen at Macworld reports that if you hit the ‘Upgrade To iTunes Plus‘ (iTunes link) on the Store’s Home page, iTunes not only gives you the options to upgrade your entire library at once, but also lists the protected tracks and albums in your library, which you can browse through and choose to upgrade to iTunes Plus according to your choice and needs.

Remember, it still costs 30 cents to upgrade a track to its iTunes Plus version and upgrading Music Videos will cost your 60 cents. You may also choose to upgrade entire albums, which are priced between $3 to $4.

Important note: If you use iTunes’ Shopping Cart for purchasing media and add an album to that Shopping Cart, it will be listed at full price rather than the upgrade price. Click the Shopping Cart’s Buy Now button and you will pay full price for the album ($9.99 versus $3, for example). For this reason, until Apple irons out this glitch, be sure to set iTunes’ Store preference to Buy and Download Using 1-Click.

So what’s your library looking like? Is DRM-free and higher bitrate worth the extra 30 cents? Or was it not that much of a bother in the first place?

In what seemed to be the most disappointing keynote by Apple, most of which featured upgrades to the iLife and iWork suites, the company has announced that effective immediately, songs available in the iTunes Music store will be DRM-free. Although this had been rumored for quite a while now, Phil chose to keep us waiting till the end of the keynote.

Of the 10 million songs available in the store from major music labels such as Warner Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music, Virgin, American Recording, EMI, 8 million are already available sans DRM in the store while the remaining 2 million would be made available by April. You should be able to seen an option to upgrade your music library at $0.30 per song, while music videos can be upgraded at $0.60 each. The songs would be high in quality with Apple’s DRM-free 256kbps AAC.

If that doesn’t set your pulse racing, Phil also announced that the iTunes Music Store would now be available over 3G too. Imagine access to 10-million songs, anywhere on the planet, on the go on your iPhone at 3G speeds. You can come back and dock your iPhone and the songs would be copied over to your library in iTunes. This too has already been put into effect, at the same pricing and quality as Wi-Fi, so you can start playing with your iPhone right away. (Sorry iPod Touch users!)

Another interesting aspect to this announcement was that, come April, Apple would implement a three point pricing on the songs. Depending on what the music labels charge, songs on iTunes will be available at 69 cents, 99 cents or $1.29. The albums seem to remain at $9.99.

What does this new freedom mean to you? Will you be looking through the Amazon Mp3 catalog or is it going to be iTunes all the way!

The people behind the largest music store in the world have decided to start a little podcast of their own. The iTunes Weekly Rewind [iTunes link] is a weekly show by members of the iTunes music team, and boy do they know their music!

The idea behind the show is to introduce you to new music that you might have heard on TV shows, movie trailers, or music that is making its rounds on the Internet. “The music that makes up the soundtrack to your week” says one of the hosts (in every single episode, no less). Each episode focusses on a few key artists and revolves around those genres. Staying away from mainstream music that you would already know about, the hosts bring in new talent as well as the classics. The hosts are very knowledgeable about the music they talk about and give you the story behind the songs.

The production of the show is top notch, which doesn’t come as a big surprise when you consider where this podcast comes from. The episodes are all in enhanced AAC, which means that they display the artwork of the song they are playing. And if you want more info, click on the link (which is only visible when you’re listening to it in iTunes) and it will take you to the iTunes store (via your web browser).

I highly recommended this podcast for music listeners who want to discover new music [iTunes link]. With five episodes down already, I can see this podcast having a permanent residence in my podcast collection.