PlayButton
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Google is testing a global video play/pause button for Chrome
Google could soon add a button to its Chrome browser that would make it possible to pause or play video from any tab. A recent release of Chrome's Canary development version has a new feature called Global Media Controls, as seen by Techdows, ZDNet and others. Once enabled, a play icon will appear next to the URL (beside the bookmark star) if you have a video playing in any tab. By clicking on it, a larger control pops up that lets you pause, play, or skip forward/backward without actually going to the video itself.
Spotify launches Play Button in bid to become the web's default music player
The music streaming wars have been heating up a good deal, as of late, thanks in no small part Spotify's long-awaited US launch. Since then, Rhapsody bought its one-time chief competitor Napster, both Pandora and Rdio underwent major redesigns and Mog finally launched a Windows client. Naturally, all of this has proven good news for the consumer, as services have a features arms race of sorts, gunning for the top spot. None of the contenders are quite perfect, of course -- when Spotify launched, for example, we couldn't help but note the absence of a browser-based option of the sort employed by Rdio and Pandora. Today's announcement still leaves open that possibility, but it does mark a new web-focused strategy for the company -- on that could arguably have a much larger impact on Spotify's fortunes than a simple browser-based UI.Today marks the launch of the Spotify Play Button -- a name we assume the Swedish company settled on before Google announced the whole Android Market rebranding thing. The button is, essentially, a widget that allows site owners to embed songs and playlists directly from Spotify's massive catalog of songs. It's a simple idea, sure, but well executed, it could prove a major win in the service's attempt to stand out in the ever-more competitive world of music streaming. After all, embedding music on sites has long been a fairly haphazard deal -- unless you happen to have a deal with a proprietary player, it means snapping up something like a YouTube video, which often live in, at best, a legal gray area.
Playbutton promises to let you wear your music proudly
It's not just slotMusic trying to sell digital music in some sort of physical form -- this so-called Playbutton concept has been making the rounds for the past few months, and it's now finally set to go on sale in February with eight different albums to choose from. As you might be able to surmise, the button is actually an MP3 player, but there's no way to get the music off of it and, to keep things as album-like as possible, there's no shuffle button either. There is a bit of room for some artwork to let folks know what you're listening to though, and you can thankfully plug in your own set of headphones. As for how much they'll cost, Playbutton founder Nick Dangerfield says albums sold on the buttons could be as much as $30 apiece, although he notes that it'll be up to the artists to decide how much they want to charge -- he suggests the "ideal price" would be $15 if bands sold them at shows.
