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Top 5 Free Apps

Release Date: August 05, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: May 22, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: August 29, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: March 27, 2009
Release Date: August 07, 2009

iTunes New Music Releases

Release Date: September 29, 2009
Genre: Rock
Release Date: September 20, 2009
Release Date: September 15, 2009
Release Date: August 25, 2009
Genre: Rock
Release Date: August 25, 2009

Top 5 Paid Apps

Release Date: April 22, 2009
StickWars $0.99
Release Date: March 31, 2009
Genre: Games
Bloons $0.99
Release Date: April 05, 2009
Genre: Games

Discover New Music

  • Pretty Hate Machine

    • 8 out of 10
    • Nine Inch Nails
    • For years I wanted to make music that sounded like something between Love and Rockets and Ministry. In 1989, Trent Reznor beat me to it with this genre-defining album, and it smacked me upside the hea
  • One Word Extinguisher

    • 8 out of 10
    • Prefuse 73
    • It's an album about a breakup, done with beats instead of mopey lyrics. But the beats are raw, and the emotions are there, even if there aren't many words on top of it. While possibly not Scott Herren
  • Haunted

    • 10 out of 10
    • Poe
    • Dropping like a bomb on some of the blah musical offerings of her contemporaries, Haunted was one of the best albums of 2000, obliterating the competition.

      Ostensibly a tie-in to her brot

  • Plans

    • 8 out of 10
    • Death Cab for Cutie
    • With the introduction of Plans, Death Cab for Cutie became a new addition to many user's Artist list after the single "Soul Meets Body" became a hit on iTunes. Offering a fresh alternativ

  • Mezzanine

    • 6 out of 10
    • Massive Attack
    • "Black Milk" knocks me off my feet in this collection of moody and eclectic songs. Massive Attack uses samples and keyboards in a very unique way, but not all the songs pack the same punch.

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News

Here an App Store, There an App Store

Apple's success with the App Store has, unsurprisingly, led the company's biggest rivals in the smartphone space to create their own online stores due to open this year. According to BusinessWeek, Research in Motion's BlackBerry App World is expected to begin operations next week, with Nokia, Microsoft, and Palm getting ready for their own virtual grand openings later this year.

Mike McGuire, an analyst at Gartner, said "There's going to be a significant counter-­challenge to Apple," while Trip Hawkins, who worked at Apple in the early 1980s before founding Electronic Arts, commented: "This could make the PC wars of the 1980s look like small potatoes."

While the App Store has a commanding lead at the moment, thanks to its 25,000-plus apps and users who have each downloaded more than 20 apps on average, according to BusinessWeek, RIM will fight back by taking 20 percent of the sales, compared to Apple's 30 percent, with paid apps starting at US$2.99, rather than Apple's $0.99.

Nokia, which is on deck with its Ovi Store set to open in May, will offer consumers app listings based on personal tastes, location, and friends' recommendations, in an attempt to answer one major complaint about the App Store, which is the difficulty many users have with navigating its enormous amount of content.

While some developers may be frustrated with that situation, however, it's hard for them to turn away from the potential profits. Satoshi Nakajima, president of photo-editing startup Big Canvas, told BusinessWeek: The distance between Apple and the others is huge. We don't have time to look at other platforms seriously."

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