At a press conference that was more pep rally than information session, the folks at Monster Cable — strike that, they are just "Monster" now — didn't show a single inch of the high-priced connectors they are (in)famous for. Instead, the company rolled out a whole host of top-dollar headphones and other products.

Streaming-music service Spotify announced at a press event in New York City today that it is expanding its social-media outreach with the launch of its own apps market: This will bring new services—including editorial content from Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, lyrics from TuneWiki, social music discovery and sharing from Last.fm, and localized concert listings based on the music you like from Songkick—into the Spotify fold.

The age of the connected cars has arrived, with automakers rapidly rolling out new infotainment systems that can put Internet power in the dashboard. Now, Parrot offers an Android-based in-dash receiver for the aftermarket that is equipped with Internet connectivity and GPS navigation.

Yesterday, Amazon announced three upgrades to its Cloud Player, an online music streaming and storage branch of its Cloud Drive service. And in other news, the online retailer might have just scored an early hit against the iconic computer company in the right to use "app store" as a name.

Now that the company's pockets are flush with cash and it has tied up major-label music licenses, Spotify is readying its U.S. launch, which will likely happen this month.

It sure is getting crowded in the cloud: According to a report by Bloomberg, Best Buy is getting close to the official U.S. launch of a cloud-based music service it first debuted in the U.K. last year, putting it on a direct collision course with other new cloud-music offerings such as Cloud Player from Amazon and Apple's iCloud.

With Amazon, Apple, and Google now offering music services that are at least partly based in the cloud, the popular European streaming service Spotify appears to be edging closer to a U.S. launch: It has signed a licensing deal with Universal Music Group, its third agreement with a major U.S. music label.

We've been hearing a lot about Apple's new iCloud and iTunes Match services, which will launch this fall. And we've seen a fair amount of misinformation about what the services can and cannot do. To help sort through the clutter, here's a list of seven things you should know about iCloud:

Long after Sirius and XM merged, the combined company will reorganize its channels on both the Sirius and XM networks tomorrow, May 4th. The change will group content by genre, and it will make the station numbers consistent between both Sirius and XM.

Amazon's Cloud Drive music service may be controversial with some music labels, but it provides a useful and fairly user-friendly way to access your music from multiple—and especially mobile—devices.

Ever since I read (and posted) about the launch of Amazon's new Cloud Drive and Cloud Player services, I've been anticipating the reaction by the major music labels. Based on past experiences, I assume it will be negative.

Amazon.com is readying a is now offering a service called Cloud Drive that lets people upload and store music in cloud-based lockers, making it available to nearly any Web-connected device. [Correction: The service is available now.]

Your new television might have a huge, beautiful screen, but often the audio quality just doesn't match up. You can give your TV an inexpensive, easy audio upgrade with a sound bar. Those slim enclosures, about 40 inches long,...

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