The new Billboard.com taps tech to put the brand's playlists front and center and make them usable for stream-happy users.

Spotify's got a huge catalog of music and 10 million subscribers. But what happens when the elite critics it's co-opting for its newest feature recommend Led Zeppelin, Adele, Arcade Fire, Coldplay, or other key artists whose albums are conspicuously absent from Spotify?

MTV just launched a new artist ranking service, based on velocity rather than popularity. Its aims: to shed the shackles of the Billboard charts, and take account of blogosphere buzz.

Music, music app, tomato, tomahto? Seems so, lately. Artists from Metallica to Mariah Carey have created apps, offering insider information or employing voice-recognition software to rate users' singing ability (Mariah Carey-oke, anyone?). I Am T-Pain, a top-selling $2.99 download that allows users to mimic the singer's voice through Auto-Tune, has been purchased 1.8 million times by fans and nonfans alike, something that will have this San Francisco conference buzzing. "That's the value of this platform," says Antony Bruno, Billboard's executive director of digital content. Read More »

Weird patent file #48295: RIM (makers of BlackBerry) has a plan for a billboard that changes the ad's length depending on speed. The slower you drive, the more time you have to read (and crash!), so the longer the ad will be.

Should Space150 and Forever 21 have paid or at least acknowledged a very similar project that debuted a year ago?

Interactive billboards take a step forward today in Times Square.

The Hospital Corporation of America's East Florida Division is using tech to "lure" patients into their emergency rooms--and are supposedly seeing success.