A Computer in Every Ear. The Rise of Headphone 3.0

Enter Sonical Headphone 3.0. A fully integrated approach for the product development of headphones and earbuds that allows consumers to load their own apps. audioXpress talked to Gary Spittle, the CEO and founder of Sonical, a young company that developed a chip and a real-time operating system for headphones and hearables. "Hearables should not be defined by the functions of a chip or the Bluetooth profiles, there is a lot more that product makers want to do," says Gary Spittle, the CEO and founder of Sonical.

As officially confirmed to some online media outlets, following insisting rumors that circulated since December 8, Apple is buying Shazam, the music recognition and audio fingerprinting service that is one of the most popular apps in mobile platforms. Together with rival SoundHound, Shazam has gradually evolved into a sort of "gluing" app, helping users discover, interact with, and share music, videos, as well as printed or augmented reality content.

Shazam, one of the world’s most popular audio recognition apps, announced the launch of a massively scaled augmented reality (AR) platform for its brand partners, artists and hundreds of millions of global users, adding visual recognition to its popular music identification service. Beam Suntory, Inc., the world's third largest premium spirits company, has signed on as one of several launch partners.