While the original cans went for nearly $800, the JVC HA-FX700 will come with a $330 price tag. Though the price is steep, you're paying for undeniably pretty earphones, purportedly high sound quality, and a lot of little parts:

The JVC HA-FX700 will be available in Japan in February and likely obtainable through your preferred Japanese electronics importer. [CrunchGear]

Minute vibrations are keeping you from enjoying your home audio at its full potential. That lost fidelity can be reclaimed, however, with some help from the visionaries at Moon Audio. By using high powered magnets to float your stereo on a thin bed of air, their Zero Gravity shelf will "improve the sound of almost any component." Except for maybe VCRs.

The price tag on the Zero Gravity is $500, which, Moon Audio will have you know, is quite cheap for this sort of thing. So if in a moment of weakness you actually buy this shelf, at least you can take solace in the fact that someone else out there spent more for their levitating stereo contraption. [Moon Audio]

2009 was the year of the App Store, as Apple passed the two-billion downloads milestone for its store. The year also saw labels and artists jumping onto the bandwagon with their own branded iPhone apps.

The most successful, like Smule's I Am T-Pain (pictured right) sold tens of thousands of copies a day. It's only fair to point out that the vast majority sank down the app charts fairly quickly though – proving that iPhone apps provide a return on investment for the music industry wasn't a huge priority this year.

Even so, there was plenty of creativity being put to work. To highlight it, we've chosen a selection of 40 branded music apps that we thought were innovative this year – which were all covered in the Music Ally Daily Bulletin.

They're all based on artists, labels and other music brands – the list doesn't include apps for music services like Spotify or Pandora, nor does it include pure music games like Rock Band or Tap Tap Revenge (although one of the latter's artist-branded spin-offs is included).

Read on for a snapshot of what was released this year, and let us know your thoughts on the best and worst of what the App Store had to offer. Oh, and yes, we've put them in a rough order reflecting how much we liked them, starting with the best.

1. I Am T-Pain might be an obvious choice for top spot, but it combined technical innovation with stellar sales. Eschewing pure promotion, it let fans sing along with a selection of T-Pain songs while having their vocals Auto-Tuned on the fly. It also had good sharing features, used in-app payments to buy and download new tracks for use in the game, and recently added the ability to sing over any song in your iPhone music library. App Store

2. Little Boots Reactive Remixer was a branded version of existing iPhone app RjDj. Yes, it involved remixing three of Boots' tracks, but in two cases that was done based on the user's movement and external sounds – a properly interactive ambient experience. Or something. App Store

3. Hi, How Are You was a beautiful iPhone game based on the artwork of singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston. Described by the New York Times as "a kind of psycho-religious version of Frogger", it was a great game backed up with Daniel's visuals and music. App Store

4. Sonifi was one of the most fully featured ‘remix an artist' apps, being designed by and for trance artist BT. It let fans mess with the beats, bass, melodies and harmonies of his latest tracks. The killer feature, though, was a two-player ‘Jam Link' mode to collaborate over Bluetooth. App Store

5. Live Metallica (pictured) was an official app from the metal band that constantly offered a free stream of their latest gig, while also letting fans buy (no, NOT from iTunes) previous sets. Photos and notes from each show made it a must-have for fans.

6. iDrum Underworld Edition was another of the best examples of the popular ‘remix your favourite artist' app genre this year. It offered 13 tracks to mess around with in an intuitive square-tapping interface, with artwork from the band's design chums at Tomato. App Store

7. Johnny Cash: I See A Darkness was a graphic novel based on The Man In Black's life. It didn't include his songs, but had a clever ‘search and insert' feature to find his tracks on a user's iPhone to play at the relevant points of the story. App Store

8. nin: access was the official iPhone app for Nine Inch Nails – one of the more tech-savvy artists in the industry right now. It gives fans access to the community and multimedia sections of the band's website, as well as letting them chat and upload photos from their iPhone. App Store

9. The Presidents of the United States of America was an app by the band of the same name, offering four albums from their back catalogue as streams, as well as lost recordings, live tracks and other extras. App Store

10. Baby By Me Sound Lab was a remixing app created for 50 Cent by Romplr. It involved mixing and matching stems from his Baby By Me single, then posting the resulting remix to Facebook. It tied in with a contest, and sparked 250,000 downloads in a matter of weeks. App Store

11. Lady Gaga iOKi (pictured) was a karaoke app based on La Gaga, with instrumental and vocal remixes from four of her hits enabling people to sing along with her, then go it alone. In-app payments allowed new songs to be purchased and downloaded too, from Gaga and other artists. App Store

12. Deadmau5 Mix was one of the first ‘remix an artist' apps for iPhone, from an artist who would release several more apps later in the year. It let fans remix ten tracks by applying delays, effects, rewinds and cuts, complete with a virtual scratch pad. App Store

13. Metallica Revenge was one of Tapulous' artist-focused spin-offs from its Tap Tap Revenge games – although in fairness we could have picked its titles for Coldplay, Lady Gaga or the Dave Matthews Band in this slot. What these games nailed was the combination of gameplay and experiencing the actual music. App Store

14. Kelly Clarkson Open Mic was a singing game based on the American Idol winner, which scored fans on their ability to sing five of her tracks. It tied into a competition that put winners on-stage singing with Kelly herself during her tour soundchecks. App Store

15. Haus of Gaga was one of the first fruits of Universal Music Group's deal with Kyte, turning its artists' video blogs into iPhone apps. It offered new and archive episodes of the Transmission Gagavision vlog, as well as news, tourdates and live chat. App Store

16. Robbie Williams Racing was, would you believe it, a racing game based on Robbie Williams. No pure cash-in, though – besides his tracks featuring in the game, Robbie himself provided the commentary, with unlockable videos and photos for skilled players. App Store

17. Delicious Vinyl DJ was a music game based on the famous hip-hop label, getting players to match notes to the sounds of Young MC, Tone Loc, The Pharcyde and Masta Ace. A nifty way of getting value out of some venerable hits. App Store

18. Get Physical Mix was a compilation app based on the back catalogue of the Get Physical dance label, which allowed fans to DJ and mix the songs themselves, complete with a virtual scratch pad. App Store

19. Grateful Dead (pictured) was an interactive mosaic e-book – an iPhone version of one of those big pictures which lets you zoom in to see lots of little pictures. Those little pictures being 450 photos of the legendary jam-band, with fans able to comment on each, or share with friends. App Store

20. Gedda-Headz was a mini-game collection for iPhone that offered multiplayer and community features, while tying in with collectible real-world toys. We still haven't heard any music from the band it's supposedly based on, but it was nevertheless a neat idea. App Store

21. HWD was an app created for UK artist Heads We Dance, which allowed fans to stream the band's new album Love Technology two weeks before its official release, with news, photos and community features thrown in. App Store

22. It's Britney was Britney Spears' entry into the App Store, offering the usual news, Twitter feed, photo galleries and even a virtual lighter. There was also a UGC feature to paste your head onto the body of one of Britney's dancers, and most importantly, if you shake your iPhone, the app shouts "It's Britney Bitch!". App Store

23. Mariah Carey-oke was the best-named artist app of 2009, hands-down. The pun partly made up for the fact that her current label UMG doesn't have the rights to her classic hits – so four new tracks were included to dog-whistle along to. App Store

24. Twentyten was an iPhone ‘calendar' app revolving around the key 2010 dates of Belle & Sebastian, with a built-in news feed and bonus digital content. An elegant spin on the promo iPhone app idea. App Store

25. Snoop Dogg's iFizzle (pictured) was a fairly simple app, but with plenty of charm. It was a collection of audioclips of Snoop's "most popular and iconic" phrases and quotes. Yep, including "Fo Shizzle My Nizzle". App Store

26. Phanatic was an app built for hardcore fans of jam-band Phish, offering a comprehensive database of setlists from the band's history. That included links to YouTube videos of performances, and the ability to generate stats in mid-show – e.g. ‘when was the last time they played this?'. App Store

27. Ziggy Marley's Music Mixer was another remixing app, but with the neat twist of a slot-machine interface – users could shake their iPhone to randomly mix up Ziggy's songs. Or they could put the time in to mess about with the tracks themselves, of course. App Store

28. Remix David Bowie – Space Oddity was… well, the title gives it away. It let iPhone users mess around with Bowie's classic hit by tweaking individual tracks, then save the mix as a ringtone. App Store

29. Riff King was a branded app for UK metallers Saxon, with streaming samples of the band's latest album and their new video. However, it also tied in with their YouTube UGC contest – also called Riff King – letting users of the app watch the latest entries. App Store

30. Usher's Top 100 didn't actually focus on R&B star Usher's music – instead, it saw him turn curator, picking 100 of his favourite tracks which users could stream through the same tech used for the PUSA application. App Store

31. The Heavy was the official app from Ninja Tune artist The Heavy, and it offered their entire back catalogue on a streaming basis, plus three videos, news and tourdates, and live footage. But it's the streaming element that intrigued us most. App Store

32. Coldplay Strawberry Swing (pictured) was an app created for Coldplay by online TV firm Babelgum. It showcased the video for the band's Strawberry Swing single as well as their previous videos, bundling in a game for good measure.

33. Deadmau5 Live was yet another iPhone app based on the innovative dance artist. It let fans vote on what songs he should play as his encore at his London Roundhouse gig in October, before serving up a 20-minute live recording once the show was done. (Not still available)

34. New Boyz – iJerkin' was a music game created for WMG act The New Boyz, based on their apparently-popular You're A Jerk dance moves. We stress ‘apparently'. Players could tap, slide and shake to make the band pop their moves, and then buy more tracks. App Store

35. What The Funkytown! was unusual, in that it was based on a song rather than an artist or label. It was a virtual scratching app to monkey about with Funkytown, speeding it up and slowing it down, or even playing it in reverse. App Store

36. Snow Patrol: Snowflake was the band's second iPhone app, providing a news feed, forum and the ability to upload photos at gigs to the band's website. The snowflake theme was carried through to a section where fans could create their own unique flakes. App Store

37. Kiss Virtual Concert Lighter (pictured) was, well, a virtual concert lighter. With 24 branded virtual lighter cases to choose from, a scrolling text marquee, and a "realistic flame". Novelty personalisation, yes, but fun with it. App Store

38. Delphic was a soundtoy app released to promote the band of the same name's new single. A simple drum loop was complemented by the fan tapping on-screen pads to trigger samples. App Store

39. Kiss Me Thru The Phone was an app based around the Soulja Boy song of the same name. It was a photo customisation tool to help fans ‘add swag' to their pics, or plant virtual kisses on friends and family before sharing the results. App Store

40. Pepsi Rock Band was an app created to promote the Rock Band console games. It let people put their own faces on the shoulders of characters from the games, then share them via email, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. It also provided buy links for songs from Pepsi's ad campaign. (not still available)

The leading digital music business information and strategy company, Music Ally, has been providing publications, consulting, and research to the music and technology industries since 2001.

Just head on over to the live stream and use the virtual keyboard to play a song, something resembling a song or a random and hideous mashup of notes that ruins the holidays for everyone. The installation will be on display at the Brick Lane Studio in London through January. [Theopane via Switched via TechEBlog]

Indeed, the numbers are tanking for both major games in this space, and hard, although analyst Michael Pachter says they should level off at a "healthy" $500 million/year.

Reports Reuters, the recently released and much ballyhooed The Beatles game moved 800,000 units to date, which is 200,000 short of what analysts expected it would sell. Guitar Hero 5, on the other hand, sold just 500,000 this year. The number pales in comparison to the 1.4 million pieces of plastic Guitar Hero III managed to sell during its first month on store shelves. DJ Hero, the latest in the pseudo-instrument series, also disappointed.

Come to think of it, that drum set, when viewed the right way, kind of reminds me of sad face. How apt. And how timely! Mark's latest shooting challenge is all about finding faces in strange places.

In other news, landfills report they'll be very busy in 2010. [Reuters via CrunchGear]

Stream music files from your A2DP-supported phone over Bluetooth, and the receiver will pick it up, and play through the speakers you've connected via the supplied RCA or 3.5mm cables. It'll detect a Bluetooth-enabled phone from 33-feet away, and as it's only $50 it could solve some of your audio problems fairly quickly. No, sadly it won't label your iTunes collection properly. [iPodnn]

By deconstructing a standard marimba, assigning a mallet to each, and hooking the whole mess up to two MD24 MIDI decoders, Larry Cotton has found a way to enjoy the soothing plinking of a marimba that can be controlled by any a MIDI sequencer or keyboard. The result is, as you can see/hear, not far from magic. I just like to imagine how many shootouts could have been avoided if these had been around in the Old West instead of those rinky dink player pianos. [Highly Liquid via Make]

Like any good stalker, Heagy was pretty organized about the entire affair. He made a sign to keep in his car so that he was ready to go the instant any of the individuals he'd recruited to watch out for the Street View van called him. In the end though, it was Heagy himself who spotted the Fame-mobile as he was nibbling on his lunch and he quickly hopped into his car, sped after the van, and figured out where it should turn next so that he could set up his sign at the right corner.

Nutty or not, I guess Heagy's plan worked since I couldn't resist extending his 15 minutes of Internet fame after seeing that Google Street View snapshot of his. Hell, the whole ploy worked so well that I'm even throwing up his band's music video:

[Fear Salesman via Neowin]

As you can see in the video above, you use the iPhone to make some simple initial music, and then the Shimon plays along to it. You can then change the style in which it's improvising and fiddle with the original music that it's playing along with.

The next step? Having it play along with real, live musicians, interacting with them and creating music together. Pretty wild stuff.

The Ballerina Sweetspot is designed to be the ultimate music lover's chair. It features a thin headrest to accommodate headphones and prevent the reflection of sound, memory foam to cushion the body, hollow armrests to neatly hold controls and an aluminum frame that supposedly reduces sonic vibration.

I highly doubt that a chair like this will enhance the listening experience enough to justify the $8000 price tag, but, again, people have a thing about chairs. And audiophiles, like CEOs, are probably willing to pay for the best of the best. [Klutz Design via AV Guide via Audio Junkies via Unplggd]

You won't need software anymore to buy songs from iTunes. iTunes will just be on the web—you'll be able to buy and listen directly, through search engines or other sites, much like you can with Lala now. Or if you're not familiar with it, think about the way Amazon is embedded on the internet, and imagine that for music, through iTunes. It's a kind of ubiquity would make the biggest music store in the world even more influential and intractable, a fact that's not lost on record labels.

It's an uprooting of the entire iTunes model: Not only would you buy songs and manage your iTunes library through the web, iTunes could shift to having a serious streaming component, away from "download to own," as Apple's been evaluating the impact of Pandora and Lala on iTunes, though the WSJ is more tentative on this point.

Also, you may very well be able to put your music in the cloud. Essentially, you would own right to listen to the song anytime and anywhere, not just the digital file you downloaded. There's also a chance that Apple will use Lala's ability to scan your current music library, match it up with the files on their servers, and give you access to the songs you already own anywhere via its servers.

Two mildly tangential points: Lala Chairman Bill Nguyen appears to be heavily involved in the new effort, making joint calls to the labels with Apple's Eddie Cue, indicating it's a classic Apple tech-and-brains acquisition, and the WSJ backs up the previously rumored $80 million pricepoint, saying Apple paid $85 million for Lala.

This whole iTunes revamp could happen as early as next year, although there's expected to be some pushback from a music industry already cowed by Apple's strength. But Cupertino's been keeping the major labels on life support for so long, there's just not much they can do about it. [WSJ]

Mashable is reporting on the launch event and this is what they've learned so far:

• On stage, Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated that Bono suggested the meeting started VEVO.
• 85% of all music videos will go through VEVO, with the rest going on YouTube.
• VEVO will manage all ad sales
• The music video site is focusing on getting rid of duplicate videos. If you have ever browsed YouTube, you'll find that many music videos do, in fact, have duplicates.
• VEVO will not launch with HD. That will come out next year.
• Now this is awesome: VEVO includes synchronized and integrated lyrics
• The YouTube and Universal joint venture will be premiering new videos from 50 Cent, Mary J Blige, and Mariah Carey tonight. They are all exclusives.
• You won't have to watch a preroll every time you watch a VEVO video. It will serve ads based on aggregate usage.
• VEVO will come up any time you search for artists on YouTube
• VEVO's launch sponsors includes AT&T, McDonald's, Nikon, Mastercard, Dove, Colgate, Axe, and Infinit.
• Aol and CBS are joining the VEVO music network. This means that users coming through their websites will get VEVO.

Word is that the site is actually already live but bogged down by traffic. Is anyone able to access it? [Vevo via Mashable]

BBC4's Synth Britannia was a sufficiently comprehensive look into the electronic music of postpunk Britain, from the pioneering soundtrack to "A Clockwork Orange" by Wendy Carlos, to experimental groups like OMD, Throbbing Gristle, and early Human League...

on to the pop greats that were my first real introduction to synth music, Depeche Mode and New Order. It ends in the middle '80s as synth music transitioned to club music and rave culture, getting nowhere near this decade's full-circle acceptance of '80s synth and chip sounds in pop.

A lovely way to spend 90 minutes, especially for dorks of a certain age who felt a kinship between early synth pop and the captivating other of both Britain and anything electronic. Too bad it's not available for watching on the BBC's iPlayer. You'll have to check the box where you keep your synthesized television experience.

Trance "act" Above & Beyond DJed in the Mojave desert yesterday for Branson's SpaceShipTwo event, and are so desperate to see space, they've asked if they can join the ride. Hailing from the UK, Above & Beyond certainly sound space-nutty, sampling Buzz Aldrin in one of their tracks.

Boasting to NME, one of the trancers, Jono Grant, said:

"We're big fans of all things space-related and so in terms of dream gigs, this is up there alongside our performance in Rio to one million people"

Branson, how about forgetting the whole 'space passenger fights' thing and turning SpaceShipTwo into an intergalactic anti-Noah's Ark? [Above & Beyond NME via TechRadar]

Your cat/dog/ferret may get peeved if it detects their thermal temperature and follows it about playing drum 'n bass, but I would love a roving music tank that I could control using any Wi-Fi or Bluetooth enabled device. Mint claims its Mintpad is the perfect partner for the Music Tank, but you can control it with your PC if you so desire.

If it ever comes up against the effeminate Sony Rolly, our money is on the Mint Robot Music Tank. Just look at those tracks! [Mint Pass via DVICE]

A floating speaker that would play theme music when you entered a room, WWE-style. Movie protagonist style.

Imagine, you walk into the office, Every Rose Has Its Thorn deafens a whole room of cubicles. Pumped (and possibly greased), you march through the office in slow motion (or just very slowly, no one can quite tell). And it's all thanks to your little Melody Balloon, a concept that is now 1% less plausible but 10000000% more incredible. I mean, as long as we're making stuff up, it might as well include at least one 80s meme. [Yanko via UberGizmo]

Each iPhone has been programmed to deliver a different sound when each function is used. The touchscreen, microphone, GPS, compass, wireless sensor and accelerometer have all been tinkered with, so Georg Essl, the lecturer/computer scientist/musician can turn the cacophony into something resembling music. We say "something" very loosely, as you can see from the video here. [Facebook via 9to5Mac]

He's no stranger to the tech world, having dabbled in some light SMS spamming on an Australian visit last year, and now he's contributed a playlist to MySpace Music, which features tracks from his favourite brudda, Tupac.

MySpace Music has just launched in the UK, 15 months after it debuted in the US, and along with the Papal one's dubious choice of choons, Beyonce, 50 Cent and Nelly Furtado have all chosen songs too, though none claim to share "the aim to reach the heart of good minded people" quite like the Vatican. [MySpace Music via MusicAlly via TechRadar]

Image Credit: RobLisaMeehan

A few days ago, we found out that Apple Corps and EMI would finally release the Beatles' catalog in a digital format. It's not that we couldn't have just purchased CDs and ripped them—that's what everyone's been doing for years now—it's just that it felt like progress. In reality, it was just the near-random actions of someone who has no idea what's going on, at all. From the Guardian via Ars, Paul McCartney's view on selling the Beatles' music online:

I met [EMI's chief executive] on a plane once. I said: "What is the problem? I want to do it, we all want to do it." And he explained that in the deal that we want, they feel exposed. If [digitised Beatles music] gets out, if one employee decides to take it home and wap it on to the internet, we would have the right to say, "Now you recompense us for that. And they're scared of that."

Just to be clear, Paul McCartney says he wants to sell music online, but he—and his record company—are worried that someone could conceivably download it, upload it back to the internet, and open the floodgates to piracy. As opposed to just uploading the higher-quality digital files you're selling to people on Apple-shaped USB drives right now, or on CDs, more than a decade ago. McCartney expects an agreement by which he would be compensated if people share his music, as if it would be somehow correlated with the release of Beatles' tracks online, which EMI—no stranger to releasing music online—is scared of because it's insane.

Poor Paul! Someone should tell him, you know, about all the wapping. [Ars Technica]

UPDATE: From anonymized (not anonymous) source who researched similar subjects in the past, a possible explanation:

It's not the music for sale they're worried about but the raw remasters (this is why McCartney specifically refers to an employee potentially uploading the music). I don't know how much you've read about the making of [Beatles Rock Band] but they went to incredible lengths to protect the masters. It was only towards the end of the project that Harmonix received the (heavily encrypted) music they needed; before then, Apple Corps had been sending them "dirtied-up" copies of the music just in case it was intercepted halfway.

The real threat from McCartney and the other Beatles (and er, spouses of Beatles) is that if, somewhere in the process of turning their music into iTunes-friendly files, the MASTERS get leaked... then they will sue the pants off of EMI. And EMI allegedly said they are in such a precarious financial position that they do not want to take the risk of getting hit by a lawsuit that could take the company down.

An alternate theory, which still doesn't quite work. If masters leaked to the internet, presumably they'd be encoded in something like FLAC at best, which would be indistinguishable from the files the Beatles are OK with selling on USB drives right now. Or if this refers to the recording's component parts, like the ones used to create Rock Band, still: This seems avoidable. And in either strain of paranoia: Paul McCartney doesn't understand the internet. (And possibly other things, too!)