streaming music

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Spotify Reaches 113 Million Paid Subscribers

Andrew Orr ·

Spotify announced that it reached 113 million paid subscribers around the world, and it’s growing twice as fast as Apple Music.

We continue to feel very good about our competitive position in the market. Relative to Apple, the publicly available data shows that we are adding roughly twice as many subscribers per month as they are. Additionally, we believe that our monthly engagement is roughly 2x as high and our churn is at half the rate.

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Zane Lowe Talks About The Future of Apple Music

Andrew Orr ·

Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe talks about where Apple Music is headed in a new interview. When it comes to Beats 1, Apples radio show, the team found something interesting.

It turns out users are four times more likely to complete an album if they’d pre-added it to their collection, 1.5 times more likely to listen to it again and they listen to music four times longer than other Apple Music subscribers. In short, Apple is trying to build a better hype machine than its rivals to counteract the popular, but depersonalised playlists that have come to dominate music streaming.

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Spotify Wants to Track Your Location so Friends Don't Use a Family Plan

Andrew Orr ·

In more location tracking news today, Spotify wants to track yours because non-family members sometimes use Family Plans *gasp!*.

“The changes to the policy allow Spotify to arbitrarily use the location of an individual to ascertain if they continue to reside at the same address when using a family account, and it’s unclear how often Spotify will query users’ devices for this information,” said Christopher Weatherhead, technology lead for UK watchdog group Privacy International, adding that there are “worrying privacy implications.”

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Apple Beta Tests Official Apple Music Web Player

Andrew Orr ·

Apple is starting to get the hang of what being a services company really means. Charlotte and I have wrote about unofficial web players for Apple Music, and now Apple is beta testing an official one.

To use the new Apple Music web version, subscribers can visit the link beta.music.apple.com and sign in with their Apple ID.

At launch, the service includes many core features, like searching and playing songs from the Apple Music catalog, searching and playing songs from your library (if Sync Library is enabled), accessing your playlists and more.

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New Shazam Discovery Playlist for Apple Music

Andrew Orr ·

Today Apple Music launches the Shazam Discovery Top 50 playlist, which is a weekly global ranking of 50 trending artists.

The chart will be updated every Tuesday and is exclusively available to stream on Apple Music. Artists at the top of the first list include Ohana Bam, A$ton Wyld, Tones and I and Regard…The chart ranks songs that are trending in the U.S. and “over 10 countries”; artists from more countries will be featured soon.

Sounds cool but I hope it’s not filled with hip-hop, because that seems to be Apple Music’s focus.

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Music App Deezer Adds Queue List Feature

Andrew Orr ·

Music app Deezer is adding a new feature called Queue List for premium users. People can change devices in the middle of a song without having to restart it or search for it again.

Each user’s queue list is now stored in the cloud, making it effortless to switch between mobile, web, desktop, smart watches, autos, Android TV and Xbox.

Users can also edit and make changes to their queue list with all changes reflected across devices. Even if your queue list is set to Shuffle or Repeat, you can still enjoy your music on this setting after switching devices.

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Apple Music Alternative Playlist Renamed 'ALT CTRL'

Andrew Orr ·

Apple is slowly rebranding Apple Music, and its latest efforts include renaming the Apple Music alternative playlist to ALT CTRL.

The playlist, which features 50 songs, will change every week. Each song is hand selected by a group of curators. The songs featured have less to do with genre, and more to do with overall feel and themes.

“ALT CTRL, formerly known as The A-List: Alternative, is where you’ll find the best of those new left-of-center tunes.” reads the Editors’ notes on the new ALT CTRL page, “Alternative is more an attitude than a sound—music that colors just a bit outside the lines.”

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Which One is Better for the Environment: Physical or Digital Music?

Andrew Orr ·

A study published yesterday found that streaming digital music led to “unintended” environmental and economic impacts. Despite a reduction in the use of plastics in physical music media, storing and transmitting digital music led to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

Researchers discovered that the amount of GHGs generated by the streaming and downloading of music online is actually much larger than the amount that was once generated by the production of plastic used to make vinyl records, cassettes and CDs in earlier decades.

The study seems focused on plastic use in physical media vs. storing and streaming digital music from servers. I’d like to see more data, such as how much electricity is used when billions of people play the average CD vs. a digital song.