According to code strings that developer Ethan Lee uncovered from a beta version of the Spotify 2.0 app, podcasts may be coming soon to the world's most popular streaming-music service hailing from Sweden.
Code strings directly reference podcast subscriptions, giving hope that users will be able to listen to the latest episode of their favorite podcast, in addition to streaming their music, right inside Spotify's mobile and desktop app.
Google updated its iOS YouTube client this morning, bringing the universal app to version 2.16.11441. The update is fairly minimal, but it does include a new music homepage and YouTube Mix integration, making the music listening experience on YouTube "better than ever."
The new music homepage allows you to do things like play albums right from search, and it will now offer you song recommendations based on your previous listening habits. It also allows you to listen to an endless YouTube Mix playlist, built using your favorite songs and artists.
In a move designed to match Spotify, which last month launched all-new pricing scheme for family accounts, Rdio on Wednesday announced that up to four family members can be added to a single Rdio account at $5 per month per extra member.
Each additional Rdio listened on a Family Plan can stream more than 30 million songs and enjoy features like radio stations, You FM, playlists on a per-user basis and more.
The new pricing scheme for Rdio's Family Plans goes in effect across the globe starting today, said the firm.
Google-owned YouTube on Wednesday announced a long-rumored service which lets you stream ad-free music, play tracks in the background through mobile apps for iOS/Android and on YouTube.com, mark individual music videos and other clips for offline playback and much more, in exchange for a flat monthly fee of ten bucks per month.
Dubbed YouTube Music Key, it's releasing in beta next week.
The service integrates with Google's existing subscription music service called Play Music (formerly Google Play All Access), which includes more than 30 million songs. If you'll be taking Music Key for a spin when it launches, Google will treat you to a promotional subscription fee of eight bucks per month.
To celebrate the release of their new album called Sonic Highways, all the Foo Fighters albums are currently on sale on iTunes, with most of them starting at just $6.99. If you want to complete your Foo Fighters collection, now is the right time to do so.
An old man like me tends to believe that the earlier Foo Fighters albums are the best, but the younger crowd might disagree. At any rates, these are some albums you should definitely consider.
SoundHound's music-tagging iOS app has received a makeover Tuesday morning putting the software in line with the design aesthetic in iOS 7. New features are available for faster music discovery, with native display support for the new 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus display sizes and other goodies.
The refreshed interface features swiping based navigation that tucks the Search button and other options under a left-side column revealed by swiping left.
You can also swipe right like you would in other iOS 7 apps to go back to the previous page and you'll notice a new nicely animated listening screen as well.
SoundHound is free in the App Store.
Spotify seems to have surpassed iTunes in Europe where royalty payments from the popular streaming-music service is now earning artists more revenue than Apple's stagnant music store, which to this date continues to sell music downloads and does not offer all-you-can-eat subscriptions.
At least that's the key takeaway from a survey conducted by Kobalt Music Publishing, which collects royalties on behalf of 6,000 songwriters and music makers in Europe.
According to the data cited Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal, Spotify in Europe brought artists an average of thirteen percent more revenue versus iTunes during the first quarter of 2014.
The data seems to corroborate recent findings by the Recording Industry Association of America which found that digital music sales on iTunes dropped between thirteen and fourteen percent globally since the start of this year, with Apple officially confirming the drop in its SEC filing.
Southwest Airlines on Monday announced an interesting partnership with Apple bringing Beats Music streaming music app to its in-flight entertainment service.
The subscription on-demand streaming music service, which Apple acquired as part of its $3 billion Beats buy in May of this year, is offered for free.
Beginning today, Beats Music is available onboard select Southwest Airlines WiFi-enabled aircraft featuring a library of hundreds of human-curated playlists.
MusiXmatch isn't a new application by any means, although I must admit I had never heard of it until this past week when I read about it on French blog iGen. The app has been around for quite some time but it was recently updated to bring its lyrics engine to Notification Center, where it displays the lyrics of your currently playing songs so you can sing along or just try to finally understand what the heck this song is all about once for all.
Assuming you have an internet connection, musiXmatch allows you to have direct access to the exact lyrics that are being sung in virtually any song in your library. This works from the musiXmatch app, or from its Notification Center widget.
Another day, another high-profile app receives its iPhone 6 focused update. After Apple optimized the WWDC app for the bigger iPhone screens, the Internet giant Google on Friday refreshed its Play Music iOS client with native display support for the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus screens. The refreshed application has additionally squashed several bugs and introduced “lots of little tweaks”.
Google Play Music is available free in the App Store.
Spotify, the leading music-streaming service hailing from Sweden, gave its iPad app on Thursday a little love. For starters, the team has crafted Skype for iPad's user interface around an all-new dark look.
As a result, Spotify at last has consistent appearance on the iPad, iPhone and Mac — down to the same dark theme, precise typography and rounded iconography.
Moreover, the Your Music feature which debuted in the iPhone edition in April 2014 is now available on the iPad, too. Representing a better way to save, organize and browse your favorite songs, Your Music is a replacement to user-generated playlists. With Your Music, you can add tracks which sync across every device, without having to create playlists or use the starring feature that lumps all starred songs into a huge list.
Download Spotify free of charge in the App Store.
Pandora and Spotify rank as the number one and number two music streaming apps in terms of downloads, analytics firm AppAnnie reports - no big surprise. However, where things become interesting is that Apple's Beats Music, which the company purchased for $3 billion in May, is placed ninth, below iHeartRadio, SoundCloud and Apple's GarageBand.