Spotify is perhaps one of the largest names in the music-streaming industry, and while Apple Music is indeed catching up, a large number of iPhone users are still using the third-party alternative.
Despite its popularity, many Spotify users aren’t fond of the persistent Behind the Lyrics feature that interrupts your view of the album artwork whenever music is playing.
When listening to your songs in the Spotify Music app, the album artwork is typically scaled down slightly so that there’s a bit of empty space in between it and the edge of the display.
A new free jailbreak tweak dubbed SpotifyFullScreenArtworkUI by iOS developer theo78825 scales up the album artwork a little bit more so it fills the whole top half of the screen.
Spotify users rocking jailbroken iOS 10 devices are going to feel right at home with a new jailbreak tweak release dubbed Apace by iOS developer Andreas Henriksson.
This tweak is a replacement for the popular iOS 9-only tweak dubbed Quickify and lets you add Now Playing music to existing Spotify music playlists or collections right from Control Center or the Lock screen.
The rhythmic souls out there who listen to their songs on a daily basis generally like to talk about and share their music with other connoisseurs.
Fortunately, a new free jailbreak tweak dubbed NPTweet by iOS developer ichitaso is now available that makes it super easy to Tweet a Now Playing track from anywhere in iOS by calling upon the help of Flipswitch.
If you ever listen to radio apps or random playlists that you didn’t create, then you’re probably familiar with how it feels when you can’t quite figure out what’s playing; a real buzzkill when you like the beat and want to save the song for later.
A new free jailbreak tweak dubbed Hypeman by iOS developer ridn can help in this regard, as it keeps you in the loop with song information every time the Now Playing track changes.
Google's AI-powered speaker, called Home, is getting new features announced earlier today during the keynote address at the company's annual conference for developers. Soon, Home owners will be able to stream songs from Apple Music and other apps running on their iPhone, iPad, Mac or Android device via Bluetooth.
Hands-free callingAnd with hands-free calling, customers will be able ask Assistant running on the device to place calls to mobile phones or landlines in the US or Canada for free.
Even better, there’ll be no setup and no need for a phone or additional app.
Visual responsesYet another upcoming enhancement, called visual responses, will let the smart speaker put responses to queries on a supported display, including your iPhone's.
That's right, you’ll be able to see Assistant answers on the biggest screen in your house, whether you're asking “What's on YouTube TV right now?” or “What's on my calendar today?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpnxTXILS4s
Getting visual responses from Home's Assistant on a TV will be even easier with Chromecast.
Bluetooth streamingGoogle is adding Bluetooth support to let Home users enjoy more music, movies and TV shows in apps running on Bluetooth-enabled smartphones, tablets and computers, like Apple Music.
Soundcloud, Deezer and Spotify’s free music offering are coming soon to Home as well. On the video front, they've already added Netflix, and have more partners on the way like HBO NOW, CBS All Access and HGTV.
Reminders, additional countriesYou can now use your Home speaker to schedule new calendar appointments and create reminders (support for adding reminders is coming soon). “Since it’s the same Google Assistant across devices, you’ll be able to get a reminder at home or on the go,” said the firm.
Google provided this brief explanation for proactive notifications:
Conversations can take place in many different ways. Sometimes your Assistant should be the one to start it—so over the next few months, we’re bringing proactive notifications to Google Home.
Google Home is currently available in a few markets, but that's about to change later this year as they expand it to new places, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Japan.
Assistant updatesHands-free calling, adding reminders, Bluetooth streaming and visual responses will all be enabled for Google Home users in the coming months via a free firmware update.
Google Home is powered by Google Assistant (now available as a dedicated iPhone app).
Speaking of Assistant, the AI-powered helper will be rolling out to eligible Android phones in Brazilian Portuguese, French, German and Japanese. By the end of the year, Assistant will support Italian, Korean and Spanish.
Starting today, developers can build conversational apps for the Google Assistant on phones. As a result, you’ll soon be able to not only get help and answers from Google, but also from third party services.
The company currently has 70+ smart home partners backing Assistant across Google Home, Android phones and iPhone, including August locks, TP-Link, Honeywell, Logitech and LG.
Apple has offered an Apple Music API for some time now and Facebook leveraged it to integrate the service with Music Stories, a song-sharing feature available within its mainland iOS app. Soon, Apple Music will integrate with the Messenger platform, too (currently used by more than 1.2 billion people every month). At the F8 conference today, the social networking behemoth announced that Spotify integration will be available on Messenger at launch and Apple Music real soon.
One of my pet peeves in terms of having a jailbroken device is how any music I'm listening to while installing tweaks on my device gets silenced with every respring. Anyone who peruses Cydia and installs tweaks a lot will find this to be a buzzkill.
Fortunately, a new jailbreak tweak called Don’t Stop the Party! by iOS developers David Goldman and Wizages helps fix the problem once and for all by letting the music play straight through the respring process.
There's a new app in the works that would finally bring Spotify onto Apple Watch. Called Snowy and created by developer Andrew Chang, it will permit Apple Watch owners to play their favorite Spotify tracks, browse playlists, access a Now Playing screen via a complication and more.
According to Chang's recent update on Reddit, Spotify will be working with him to add Apple Watch functionality and playlist syncing into its mainland iPhone and iPad app.
Rapper and entertainment mogul Shawn Carter, known to most as Jay-Z, has removed his albums from Apple Music and Spotify. As noted by MacRumors, all of his solo albums quietly disappeared from the two apps overnight.
It's not yet known if the decision was Carter's call, given that he owns the struggling music service Tidal, or a directive of wireless carrier Sprint, who recently purchased 33% of the company. Either way, the move is about exclusivity.
Update: Jay-Z's music is back on Apple Music. We are not sure what happened.
It wasn’t long ago that we showed you a jailbreak tweak called Lightify, which applied a light skin to the Spotify Music app's typically dark UI.
On the other hand, a new free jailbreak tweak called Brightify by iOS developer cyanisaac aims to accomplish similar goals, all while coming with its own unique benefits that competing tweaks don't offer.
Apple has hired Shiva Rajaraman, a product leader formerly with Google's YouTube, Spotify and Twitter, to accelerate its failing video content strategy, The Information reported yesterday citing people familiar with the matter. The paywall'd article cites three people briefed on the hiring as saying that Rajaraman will help shape Apple’s video strategy to take on established players like Amazon and Netflix.