Music

Amazon Music Unlimited launches: $9.99 per month, $3.99 for Echo-only streaming

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 12, 2016

Amazon today announced its long-rumored music streaming service to better compete with the likes of Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play Music, Tidal and others. The service is called Amazon Music Unlimited and starts at $9.99 per month for individual accounts or $14.99 per month for a family of six, which is the standard pricing offered by Apple Music and others.

However, Amazon has undercut Apple Music with a $7.99 per month tier for members of its $99 per year Prime service. And if you want to only stream music to your Echo wireless speaker, Amazon Music Unlimited is just $3.99 per month.

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First user-created music remixes about to launch on Apple Music and Spotify

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 7, 2016

Unofficial remixes of songs are launching on both Apple Music and Spotify thanks to a partnership with a company called Dubset Media Holdings. Apple signed a deal with Dubset in March 2016, while Spotify cut a similar deal of its own in May.

Remixes and DJ mix sets, typically distributed through services like YouTube and SoundCloud, should start appearing on Apple Music and Spotify.

Dubset's proprietary scan-and-match technology will ensure that artists get paid fairly for musical remixes, TechCrunch said Friday.

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Identifying songs inside iOS 10 Messages with Shazam’s new iMessage app

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 5, 2016

Shazam, a music identification service that's integrated into iOS (“Hey Siri, what song is this?”), recently celebrated a billionth download of its popular mobile app. Today, the company pushed a sweet little update to Shazam and Shazam Encore iOS apps in the App Store. Bumped to version 10.1, the refresh software packs in a brand new iMessage app with support for music detection within iOS 10's stock Messages app, here's how to use it.

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I hate to Love songs on Apple Music

Sébastien Page ∙ September 29, 2016

While Apple likes to put emphasis on the human curation that goes behind the scenes, Apple Music is still largely powered by algorithms that learn about your music tastes by looking at your own library, but also by looking at your recent activity, including the songs you Love.

The more you play a song, the more the algorithm understands you like that song, and maybe by extension that band. If you Love a song, you're also signaling that this is a tune you particularly enjoy. Algorithms then crunch data based on your behavior to improve music suggestions for you.

For the past year, my favorite way to train Apple Music's algorithms was to actively Love songs. It was a quick and simple way for me to tell Apple "hey, I really like that, please play this more often and also play more songs similar to that one."

But the big, bold, confusing mess of a redesign that happened with iOS 10 has changed a lot of things, including how you now Love songs on Apple Music.

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Spotify expands in the Japanese market

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 16, 2018

Spotify, the top music streaming service, today launched in Japan, the world's third-largest economy by nominal GDP and home to population of 127 million people. The company announced at a press event in Tokyo that the service is currently available to music lovers in Japan on an invite-only basis before opening to all users. The service launched on mobile, tablet, desktop and PlayStation consoles.

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Spotify’s new continuously updated playlist combines your favorites and new music

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 16, 2018

Spotify, the #1 music streaming service, today announced a new playlist updated daily with tracks that users mark as favorites as well as new music.

Now available in the updated mobile Spotify app for iOS and Android, Daily Mix differs from Spotify's existing Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists which get refreshed each Monday and Friday, respectively, in that Daily Mix won't be a complete refresh of songs each time the playlist is updated.

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Spotify hits 40 million paid subscribers

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 14, 2016

Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek said on Twitter this morning that the world's leading music-streaming service now has forty million paid subscriptions. “40 is the new 30. Million,” reads the tweet. The Swedish service has been ramping up its streaming business for quite some time as it prepares for an initial public offering (IPO) so this should be music to the ears of Spotify's investors.

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4 ways to listen to music while charging your iPhone 7

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated April 24, 2019

In case you haven't already figured it out, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus both do completely away with the 3.5mm headphone jack. Instead, Apple is now pushing the industry to use Lightning-based and wireless Bluetooth headphones and speakers.

So with that in mind, how will you possibly use your existing headphones and speakers with your new iPhone while you're trying to charge it? Well we've got four solutions for you that will get your mind off of the missing headphone jack.

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Apple begins selling $99 gift cards for Apple Music annual subscriptions

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated July 2, 2017

The individual Apple Music tier is $9.99 per month, which works out to an annual cost of $120. But now, you can bring the price of your monthly subscription down to $8.25 by purchasing Apple's new gift card that gives you full twelve months of Apple Music in exchange for $99. These redeemable codes are available from Apple Stores, eBay (with email delivery) and a number of other retailers.

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