Music

Spotify remains one of the most popular music streaming services currently available, but popularity does not mean perfection. There are many things that Spotify users complain about, such as the oddities of the discovery algorithms. The company is getting better at listening to feedback and is taking steps to improve things.

Spotify has just announced new tools and controls to help with music discovery, playlist curation and recommendations. There’s something for everyone to benefit from, so let’s take a look at what’s new.

WhatsApp is primarily about keeping in touch with people, be that friends, family, colleagues, businesses or some other group. But there is also the option to update your Status to indicate what you’re up to, how you’re feeling, or any other number of creative possibilities.

Now WhatsApp has opened up a new option -- adding music to Status updates. This gives you the option of complementing a photo or video Status with a backing track, and WhatsApp says it has millions of songs that you can use.

The MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard is decades old, but still going strong. It continues to serve musicians, making it possible to reliably connect a range of instruments to computers. With the latest update to Windows 11, Microsoft ushers in some significant MIDI improvements.

The launch of Windows 11 build 27788 sees the arrival of Windows MIDI Services Public Preview. Microsoft describes this as “our complete rewrite of MIDI on Windows with a focus on a great experience for musicians and a strong foundation for future expansion and enhancement”. Importantly, there is now full support for MIDI 2.0.

Not content with providing access to music on demand, it did not take long for Spotify to branch out and start hosting podcasts. More recently, audiobooks were introduced, and now the company has announced a series of new audiobook features.

Books and video may not seem like natural bedfellows, but this is one of the things that is currently being tested. Other new features include author pages which are similar to artist pages, and an interesting “follow-along” option.

With mobiles connected to the internet on a near-permanent basis, it is easy to take for granted. This means that whenever a connection is not available, it is very apparent. Now Spotify is taking steps to help reduce the impact of a loss of connection.

While it is already possible to create offline playlists, this is something that needs to be done manually and it’s all too easy to find yourself on a flight with the sudden realization that you forgot to set it up. And this is precisely where the new Offline Backup mode helps, creating offline playlists automatically, based on your recent listening.

Streaming music service Spotify has announced Jam, a group playlist feature that can be used by up to 32 people. Spotify describes the new social feature as a "personalized, real-time listening session for your group to tune into together".

It is, in many ways, an amalgamation of several existing features of Spotify, such as Blend, personalized playlists and collaborative playlists. All users of Spotify -- free and paying -- are able to contribute to a Jam, but the ability to create them is limited to Premium Subscribers.

Nowadays, our computers often serve as our centralized media centers. We use laptops and desktops to both watch videos and listen to music. Long gone are the days of having big stereo receivers paired with independent media devices such as CD and DVD players. Streaming is superior.

Unfortunately, many consumers rely on the terrible speakers that are integrated into their laptops or the ones that came with their desktop. These people are missing out on what is truly possible from computer audio. By upgrading to higher quality speakers, a whole new world of audio can be experienced.

A lack of ads and unlimited track skipping are both pretty good reasons to cough up for a Spotify Premium subscription, but for some people it is not enough.

The streaming audio service apparently agrees that paying subscribers do not currently get enough for their outlay and is adding features to increase value for money. So, what does Spotify think will entice would-be subscribers into taking the plunge? New control buttons; buttons most people would reasonably expect to be included in an audio app as standard, rather than as a premium feature.

If you have ever driven a car and needed directions, there's a good chance you have tried Waze. The Google-owned service is very popular thanks to its crowdsourced traffic information -- any user can report traffic jams, police speed traps, and more. It really is a useful app that can reduce travel times.

One of the coolest features of Waze is the ability to integrate with music-streaming services, such as Spotify, so you don't have to exit the navigation app to interact with music controls. This isn't just for convenience, but for safety purposes too. Sadly, the wildly popular Apple Music has not been compatible with the aforementioned Waze feature, but today, this finally changes.

Apple Music is the best streaming music service. Yes, it is much better than Spotify. This is fact. I know this to be true, as I have used both and found Apple's offering to be superior. Apple Music isn't limited to the company's own devices like iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV either -- it can also be accessed on Android and the web, for instance.

Today, Apple Music comes to yet another platform -- Roku. Yes, whether you have a Roku media box or TV with Roku integrated, you can now access Apple Music with it. How cool is that?

For the past month, I have been updating a story on the Russia-Ukraine war from a tech perspective, covering the many online entities being blocked by Russia and the ways groups like Anonymous have been feverishly working to cause Putin, his government, and the Russian military as many headaches as it can. I've even looked at the ways that have sprung up to track things like weapons and Oligarch private jets. Those updates are officially over now, as the number passed twenty, and the page became too much to reasonably expect a person to scroll. 

The end of the daily updates does not, unfortunately, mean an end to war and the deaths and displacements it is causing. So, we'll continue to bring you the important news as it happens. 

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, when you wanted to play your music publicly, you had to lug around a huge boombox powered by C or D batteries. It was a costly and tiring ordeal, but it was well worth the effort; it allowed friends to simultaneously enjoy music on the street, at the beach, or in the park. The boombox became a big part of Hip-Hop culture too and was immortalized by fictional character Radio Raheem in the classic Spike Lee film Do the Right Thing.

These days though, kids don't really need a big boombox anymore. Smartphone speakers can get pretty loud, and if you need some extra volume, a small Bluetooth speaker can often get the job done. But what if you really want to blast your music? Like, maybe you want to play some Hip-Hop music at a basketball court or crank some rock and roll loudly at a party. Well, the all-new "Blaster 3.0" Bluetooth boombox from Monster should hit the mark.

For most of one day last week, a majority of Amazon Music and Ring customers suffered a catastrophic outage when Amazon’s own Amazon Web Services (AWS) went down for hours. Whether you were missing music or vital security, it was a long day for many people. 

The system came back up gradually; here and there a site or app would work, but sometimes only briefly. By that evening, US east coast (EST) time, everything was back up and running as normal. 

Following the release of her latest album, 30, Adele has had a greater impact on Spotify than the artist -- or anyone else -- expected. The new LP has already been streamed millions of times, and this is hardly surprising for Adele's first album in six years. But the singer has also managed to convince Spotify to make a big change to the platform.

The streaming music service has stopped shuffling albums by default, in recognition of the fact that bands and artists craft albums with a great deal of attention to detail, carefully curating track order to create a narrative or mood.

If your stereo receiver or speaker system lacks Bluetooth connectivity, what should you do? Throw your existing stereo gear in the trash and buy something new with the wireless standard? I mean, I suppose you could, but that would be idiotic. Instead, you can simply add Bluetooth with a dongle.

Yes, such adapters exist, allowing you to add Bluetooth connectivity to wired speakers and stereos. Best of all, they are typically very simple to use. Today, StarTech.com launches a new such dongle, and it looks to be rather premium. Called "Bluetooth 5.0 Audio Receiver with NFC," not only does it offer analog connectivity, but optical output too. It even features 48KHz/24 bit sample rate support.