Articles about Spotify

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.

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Streaming music services are great, but they are -- obviously -- reliant on an internet connection. While most give you the option of saving tracks to listen to offline, this requires a degree of preparation that not everyone has time for. So Spotify has come up with a solution.

The company has revealed that it is working on a feature called Your Offline Mix. It is a playlist that is automatically created from what you have been listening to recently, and it means that you will always have something to satisfy your musical appetite even if you don't have an internet connection.

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There can be few internet users who are not aware of Wordle, the outrageously popular word-guessing game that is now owned by the New York Times. The game has a huge number of fans all over the world, and it has served as inspiration for many derivatives.

One such Wordle-inspired game is one for music fans, developed by Spotify. Bursting onto the scene in the middle of 2022, the music-guessing game Heardle earned itself an eager following. But disappointment is on the horizon; Spotify has announced that Heardle is closing down.

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Spotify has launched a new personalized playlist option which gives users a unique way to create mixes to suite any mood, occasion or activity.

The company describes Niche Mixes as "a set of personalized playlists that combines all that our Mixes offer in a playful way". What this means in practice is that you can search for an "activity, vibe or aesthetic" (running, 80s, meditative, for instance), add the word "mix", and you'll be provided with a custom playlist to suit.

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Spotify has announced a streamlining of its user interface which will see the existing Heart and "Add to playlist" icons replaced with a single Plus button.

The new Plus (+) button will serve a dual purpose, making it possible to not only add tracks, podcasts and more to your library, but also to add them to playlists. Spotify says that this new approach makes it quicker and easier to add content to multiple playlists, and the update button will roll out to iOS and Android users first before spreading to all users.

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Netflix recently announced a crackdown on the sharing of account details and has introduced a paid sharing option to allow multiple users. It isn't surprising then that there's a thriving Dark Web market for streaming account details.

Research from AtlasVPN shows that account logins for popular streaming services are being sold for an average of $11.

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Microsoft today stops selling Windows 10, instead redirecting would-be purchasers towards Windows 11. There are ways around this however.

For Windows 11 testers in the Dev Channel, Microsoft has released a new build, and this one is available for Arm64 devices. Last week’s flight (Build 25284) was blocked due to a known issue that resulted in devices getting stuck at the OS boot logo.

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For the last decade the Downdetector site has been providing data on the real-time status and outages of online services.

Ookla, the company behind Downdetector, has released information on the largest outages seen in 2022. While nothing surpassed the biggest outage ever seen, experienced by Meta on October 4, 2021, there have been some significant ones this year.

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If you have noticed the appearance of the Spotify app on your computer but you don't recall installing it, you are not alone. There are multiple reports -- or complaints, even -- from users of Windows 10 and Windows 11 that the app has installed itself without permission.

It is certainly not unknown for Microsoft to forcibly install apps on computers, but on previous occasions when apps have been foisted onto people, there has been some sort of announcement or notification. This has not happened this time around, so it is not quite clear what is going on. One thing is undeniable though: people are not happy.

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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.

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Airbnb. Uber. Spotify. To join the big fish in the disruptive digital shark tank you need to get beyond siloed sales and marketing approaches. You have to move ahead fast -- with input from your whole organization -- or die.

Since the early 2010s, growth hacking culture has developed as the way to achieve this, pulling together multiple talents -- product managers, data analysts, programmers, creatives, and yes, marketers -- to build a lean, mean, iterative machine that delivers the swift sustainable growth you need to stay alive and beat the competition.

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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?

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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.

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It is something that has been a long time coming, but Spotify has finally launched its eagerly anticipated Lyrics feature.

Thanks to a partnership with Musixmatch, the streaming music service is helping all of its users to avoid the problem of misheard lyrics. Available to users of Free and Premium tiers, Lyrics gives you the chance to sing along to music karaoke-style.

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For many people, Spotify is the go-to service for streaming music, but the platform is about more than just accessing a massive collection of tracks spanning endless genres. In addition to music, there are also podcasts, and next year there are plans to further extend the audio offerings.

With the acquisition of audiobook platform Findaway, Spotify is continuing on its journey to become "the world’s leading audio platform". Just as with its music and podcast offerings, the company plans to provide opportunities for both creators and consumers alike.

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