Articles about Spotify

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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I am old enough to remember just how greedy the music industry was when the compact disc reigned supreme. People complain about spending $10 per month for a streaming service nowadays, but how about paying even more than that for a single album. Yeah, kids, that's really what we paid. Forget playing any song you want at any time. The average person could afford maybe one album a week, and if you ended up not liking it, you were out of luck.

So, yeah, the current streaming revolution from services like Apple Music and Spotify are far superior for consumers. Speaking of the latter, believe it or not, that service has not been available in South Korea. Well, folks, today this changes. Yes, Spotify has finally landed in South Korea. 신난다!

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Spotify has announced a series of upgrades and additions to its Collaborative Playlists feature, making it easier than ever to compile playlists with friends and family.

The changes simplify the process of adding new contributors to a playlist so they can start adding songs, as well as making it easy to see who is working with you on a particular playlist. Spotify says the changes are being introduced to help people feel closer together during the current climate.

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Spotify revolutionized how we consume music, and although it faces strong competition from the likes of Pandora, Apple and Amazon, it remains the number one audio streaming service by some margin, with 286 million active users a month.

That doesn’t mean it’s perfect though. Personally I’m not a lover of Spotify’s look, and I think the mobile experience could certainly be a lot better. I’m definitely not alone here.

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Spotify has announced that it is lifting the content cap that previously limited the number of songs, albums and podcasts that could be added to a library.

Until today is was only high-profile Spotify Rockstars who were able to store more than 10,000 items in their Spotify libraries, but now you'll no longer see the message "Epic collection my friend. There's no more room in Your Library. To save more, you'll need to remove some songs or albums" when you reach this number.

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If you've been looking for one more reason to cough up for a Spotify Premium subscription, the ability to hide songs in playlists could be it.

You may well have found a number of near-perfect playlists that other people have created, but there's a reasonable chance that there's at least one song you can't stand. Now, rather than having to skip the track -- or manually recreate the playlist yourself with the offending song removed -- you can simply tell Spotify to hide it.

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When it comes to streaming music, Spotify and Apple Music are the two services fighting for the top spot, with Amazon’s offering a distant third.

However, the retail giant is hoping to change that, with a new service that offers more than 50 million songs in HD quality, as well as millions of tracks in Ultra HD, the highest quality streaming audio available.

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A new report says that the EU is ready to launch an antitrust investigation into Apple. The report says that the European Commission will begin a probe into the company after Spotify complained that Apple was using the App Store to stifle competition.

The investigation is said to be due to begin "in the next few weeks". It will look at Spotify's complaint that Apple is "monopolistic" and abuses the App Store to "deliberately disadvantage other app developers".

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The battle between Apple and Spotify continues, with the streaming music company labelling the iPhone-maker a "monopolist".

The spat started when Spotify filed a complaint against Apple, saying that the company is stifling competition and limiting user choice with rules it puts in place. Apple responded, poo-pooing the claims, and now Spotify has responded in turn not only accusing Apple of having a monopoly, but also saying that the company's response to the complaint was "entirely in line" with what it expected.

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A couple of days ago, Spotify filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission (EC), the regulatory body responsible for keeping competition fair and nondiscriminatory. It claimed the tech giant has, over the past few years, "introduced rules to the App Store that purposely limit choice and stifle innovation at the expense of the user experience -- essentially acting as both a player and referee to deliberately disadvantage other app developers".

Understandably, Apple is none too happy with Spotify’s claims, and today hits back, addressing the music streaming service's key grievances.

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Having enjoyed huge success in other parts of the world -- and despite currently fighting a legal battle with Warner Music Group over licensing -- Spotify has now launched in India.

To cater for the various tongues spoken in the country, the recommendation engine can be set to multiple languages. Subscription pricing has also been tailored to the Indian market, and while it is not possible to make direct comparisons across currencies, a year's subscription costs 1,189 rupees (under $17).

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Spotify has updated its Terms of Service agreement, implementing an explicit ban on the use of ad blockers.

While the music streaming service has a decent number of paying users, a large percentage of the userbase stick with free, ad-supported accounts. A proportion of these free users turn to ad blockers, and this is something Spotify has been increasingly trying to clamp down on.

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As 2018 comes to a close, I find myself doing much reflecting. Linux consumes much of my thinking, and sadly, this was not the year that it overtakes Windows on the desktop. You know what, though? Windows 10 was an absolute disaster this year, while the Linux-based Chrome OS has slowly become more and more mature. Other desktop Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, Mint and Fedora, continue to get better, and Android remains the undisputed king of mobile. As we all know, Linux powers many servers around the globe too. So yeah, maybe it isn't the year of the Linux desktop, but the open source kernel still had a superb 2018 -- I raise my glass to it.

One of the most refreshing aspects of Linux in 2018 was the popularity of Snaps. Canonical revealed that the containerized packages have been a smashing success. Today, the Ubuntu-maker highlights what it feels are the top 10 Snaps of 2018. No, it is not based on popularity or voting, but seemingly, just Canonical's opinion.

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It’s a fair bet that we’d never have heard of Facebook, Instagram, Google and WhatsApp if the internet hadn’t been invented, but London-based graphic designer Thomas Ollivier has put his skills into re-imagining how some of today’s top tech brands might have looked in the pre-internet days of the 1980s.

The collection of images, which he’s titled Re:Birth, provides a fun glimpse into how technology has changed in the past 30 years. And boy has it changed.

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