Tag Archives: Music Streaming

Spotify Tests TikTok Style Video Feeds for Discovering New Music

Spotify is one of the most popular audio streaming apps in the world. It is currently one of the most complete as well in terms of listening options. You do not only have music; you also get the largest collection of podcasts the world has seen so far. On top of that, it might be the cleverest audio streaming app you can find today.

Spotify features nifty ways for you to discover new music. The app understands the sorts of music you listen to daily and gives you suggestions to music that might match your music tastes, your playlists’ moods, or themes. You can even discover music with your friends now with the Spotify Blend feature.

Soon though, you might be able to discover music on Spotify in a brand-new way. You want to keep in mind that this is a feature not fully released to the final app, so you might want to take it with a pinch of salt. The feature was first spotted by a certain Chris Messina on Spotify’s TestFlight build, a beta Spotify app for the iOS. There are no mentions on whether you can find the feature on Android’s version of Spotify Beta apps.

As reported by TechCrunch, the new Discover feature is a button or tab of its own that takes up the fourth spot on Spotify’s navigation bar. Spotify has confirmed that they are in the midst of testing this new ‘Discover’ function. While it does sound like Spotify is simply adding a simple random music search feature to the app, you might want to take a closer look at it.

Discover is a sort of short-form video content that sits on Spotify. It can be likened to TikTok, yes. But the sole purposed of it is for users to discover new music. You cannot be freely posting contents into the platform like TikTok. Instead, the feature now allows users to scroll through short video clips accompanied with curated music paired to the video feed. This does sound a lot like Spotify’s Canvas feature which played short video clips for certain songs.

Again, this feature is only available on iOS devices. It is also not a fully released feature, which also means you must source for Beta versions of the Spotify app. Sadly if you are on Android, you might be out of luck.

Spotify, You One-Stop-Shop for All Your Netflix Soundtracks, Playlists, and Podcasts

In a world where experts thought, just a few years ago, that TV would be dead and short form content platforms like YouTube will takeover, TV and films are doing better than ever. You cannot credit their strength to manufacturers though. Rather, these things come because of technologies that exists and allows the existence of Netflix.

Netflix is now bigger than life though. While there are other platforms like Disney+, or Amazon Prime Videos, Netflix is still king. It is the one platform that you go to time and time again to find contents to watch. It is, at least personally, the first platform that we switch on to find entertainment before even YouTube.

You can never get enough of Netflix though. After every show, you might discover something about the show that you liked. The most common of that is the soundtracks used in the show or movie. Within two weeks of Squid Game’s debut on Netflix, 22,500 unique Squid Game themed playlists were created by Spotify users to keep the show alive.

Netflix very much understands that their users are looking for entertainment far beyond their own scope. Spotify sees this too, obviously, being the largest audio streaming platform known to man. A collaboration was imminent.

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Source: Spotify

They call it the Netflix Hub on Spotify and it is the best way for you to experience your Netflix shows beyond the streaming platform, at least according to Spotify and Netflix. In the hub premium users can find all official soundtracks, playlists, and even podcasts from Netflix’s shows. You can easily access soundtracks from shows like Squid Game, Bruised, and even Cowboy Bebop.

The collaboration is more than just compiling soundtracks, playlists, and podcasts though. In honor of the final season of Money Heist, Spotify has included new videos from the cast of the show (not available in Malaysia yet, as far as we can tell). They have also updated the soundtrack playlist with songs used the latest episodes of the show. There are also new features like Character Match Playlist quiz that matches you to your favourite characters from the Spanish show.

Of course, the collaboration will not just end at Money Heist. As Netflix populates its library with new contents, so will Spotify with dedicated Netflix contents. You might see a Squid Game related video content and quiz in the future, you will never know.

Now you can Easily Block Other People on Spotify

Today’s generation is the most connected one so far. But it is a generation also where cutting off someone is as easy as a click of a button. There is something called ‘cancel culture’ in the world of social media today.

While there are plenty of reasons why you would want to cut a person off, for whatever reasons, on social media, wanting to block a person on streaming platform like Spotify is a little odd. There is a way to block certain artists from ever appearing on your Spotify home feed. That feature was introduced back in 2019. For whatever reason as well, users have been wanting to block other users instead on the platform.

To be fair, Spotify is more than just a music streaming app today. It is also a social platform where you can add friends, follow their playlists and even see what they are playing in real time. In a sense, if someone is in your friends list, their listening privacy is gone. You can ensure that your listening session does not appear on any of your friends feed by turning on ‘Private Session’, but that only lasts for a limited time before Spotify kicks you back into online mode to update your songs and your recommendations.

You now can decide to block other users from accessing your activities now though. It is as simple as clicking the person’s profile and tap the “Block User” option. Once you have done that, the person will not be able to see you appearing on their ‘friend’s activity’ list on the right side of the app anymore, at least on the desktop interface. That way, you also limit what you show the person you blocked.

While showing your Spotify activity may not seem all that harmful, it could lead to a bigger impact. Some might think that just showing the ‘Now Listening to’ information as an empty information your friends cannot use. For example, other users can use the activity information from Spotify to harass you on other platforms like Facebook or Instagram, for example. They could also use whatever information they can gather against you as well for that matter. Remember, information in the wrong hands can be dangerous.

The function should be available to users very soon, at least according to Spotify as per Engadget.

Spotify Launches Blend for You to Share Playlists and Compare Musical Tastes

Sharing your playlist with your friends in the old days means that you have to copy a whole music library you have created over a USB drive, or a CD. That was the days before content streaming services like Spotify came to be. Even when Apple’s iTunes was a thing, it served more like a digital music library that requires you to have the music files stored in your device.

Before the days of Spotify too, you still had to pay money for individual songs and albums if you want to legally listen to them and own them for your own personal consumption or even share it with your friends. Obviously, sharing your music library before then is still a grey area in terms of copyright.

Spotify may not be the first music streaming service and cloud-based music library to exist. It is, in 2021 at least, the most successful thus far. This is amidst the rise in other services like Deezer, Tidal, YouTube Music, and more. If you think about it, Spotify has a tough competition to work with especially in Tidal and YouTube Music at this point. Tidal features a higher quality music streaming that allows music to play at near lossless quality while YouTube Music offers a more robust and complete music library compared to Spotify. At some point Taylor Swift criticised Spotify’s royalty structure and pulled all her assets away from Spotify.

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Source: Spotify

When spotify launched, sharing your favourite songs and curated playlists is made super easy. You only need to share a URL with your friends now and you can listen to it at anytime where you have internet or data. Of course, your friends can still comment on your music selection and judge your music taste according to what you have just shared. You could also say sometimes that you share the same music taste with your best friends, but you would not really know how similar sometimes.

Spotify introduced Blend Playlists in June 2021 as a Beta feature. It was introduced as a way for two users to create a shared playlist that is dedicated to their shared musical tastes. It is also created as a new way for friends to interact and bond over their love of music.

The feature is now out in full force on your Spotify. Blend Playlists also now allows you to customise the playlist with unique cover arts for easy identification. The Blend feature also scores your music taste compatibility with your friends. Of course, you can share those on social media to brag that you and your besties are very similar to one another.

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Source: Spotify

Blend is not a personally curated list though. It is still a curated list, but it is curated via Spotify’s clever mechanism that adds and changes the playlist to adapt to your listening behaviour combined with your friend’s listening behaviour that you share the list with. The best part is that both you and your friend can have a similar playlist experience but in completely different situations and locations at the same time.

Of course, this experience is not just limited to you and your best friends. It is a good way to start sharing a curated playlist with your family members, or a loved one. This is a way to keep your bonds as strong as they are in these trying times where face time and physical interaction has to be limited.

The feature should now be available on the Spotify app. You can supposedly access the feature from the “Made for you” hub on mobile devices. You simply hit “create blend” and invite your friends to create a Blend Playlist with whichever friends you choose to have a blend with (if the person accepts) and let Spotify do everything for you there. To our knowledge, we have found that the feature has not been made available to us (could just be us). The Spotify app is available for free on both Android and iOS via Google Play Store and Apple Play Store respectively.

Spotify Introduces Spotify Premium Mini Subscriptions

Spotify is giving its users more flexibility with the introduction of new Premium Mini subscription plans. The new plans will allow users to subscribe to Spotify Premium in bite sized pieces ranging from daily to weekly. Users will now be able to subscribe from MYR1 a day to gain access to ad-free streaming on the platform.

In addition to being ad-free, users on these Mini plans will also be able to access Spotify’s many other features. These will, however, be in a more limited manner. Users on the Premium Mini plans will be able to use Spotify to access the full library of songs and podcasts available on the platform and will be able to skip tracks freely. You will also be able able to share playlists and tune in to the same podcast with up to five friends using the Group Sessions feature. However, when it comes to downloading songs for offline playback, users on the Spotify Premium Mini plans will be limited to 30 tracks.

Spotify Premium Mini MY 1
Source: Spotify

Subscribing to the new Spotify Premium Mini plans is pretty simple. All you have to do is click the “Get Mini” option in the subscriptions option. Spotify is also introducing more payment options for Malaysians. Users in Malaysia can now pay using multiple methods including through their mobile bill or even using one of the many eWallets available; absolutely no credit card is needed. Keep in mind that the Premium Mini plans are prepaid plans. This means that you will need to pay upfront for your daily and weekly subscriptions.

Spotify Premium Mini will be available in two options – daily and weekly. You will be able to subscribe to the Premium Mini Daily for MYR1 a day while the weekly option is priced at MYR3.90 a week. The same subscription plans are also available in Thailand, India and Indonesia. Prices start at THB7, INR7 and INR2,500 respectively.

Spotify Buys Podz – Finding Your Favourite Podcasts Will be A Lot Easier

Spotify is already the world’s most popular music streaming app. The platform probably also houses the largest collection of podcasts known in the modern world. In some sense, in the world of audio streaming at least, Spotify arguably has the best interface and discovery Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Looking for music and discovering music that would suit your preferences is a breeze on Spotify. Spotify itself will surface music that suits your tastes based on your playlists, and even based on songs that you frequently listen to. Podcasts is a different story though.

It is not exactly difficult to find podcasts in Spotify. We would not call the podcast discovery function excellent either. We think that they might as well be non-existent sometimes. That is about to change though.

Spotify is acquiring Podz, a podcast discovery service. It uses AI to generate highlights for a particular podcast and let users listen to 60-second samples of a chow or podcast before listening to the full show or subscribing to a channel or show. In some ways, it allows you to evaluate the podcast even before you spend your precious time on it.

With the acquisition, Spotify will be looking to integrate Podz’s clever AI algorithm and working into Spotify itself. The integration will make it not just easier and less time consuming for users to evaluate shows before committing to the show. It will also allow Spotify to improve the discovery algorithm of their podcast platform with the highlights.

At the same time, as a user, it will really make Spotify’s library of 2.6 million podcasts much easier to navigate and a lot more interesting. Spotify has been continuously building their podcast platform over the years, even getting some podcast exclusives up and running in the past two years. With Podz integrated, they could surface and push their own exclusive podcasts on users’ landing page in their app or web player. If the service is successful also, it could attract more creators into the platform just because their contents will be a lot more visible than before.

Spotify is planning to integrate Podz into Spotify before the end of 2021. Of course, that also includes the roll out to users all around the world. Last week, Spotify has also launched their Clubhouse competitor, Greenroom. Greenroom is now available for free on both iOS and Android. With the integration of Podz and Greenroom, Spotify looks to be the world’s largest audio streaming solution.

Tech & Tonic Podcast S02E11 – More Streaming, More Better

This episode is brought to you by Acer. Pre-order your Acer Nitro 5 gaming notebook with AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900HX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GPU from Acer from the 10th May 2021 onward!

In this episode of Tech & Tonic, we discuss the growing number of streaming services. Disney+ Hotstar is finally making its way into Malaysia after a long wait. Disney+ Hotstar joins Malaysia’s long list of streaming platforms including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Go, Astro Go, iflix, and a few others.

Is having more streaming services a good thing though? Does it still make sense for you to pay for Cable TV services like Astro in Malaysia, especially with certain channels being removed with the introduction of Disney+ Hotstar? Do we need more streaming platforms at this time? Would Disney+ be better than the rest of the platforms?

We discuss this and more in the Tech & Tonic Podcast.

Spotify Miniplayer Brings Audio Discovery to Facebook together with Price Hikes

Looks like Spotify and Facebook are playing extra nice with the launch of a new feature which brings even more integration of the music platform to the Facebook app. Come across a song that’s caught your ear on Facebook? The new miniplayer feature will allow you to simply press play to get the beat going as you continue to browse your timeline. The new miniplayer feature will allow you to play music from videos with licensed music as well as other content on your Newsfeed.

The new Spotify feature on Facebook will require users to connect the apps. Upon connecting the apps, users will be able to play songs they come across on their Facebook Newsfeed as they browse. As always, the feature will be available to Spotify Premium users with full access in the miniplayer. Free users, however, will be able to access the feature with shuffle mode and ads from Spotify.

Spotify Miniplayer Video

The new feature is available in select countries including Malaysia, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Africa, Thailand, Uruguay, and the U.S. The feature will continue to make its way to other markets soon.

New Features, Higher Prices

In addition to the new feature, it seems like Spotify is also revising its pricing. The music streaming platform seems to be rolling out pricing changes to a number of regions including the U.K. and Europe which have seen the price revisions officially announced through email notifications. The revised prices go into effect starting April 30, 2021. Existing users will have a month’s grace period to decide whether they will be continuing with the service.

Photo by Heidi Fin on Unsplash

Spotify users in Europe will be paying €5.99 (MYR29.62) for the student plan and €12.99 (MYR64.23) for the Duo plan; a €1 (MYR4.94) increase from the initial price. The family plan sees a €3 (MYR14.83) increase to €17.99 (MYR88.95). In the U.K., the price revisions are £5.99 (MYR34.07) for Student, £13.99 (MYR79.56) for Duo and £16.99 (MYR96.63) for family – an increase of £1 (MYR5.69) for the student and duo plans and a £2 (MYR11.38) increase for the family plan.

The price increase is expected to affect countries in Asia and South America as well. No indication of when though.