Spotify is making it a lot faster to find your favorite music or new things to listen to with a big update for its iOS app today.
The music streaming service revealed it overhauled the Home screen on its iPhone and iPad app, packing it with more content you love and better discovery and recommendation features that change throughout the day.
Spotify is reportedly making a big push to get record labels to pay to promote artists’ music in its service as a new way to generate revenue.
Despite having nearly double the number of paid subscribers as Apple Music, Spotify still isn’t a profitable company and is looking to the music industry to help it create new revenue streams. Although the talks are still ongoing, you could soon see sponsored songs in your playlists and other areas of the app.
You can now sing along to your favorite tracks on Spotify without messing up the words. The world’s biggest streaming service has finally caught up with Apple Music by adding time-synced song lyrics, courtesy of Musixmatch.
Apple Music now has the ability to intelligently sort alternate album versions. The new feature, brought back from Beats Music, presents you with other versions of the same album in a new section beneath the track list.
The newest update to Pandora for Apple Watch gives you the ability to stream music without being connected to your iPhone.
The feature takes advantage of changes made in watchOS 6, which rolled out last fall, that allow third-party apps to stream audio on Apple Watch. Of course, you’ll need a device with LTE connectivity to enjoy it.
This week we check out a great Music app replacement, a crazy photo-and-video glitching app, a $90 music-notation app, and more.
The iConnectAudio4+ isn’t a new product. It’s been around for a few years. And this isn’t really a review. This article will be more of a PSA, telling you about a unique input device can change how you use your iPad for audio.
The feature that sets the iConnectAudio4+ apart from other USB audio interfaces is that it can connect to two computers at once, and send audio to both. It can even route audio — digitally — between your Mac and your iPad.
Neil Young believes there’s a big problem with making music on a MacBook Pro. In a recent interview, the acclaimed singer-songwriter slammed the “Fisher-Price” audio quality you get with Apple’s newest notebooks.
Young also revealed that Steve Jobs knew about his concerns, but felt that MacBook audio was good enough for consumers.
If you and a friend both have AirPods or Beats headphones, you can share audio coming from a single iPhone or iPad. This is great for listening to the same music track or podcast, or — most useful I reckon — watching a movie together. Apple makes it really easy for you to share your audio stream with someone else. In fact, you could say it’s easier than doing it the old way, because A) there are no wires to get tangled and B) there’s no splitter adapter to lose.
Here’s how to set up audio sharing on AirPods.
Audient’s Evo is an excellent-looking new iOS-friendly USB audio interface. Like all other “sound cards,” the Evo lets you hook up speakers, headphones, and connect microphones, guitars, and so on. It then connects to a computer or iDevice via USB, so you can route all that audio in and out of your apps.
But the Evo brings a few clever extras. One is the Smartgain feature, which automatically sets your input levels. The other is something called loopback, which lets you record your iPhone’s own output. This is handy on the Mac and Windows, but essential on iOS, and very welcome.
Roland’s new Go Livecast is a pretty fantastic little box for live-streaming with your iPhone. You can hook up microphones, use the companion app to do the streaming, and — get this — you can hook up a second iOS device and switch to its camera.
Let’s check it out.
This week we create music-synced video art with Glitch Clip, import music to our iPhone with Doppler 2, take proper control of Shortcuts with LaunchCuts, and more.
Glitch Clip is an iPad app for VJs. That is, Glitch Clip lets you combine video clips with in-app effects and visuals, and sync them to music. Thus, you can create live video performances, or you can just make killer music videos for when you put your own songs up on YouTube.
Previously this kind of power was found in apps like Isadora for the Mac, which costs over $500. And while Glitch Clip is no Isadora, it’s only 1/100th the price.
If you love making music, then you’re in the right place. If not, then next week I promise to write more about some non-music apps again — if the developers release some. Until then, we can bomb the bass, make some tunes with Tune Maker, get Unisonic with JAX, and take control of our stereo widths, all with the tap of a touch-screen.
Imagine arriving home, listening to music on your iPhone. You want to start that music playing on your home speakers instead, only you don’t want all the hassle of using Control Center, or the AirPlay panel, to do the connection manually.
If you own a HomePod, all you have to do is hold your iPhone near it, and playback will transfer. But what about regular AirPlay speakers? Can you hand off to those? Yes! You can. With a quick one-time setup, you can have the music or podcast app switch from your headphones, and play on any AirPlay speaker you have at home.
This week we boss a metronome around with only our voices, let a music app write our songs for us, and create beats and tunes like little children might. Yes, the only good new apps I’ve seen this week have all been music apps, so try to enjoy it.
Cubasis, the audio workstation app from Steinberg, just got rewritten as a brand new app. Cubasis 3 looks just like the old version, but is all-new, and includes support for the iPhone as well as the iPad. And hopefully, this rewrite also means that in the future, updates that adjust the user interface for new iOS features and screen sizes will be supported a lot faster. It took more than a year for Cubasis to support the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, for example.
So, what’s new in Cubasis 3?
Tidal today one-upped Apple Music with an even better student deal. Its 50% discount now extends to high-schoolers — not just college attendees.
Qualifying members will pay just $4.99 a month for Premium access, or $9.99 a month for the Hi-Fi plan. The discount is available to new and existing subscribers who verify their student status.
Start blasting those holiday tunes with free Amazon Music on iOS.
The streaming service can now be enjoyed without a paid subscription for the first time on iPhone and iPad, giving it a big advantage over Apple Music.
But just like other free music plans, it does come with ads … and some restrictions.
Here’s a short list of things that are wrong with regular AirPods:
The new AirPods Pro fix all of these problems, apart from the last point on the list. And to be honest, it’s so easy to change the volume by squeezing your iPhone through your pocket, or by using an Apple Watch, that the lack of a volume control isn’t that big of a deal.
The original AirPods (and the faster, updated version) might be the most-loved new Apple product in recent years, and the AirPods Pro improve on them in almost every way. So, are the AirPods Pro perfect? Maybe …
This week we stream movies off USB sticks, stay safe with social networks, learn to play guitar with Apple Music, and draw pictures on virtual paper. These are the best apps and updates of the past seven days.
Apple’s big update for Macs, macOS Catalina, is finally out today bringing with it a host of new features, apps, privacy improvements, and much more.
Developers just received the gold master version of macOS Catalina last week, but today’s launch was a bit of a surprise. Anyone that has a compatible Mac can grab the new update from the Mac App Store for free.
You will soon be able to ask Siri to play your favorite tracks from Spotify.
The world’s biggest music streaming service just started testing Siri support in iOS 13. It comes after Apple’s latest updates introduced new SiriKit audio APIs that allow third-party access.
In iOS 13, you can share songs and watch movies with a friend, with each of you using your own AirPods. The new feature is called Audio Sharing, and it lets you instantly — and temporarily — pair a second set of AirPods to your iPhone or iPad. It’s like the olde schoole method of using a headphone splitter to plug two sets of headphones into one jack socket, only way more expensive and fancy.
Here’s how to use it.
Stay calm and remix on.
Taylor Swift is partnering with Apple for a new Today at Apple session that will teach attendees how to remix her latest single “You Need To Calm Down.” Unlike some of the other Music Labs though, this special session will only be available in select stores.