Spotify - page 15

If you’re searching for further evidence that music streaming is overtaking downloads, look no further than a new report claiming that over the last quarter European revenue from Spotify streams were 13% higher than revenues from iTunes downloads.

The report comes from Kobalt, a company that helps collect music royalties on behalf of thousands of big-name artist. Currently it only collects earnings from Spotify streams in Europe — which means it’s unknown if similar figures are true in the U.S.

This time last year, iTunes’ earnings were 32% higher than that of Spotify in Europe, although streaming revenues have tripled over the past two years.

For the last year or two, Spotify’s iPad app has been sadly, pathetically ignored. Like Twitter for Mac and Tweetbot for iPad, the app has lagged behind the iPhone version so badly that it almost feels like using a different service.

So the use of the word finally is very fitting when describing Spotify’s big update today on the iPad.

Beats Music may have Apple’s support behind it, but it’s still got a long way to go before it tops the crowded online marketplace.

According to new figures from app analytics firm App Annie, Beats is currently trailing industry leaders Pandora and Spotify. In September, both of those services racked up more downloads and earned more revenue than Beats, across both the App Store and Google Play.

Beats was the ninth most downloaded music app in September, with once again Pandora and Spotify taking the lead — but also the likes of Shazam, SoundCloud and even Apple’s own GarageBand receiving more downloads.

This week: the iPad Air 2 reviews are in, and not everyone’s feeling the love; Cult of Mac spends a day with Apple Pay; Yosemite and iOS 8.1 Continuity features delight; a potential cure for the painful #6PlusPinch; some welcome changes rumored for Beats Music; and we wrap with our favorite movie trilogies of all time on an all-new Get To Know Your Cultist.

Titter your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.

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Show notes ahead, mateys.

Having helped pioneer the concept of the $0.99 music track on iTunes, Apple is now trying to bring down the price of streaming music.

According to a new report published by Re/code, Apple is pushing music labels for extensive price cuts that would bring the cost of a Beats Music subscription from its current $10 price point all the way down to $5.

New figures released by app analytics firm App Annie show that mobile users are more likely than ever to pay for music services by way of in-app purchases.

Looking at figures from August, streaming music offerings from Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music were among the top earning apps in terms of revenue.

Thousands of angry iPhone users have found an album they weren’t looking for: U2’s Songs of Innocence.

Instead of making the band’s mediocre new album an opt-in freebie, Apple jammed it down the throats of a half-billion iTunes Store customers, enraging some of the company’s most loyal fans. Whether they wanted the album or not, it’s now showing up as “purchased” in individuals’ iTunes libraries on their computers and phones.

When Tim Cook trotted out the Irish rockers for a limp finale to Tuesday’s big Apple Watch announcement, he called giving away the band’s new record “the largest album release of all time” — but now it looks like one of the dumbest.

If you’re a free Spotify user, prepare for your experience to get a lot more annoying: video ads are coming to the a la carte music streaming service.

Forget Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music. I’ve tried them all, and for my money, Rdio is the best streaming music subscription service out there. It has the best app design and, for my tastes, the best music selection. But you have to pay.

An update, though, is trying to make Rdio much more palatable to free users, as well as help all users find new music faster. It’s making the service free to everyone, emphasizing ad-supported stations for free users (with up to 15 times as many tracks as competing services), and new, smart social services for paid users.

The world already has more music streaming services than any sane person can subscribe to on a monthly basis, but Google is preparing to take on the likes of Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, and Beats Music with a new service of its own called YouTube Music Key.

Equalizers haven’t been a fashionable tech feature since Boomboxes went out of style in the 90’s, but Spotify just released a major update to its iOS app and I can’t stop playing with its fun new equalizer.

Spotify’s 1.1 update includes a number of other new features like a redesigned Artist page on iPad and new Discover feature, but the simple equalizer is perhaps the most useful new addition, allowing users to customize presets with six sliders.

The European Commission today gave its approval to Apple’s $3 billion takeover of Beats Electronics and Beats Music. The regulator concluded that the two companies are not close competitors, and that the headphones they sell are “markedly different in function and design.”

iTunes Radio quickly became known as an underdog after its release last fall, with Apple facing an uphill battle against established services like Spotify and Pandora. In today’s video, we take an in-depth look at iTunes Radio, its features, its future — and why it deserves your attention.

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Shortly after updating Spotify with the ability to search for downloaded music offline, Spotify’s iOS app has just received a notable new update.

Spotify now lets users view play queues on their iPhone. This can be done by tapping the queue icon on the top right corner of the “Now Playing” screen. The update also features a new dialog box, which appears each time you try to add a song to a playlist which already includes it: a great way of avoiding duplicating songs without you realizing it.

The album is dead. So dead Amazon thinks customers won’t even care if all the songs in its new music-streaming service have been spun out of tune by DJs across the country for months.

To boost its digital offerings, Amazon is planning to launch its own music service, reports BuzzFeed, but rather than stocking up on the latest hit songs, Prime Music will shun new releases in favor of a potluck offering of songs and albums that are at least six months old.

I’m a streaming music junkie. I’ve subscribed to Rdio, Spotify and Slacker to rein in my tendency to hoard (and then not back up) music.  Putting a tenner on monthly subscriptions for an all-you-can-listen auditory buffet model appealed to me more than an album-binging approach, too.

Still, the Apple and Beats acquisition rumors (now fact) struck me as tone deaf – what does Beats bring that the other services don’t? So I decided to take the Beats app on my iPhone for good long spin.

What if you had access to any song you wanted while you were DJing? “It’s like giving a chef infinite resources for ingredients,” explains Algoriddim co-founder and CEO Karim Morsy. Algoriddim’s popular djay app is getting a major update today that gives users the ability to mix and match millions of tracks on the iPhone and iPad.

Thanks to a partnership with Spotify, djay users can now play any of the streaming’s service’s 20 million songs. Some fancy audio matching technology also makes it incredibly easy to match and discover new tracks.

Here’s how to do Spotify voice search on the iPhone or iPad.

1. Tap the search field in Spotify
2. Tap the Siri dictate button on the keyboard
3. Say the name of whatever you wan to hear
4. Tap Siri button again
5. Browse results.

Alternatively you can buy the new Vela app for $0.99, and skip all the tedious screen tapping.

Spotify seems to have solved one major problem with its apps. Until now, the music streaming service has been focussed on playlists, forcing you to organize your music in order to “save” it for later.

Compare this to Rdio, which concentrates on albums and songs, letting your save them to an iTunes-like collection.

Spotify now offers “Your Music,” which is pretty much a copy of Rdio’s collections, and is a very welcome addition.

Today Spotify announced a killer deal for college students: it’s cutting the cost of its Premium subscription in half from $10 to $5 per month. The discount will work for up to four years, and all you have to do is verify your name, date of birth, and college you attend.

A Spotify Premium subscription gets you unlimited access on any device to the service’s 20 million songs. We recently called it the best all-around music subscription service money can buy. Apple is even rumored to be building its own Spotify competitor. Spotify has apps for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and web.

Claiming your college discount is pretty easy through the Spotify website. The cost will be reduced for the next month’s billing cycle. Existing Premium subscribers can get in on the discount as well.

Source: Spotify

When iTunes Radio launched last spring, music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify took cover from the impending Apple invasion, but radio streaming apps like TuneIn Radio might be in Apple’s sights now as well.

Starting today iTunes Radio will feature National Public Radio as its first news channel for the audio streaming service. NPR’s channel will feature a 24-hour live stream with news, along with pre-recorded shows, but it won’t be the only news channel in the iTune Radio lineup.

iTunes Radio still has a long way to go before it catches up with Pandora’s number of subscribers, but in an effort to keep up with increasing royalty costs, Pandora announced this morning that it’s bumping up the monthly subscription price for Pandora One.

Starting in May new subscribers will have to pay $4.99 per month if they want their music stream ad free, which is still cheaper than competitors like Spotify and Rdio (both $9.99 per month).

Apple’s alternative, iTunes Radio is ad-free with $24.99 annual iTunes Match subscription, but Pandora is deciding to just drop the annual subscription option altogether.

Here’s a breakdown of the pricing changes:

This time ’round on The CultCast: all that we love about iOS 7.1; more rumors swirl of a 4.7 and 5.7-inch iPhone 6; an intriguing new iPod challenger gets a ton of buzz; why Flappy Bird might fly back into the App Store; 2014 brings a new MS Office; and iTunes Radio is more popular than you thought…

Guffaw your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the uproarious good time commence.

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iTunes Radio has barely been around for six months but after launching alongside iOS 7 in the U.S., Apple’s music streaming service has already knocked Spotify off the #3 spot among the most popular music streaming services in the country.