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Month: July 2017

Cool App: Streaks

Apps
Jason Tate

After reading the MacStories review of the Streaks app, I decided to give it a shot:

Streaks helps you set personal goals and stick to them using a combination of reminders and tracking. One of the hallmarks of the app, and what undoubtedly won it an Apple Design Award in 2016, is its obsessive attention to ease-of-use. By the very nature of its mission, Streaks is an app in which you shouldn’t spend a lot of time. Whether it’s in the main app, widget, or Apple Watch app, Streaks is designed to remove the friction of turning goals into habits by tracking tasks in a way that doesn’t become tedious, which makes it important to be able to mark items as completed quickly and easily.

I’ve only been using it for three days so far, but I think this will be something I stick with for a while. I like the idea of having a few (currently only four) streaks set up to help form some habits I’ve been having trouble with.

The Inside Story of SoundCloud’s Collapse

Soundcloud
Jason Tate

Ryan Mac, writing for BuzzFeed:

In a music era dominated by Spotify, SoundCloud has been, at the best of times, a startup in stagnation, and, at the worst of times, an organization in disarray. Once harboring aspirations to be the YouTube of sound, the Berlin-based company has struggled to remain viable, hamstrung by management missteps, an ineffective business strategy, and a stubborn music industry that would rather it had never existed.

And:

With SoundCloud holding out for just under $2 billion, Twitter balked, sources said, put off by the heady price tag, music industry headaches, and the discrepancy between Soundcloud’s monthly visitors and its registered users. (Many people listened to SoundCloud’s content, but never registered with the site.)

And:

SoundCloud’s quest to build a business and find legitimacy in the eyes of labels divided the company and alienated long-time users. Internally, workers noticed a distinct shift away from creators and toward listeners. Internal key metrics changed from “tracks posted” to “number of minutes listened.” Meanwhile, the company’s short staffed engineering team focused on developing products that could better track copyrighted content. When SoundCloud killed its record button, the move was interpreted by some as a sign the company was less focused on creators. Soon it would stop supporting groups, a feature that allowed like-minded users to congregate on the site and share or comment on the tracks posted to it.

Reddit Valued at $1.8 Billion

Reddit
Jason Tate

Reddit is now valued at $1.8 billion after their latest round of funding. According to Recode, the company will be going on a hiring spree and redesigning their website:

Reddit has raised $200 million in new venture funding and is now valued at $1.8 billion, according to CEO Steve Huffman.

The new funding round, the company’s largest ever, should expedite a number of internal product and business efforts, including a redesign of its homepage and its first foray into user-uploaded video, Huffman added in an interview with Recode.

The money comes courtesy of a number of well-known Silicon Valley investors, including firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, and individual investors like Y Combinator President Sam Altman (also a board member) and SV Angel’s Ron Conway. It also includes money from the hedge fund Coatue, investment firm Vy Capital and mutual fund giant Fidelity.

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Neon Trees Are Back

Neon Trees
Jason Tate

Neon Trees have announced on Facebook that they’re back:

It seems strange to say this but:

We’re back.

It’s been 3 years since our last album, and after years of being a band together, touring the world and living the dreams of our youth, we took an important break.. one that’s refreshed all of us and refocused what our band is and what we want to do next.

We are pleased to announce that next week you’ll all be getting the first taste of new music from this next era of Neon Trees.

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On Friday Bandcamp Will Donate Proceeds to Transgender Law Center

Bandcamp
Jason Tate

Bandcamp:

Bandcamp is a platform for artistic expression, and all manner of variance in experience and identity, including gender and sexuality, is welcome here. We support our LGBT+ users and staff, and we stand against any person or group that would see them further marginalized. This includes the current U.S. administration, and its recent capricious declaration that transgender troops will no longer be able to serve in the military. That this announcement was motivated in part to help fund the border wall exposes it as part of the administration’s cynical, discriminatory agenda.

In response, we will be donating 100% of our share of every sale on Friday, August 4th (from midnight to midnight Pacific Time) to the Transgender Law Center, a nonprofit organization that works tirelessly to change law, policy, and culture for the more equitable. TLC does critical policy advocacy and litigation on multiple fronts, fights for healthcare for trans veterans, defends incarcerated trans people from abuse in prisons and detention centers, supports trans immigrants, and helps trans youth tell their stories and build communities.

MTV to Bring Back TRL

MTV
Jason Tate

MTV will be bringing back TRL while they attempt to stay relevant:

Then in October, MTV will unveil the revival of “TRL.” The original iteration — which featured a countdown of music videos, a studio audience and frequent appearances from star musicians — was, in a way, a throwback itself, an updated version of “American Bandstand.”

The newer version of “TRL” will initially run an hour a day, and Mr. McCarthy said that might grow to two to three hours a day as the show developed. (There will also be unique daily content for Instagram, Snapchat and other social media channels.)

I remember watching TRL when I was younger. I watched it because there was a chance Blink-182, New Found Glory, or Sum 41 would make it onto the countdown and I’d get to see thirty seconds of their video. One of the main reasons I started AbsolutePunk.net was so that I could catalog music videos for bands I loved in a place where everyone could find them easily. Thankfully, YouTube ended up doing all that way better than I could have ever dreamed.

What TRL did well was become a destination for any artist starting their album cycle. If you wanted a shot at breaking out, you had to appear on the show and do an interview/video debut/live performance. This worked great when MTV was one of the only gatekeepers for the music industry. New album information for a select group of artists could break on TRL. Now, with access to more video (and news) content for bands than I could ever consume in a lifetime on the internet, I wonder what the hook will be for TRL that makes it worth watching. As someone that barely watches any live TV, I’m skeptical about the demand for these kinds of shows. Finding the small communities, video channels, and/or podcasts that are tailored to your specific listening habits just seems more interesting to me.

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