Apple Music have announced a new student membership option that discounts the service by 50%.
That means in the U.S., where an individual membership to Apple Music costs $9.99 per month, the student membership will be $4.99 per month instead.
The option isn’t just arriving in the U.S., though. Students in other countries, including the U.K., Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, will also be able to take advantage of the new membership option.
Rob Levine, writing for Billboard, looks at the strange place YouTube occupies in the music industry:
Most Internet companies need to get permission from labels in order to use their music — a negotiating dynamic that results in high fees. With services that operate under the DMCA — like YouTube and, until recently, SoundCloud — the dynamic is very different. These services also stream music uploaded by users, and copyright holders who don’t want their content online need to file takedown notices — one for each copy of each song. Instead of selling the rights to music that a service needs, label executives say they’re stuck selling the rights to music that a service essentially already has.
Well, that’s the theory. In practice, it’s more complicated.
John Voorhees, writing for MacStories, looks at new social network built just for music fans:
SoundShare is an iPhone-only app designed to break down the walls between competing streaming services so that it’s easier to share music with your friends. Integration with Apple Music, Spotify, and Deezer allows music sharing with others and collaboration on playlists regardless of which service your friends use.
Serenity Caldwell, writing for iMore, looks at what may have happened in regard to the blog post going around saying that Apple Music deleted a bunch of files off someone’s hard drive.
Whatever the case, Apple Music was never designed to delete Pinkstone’s source library, and it won’t delete yours. That’s simply not how the service works on your primary Mac. But if you’re not aware of how iCloud Music Library stores copies of tracks, you may delete your local copies to save space, thinking you can get them back — and get screwed as a result.
My guess is that there was a misunderstanding in how the system works, because the system is pretty stupidly confusing at times, and there is always the chance it was a bug. But there’s absolutely no way that deleting your music, without you expressly saying to do it, is “working as intended” as apparently the original author was told by tech support.
What I consider to be the killer feature of Apple Music, the combination of my local library with their streaming library, is also the feature that adds the most complexity to the service. While it does work, and I do use it, it’s far from perfect and definitely confusing. That’s on Apple to fix if they want you to trust your music library to their product. If they don’t have that trust then people will continue to use two apps: one for music they own and then Spotify for everything else.
StarWars.com has shared photos of the new The Force Awakens Funko collectables and they’re amazing.
Coming in July and made in Pop!’s already-classic design aesthetic, the lineup includes everyone from Luke Skywalker to maskless Kylo Ren to Rey (with lightsaber!). In addition, several retailer exclusives are coming, featuring special depictions and variations of characters. Look for Rey with X-wing helmet, Poe Dameron with jacket and blaster, and much more. Finally, you can recreate Rey’s fateful meeting with Luke right on your desk.
John Paul Titlow, writing for Fast Company, looks at Pandora and their attempt to fight back the big streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music:
By shifting toward on-demand subscriptions, Pandora is hoping to add a new, much deeper layer of data and understanding to its artificial brain. By creating artist-based stations and thumbing songs, listeners can teach Pandora a lot—but behaviors like saving albums and listening to them on repeat or adding individual songs to playlists are vastly more informative (as Spotify and Apple already know). Right now, if you’re obsessed with the new Rihanna album, Pandora has no idea. These are the types of blind spots the service needs to fill in, especially if it wants to target superfans with special perks.
Data is just as crucial when it comes to selling concert tickets.
I’m fascinated by the idea of big music data and how it can find the perfect next band or album for a listener. I think Pandora is smart to be moving into trying to tie their music service into other things like selling concert tickets. But, I’m bearish on the company as a whole. They’ve been relegated to what is basically a feature in other apps and there’s no reason to pay for something you already get in a good enough fashion somewhere else.
Some fans have discovered that if you expose David Bowie’s latest album artwork to sunlight, it transforms into a field of glowing stars. Once covered back up, the stars fade away.
Rebecca Ford, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, is reporting that a Space Jam sequel starring LeBron James has been green lit by Warner Brothers.
Justin Lin and Andrew Dodge are ready to shoot some intergalactic hoops with LeBron James. The Fast & Furious 6 and Star Trek Beyond helmer is in talks to direct Warner Bros.’ sequel Space Jam 2 while Dodge will write.
The world has been interviewing Blink-182 over the past week (the label’s mad at me for posting that the video went up on YouTube, so I’m probably s.o.l), the latest is from Forbes, discussing the new beginning for the band and giving a little more detail on some of the new songs:
Well songs like “Rabbit Hole,” that have this big anthemic gang vocal at the end of it. There’s a song called “No Future,” there are a lot of really energetic, anthemic, angst-y fun rock songs I can’t wait to play live. This album is really rich with sing-along melodies and sing-along choruses. When I go to a show I want to sing along with the band. I still have that energy of going to see Bad Religion at the Palladium and wanting to sing every single word and I think this album has a lot of that for people.
The @chorusfm post about the @FurtherSRecs comp DESTROYED all other embedded players, stats-wise. Remind me why I should sponsor FB posts?
— Aj (@Aj_LaGambina) April 28, 2016
The Guardian studied their online comments section, the results were harrowing:
The Guardian was not the only news site to turn comments on, nor has it been the only one to find that some of what is written “below the line” is crude, bigoted or just vile. On all news sites where comments appear, too often things are said to journalists and other readers that would be unimaginable face to face – the Guardian is no exception.
New research into our own comment threads provides the first quantitative evidence for what female journalists have long suspected: that articles written by women attract more abuse and dismissive trolling than those written by men, regardless of what the article is about.
An interesting new app called Talkshow debuted this week:
Talkshow is a simple messaging app that allows you to text these things in public. With Talkshow, individuals, groups of friends, entertainers, creators — anyone! — can have conversations in public, to be viewed by others in real time or after the fact. Every Talkshow can be shared outside the app and embedded into other websites.
I can definitely see some interesting uses for this kind of thing.
Rolling Stone were at the kickoff “Karaoke Bash” for Blink-182’s new album and tour and the article has some new information peppered in.
“It goes in a lot of different directions,” says Hoppus. “We have some songs that sound like Blink-182 from 1999. … We have some songs that are like nothing we have ever done before. We have a ballad called ‘Home Is Such a Lonely Place’ that has clean arpeggiated finger-picking guitars with strings underneath it. We have super-fast late-Nineties-punk-rock-sounding songs. … We tried to capture the energy and not worry so much about all the knobs.”
David Chanen, writing for the StarTribune, on how the investigation into Prince’s death is now part of a criminal probe:
The law says that “investigative data collected or created by a law enforcement agency in order to prepare a case against a person, whether known or unknown, for the commission of a crime or other offense for which the agency has primary investigative responsibility are confidential or protected nonpublic while the investigation is active.”
The exception citation doesn’t mean that criminal charges will be filed at the completion of the Sheriff’s Office inquiry, only that charges are a possibility.
Quite a few reports are coming in that say things did not go well at Beach Slang’s show in Salt Lake City last night:
Rumors are running rampant that Philly Replacements revivalists Beach Slang broke up onstage last night at their show at Salt Lake City’s Kilby Court. Fans who were at the show describe a scene where frontman James Alex announced onstage that this would be their last show and the crowd would be given refunds at the door.
Update: The band have updated their Facebook page and are not breaking up:
Salt Lake, for the car crash last night and Boise, for fumbling on you, I am gigantically sorry—even bigger than that. I am going to make good on making it up to you. Cross my heart. This, and all of you, mean too much to me. I love you with thunder. I love you all the way. So, yeah, Seattle, we are still coming to your good city, wild-eyed and ready, our hearts bashed back into shape. If you’re still in, we are.
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