For the first time, all three of the major labels – Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group, along with their respective publishing arms – have struck individual licensing deals with the same artificial intelligence-focused music startup: Klay.
I don’t even have anything snarky to say. I find all of this so much more soulless than the most generic copycat awful neon-era scene music.
Letterboxd have announced a new “video store.”
This isn’t a subscription service! No lock-in, no paywall. Just rent the films you want, whenever you want, and join the conversation with our community logging, reviewing and adding them to lists.
Letterboxd Video Store is a film rental platform inside Letterboxd. Think of it as curated shelves instead of just scrolling lists endlessly without being able to make up your mind on what to watch.
Ashley King, writing for Digital Music News:
If you thought only streaming platforms were feeling the onslaught of artificial intelligence-created (AI) artists and generated music, think again. Even radio stations aren’t safe from the budding industry of AI-generated content. According to Billboard, an AI singer called Xania Monet has become the first known AI artist to earn enough radio airplay to debut on a Billboard radio chart.
You know, we don’t have to do this…
I’ve purchased a few things from TwelveSouth over the years (Hannah’s laptop stand, a couple chargers, etc.), so when I saw the new PowerBug pop-up on Instagram I knew I needed to give it a try. It’s a simple idea, executed perfectly. A MagSafe charger built to be minimal and plug into a wall socket. Attach phone, charge phone. No extra cords.
I’ve wanted something like this in our bathroom for a while and after it came I immediately bought a second one for the kitchen.
Read More “Recommendation: PowerBug”
Vimeo has been acquired by Milan-based app developer Bending Spoons:
Vimeo, once the internet’s most prestigious stage for independent filmmakers and animators, is being acquired by Milan-based app developer Bending Spoons in a $1.38 billion all-cash deal. The sale, expected to close later this year, will end Vimeo’s turbulent run as a public company.
For the creative community, the news is hardly shocking. Vimeo’s cultural influence has been fading for years, its pivot away from entertainment and towards enterprise software leaving behind the innovators and filmmakers who built its reputation.
Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:
YouTube is celebrating 10 years of its YouTube Music app on Thursday with the launch of new features that bring it closer to rival Spotify and others. The app will now include “Taste Match” playlists, which are playlists that combine multiple users’ overlapping interests, similar to Spotify Blend. The app will also start notifying users of upcoming releases, merch, and concerts, and is partnering with Bandsintown to help fans discover concerts when watching videos and Shorts on YouTube itself.
404 Media (paywalled) is reporting on how Spotify is allowing AI-Generated songs on various dead artists’ pages:
According to his official Spotify page, Blaze Foley, a country music singer-songwriter who was murdered in 1989, released a new song called “Together” last week. The song, which features a male country singer, piano, and an electric guitar, vaguely sounds like a new, slow country song. The Spotify page for the song also features an image of an AI-generated image of a man who looks nothing like Foley singing into a microphone.
Craig McDonald, the owner of Lost Art Records, the label that distributes all of Foley’s music and manages his Spotify page, told me that any Foley fan would instantly realize “Together” is not one of his songs.
Consequence has more:
Update: In a statement a spokesperson for Spotify said, “The content in question violates Spotify’s deceptive content policies, which prohibit impersonation intended to mislead, such as replicating another creator’s name, image, or description, or posing as a person, brand, or organization in a deceptive manner. This is not allowed. We take action against licensors and distributors who fail to police for this kind of fraud and those who commit repeated or egregious violations can and have been permanently removed from Spotify.”
The billionaire, who primarily lives in Stockholm, just led a €600 million investment in Helsing, a 4-year-old, Munich-based defense tech company that is now valued at €12 billion, as first reported by the Financial Times and confirmed separately by TechCrunch. The deal makes it one of Europe’s most valuable privately held companies; it also highlights Europe’s scramble to build its own military muscle as the world grows messier and the U.S. turns inward. […] But what started as an AI software company has grown much more ambitious. Helsing is now building its own strike drones and aircraft and said it’s working on a fleet of unmanned mini submarines in order to improve naval surveillance.
Spotify Technology SA shares tumbled on Tuesday after the streaming company gave a muted outlook for profit and subscriber growth in the current quarter.
The Stockholm-based company forecast gross profit margins of 31.5% in the second quarter, missing analysts’ average estimate for 31.6% according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Spotify sees monthly active users rising to 689 million, less than the 694.4 million analysts expected.
YouTube Music has added sharable lyrics to their music app.
Often, as a web designer or developer, you are creating a template to be filled with different versions of content. There is no “hand tweaking” typography on the web, especially when the layout is fluid, reflowing to fit different shapes and sizes of screens. So what can we do now to better express the expectations of quality from traditional typography, while still relying on the mechanization brought by today’s computers?
One solution is text-wrap:pretty. It’s intended to bring a new level of polish to type on the web by leveraging paragraph-based algorithms to solve long-standing problems.
This looks really good. I’m excited to play around with this when I can find some spare time.
Bill Gates, writing on the 50th anniversary of Microsoft:
The story of how Microsoft came to be begins with, of all things, a magazine. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured an Altair 8800 on the cover. The Altair 8800, created by a small electronics company called MITS, was a groundbreaking personal computer kit that promised to bring computing power to hobbyists. When Paul and I saw that cover, we knew two things: the PC revolution was imminent, and we wanted to get in on the ground floor.
At the time, personal computers were practically non-existent. Paul and I knew that creating software that let people program the Altair could revolutionize the way people interacted with these machines. So, we reached out to Ed Roberts, the founder of MITS, and told him we had a version of the programming language BASIC for the chip that the Altair 8800 ran on.
There was just one problem: We didn’t.
It was time to get to work.
I’ve heard this story many times before, but to read it again, and see the source code at the bottom of the page, is pretty wild.
Stuart Dredge, writing for Music Ally:
They include detailed breakdowns of how music is performing; data on what content fans are engaging with; promotional tools for music on TikTok; and the ability to set up EP and album campaigns driving pre-saves on Apple Music and Spotify.
A website is already live with login links for artists. It also explains that artists can invite their teams to have access to their analytics in TikTok for Artists too. Label teams can access artist analytics through their separate MediaMatch accounts in TikTok’s back-end.
While Nintendo told us very little in the official reveal of the console in January, now we know when the Switch 2 is coming and how much it will cost at launch: June 5th and $449.99. We also have more hardware details and specs to pore over, like a 1080p, 120Hz 7.9-inch LCD screen, Joy-Con controllers with mouse-like functions, 256GB of storage, and 4K output via the dock. We even know why it’s called the Switch 2instead of Super Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo also cleared up the mysteries about the system’s “C” button with details about new GameChat features and a camera accessory, and confirmed that GameCube games are coming to Nintendo Switch Online, along with a dedicated controller to give them the respect they deserve.
Last but not least, Nintendo showed off a number of new games, like a Switch 2 edition of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and the exclusive Switch 2 launch title, Mario Kart World.
The new version of Apple Music lets you trigger “mood” playlists from control center:
Opening the Music app will continue being the main way most of us interact with Apple Music, but I love what Apple’s doing with iOS 18.4’s new Ambient Music controls. The ability to assign a mood playlist button to your iPhone’s Lock Screen, Action button, or Control Center removes friction from the music playback experience.