Taylor Swift has answered one of the last remaining questions about Apple Music before it launches: her popular album 1989 will be available on Apple Music when it launches on Tuesday. The development follows Swift’s high profile letter to Apple over how artists would be paid during the streaming service’s 3-month free trial. Apple later reversed its decision announcing it would pay artists during the trial.
While the pop star says it isn’t an Apple Music exclusive (like Pharrell’s upcoming release), the album is notably not available on Spotify as Swift removed her catalog last year due to the service’s free tier.
Take a look at the sequence of tweets in the linked post. This all feels so very pat. It’d be cynical of me to think this was all cooked up in a back room, planned in advance, right?
Every year we see the same promise: this is the year that Android-first development will become a reality. At the same time we see big companies like Instagram repeatedly introduce new apps that are iOS-only. Android has been able to tout more market share than iOS for quite some time, but that doesn’t seem to have translated into app developers releasing Android apps at the same time as their iOS counterparts, much less Android-first.
Lots of interesting elements in this piece. First, note that this comes from an Android blog, not an Apple blog.
One issue is willingness of users to pay for their apps. From one small developer:
“Everything we’ve read, every number we’ve seen shows that it’s really difficult to get people to pay for apps on Android. We didn’t think we could release a paid app on Android and create something sustainable enough to fund further development.”
And then there’s the issue of fragmentation:
“We were finding Android in general to be a slower platform to move on. There’s more time spent dealing with fragmentation bugs. There’s more time spent dealing with testing and debugging, and we would rather spend that time building new functionality.”
There’s a lot more to this. There are obviously counterexamples, developers who find Android an easier platform for their app. And we all know that the iOS app store is not paved with gold. There are quotes from John Gruber about Branch Q’s Vesper price hike and from Marco Arment about the free app model with in-app purchase to unlock premium features.
The key ingredient here is Google’s Speech Recognition API (though others like its translation services are also at work). The API lets the fridge recognize voice input in up to 40 different languages, with the ultimate goal of recognizing the single phrase “I am Canadian” (Molson’s longtime marketing slogan).
Molson makes some spectacularly awful beer but they do some really interesting promotions around the theme of “I am Canadian”.
Mitchell Lunn and Juno Obedin-Maliver, both clinical fellows at the University of California, San Francisco, have spent the past decade studying the health problems that many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer identified people face.
Their biggest challenge is the lack of population health data about LGBTQ people.
The researchers hope that an iPhone app can change that.
It’s gone from one or two examples to a bona fide trend—which, as any journalist knows, occurs whenever there is least three of something. The trend in this case is the hiring of human editors to filter through the news, music, and other forms of content that are being produced and/or hosted by a variety of platforms. So Apple is hiring editors for its News app, which it announced at its recent developer conference, as well as editor/DJs for the streaming music service the company is rolling out soon.
And:
Facebook is launching a new feature called Instant Articles with partners like the New York Times, but the site’s staff won’t have anything to do with the selection of stories that become part of the program—and the choice of who sees them and when will be left to Facebook’s all-powerful algorithm. Much like Facebook, Google’s services are also powered completely by algorithms.
Interesting choices. Can an AI make better news/music curating choices than a human? No doubt, that day is coming. At the same time, more and more music and news is being created algorithmically. Humans are still the exclusive consumers of both news and music and we decide what is good enough to satisfy our needs.
What I dread is the day that AIs are mostly producing content for other AIs.
Alright boys and girls, get ready to be schooled. A new study conducted by the University of Queensland’s School of Psychology has found that listening to extreme music like heavy metal can help people process anger and even increase their positive emotions, like inspiration.
Jim and Dan speculate on what really happened with the Apple Music policy change, and talk about the changing music industry, Eddie Van Halen, The Terminator, and more.
Sponsored by Squarespace. Use promo code GUITARS for 10% off your first purchase.
Schwarzenegger may be a real life jerk but he is a publicity machine and will do whatever it takes to promote his projects. This is a great stunt. I can’t wait to see the movie. The theme music alone gives me chills.
For the last 12 years, Mr. Lowe has been a top tastemaker on the BBC’s Radio 1 by championing brand-new music, landing interviews with stars like Kanye West and running his show with a frenetic production style inspired by hip-hop itself. Now he is preparing for a much broader role as the guiding voice of Beats 1, a free Internet radio station from Apple that on Tuesday will begin broadcasting to smartphones and laptops around the world — an experiment, of sorts, to reinvent live radio.
I hope we see profiles of the other two featured DJs for Beats 1. This is an aspect of Apple Music I find especially interesting and, I think, will make or break the service.
I’m not feeling a lot of love for OS X El Capitan out there. That might not be surprising, given that it’s firmly in the tradition of Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard–new-feature-light, speed-and-stability-focused OS X updates.
But as someone who reviewed Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion, I can tell you that not only did these cat modifier cat releases contain a bunch of bug fixes and other internal tweaks, they also managed to add a bunch of new features, too. Apple can’t help itself.
So let me present to you six reasons to be excited about what’s coming in El Capitan.
This is a solid take on some of what’s coming with OS X El Capitan. My hope is that, as with any stability-focused release, Apple has taken the time to get under the hood and do a bit of tune-up.
PIAS Entertainment Group And Play It Again Sam recordings, reached an agreement with Apple Music for their large roster of independent artists.
Thiese quotes are from TheQuietus.com:
On Monday, Apple Music agreed to pay royalties to rights holders during the three-month free trial period offered to users of their service. This came after days of uncertainty and disagreements that came to a head with Taylor Swift penning an open letter criticising Apple’s initial decision not to pay. Now label group PIAS have issued a statement that concludes “despite what one might read, this was not entirely down to Taylor Swift.”
And:
Adrian Pope, Managing Director of PIAS, says: “ Over the last three weeks or so we and others have worked hard to secured a range of significant benefits, protections and improvements on the originally proposed terms.
And:
“A key point of improvement is that we will now receive a per stream payment from day 1 of any free trial period. Other controls and protections have been added such that we feel this is a genuinely good deal for the labels and artists we represent. It should be noted that [PIAS] made it contingent that in us approving this agreement the same terms would be made available to all 4000+ independent labels, thus providing a fair playing field for all.”
For each song that is streamed free, Apple will pay 0.2 cent for the use of recordings, a rate that music executives said was roughly comparable to the free tiers from services like Spotify. This rate does not include a smaller payment for songwriting rights that goes to music publishers; Apple is still negotiating with many publishers over those terms, several publishing companies confirmed on Wednesday.
First things first, the money Apple will pay out during each free trial period is still under negotiation. It will be more than .2 cents a song. How much more is not yet known.
But at .2 cents a song, if you listen to 5,000 songs, Apple will shell out $10 for usage rights. Spread over 30 days, that’s 167 songs a day.
At an average song length of 3.5 minutes (your mileage may vary, but here’s one take at that math), that’s almost 10 hours a day of wall-to-wall music.
Very few people will hit that threshold. According to a survey by Edison Research, Americans listen to an average of just over 4 hours of music a day. That’s about 70 songs a day.
At that rate, Apple will pay out about 70 x 30 x .2 cents = $4.20 per month for each trial period user. Add in publishing costs, as well as other costs associated with running a business, and there’s enough cash going out to make it clear why Apple hesitated before agreeing (rightly so) to pay artists for that free trial period.
FirstLetter is a game that was specifically designed for Apple Watch. It is playable on the iPhone, but its minimalist design and simple game mechanics make it perfect for the wrist worn device.
As things currently stand, the interface options for an Apple Watch app are quite limited. And that fact puts a real crimp in the design efforts for any sort of Apple Watch game. But FirstLetter is pretty simple and provides a good template for Apple Watch game design.
Another point worth noting is the price. It’s free, with an ad-canceling version, available via in-app purchase, for $1.99.
To be clear, FirstLetter is not necessarily my cup of tea, but it does show off a particular gaming mechanism that works well on the Apple Watch.
Dropbox made itself a household name by giving away cloud storage. The eight-year-old company, valued at $10 billion, had 300 million registered users a year ago; now it’s got 400 million. Its two-year-old effort to make money from business users has been less impressive. While Dropbox led the $904 million global market for business file-sharing last year with about a 24 percent share, No. 2 Box and No. 3 Microsoft each took about 21 percent and doubled their slice of the pie, growing almost twice as fast, according to researcher IDC.
Dropbox is hugely popular, but it seems clear they need to figure out this sales strategy quickly.
Lisa Jackson, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and Apple’s top executive on environmental issues, will become the company’s lead on all policy initiatives, including the environment, education and accessibility. Her new title will be the vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives.
In a memo to employees, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said that Jackson’s new role is in line with the company’s dedication to “leaving the world better than we found it.”
Another good sign that Apple’s commitment to environment issues isn’t just lip service. Even better, they wisely see this as part of making the company better and more successful.
Apple’s “World Gallery” campaign, by agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab, that showcased iPhone photos taken by amateur and professional photographers around the world, has snapped the top prize in the Outdoor Lions at Cannes this year.
According to the jury president Juan Carlos Ortiz, creative chairman at DDB Americas, the judges didn’t so much choose “World Gallery,” it chose them. Praising the Grand Prix winner, Ortiz said: “It’s not just a great idea, it’s a game changer. It’s really opening a new way of doing things and changing behavior.”
Congratulations not just to Apple for the win but to all the photographers who had their work showcased. It really brought to the fore how a creative person with an iPhone can create amazing images.
Apple Music, the hardware giant’s soon-to-launch streaming service, has landed an eleventh-hour coup, striking deals with the independents’ digital rights organization Merlin and with Martin Mills’ indie powerhouse Beggars Group, sources tell Billboard. Label group PIAS has also announced it has signed on.
In a letter sent to Merlin members, CEO Charles Caldas writes, “I am pleased to say that Apple has made a decision to pay for all usage of Apple Music under the free trials on a per-play basis, as well as to modify a number of other terms that members had been communicating directly with Apple about. With these changes, we are happy to support the deal.”
I think independent music will be a big deal for Apple Music and, like many, am getting more and more excited to see what Apple Music will offer in terms of real world use.
Brian McCullough, writing for InternetHistoryPodcast.com:
Aside from the naming similarities, though, InfoGear’s iPhone would have plenty of other eerie similarities to Apple’s later device, both philosophically and technically.
For one thing, just as in Steve Job’s famous mantra, the InfoGear iPhone was designed to do three core things (phone calls, email and light web browsing) but to do them well. And from the very beginning, there was an almost Apple-like obsession with simplicity and ease of use. Interested in presenting an approachable, consumer-friendly image, InfoGear hired Frog Design, famous for the previous industrial design of various Apple and Mac computers.
I remember this product. Interesting that it was called the iPhone and did the big three: email, web, and phone. Fun read.
Privacy campaigners and open source developers are up in arms over the secret installing of Google software which is capable of listening in on conversations held in front of a computer.
First spotted by open source developers, the Chromium browser – the open source basis for Google’s Chrome – began remotely installing audio-snooping code that was capable of listening to users.
It was designed to support Chrome’s new “OK, Google” hotword detection – which makes the computer respond when you talk to it – but was installed, and, some users have claimed, it is activated on computers without their permission.
Some folks are calling this evil. I don’t think there’s any evil intent here, at least not on Google’s part. But the use of this approach to do evil is obvious.
My two cents: I think every computer manufacturer should include a switch to disable the microphone and camera, a switch that is impossible to override remotely.
When attempting to install iOS 9 on a device with insufficient space, there’s a popup that offers to temporarily delete some apps in order to make room for the update. Apps that are deleted are then reinstalled and replaced after the operating system update is completed.
This is a fantastic idea. A bit of a hack, made necessary by an OS update size that outgrew the smallest iOS device capacity. But a terrific idea, nonetheless.
Kirk McElhearn takes a quick tour through seven (six, really, with a seventh on the way) iOS browsers. Good to know the strengths and specialties of each. A short browse, worth your time.
Apple has added flyover support to more than 30 new locations in 2015, bringing the total number of 3D locations to 150. In April, the company added a number of new European cities to the list.
And if you’ve never played with flyover, go to Apple Maps on your Mac or iOS device, then type one of the flyover locations in the search field. As an example, you might start with:
Colosseum, Rome
Once the map appears, tap the location pin, then tap the popup window that appears (on the Mac, click the info icon, the small circle with the letter “i”) and select “Flyover Tour”. Obviously, this option is only available in the locations that support it.
