ReportWire

Tag: Spotify

  • Spotify partners with the big three music labels on ‘artist-first AI music products’

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    Spotify sees the music industry’s AI problem, and it’s going to do… something about it. On Thursday, the company published a blog post heavy on principles, partnerships and vague plans. Unfortunately, it’s practically devoid of specifics. The most explicit bit is that it’s partnering with the big three music labels. Together, they’ll “develop responsible AI products that empower the artists and songwriters they represent, and connect them with the fans who support them.”

    The move follows Spotify’s announcement last month that it would clean up the AI slop proliferating on its platform. The company frames today’s news as a direct defense against competition from unauthorized AI music production. “If the music industry doesn’t lead in this moment, AI-powered innovation will happen elsewhere, without rights, consent or compensation,” the company wrote.

    Spotify says artists don’t find that current AI tools are “built to power their careers, their businesses, and their fan bases.” That will inform whatever comes out of the partners’ plans. “We’ll develop new products for artists and fans through upfront agreements, not by asking for forgiveness later,” the company wrote.

    Spotify laid out four principles that will guide its hazy plans for “artist-first AI music products.” The first is through partnerships with labels, distributors, and publishers. (In addition to the big three of Sony, Universal and Warner, Spotify is partnering with digital rights company Merlin and the French music label Believe.) The other tenets include choice in participation, fair compensation and artist-fan connections.

    Although it’s been forced to clean up the AI mess that grew on its platform, Spotify has adopted AI features of its own. Most notably, that includes its AI DJ. But it’s also released a personalized daylist and AI Playlist features. The company differentiated its tools from unauthorized ones it’s combating. It described its AI features as helping listeners to discover and connect with real artists.

    “Our goal is to ensure the future of music innovation happens responsibly, and to invite the best minds in AI to help build it,” Spotify wrote.

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    Will Shanklin

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  • New on Netflix: Some of Spotify’s Biggest Podcasts

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    Video podcasts are coming to Netflix — in part because everyone’s gotta compete with YouTube.
    Photo: Bill Simmons via YouTube

    What even counts as television these days, anyway? That question gets a tad thornier by the day, especially now that Netflix has announced a new partnership with Spotify to bring a curated slate of the latter’s owned video podcasts onto the streaming platform.

    It’s a sizable lineup, one that mostly draws from The Ringer, the Bill Simmons–founded network that Spotify acquired in 2020, and which in recent months has been notably embracing video. The slate coming to Netflix includes the expected sports programming like The Bill Simmons Podcast (redemption, presumably, for Any Given Wednesday) and The Zach Lowe Show, but also more culture-oriented fare like The Rewatchables, The Big Picture, and The Dave Chang Show. Beyond The Ringer, the deal brings on podcasts that had been absorbed in Spotify’s 2019 acquisition of Parcast, including the generically named True Crime and Serial Killers, both of which will likely play nicely with Netflix’s recommendation algorithm. They will become available on Netflix in the U.S. early next year, with other markets to eventually follow. More titles are expected to be added later.

    For Netflix, this move doesn’t come out of nowhere. The company has been steadily experimenting with broadening its on-platform definition of “content,” including video games and digital video programming that originated on YouTube, like the popular kids’ YouTuber Ms. Rachel. It’s also long dabbled on the periphery of podcasting, mainly producing branded company shows tied to its television projects, not unlike how HBO uses podcasts to deepen engagement with shows like The Gilded Age and The Last of Us.

    But the podcast world has changed dramatically in the past few years. The rapid rise of video-first programming has completely reshaped the medium — and Netflix’s leadership has been watching. “The lines between podcast and talk shows are getting pretty blurry,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors back in April. “As the popularity of video podcasts grows, I suspect you’ll see some of them find their way to Netflix.” Around the same time, Axios reported that it was seeking a podcast chief, signaling a deeper structural move into the space.

    The Spotify podcasts heading to Netflix

    Sports
    • The Bill Simmons Podcast
    • The Zach Lowe Show
    • The McShay Show
    • Fairway Rollin’
    • The Mismatch
    • The Ringer F1 Show
    • The Ringer Fantasy Football Show
    • The Ringer NFL Show
    • The Ringer NBA Show

    Culture / Lifestyle
    • The Rewatchables
    • The Big Picture
    • The Dave Chang Show
    • The Recipe Club
    • Dissect
    • True Crime
    • Conspiracy Theories
    • Serial Killers

    For Spotify, things are a little more complicated. The deal represents both a retreat and a reframing. After spending years and billions of dollars to become the dominant podcasting player — buying Gimlet Media (now shuttered), Parcast (also largely shuttered), and The Ringer, plus signing exclusive deals with Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper (who later left for SiriusXM) — the Swedish platform had been further pivoting toward video in search of more lucrative ad dollars and a better business model for its podcast efforts. But YouTube’s sudden incursion into the podcast space, precipitated by the medium’s broader turn toward video, has effectively boxed Spotify in; it didn’t take long for audience-research reports to indicate that more podcast listeners now consider YouTube to be their top preferred platform, surpassing Spotify. By bringing its video podcasts to Netflix, Spotify can extend its shows’ reach without shouldering the cost of competing in video distribution. It’s a way of turning its original content into syndicated inventory, licensing its productions into a marketplace and audience ecosystem that’s indicated greater affinity toward visual programming.

    Both companies, of course, are reacting to the same gravitational pull: YouTube. The platform has evolved into the default center of gravity for the creator economy, swallowing categories like music, gaming, education, and now podcasts. In recent months, YouTube had been quietly reframing itself as a direct competitor to Netflix, a position further substantiated by its own claim that the platform is reaching more viewers over television sets than on phones and computers. As such, for Netflix and Spotify, this partnership is less a marriage than a kind of mutual defense pact: Netflix gets a new vein of low-cost, evergreen talk content that helps it compete in attention time against YouTube, while Spotify gets a new distribution vector that can keep its video and podcast investments relevant.

    The most intriguing question is how far Netflix is willing to go, and whether it’s considering adding what’s long thought to be the most popular podcast in the world: The Joe Rogan Experience. (Spotify doesn’t own Rogan’s show, but it holds an exclusive distribution deal.) Or, indeed, whether it will lean toward bringing on the most culturally influential podcast genre we have: politics. Given Netflix’s aversion to anything resembling news programming, there’s likely not much appetite for that. At least, not yet. But give it time — and, perhaps, a bad fiscal quarter.

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    Nicholas Quah

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  • Some Spotify video podcasts are coming to Netflix

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    Spotify is taking the video versions of some of its podcasts to another platform entirely: Netflix. Starting in the US in early 2026 (with more markets and shows to follow), Netflix will start offering sports, culture, lifestyle and true crime podcasts that Spotify Studios and The Ringer produce.

    Nine sports podcasts will be available at the jump, including The Bill Simmons Podcast, The Zach Lowe Show, Fairway Rollin’ and The Ringer’s F1, fantasy football, NFL and NBA shows. Other video podcasts that are coming to Netflix include The Rewatchables, The Recipe Club, Dissect, Conspiracy Theories and Serial Killers.

    Netflix sees these podcasts as complementary to its current offerings (The Ringer F1 Show, for instance, will sit neatly alongside Drive to Survive). Of course, for Spotify, this is a way to get more eyeballs and eardrums on its original programming.

    With TV viewing becoming a bigger priority for YouTube over the last few years, this seems like a way for Netflix to bite back in the battle for consumer attention, given the prevalence of video podcasts on Google’s platform. Many people use streaming services for background comfort sound, and turning to podcasts or talk-radio style formats (something Disney+ also offers with The Rich Eisen Show on weekdays) may be a way for them to do that after pulling the plug on cable and broadcast TV.

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  • Spotify, Canva and other apps can now connect to ChatGPT

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    You’ll soon be able to interact with some of your favorite apps, including Spotify and Canva, right inside of ChatGPT. OpenAI announced the integration, which is enabled by the company’s new Apps SDK, during its DevDay presentation. As of today, ChatGPT can connect to a handful of apps, with more to come over time and OpenAI working on submission guidelines that will allow developers to monetize their work.

    As a ChatGPT user, you can any access available third-party app by referencing it in your conversations with the chatbot. In the case of Spotify, for example, you can write “Spotify, make a playlist for my party this Friday.” The first time you mention an app in this way, you’ll be prompted to connect your account to ChatGPT. When working with Spotify, ChatGPT can make recommendations based on a mood, theme or a topic. The interface will eventually lead you to Spotify itself, where you can listen to what ChatGPT has created.

    “It’s early days, so while we might not be able to deliver on every request just yet, we’ll continue to build, refine, and improve the experience over the coming weeks and months,” Spotify says of the integration.

    OpenAI showed off other apps working inside of ChatGPT. For instance, an employee demoed Canva creating a few posters for a dog-walking business that they had talked to ChatGPT about starting. With today’s announcement, ChatGPT can connect to Canva, Coursera, Figma, Spotify and Zillow. In the coming weeks, DoorDash, OpenTable, Target and Uber will also work with the chatbot. And later this year, OpenAI says it will begin accepting app submissions for review and publication.

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  • Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ is almost here. Here’s what to know

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    Lights, camera, action. Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” arrives Friday. Are you ready for it?Swift announced her latest era back in August, when she began teasing the release.Here’s everything you need to know ahead of its drop date: how to stream, which variants exist, and of course, how the album came together. Enjoy the show!How to listen to Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl””The Life of a Showgirl” will be available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.Fans can pre-save the album ahead of its release on Oct. 3. Pre-saving ensures the new music automatically appears in a fan’s library the moment it is available. It is also a way for an artist to promote streams ahead of the drop date.On Monday, Spotify announced that Swift’s album surpassed five million pre-saves on its platform to become the most pre-saved album in its history. The previous title holder? Her 2024 album “The Tortured Poets Department.”In addition to the many streaming options, there will also be a digital-download variant of “The Life of a Showgirl” available via iTunes, featuring a new cover image and a nearly three-minute “exclusive video from Taylor herself detailing inspirations behind the album” labeled “A Look Behind the Curtain.”What physical variants are there?Target is once again a major partner with Swift. Their stores will carry three CD variants, titled “It’s Frightening,” “It’s Rapturous” and “It’s Beautiful” editions. There is also an exclusive vinyl release, “The Crowd Is Your King” edition, in “summertime spritz pink shimmer vinyl.” Many Target locations will remain open past midnight on the day of release for superfans to pick up in real time.There are a number of other vinyl variants as well: “The Tiny Bubble in Champagne Collection,” which features two vinyl variants described as “under bright lights pearlescent vinyl” and “red lipstick & lace transparent vinyl.”There is also “The Baby That’s Show Business Collection,” in two colorways: “lovely bouquet golden vinyl” and “lakeside beach blue sparkle vinyl.”Then there’s “The Shiny Bug Collection” in “violet shimmer marbled vinyl” and “wintergreen and onyx marbled vinyl.”And of course, there is the standard LP and cassette, in “sweat and vanilla perfume Portofino orange vinyl.”Artwork varies throughout.What do we know about the album so far?Swift partially announced her 12-track new album “The Life of a Showgirl” on the “New Heights” podcast hosted by Travis Kelce — Swift’s fiancé and Kansas City Chiefs tight end — and his brother, Jason Kelce, the former Philadelphia Eagles center.In the full episode, Swift revealed she worked on the album in Sweden while she was on the “Eras Tour” — flying between dates to record, truly embodying the album’s title, “The Life of a Showgirl.” The entire album was completed with producers Max Martin and Shellback, whom Swift previously collaborated with on 2012’s “Red,” 2014’s “1989” and 2017’s “Reputation.” Her frequent producing partner, Jack Antonoff, was not mentioned.She described the release as full of “bangers.” “I care about this record more than I can even overstate,” she said, agreeing with Travis Kelce when he described the release as “a lot more upbeat” than 2024’s “The Tortured Poets Department.”Across the album, there is only one feature listed: the title track, “The Life of a Showgirl,” will include Sabrina Carpenter.

    Lights, camera, action. Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” arrives Friday. Are you ready for it?

    Swift announced her latest era back in August, when she began teasing the release.

    Here’s everything you need to know ahead of its drop date: how to stream, which variants exist, and of course, how the album came together. Enjoy the show!

    How to listen to Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl”

    “The Life of a Showgirl” will be available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.

    Fans can pre-save the album ahead of its release on Oct. 3. Pre-saving ensures the new music automatically appears in a fan’s library the moment it is available. It is also a way for an artist to promote streams ahead of the drop date.

    On Monday, Spotify announced that Swift’s album surpassed five million pre-saves on its platform to become the most pre-saved album in its history. The previous title holder? Her 2024 album “The Tortured Poets Department.”

    In addition to the many streaming options, there will also be a digital-download variant of “The Life of a Showgirl” available via iTunes, featuring a new cover image and a nearly three-minute “exclusive video from Taylor herself detailing inspirations behind the album” labeled “A Look Behind the Curtain.”

    What physical variants are there?

    Target is once again a major partner with Swift. Their stores will carry three CD variants, titled “It’s Frightening,” “It’s Rapturous” and “It’s Beautiful” editions. There is also an exclusive vinyl release, “The Crowd Is Your King” edition, in “summertime spritz pink shimmer vinyl.” Many Target locations will remain open past midnight on the day of release for superfans to pick up in real time.

    There are a number of other vinyl variants as well: “The Tiny Bubble in Champagne Collection,” which features two vinyl variants described as “under bright lights pearlescent vinyl” and “red lipstick & lace transparent vinyl.”

    There is also “The Baby That’s Show Business Collection,” in two colorways: “lovely bouquet golden vinyl” and “lakeside beach blue sparkle vinyl.”

    Then there’s “The Shiny Bug Collection” in “violet shimmer marbled vinyl” and “wintergreen and onyx marbled vinyl.”

    And of course, there is the standard LP and cassette, in “sweat and vanilla perfume Portofino orange vinyl.”

    Artwork varies throughout.

    What do we know about the album so far?

    Swift partially announced her 12-track new album “The Life of a Showgirl” on the “New Heights” podcast hosted by Travis Kelce — Swift’s fiancé and Kansas City Chiefs tight end — and his brother, Jason Kelce, the former Philadelphia Eagles center.

    In the full episode, Swift revealed she worked on the album in Sweden while she was on the “Eras Tour” — flying between dates to record, truly embodying the album’s title, “The Life of a Showgirl.” The entire album was completed with producers Max Martin and Shellback, whom Swift previously collaborated with on 2012’s “Red,” 2014’s “1989” and 2017’s “Reputation.” Her frequent producing partner, Jack Antonoff, was not mentioned.

    She described the release as full of “bangers.” “I care about this record more than I can even overstate,” she said, agreeing with Travis Kelce when he described the release as “a lot more upbeat” than 2024’s “The Tortured Poets Department.”

    Across the album, there is only one feature listed: the title track, “The Life of a Showgirl,” will include Sabrina Carpenter.

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  • Why Spotify Co-Founder Daniel Ek Is Stepping Down as CEO

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    Spotify said Tuesday that founder Daniel Ek is stepping down as CEO to become the executive chairman, in an announcement that sent its shares sliding in Tuesday trading.

    The Stockholm-based streaming giant said Ek will be replaced by two lieutenants who will become co-CEOs: Chief Product and Technology Officer Gustav Söderström and Chief Business Officer Alex Norström. The pair, who are also currently copresidents, will transition into their new jobs on Jan. 1 and will report to Ek.

    Spotify said in a press release that the move “formalizes” how Spotify has been operating since 2023, with Söderström and Norström largely leading strategic development and operational execution.

    Ek said that he had already “turned over a large part of the day-to-day management and strategic direction” to the pair.

    “This change simply matches titles to how we already operate,” he said. As executive chairman, Ek said he will focus on Spotify’s “long arc.”

    In an online question and answer session following the announcement, Ek said his new role would not be a ceremonial one that investors with a “U.S. perspective” might expect.

    In Europe, an executive chairman is typically “quite active in the business,” and acts as a representative to “certain stakeholders” such as governments, he said.

    Ek said he still sees growth opportunities, including a “huge part of the world that’s really not accustomed to streaming” stretching from Asia to Africa, as well as new technology including artificial intelligence.

    “I’m gonna keep pushing for us to look around the corner, stay focused on the long term,” he said.

    Since Ek founded Spotify about two decades ago, the platform’s rise has helped transformed the music business and paved the way for modern streaming. Spotify now has more than 700 million subscribers and a library of more than 100 million songs, 7 million podcast titles and 350,000 audiobooks.

    Spotify shares, which have doubled in the past year, fell more than 5% in afternoon trading after the announcement.

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    Associated Press

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  • The New Patronage: A.I., Algorithms and the Economics of Creativity

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    Generative A.I. is cheapening media production while platforms recode payouts, power and provenance. Unsplash+

    The cost of making high-quality media is collapsing. The cost of getting anyone to care about it is not. As generative A.I. turns production into a near-commodity, cultural power is shifting from studios and galleries to the platforms that allocate attention and the algorithms that determine who gets paid. The new patrons are not moguls with checkbooks; they are recommendation systems tuned for engagement and brand safety.

    Production is cheap; distribution is scarce

    Video models now draft storyboards, generate shots and remix audio at consumer scale. Yet the money still follows distribution, not tools. On YouTube, the rules of the YouTube Partner Program, set and revised unilaterally, determine whether a creator receives 55 percent of watch-page ad revenue for long-form content and 45 percent for Shorts. Those headline rates are stable, but the platform’s enforcement posture has shifted: as of July 15, YouTube began tightening monetization against “inauthentic” or mass-produced A.I. content, a clarification aimed at the surge of spammy, low-effort videos. The message is clear: use A.I. to enhance originality, not to flood the feed. 

    The enforcement problem is real. “Cheapfake” celebrity clips—static images, synthetic narration and rage-bait scripts—have racked up views while confusing audiences. YouTube has removed channels and now requires disclosure labels for realistic synthetic media, but detection and policing remain uneven at scale. 

    Platforms are recoding payouts and power

    Spotify’s 2024 royalty overhaul illustrates how platform rule-sets become policy for the creative middle class. Tracks now require at least 1,000 streams in 12 months to pay out; functional “noise” content is throttled; and labels face fees for detected artificial streaming. The goal is to redirect the pool away from bot farms and sub-cent trickles. The effect is a re-concentration of earnings at the head of the curve and a higher bar for the long tail. When platforms change the taps, whole genres feel the drought or the deluge. 

    TikTok’s détente with Universal Music in May 2024 underscored the same power dynamic in short-form video. After months of public sparring over royalties and A.I. clones, a new licensing deal restored UMG’s catalogue to the app, alongside language about improved remuneration and protections against generative knock-offs. When distribution is the choke point, even the largest rights-holders must negotiate on platform terms.

    Data deals: the new studio lots

    If attention is one axis of the new patronage, training data is the other. The most lucrative cultural contracts of the past year were not output commissions but input licences. OpenAI’s run of publisher agreements, including the Associated Press (archives), Axel Springer, the Financial Times and a multi-year global deal with News Corp, reportedly worth more than $250 million, signals a market price for premium corpora. A.I. labs are paying for access, and the beneficiaries are large, well-structured repositories of rights, not individual creators. 

    The legal battles surrounding image training demonstrate the unsettled state of the rules. Getty Images narrowed its U.K. lawsuit against Stability A.I. in June, dropping core copyright claims while pressing trademark-style arguments about reproduced watermarks. The pivot reflects the complexity of proving training-stage infringement across borders, as well as the industry’s search for more predictable routes to compensation.

    Regulation is standardizing transparency and shifting risk

    Rules are arriving, and they read like operating manuals for platformized culture. The E.U.’s A.I. Act phases in obligations for general-purpose models, with guidance for “systemic-risk” providers by 2025 and a Code of Practice outlining requirements for transparency, copyright diligence and safety. In effect, document training, assessing model risks, publishing technical summaries and preparing for audits are all tasks that privilege firms and partners with a strong compliance presence. 

    In the U.S., the Copyright Office’s multipart A.I. study is moving from theory to guidance. Part 2 (January 2025) addresses whether and when A.I.-assisted outputs can be copyrighted, while the pre-publication of Part 3 (May 2025) examines training and how to reconcile text-and-data mining with compensation. The studio system, once established, created creative norms through collective bargaining; now, regulators and A.I. vendors are co-authoring the manual.

    Unions are also imposing guardrails. The WGA’s 2023 deal barred studios from treating A.I.-generated material as “source material” and protected writers from being required to use A.I.; SAG-AFTRA’s agreements introduced consent and compensation for digital replicas, with similar provisions in music. These are not abstractions; they are hard-coded constraints on how platforms and producers can deploy synthetic labour.

    Provenance becomes product

    As synthetic media scales, provenance is turning into both a feature and a bargaining chip. TikTok has begun automatically labelling A.I. assets imported from tools that support C2PA Content Credentials. YouTube now requires creators to disclose realistic synthetic edits. Meanwhile, device makers are integrating C2PA into the capture pipeline, with Google’s Pixel 10 embedding credentials in its camera output. OpenAI, for its part, adds C2PA metadata to DALL-E images. Attribution is becoming clickable. 

    The provenance layer will not solve misinformation alone. Metadata can be stripped, and enforcement lags, but it rewires incentives. Platforms can boost authentic, labelled media in feeds, penalize evasions and share “credibility signals” with advertisers. That is algorithmic patronage by another name.

    What shifts next

    Studios and galleries will increasingly resemble platforms. Owning release windows is no longer enough. Expect investments in first-party audiences, data clean rooms and rights bundles that can be licensed to model providers. The historic advantage, taste and talent pipelines must be coupled with distribution levers and data assets. Deals will include not just streaming residuals but “model-weight” royalties and retraining rights, mirroring the structure of today’s publisher licences.

    Creators will face algorithmic wage setting. Eligibility thresholds (1,000 Spotify streams), demonetization triggers (unoriginal Shorts), disclosure requirements (synthetic media labels) and fraud detection fees are becoming the effective tax code of digital culture. The prudent strategy is to diversify revenue streams, ads, direct fan funding and commerce, and to instrument provenance by default to stay on the right side of both algorithms and regulators.

    Policy, too, will reward those who can comply. The E.U. framework, the U.S. copyright study, and union clauses collectively nudge the market toward licensed inputs, documented outputs and consent-based replication. Those advantages include larger catalogues and well-capitalized intermediaries. For independent creators, collective licensing pools and guild-run registries may offfer the path to negotiating power.

    The arts has seen patronage shift before, from courts to salons to art galleries and museums. This time, the median patron is a ranking function. Where culture is made matters less than where it is surfaced, metered and paid. Those who understand the incentives embedded in platform policy, and can prove provenance at the speed of the feed, will capture the surplus. Everyone else will be producing to spec for someone else’s algorithm.

    The New Patronage: A.I., Algorithms and the Economics of Creativity

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    Gonçalo Perdigão

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  • Spotify now directly integrates with DJ software

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    Spotify just announced integration with like rekordbox, Serato and djay. This will make it much easier to build out sets from playlists and to do cool stuff like blend tracks.

    The company says that users “will be able to access their entire library and playlists directly within desktop DJ software,” with just one caveat. This is only for Premium subscribers. The integration is available in 51 global markets.

    It looks pretty easy to get started. Just log into a Premium account directly inside of the preferred DJ software. That’s pretty much it.

    It’s worth noting that this isn’t a brand-new idea. Spotify offered something similar for years, but stopped supporting . This was a business decision that was believed to be .

    The platform has been busy lately. Spotify recently introduced and an . However, it still while making nearly . It’s also worth remembering that CEO Daniel Ek is heavily invested in a .

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    Lawrence Bonk

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  • 9 Websites to Help You Find New Music

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    For decades, you didn’t have to look far to find the tastemakers in music. They were radio DJs and music writers for the most part, concentrated into a handful of stations an publications. They set the standards and people followed them.

    But, now that those days are long behind us and we can all carry around the entire history of popular music in our back pocket, how in the world to we sift through the tangle of songs and discover stuff we really want to listen to.

    Certainly streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and others can help, but they aren’t exactly incentivized to help you find everything you want. Their goal is quantity, not quality.

    Fortunately, a number of music discovery tools have tried to fill the void, many of them developed independently, free from the constraints of capitalism (mostly) and focused almost entirely on helping us find new, cool music. There are apps that can do this, but for the purposes of this, we will stick with websites, some of which might be tough to navigate on a phone anyway.

    Every Noise At Once

    As overwhelming as it is incredible, ENAO is a massive map of musical sub-genres linked to Spotify to help you discover everything from discofox to nu gabber, whatever those are. Oh, also jazz, modern alternative and even Houston hip hop. Sub-genres are the new language of music searchers. Artists want to find the niche-ist of niches to place themselves in so they are easier to find via hashtags and other search functions. ENAO takes this to a whole other level by not only breaking apart all the categories it can find, but giving options of discovery of artists, playlists and a wealth of other information, putting it all in a giant visual tag cloud of sorts. Its developer stopped working on the site in 2024, but it’s still going strong and, God willing, will for a long time because it’s incredible.

    Gnoosic

    Part of Gnod, a network providing tools for discovery of all kinds, Gnoosic is a simple tool that helps you find music through comparison. Put in three of your favorite bands and it spits out other artists you might like based on those choices. The limitation of three is pretty brilliant because it really hones in on very specific kinds of music and you get to see what Gnoosic renders for you. Once you make your choices, start clicking through a list of artists you can choose to like, not like or say you don’t know. It keeps refining from there.

    Music-Map

    Once you’ve played around with Gnoosic, check its sister site Music-Map. It is one of a number of tools that help to visualize music connections by putting other artists of a similar style or genre floating in a tag cloud similar to ENAO. Each artist you click on spawns a new set of artists. It isn’t as convenient as some other tools that link directly to the songs on Spotify or YouTube, but when you see a name you’ve never heard of, it’s easy to do a quick search and see if it is worth your time.

    click to enlarge

    Radio Garden is a unique way to learn about music from across the globe.

    Screenshot

    Radio Garden

    One of the more creative and unique websites for music discovery is, ironically, one that involves radio stations, in this case, spread across the entire globe. Visit the site and swoop down across a visual of the planet. Every dot represents the stream for a radio station. If you are fascinated with maps and geography, you will find yourself mesmerized by the options. Tune into a pop station in Indonesia or listen to some traditional Cambodian tunes or the fantastic world music of West Africa. You might not be able to understand everything you hear, but then you’ll come across Katy Perry on some island in the South Pacific and realize we aren’t that different after all.

    What the F*** Should I Listen to Right Now

    Simple and to the point. Put in a band and the tool tells you who you might like. You can tell it you “don’t like that f***ing artist,” click the name of the band to listen to them on Last.fm, or start over. It’s not terribly sophisticated, but it’s funny and a quick way to run through a few possible options when you are in a hurry.

    Musicroamer

    Another in the series of visually based websites, Musicroamer lets users create endless visual maps of artists with their connections to other artists. Those can be added to playlists or saved as maps to refer back to later. All of the artists have previews spun by Spotify so its easy to give it a listen and see if you like it. The more connected artists mapped out, the wider the grid and the more obscure the music. Requires registration for full use.

    click to enlarge

    Want to hear some weird music from France in the 1950s? Radiooooo has you covered.

    Screenshot

    Radiooooo

    Speaking of maps, why not use the ones at Radiooooo to not just circle the globe but listen to the music of any era from any place. Feeling like some 1950s Cuban music or maybe some tunes from Russia in the 1940s? They have it and it can be as weird as you imagine. There are numerous ways to refine searches from choosing “slow, fast or weird” (trust us, weird is worth it), to randomized shuffles and setting a “taxi” trip that runs through a number of different styles of the user’s choosing. One of the cooler features is the ability to add a song found while browsing around. And the catalog seems endless. Some tools are reserved for paying customers, but there is plenty available for free to keep you here for hours.

    Rate Your Music

    Set up more traditionally as a user based listening/rating service, RYM nevertheless offers a range of ways to discover music. One of our favorites is through their extensive catalog of charts. Having been around for over 20 years means the number of charts ranking artists, songs and records going back decades is remarkably extensive. Each selection is broken down into genre and descriptors with comprehensive information about the song, album and band. You can even create your own charts and explore the huge number of custom lists that range from the very normal to the positively bizarre.

    Discovery Quickly

    DQ (no relation) is more Spotify tool than music discovery website, but because it has so many features and is so easy to use, it absolutely helps with listening to new bands. Not only will it, once connected to your account, show you everything you listen to and stats related to your Spotify usage, but you can quickly browse genres and new releases, everything Spotify offers. The best part is just hover over the photo of any artist and it plays the most popular song by that artist instantly. Very convenient.

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    Jeff Balke

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  • Spotify Would Prefer You Didn’t Sell Your Own Data for Profit

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    Spotify has never been shy about the fact that the massive amount of user data it collects is a major part of its secret sauce, from its user-specific Discover Weekly playlist to the annual event that is Spotify Wrapped. But the company, which does everything it can to lock people into long listening sessions and sells ads based on user data, would really prefer it if you didn’t bottle up that sauce and resell it for your own profit. According to a report from Ars Technica, a set of users did just that to make a little profit, much to the company’s chagrin.

    More than 18,000 Spotify users joined a group called Unwrapped, which set out with the goal of allowing said users to monetize their data by selling it to a third party. They found a buyer on Vana, a startup platform that allows people to sell data to firms building AI models. The idea is that users can get some cash directly by selling sources of data that are largely untapped, including things like private messages from Twitter, Reddit, and Telegram—and, in this case, listening history data from Spotify.

    Through a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), the users voted on whether or not to make a sale, with 99.5% of the more than 10,000 voters approving, according to Ars Technica. They ultimately sold off artist preference data pulled from their respective Spotify profiles to a company called Solo AI, which markets itself as an AI-driven music platform. The users reportedly got $55,000 for the pool of data, which was split amongst them and distributed via cryptocurrency tokens. The final profit for each person: about $5.

    If you’re factoring in whatever trouble it takes to collect the data and cash out the crypto, your mileage may vary on whether it was all worth it, but it’s interesting as a proof of concept. Now, whether that concept is good or not is a whole other question. The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that selling your own data doesn’t actually do anything to correct the imbalance between the power held by companies that collect and cash in on user data and the users who are being constantly surveilled and monetized, and argues, “Those small checks in exchange for intimate details about you are not a fairer trade than we have now.”

    Spotify also thinks selling your user data is bad, but for totally different reasons. According to Ars, the company told the developers in charge of the Unwrapped project that they were violating Spotfiy’s developer policy, which prohibits the use of Spotify content for machine learning or AI models.  “Spotify honors our users’ privacy rights, including the right of portability,” Spotify’s spokesperson told the publication. “All of our users can receive a copy of their personal data to use as they see fit. That said, UnwrappedData.org is in violation of our Developer Terms, which prohibit the collection, aggregation, and sale of Spotify user data to third parties.”

    Maybe Spotify is just annoyed that users are monetizing their own data when the company has struggled to figure out how to do the same. Per Business Insider, just 11% of the company’s revenue currently comes from its data-driven advertising business, well short of its 20% goal, as it has apparently been unable to crack ways to turn its massive trove of user data into ad placements that ad buyers actually want.

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    AJ Dellinger

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  • Why the song of the summer is nearly 30 years old—and what it has to do with Gen Z’s nostalgic thirst for a ’90’s kid summer’ | Fortune

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    “‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand,” Johnny Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls wailed plaintively in “Iris,” which dominated charts from April through July of 1998. He was singing about Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan’s angel/human romance in “City of Angels,” but nearly 30 years later, he was singing to millions more, many of them Gen Z.

    Google Trends’ September 3 newsletter reported that search interest for “iris goo goo dolls” was at a 15-plus year high, and as of the past week it was “the top searched song of the summer.” On Spotify, it was a top 25 global hit for several months running, The Wall Street Journal reported in late August, even reaching as high as No. 15. This phenomenon isn’t just a quirk of algorithms or chance—it’s the product of a larger cultural moment driven by nostalgia and the shifting ways we connect with music. Gen Z, a generation already defined by a keen sense of nostalgia, has popularized the concept of a “90s kid summer,” harkening back to a time before social media and smartphones—the exact time of the Goo Goo Dolls’ biggest-ever hit.

    The viral surge of “Iris”

    Much of the song’s renewed momentum can be traced to viral moments, such as the Goo Goo Dolls’ live performances at major festivals like Stagecoach and on the American Idol season finale. TikTok trends featuring both original footage and covers have also propelled “Iris” to new global streaming peaks, with over 5 billion streams worldwide, far and away the top result for the band on Spotify. Rzeznik told Australian outlet Noise11 that his band has to play live and “that’s how we earn a living.” With “Iris” at the 2-billion stream mark at that point, he added, “You make crap for streaming. People stream your songs and you make no money.”

    John says, “Nobody makes any money out of selling records anymore because nobody buys records anymore. You make crap for streaming. People stream your songs and you make no money. You’ve got to go out and play live. That takes a lot of time. I just think the business has changed so much. Its not as much fun as it used to be. We get to play live and that’s how we earn a living”.

    The strange power of a three-decade-old song dominating summer playlists is no accident. As revered music critic Simon Reynolds explored in his influential 2010 work Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past, we live in a time where cultural production is increasingly fixated on recycling the old rather than inventing the new. Reynolds argued that contemporary pop is less about innovation and more about revisiting previous decades, blurring distinct eras, and nibbling away at the present’s identity. He’s far from the only cultural theorist to spot the lure of the recycled hit.

    A few years later, in 2014, the cultural theorist Mark Fisher (who later committed suicide after a long battle with depression) released a book of essays, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Among several memorable phrases, he introduced the concept of the “slow cancellation of the future”: the persistent feeling that time is repeating itself and new ideas are stalling in favor of familiar comfort. According to Fisher, our cultural imagination is increasingly drawn to recycling past successes, not just in music but in film, fashion and art. The result is a present haunted by the ghosts of earlier decades—where the future has faded into a “recycled present” and our ongoing search for novelty is often satisfied by what we already know.

    Gen Z’s 1990s nostalgia

    These ideas play out most vividly in recent consumer trends, especially among Gen Z. For many, the 1990s symbolize an era before smartphones and constant connectivity—a time when summers consisted of bike rides, ice cream trucks, and garden hoses, rather than endless notifications and screen time. The “90’s kid summer” trend reflects a longing for unstructured play and analog fun, with parents and young adults alike trying to recreate the freedom and creativity they associate with the pre-digital age.

    Google Trends reported that “90s summer” reached an all-time high in June and “90s kid summer” was a breakout search in July. It has close similarities to a similar breakout search: “feral child summer,” which encourages parents to stop tracking their kids’ every movement (with technology that was not available in the ’90s). They communicate a yearning for another time with less technology, when “Iris” was playing on a loop over and over on VH1. For Gen Z, who never truly experienced the ‘90s but grew up with its influence, revisiting this past through music like “Iris” is both escapism and rebellion against the anxieties of the digital present.

    When the Goo Goo Dolls, with opener Dashboard Confessional, played Berkeley’s Greek Theatre in September, the emo band’s frontman Chris Carrabba remarked on all the teenagers who were rocking vintage band tees in the crowd. ““Do they even have MTV anymore?” he asked in onstage comments reported by SF Gate. Then he offered an explanation to his audience: “Families used to watch TV communally. It was like large format TikTok.” SF Gate noted that the crowd grew overhelmingly loud for the closing number of the show: of course, “Iris.”

    Nora Princiotti of The Ringer argued on September 3 that the summer of 2025 lacked a defining “song of the summer,” with recent examples including “Old Town Road” and “Despacito” and older classic including “Hot in Herre” Nelly and “Summer Nights” from Grease. She argued that it was a summer “without monoculture,” depriving many contenders from the chance to dominate the airwaves that were available to the Goo Goo Dolls the first time around, in 1998.

    But somehow, “Iris” managed to dominate a different kind of airwave in 2025, emerging as a juggernaut in a manner oddly fitting for a world where Reynolds’ prophecy of retromania is truer than ever. If Mark Fisher was also correct that the future has been canceled, then another Goo Goo Dolls’ lyric, from their 1995 smash “Name,” also comes to mind: “reruns all become our history.”

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    Nick Lichtenberg

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  • Spotify lossless streaming is finally here and it’s included with a Premium plan

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    Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: over a half-decade of rumors, infrequent teases and affirmations that something is on the way, only for fans to impatiently bide their time and the thing to eventually arrive with very little advance warning. No, I’m not talking about this time. Spotify is finally that offers higher-quality music streaming.

    Best of all, the company is offering it to Premium members at no extra charge. You’ll get a notification once it’s enabled on your account. Starting today, Spotify is rolling out lossless audio in the US, UK, Australia, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Portugal and its home territory of Sweden. In all, Spotify Premium users in more than 50 markets will gain access to lossless audio by the end of October.

    The option is available on mobile, desktop and tablets, along with many Spotify Connect-compatible devices, including Sony, Bose, Samsung, and Sennheiser products. Spotify Lossless will make its way to Sonos and Amazon devices, as well as others, next month.

    Somewhat annoyingly, you’ll have to enable Spotify Lossless manually, and you’ll need to do that on each device on which you want to use it. To switch it on in the Spotify app, tap your profile icon in the top left, then go to Settings & Privacy > Media Quality. From there, you can choose to turn on lossless audio for Wi-Fi and cellular streaming, as well as your downloads. When it’s on, you’ll see a lossless indicator in the Now Playing view and the Connect Picker.

    Lossless streaming uses more data than other quality options, which is why Spotify is offering several settings for Wi-Fi, cellular and downloads so you (hopefully) don’t bust through any data caps you might have. You’ll be able to see how much data the various options — low, normal, high, very high and lossless quality — will use to help you figure out which way to go.

    Spotify Lossless offers up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC streaming. The company says the option means you’ll be able to stream in “greater detail across nearly every song available on Spotify.”

    Of note, the company says that you’ll get the best lossless experience when you stream music on Wi-Fi using wired headphones or speakers on non-Bluetooth connections, because Bluetooth doesn’t yet have enough bandwidth to support lossless audio. As such, if you try streaming lossless music with a Bluetooth connection, the audio signal will still be compressed before it reaches your ears. It might take slightly longer for each lossless audio track to start playing too, as your device might need to cache it to avoid mid-song stutters.

    “The wait is finally over; we’re so excited lossless sound is rolling out to Premium subscribers,” said Gustav Gyllenhammar, Spotify’s vice-president of subscriptions, said. “We’ve taken time to build this feature in a way that prioritizes quality, ease of use, and clarity at every step, so you always know what’s happening under the hood. With Lossless, our premium users will now have an even better listening experience.”

    Gyllenhammar isn’t kidding about Spotify taking its time to offer lossless listening. It was reported that the company was “close” to delivering lossless audio. In 2021, Spotify said it would , but that didn’t happen and the company has largely kept mum about a higher-quality streaming option since (it said in 2022 a Spotify HiFi experience was , but declined to commit to a release window).

    Earlier this year, it was suggested that Spotify would finally offer a lossless option in 2025 and that it . Thankfully, that’s not quite the case, as Lossless is included with a $12 Premium subscription that will definitely not get more expensive at some point in the future. Nope, no way. In any case, including it with Premium puts Spotify on par with the likes of Apple Music, which has offered lossless streaming to paid subscribers at no extra cost . Now then, Spotify, about Dolby Atmos…

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    Kris Holt

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  • Spotify’s new ‘smart filters’ let you screen library content by activity, genre or mood | TechCrunch

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    Spotify is giving users more ways to personalize what they hear. The company is launching a new feature that allows users to filter their library by specific activities, moods, or genres. These filters can also be used to find playlists, or, to some extent, audio books and podcasts, and can even kick off a new session on Spotify’s AI DJ.

    The smart filters, which began rolling out on Friday, will first be made available to Premium subscribers on mobile devices and tablets in select markets, including the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa. Spotify estimates the rollout will be completed over the next few weeks.

    The feature arrives as the company has been focused on adding more personalization tools and features to its app in recent months. These types of tools, while seemingly small additions, can help differentiate Spotify further from competitors while also making it harder for existing users to leave.

    In April, for example, Spotify began offering tools to create personalized playlists using AI prompts, and in May, it added new playlist management tools as well as a way to create your own custom cover art. You can also now talk to its AI DJ to personalize your music selection, and take advantage of a revamped version of Spotify’s flagship personalized playlist, Discover Weekly.

    Despite these changes, some users are finding Spotify’s interface is becoming too crowded, especially as the company wades into social networking territory by adding messages, comments on podcasts, polls, Q&As, stories, and a design that feels more like TikTok or YouTube following the introduction of music videos and video podcasts within the app.

    The company has often faced complaints about an overly busy user interface, and the continual addition of new features has left some users feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. That, combined with the company’s heavy focus on algorithmic suggestions, has even pushed some users to abandon Spotify entirely.

    However, Spotify continues to report more users and subscribers — its user base swelled 11% to 696 million in the last quarter from a year earlier, and subscribers reached 276 million, up 12%.

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    Sarah Perez

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  • Tickeri Joins Forces With Spotify to Bring Latin Music Fans Closer to Live Shows

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    Fans can now discover Tickeri tickets directly on Spotify, the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service


    LOS ANGELES, September 3, 2025 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Tickeri, the premier ticketing platform dedicated to Latin events and culture in the U.S., is proud to announce its new partnership with Spotify. The collaboration offers fans a seamless way to discover and connect with Latin concerts, right where they listen to their favorite artists.

    Starting today, concerts listed on Tickeri will appear across Spotify’s event discovery features, including the Live Events feed. This enables fans to effortlessly see upcoming shows by the artists they love.

    “We’re always looking for new ways to connect our community with the music they love,” said Juan Luis Gonzalez, co-founder & CEO of Tickeri. “Partnering with Spotify brings our mission full circle, turning digital listening into real-life experiences.”

    This integration means:

    For the Latin music industry, this represents a transformational step in how artists, fans, and event organizers connect. Tickeri’s mission has always been to elevate Latin talent and empower independent promoters. Now, with the expansive reach of Spotify’s platform, that mission expands to an even greater scale.

    According to Spotify, more than 200 million fans discovered concerts through the platform in 2024. At any moment, Spotify can match over 350 million users with upcoming events based on their listening habits. In fact, about 1 in 3 listeners attends at least one concert each year.

    This collaboration also highlights the growing recognition of the power of the Latin market in the U.S. and worldwide. From reggaetón to vallenato to regional mexicano, Latin artists are breaking streaming records and headlining global tours. Together, Tickeri and Spotify are partnering to make sure those cultural movements reach fans where it matters most, in real life.

    About Tickeri
    Founded by Peruvian brothers Javier and Juan Luis Gonzalez, Tickeri is the first ticketing platform created specifically for the Latin music market in the U.S. With a commitment to cultural celebration, transparency, and innovative tech tools, Tickeri empowers both fans and event organizers to thrive in the live event space.

    About Spotify
    Since its launch in 2008, Spotify has revolutionized music listening. Our move into podcasting brought innovation and a new generation of listeners to the medium. In 2022, we took the next leap, entering the fast-growing audiobook market-continuing to shape the future of audio.

    Today, more listeners than ever can discover, manage and enjoy over 100 million tracks, nearly 7 million podcast titles, and 350,000 audiobooks a la carte on Spotify. We are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service, with more than 696 million users, including 276 million subscribers across over 180 markets.

    Contact Information

    Elena Rodrigo
    P.R & Marketing
    erodrigo@themusicjointgroup.com
    8186932715

    Source: Tickeri

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  • Anonymous researcher exposes politicians’ hidden Spotify playlists, including Vance, Leavitt and Bondi

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    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    Vice President JD Vance is a big fan of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gets pumped up with Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls).” And former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi? She cranks Nelly’s “Hot In Herre.”

    That’s all according to Panama Playlists, a website that quietly went live recently and claims to reveal the hidden music tastes of politicians, tech leaders and journalists.

    “I found the real Spotify accounts of celebrities, politicians and journalists. Many use their real names,” the anonymous site creator wrote. “With a little sleuthing, I could say with near-certainty: yep, this is them.”

    The anonymous researcher, who says they’ve been scraping accounts since summer 2024, insists they only used publicly available information. “I’ve been scraping their playlists for over a year. Some individuals even have a setting enabled that displays their last played song. I scraped this continuously, so I know what songs they played, how many times and when.” They also noted there is no affiliation with Spotify. The site itself frames the project as more playful than sinister.

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    Vice President JD Vance’s playlist revealed “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys and Justin Bieber’s “One Time.” (Panama Playlists)

    Why leaked playlists matter

    At first, this all feels like lighthearted gossip, but it points to a bigger issue: how much of our personal information is publicly available by default? A playlist can reveal mood, personality and even political leanings. When pieced together with other open-source data, these details help paint a surprisingly detailed portrait. The lesson? Privacy leaks don’t always involve hackers. Sometimes, it’s the platforms themselves leaving doors wide open. 

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    What the Panama Playlists reveal

    The playlists range from ironic to eyebrow-raising, with some choices feeling almost too on the nose. Here are some of the highlights: 

    JD Vance

    The vice president’s “Making Dinner” playlist includes “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys and Justin Bieber’s “One Time.” His “Gold On The Ceiling” playlist adds eclectic picks like “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction, “You are a Tourist” by Death Cab for Cutie and “San Francisco” by The Mowgli’s.

    Karoline Leavitt

    The White House press secretary’s “Baby Shower” playlist featured Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” The timing matched her actual baby shower, further confirming the account.

    Sam Altman

    The OpenAI CEO’s “My Shazam Tracks” suggests he’s searched for “Get Ur Freak On” by Missy Elliott, George Ezra’s “Blame It on Me,” and David Guetta and OneRepublic’s “I Don’t Wanna Wait.”

    Pam Bondi

    The U.S. attorney general’s playlist “Pam” includes “Hot In Herre” by Nelly, “Hands to Myself” by Selena Gomez and “Cold As Ice” by Foreigner.

    screenshot of playlist for Karoline Leavitt, Sam Altman and Pam Bondi

    Playlists show Karoline Leavitt listening to Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls),” Sam Altman to Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” and Pam Bondi to Nelly’s “Hot In Herre.” (Panama Playlists)

    Ron DeSantis

    The Florida governor keeps it classic. His playlist includes “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash, Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” and “Life Is a Highway” by Rascal Flatts.

    Mike Johnson

    The House speaker has a Pandora account with Jerry Goldsmith’s “The Parachutes,” Enya’s “May It Be” and Bryan Adams’ “One Night Love Affair.”

    Adam Mosseri

    The Instagram CEO’s playlist, “Hang,” shows a reflective and soulful side. It features “July” by Noah Cyrus and Leon Bridges, “River” by Leon Bridges, “Strangers” by The Kinks and Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat.” He rounds it out with Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” and Bobby Vinton’s “Mr. Lonely.” 

    screenshot of playlist for Ron DeSantis, Mike Johnson and Adam Mosseri

    Ron DeSantis, Mike Johnson and Adam Mosseri’s playlists revealed. (Panama Playlists)

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    What Panama Playlists teaches us

    • Panama Playlists demonstrate how a person’s music can clash with their public image, revealing hidden interests that shake expectations.
    • Your tunes might be more visible than you think.
    • Spotify’s default settings put playlists in public mode unless you switch them to private.

    This is less about guilty pleasures and more about digital exposure. The music you thought was just for your earbuds might already be telling a story about you to strangers. 

    Tips to stay safe and protect your playlist

    If you use Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube Music, take a moment to review your privacy settings. Here’s how to protect yourself: 

    1) Make playlists private

    Turn off public defaults. Only share playlists you intentionally want others to see.

    Spotify

    • Disable public visibility: Stop new playlists from being automatically public.
    • Tap your profile picture in the upper left.
    • Tap Settings and privacy
    • Click Privacy and Social 
    • Toggle off Public playlists.
    screenshot of settings on how to make spotify playlist private

    Users can adjust their Spotify settings to make their playlists private. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

    Apple Music

    • Open the Apple Music app on your iPhone or iPad.
    • Tap your profile icon or picture in the upper right of the screen.
    • Tap “View Profile.”
    • On your profile page, tap “Edit.”
    • Find the toggle for “Listening To” or “Allow Others to See What You’re Listening To” and turn it off to stop sharing your Apple Music listening activity.
    screenshot of settings on how to stop sharing apple music listening activity

    Steps on how to stop sharing your Apple Music listening activity. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

    YouTube Music

    • Open the YouTube Music app and sign in.
    • Tap your profile picture to go to your Library.
    • Find the playlist you want to edit. Long-press on the playlist or open it and tap the three dots (…).
    • Choose Edit playlist.
    • Under Privacy, select the option you want:Private: Only you can view the playlist.Unlisted: Anyone with the link can view, but it’s not publicly searchable.Public: Anyone can find and view your playlist.
    • Private: Only you can view the playlist.
    • Unlisted: Anyone with the link can view, but it’s not publicly searchable.
    • Public: Anyone can find and view your playlist.
    • Tap Done or Save to confirm your choice.

    Note: There is no global setting to make all playlists private at once; you must adjust privacy for each playlist individually. The privacy setting is available when creating a new playlist or editing an existing one. For brand-new playlists, you’ll see a privacy selection box during playlist creation. 

    2) Review connected apps

    Streaming platforms often link to third-party apps. Revoke access for those you no longer use. 

    3) Limit what you share

    Playlist names, listening history and even likes reveal more than you think. 

    4) Use personal data removal services

    What looks like harmless fun, like a playlist name or your “last played” track, can actually become part of a bigger puzzle. A determined bad actor could stitch together your music history with other open-source data, such as your social posts, tagged photos or even public records. Over time, those small details paint a surprisingly complete picture of your habits, locations or private interests.

    That’s why reducing your overall digital footprint matters. Personal data removal services work to wipe your information from data broker sites, making it harder for anyone to cross-reference your listening habits with your identity. The less data floating around, the harder it is for someone to connect the dots in ways you never intended.

    Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web by visiting Cyberguy.com/Delete.

    Get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web: Cyberguy.com/FreeScan. 

    5) Keep your software updated

    Privacy settings change often. Check regularly to ensure your preferences haven’t been reset and keep your software updated.  

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    Kurt’s key takeaways

    The playlist leak may feel like a punchline, but it serves as a real reminder. Our digital lives are stitched together from tiny details we often overlook. Even something as simple as your favorite workout jams can end up on display if you don’t take control. Privacy isn’t about hiding your personality. It’s about choosing what you share, and with whom.

    Would you be comfortable if your own playlists, every guilty pleasure and repeat listens were suddenly made public? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com/Contact.

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    Copyright 2025 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved. 

    Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

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  • Bring Back Credits on Songs and Albums

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    For those who grew up buying records, part of the fascination was not just listening, but reading. The inner sleeve of records often had extensive notes, lyrics and credits for everything from the songwriter to the cover art designer. Before the days of streaming and the internet, this was often how music information was discovered. If you liked a producer or a guitar player on a record, you would find out who it was from the liner notes and look for that person’s work elsewhere.

    This was particularly important for musicians. Credits on albums and songs are like credits for actors, except musicians don’t have an IMDB.

    In fact, since streaming essentially swallowed whole the music world, liner notes have all but disappeared. Spotfiy, Apple Music, Tidal and others will display limited credits (if you dig for them), but only what the record label provides. Unlike the film industry where strong unions protect the rights of actors, screenwriters and the like, musicians don’t have anyone speaking for them and, as a result, their names often remain unheard.

    For older music where credits were more common, you can often find that information on Wikipedia or AllMusic.com, but not for everything and certainly not organized and categorized in the way IMDB and other film credit databases are. And yet, the contributions made by musicians every day, even now in the age of AI and digital music, are critically important to every new song that drops.

    And before you ask why anyone should care about the drummer playing with Taylor Swift (it’s Matt Billingslea, by the way), it’s because musicians are an essential part of forming the sound that made her famous. And knowing the specific people helps not only provide them with the accolades they deserve, but it furthers our knowledge of music.

    For years, musicians would listen to records, see who played their instrument on the album by looking at the liner notes, and go find other artists using the same musician. You might be able to follow a bass player from Miles Davis to Sting to the Rolling Stones (Darryl Jones) or find out that before Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page was a sought after guitarist playing with Donovan, Joe Cocker, the Who and numerous others.

    And those are just the credits we can glean from recordings. Never mind the hundreds of busy touring musicians who no one really even thinks about. Ask Eric Hernandez. He’s Bruno Mars’ brother…and also his drummer.

    Much of what you hear on a daily basis was created by people who spent their lives hunting for their instrumental predecessors. It doesn’t seem like that much effort to give them the credit they so richly deserve.

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    Jeff Balke

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  • Instagram adds Spotify integration to Stories and Notes

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    Spotify and Instagram are cozying up for more seamless music sharing. Two new features make it easier for Spotify’s nearly 700 million users to share their favorite tunes.

    When sharing a Spotify track to Instagram Stories, a short snippet of the song will now be included. When people view the story, they’ll have an option to open the track in Spotify. They can do that by tapping the music sticker on your post.

    Along similar lines, Instagram Notes now lets you show your friends what you’re jamming out to. When creating a note, tap the music note symbol. Then, in the audio browser, choose “Share from Spotify.” The note will auto-update to show what you’re listening to at that point. (Or, if you’re not, it will display the next song you play within 30 minutes, so choose wisely.) Friends can tap your note to add the track to their Spotify likes.

    Inversely, Instagram integration is easier in the Spotify app. When sharing a currently playing track from there, a new Notes icon will appear next to other Instagram sharing options.

    The new features are available now (globally) on iOS and Android.

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    Will Shanklin

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  • Spotify now lets you create seamless transitions between songs on your custom playlists

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    Spotify routinely debuts new playlist features for its users, but the company’s latest update has the potential to dramatically alter custom mixes. Starting today, premium users will have access to a new tool for creating customized transitions within playlists. This will allow seamless progression from one track to the next, with natural-sounding changeovers and no awkward silence.

    Once you’ve created a playlist, you’ll notice a Mix option on the toolbar. When selected, the tool gives you the option to pick Auto and allow Spotify to instantly make the transitions, or you can tap in further to customize things as you see fit. From there, you can choose presets like Fade or Rise to quickly apply transition styles or try specific changes to volume, EQ and effects. The app will display a waveform for the two songs, helping you select the best place to make the swap.

    After making your transitions, you can save them for future use or for sharing with friends. And speaking of friends, the transition editor is available for collaboration on any playlists you build with your pals. Spotify allows you to toggle the Mix option on and off at any time, so you’re free to listen without any of that creative customization if needed.

    To help you create a playlist that’s ready for mixing, Spotify will show you the tempo in BPMs (beats per minute) and Camelot keys for each song once you tap Mix. The company reminds users that the best options for this tool are songs that were created for seamless transitions, so genres like house and techno will provide the best results. Spotify also recommends using the Mix tool for making running playlists with consistent BPMs to help with pace or to create roadtrip playlists that can maintain “the vibe.” Lastly, you can create your own cover art for mixed playlists using Spotify’s built-in editor that debuted last fall.

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    Billy Steele

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  • TikTok testing album pre-saves – ReverbNation Blog

    TikTok testing album pre-saves – ReverbNation Blog

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    With TikTok closing its own streaming service (TikTok Music) at the end of November, the company is making moves to prove it’s still a dominant player in music discovery and music promotion.

    One such move? TikTok is testing full-album pre-saves.

    TikTok enables more off-platform music engagement

    Fans can already use the ‘Add to Music App‘ feature to dive deeper into tracks being discovered on TikTok, helping the user automatically save that music to their own libraries or playlists on other streaming platforms.

    And it now seems that TikTok will soon add album pre-saves. The upcoming feature will allow users to take another off-platform action in support of the artists they enjoy.

    This includes album pre-saves on Spotify, and album pre-adds on Apple Music.

    How soon is soon?

    According to Music Ally, who discovered the pre-save feature being tested:

    TikTok has confirmed to Music Ally that this feature is in beta…

    There is no news on when the feature will launch fully out of its beta stage yet though. When we spotted the original ‘Add to Music App’ feature in its similarly-early tests… the official launch came six months later…

    So I guess: Check back in whenever you’re about to launch your next album!

    Want to distribute your music to TikTok, Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram, and more?

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    Chris Robley

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  • ‘BBL Drizzy’ Was the Beginning of the Future of AI Music

    ‘BBL Drizzy’ Was the Beginning of the Future of AI Music

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    Not all AI tools are the generate-from-scratch types like Google’s MusicFX, Suno, and Udio that independent creators like Hatcher use—there are also ones for extracting stems, for mixing and mastering, and for brainstorming lyrics, all of which are finding user bases amongst hobbyists as well as professional producers. Sam Hollander, a pop hitmaker who has worked with Panic! at the Disco and Flava Flav, compares AI to the explosion of drum machines in the ’80s, and how session drummers had to adapt and learn programming if they wanted to continue to work.

    Giving a typical example of where AI fits into the workflow of him and his peers, Hollander recalls how a UK grime producer he worked with was using Suno and Udio to generate funk and soul samples; once the tool iterated one he liked, he’d use another AI tool to extract the stem in order to use it, manually, in a track.

    “There’s going to be two paths,” Hollander predicts. “An entirely organic industry that bucks against it” versus “people who adapt [AI] into what they do.” Last week, thousands of musicians and other creatives aligned themselves with the former group, signing a letter claiming that AI training was an “unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works.”

    For his part, Hollander dabbles in AI tools for brainstorming as well as for sample-hunting and generating, but, like Hatcher, always uses his original lyrics. “I don’t think AI does humor exceptionally well yet,” Hatcher says—human input is still needed, and even necessary, if AI-made music is going to avoid the pitfalls of being totally boring and bad.

    “[AI music] either has a shock factor, or [is] music as a background thing,” Hu points out. Shock-factor comedy is part of the appeal for successful AI projects, like the viral SpongeBob rap by producer Glorb, or ObscurestVinyl, a collection of “lost” album tracks like the Ronettes-style “My Arms Are Just Fuckin’ Stuck Like This.” Original concepts and hand-crafted lyrics mean that the AI output avoids feeling generic—and make it good and interesting enough that it might be picked up, in Hatcher’s case, by a major producer as a sample on merit alone.

    The other side of that coin is the realm of AI-generated ambient/chill music, which Hu identifies as a growing domain, citing YouTube channels like Home Alone and what is ? as examples. With millions of views, and their use of AI on the down-low, these channels also show that what began as experimentation in the early days of these tools—so, literally, last year—is now going mainstream in an almost hidden way, as AI output becomes indistinguishable from human-made samples and compositions.

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    Allegra Rosenberg

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