Pandora, Apple Music also stops promoting R Kelly’s music

Following news of Spotify no longer promoting R Kelly’s music, Pandora announced it has stopped promoting singer R Kelly on its music streaming platform. According to an unnamed source, Apple has done the same thing quietly over the past few weeks. R Kelly’s music has been pulled from playlists like “Best Slow Jams of the 90s, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. But he is still prominently featured in the artwork for the playlists. Also, several R Kelly playlists are still on the service.

A couple of weeks ago, the women of color of the Time’s Up movement joined the #MuteRKelly campaign and issued an open letter that calls on multiple companies (like RCA Records, Spotify, Apple Music, and Ticketmaster) to cut ties with the artist in the wake of the recent sexual and physical abuse allegations levied against him.

Source: Pitchfork

‘Star Trek: Bridge Crew’ gets first DLC, coming to the PSVR first on May 22nd

Fans of Star Trek: Bridge Crew are in for a treat—you should be extra excited if you play on the PSVR. Ubisoft just announced that the game’s first DLC Star Trek: The Next Generation is coming to the PSVR on May 22^nd. This DLC will bring everything from the outfits from that era to the ability to pilot the Enterprise NCC-1701D itself. There’s a new role called “Operations” that will take the place of engineering position and you get greater control over ship buffs and managing the rest of your crew.

The DLC brings new enemy types, including the Romulans and Borg, as well as Patrol and Resistance game modes. As mentioned the PSVR is getting the DLC this month, while the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality are getting the game on July 21^st.

Source: Android Central

Instagram introduces ‘emoji sliders’ for polling your followers

Instagram thinks binary options for polls aren’t enough, they want you to work with a scale… or an emoji slider, in this case. It’s a new way to get feedback from your loved ones and followers about what they feel about anything you want to poll them on. For example, how much of a snake your ex is on a scale of not a snake to 100 percent snake. The emoji slider was borne out of the popularity of the poll sticker. If you want to try it out, it’s now rolling out to users and you can find it with the rest of the stickers in the sticker tray.

Source: TechCrunch

‘Black Panther’ director open to working on an all-female spin-off of the successful Marvel film

If given the chance Black Panther director Ryan Coogler says he’d want to direct a spin-off movie based on the women of Wakanda. When asked during a talk at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday about whether the women were just as important as the men in the film, Coogler said, “I think you could argue they are more important.” So when asked if he’d be onboard to directing a film that centers around the characters played by actresses Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, and Letitia Wright, he said “That would be amazing if the opportunity came up. They did it in the comic book version.”

Now, whether Marvel Studios follows through and does something about this is an entirely different discussion. If you are interested in the female warriors on Black Panther, Sony has partnered with a Nigerian network to produce a television series about the 19^th-century Dahomey Warriors, which were the all-female military regiment that inspired the creation of the Dora Milaje.

Source: CNET