Anchor and WordPress can turn your blog post into podcasts

As part of Spotify's Stream On event, podcasts played a significant role in its future. One feature to help entice more people to use podcasts is a new partnership between Anchor and WordPress. 

Writers interested in podcasting but don't know where to start can rely on their written works. You can turn your posts into podcasts by either reading the blog posts yourself or using third-party text-to-speech technology that Anchor will offer.

The feature is meant to bring your work to newer audiences without that much extra work. The hope is that it can help create a new revenue stream for you as well. There are other new podcast features we'd like to discuss in future posts.

Source: Anchor

Spotify to offer a lossless streaming tier later this year

Spotify is joining the likes of Tidal and Deezer by offering a hi-fi tier for its streaming service. Simply named Spotify HiFi, this lossless streaming tier will be an add-on option for premium subscribers. Spotify announced this new addition during its Stream On virtual event.

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Spotify is granted new patent that keeps track of your speech to suggest songs

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Spotify has always worked to improve its ability to recommend songs to you. And one avenue it is at least considering is using your speech and background noise to determine what music to recommend to you. The company filed a patent for this technology in 2018 and got it approved on January 12, 2021.

According to the patent, potential uses of the technology include extracting the "intonation, stress, rhythm, and the likes of units of speech" from the user's voice. The tech can also utilize speech recognition in audio recordings to identify metadata points like emotional state, gender, age, accent, and environment. Environment refers to whether you're alone in a room or with someone else.

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This AI bot judges your Spotify listening habits

This might not seem as shareable as Spotify Wrapped, but How Bad Is Your Spotify? gives us a more judgemental take on your music taste. This AI bot was a project by digital culture site The Pudding, and it works similarly to Spotify Wrapped. You just need to log into your Spotify account and respond to some questions. And then you'll get a full, scathing report of your listening habits. Sometimes it might feel good to roast yourself, and your music taste might be a fun place to start.

Personally, it roasted me for how much Taylor Swift I listen to, but I'm okay with that.

Source: Mashable