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

Spotify tests its Stories feature with popular musicians

This isn't the first time we've seen Spotify test out a Snapchat-like Stories feature. The company started testing this out last year, and it seems that the experiment is still ongoing. Some playlists and artists' albums show the Stories-like feature. It's been spotted on Spotify-created playlists like Christmas Hits, featuring singers like Kelly Clarkson, Meghan Trainor, Jennifer Lopez, and the enhanced version of Megan Thee Stallion's debut album, Good News. 

The company confirmed that it is still carrying out the test, but it won't say if this feature will be widely available to all its users. "At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience," a Spotify spokesperson said in a statement. "Some of those tests end up paving the path for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We have no further news to share on future plans at this time."

Source: Engadget