Neil Young restores catalog on music streaming services

After one year or so of swearing off music streaming services due to audio quality issues, fock/rock musician Neil Young finds his music catalog back in the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, and Deezer. His music has been on Tidal due to the streaming service offering a “HiFi” tier in its service for those who want lossless quality tunes.

Young had been concentrating on its Pono brand, which included the PonoPlayer and PonoMusic download service. Both focusing on offering maximum audio quality. However, PonoMusic has been offline since July following the acquisition of its platform provider Omnifone. Perhaps, the drop in income has made Young reconsider his position. If you’re a fan and on these services, this is good news for you.

Source: AppleInsider

Sonos partners with Amazon, adds voice support to its speakers

By early 2017, you’ll be able to use Amazon Alexa-powered devices (such as the Echo, Tap, and Dot) to control your Sonos ecosystem. Sonos has entered a long-term partnership with Amazon to introduce things like voice control to Sonos’ connected speakers. Aside from that, the Sonos system also adds Spotify Connect support, which will let you easily stream tunes on the music streaming service right into your speaker system. The support should go live in the coming weeks. Sonos earlier this year partnered with Apple to bring support for Apple Music into its system.

Source: Gizmodo

Spotify has 100 million subscribers, 30 million are paid listeners

Streaming music service Spotify revealed it has 100 million subscribers, 30 million of which pay for the service to enjoy ad-free music and the ability to save songs and playlists on a mobile device.

Despite its market dominance, Spotify reflects the delicate nature of running a streaming music service. According to Reuters, "Spotify, founded in 2006, pays more than 80 percent of its revenue to record labels and artists and has not yet shown a profit as it spends to grow internationally. Last year, it made an operating loss of 184.5 million euros ($209 million), widening from 165.1 million in 2014."

Apple Music, which competest directly with Spotify, announced last week that it had 15 million subscribers. Apple offers no free tier past a three month trial period.

Source: Reuters via Appleinsider

Spotify links now show up as 30-second clips on Twitter

You can say it’s a long time coming but finally, it’s here. Twitter is extending its Audio Cards feature to Spotify. It’s been almost a year since the feature came out and SoundCloud was the service of choice then. Now, for Spotify tracks you tweet, the link will also have a 30-second preview of the song. It can even show up in the curated Moments feed. You’ll be able to see these Audio Cards on the website as well as Android and iOS apps. Most of the tracks already show up this way but Twitter says the full rollout will be done in around one week.

Source: Twitter | Via: Engadget