It’s a TV. It’s a roller coaster. It’s a 4D Disney World experience. It’s the Sphere, and it’s a lot more fun than my phone.
Well, great news — just get them a preorder of the Rat Wars vinyl and explain that’s why it didn’t ship on time. It’s a perfect present for anyone who remembers when Trent Reznor scored Quake, a real uncle-type gift. (The album rips, obviously.)
[HEALTH :: FASHION]
The experience, called Beat Galaxy, was made in part by Universal Music Group (UMG), and features a runner / music game you can play with music from UMG artists. It’s not nearly as polished as Epic’s newly-launched Fortnite Festival, but if you’ve been looking for something like that in Roblox, Beat Galaxy is in the ballpark.
One user (@robdad_) on TikTok spotted the upcoming feature, which uses AI to generate a playlist based on a prompt, like “get focused at work with instrumental electronica.” Spotify confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s testing the tool.
The app — on iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS — now directs you to Apple TV to buy or rent movies and shows. This means you can only access purchased or rented content from the Apple TV app as well.
Then check out the full score for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which was shared online for free by Stephen Barton, one of the composers on the game. This rules! More developers should do this.
A Savanah, Georgia NBC morning show booked a young Dan Deacon, who would eventually become known for his frenetic live performances, in 2005. (Here’s an NPR story if you don’t know who I’m talking about.)
The audacity to put him on right when people were waking up is astounding. I grabbed a time-stamped link below, but the pre-performance interview is well worth a watch if you’re curious about this young Deacon’s equipment.
Ten years old, but new to me: a website that plays a tone every time a Wikipedia page is updated. It’s a soothing antidote to ... basically every other browser tab, at this point.
The bell-like sounds of a celesta correspond to edits with a net addition of content to Wikipedia, and the strums of a clavichord correspond to net subtractions of content.
That, of course, is from Wikipedia.
[listen.hatnote.com]
Rapper/podcaster Danny Brown enters his Steam Deck review (not necessarily the OLED model, but still) as the ultimate in-flight companion device.
That 10 percent number translates to about 40 jobs, including part of the company’s playlist curation team, sources told Bloomberg.
Spotify announced layoffs affecting 17 percent of its staff earlier this week.
Apple announced collaborative playlists for Apple Music at WWDC, and while it appeared in some iOS 17.2 betas, it’s not present in Tuesday’s iOS 17.2 release candidate, 9to5Mac reports. Barring an unexpected surprise, you shouldn’t expect to see collaborative playlists in the final release.
Apple’s iOS 17 website still says the feature is coming “later this year,” but at this rate, I doubt that’s going to happen.
YouTuber Charles Cornell recently broke down the unassailable soundtrack of Streets of Rage 2, and his glee mirrors the feelings I’ve had about that song collection for the last cough years.
While you’re watching, check out The Verge’s interview with Yuzo Koshiro, the game’s composer.
Or maybe it’s Berkely, CA, or Cambridge, MA, or some other college town. Enough people were confused about Spotify’s latest Wrapped to spur articles in the New York Times and Washington Post, and Spotify is extending 2023’s audio recap season by explaining how they were assigned:
Sound Towns selected for eligible users are made up of two factors: a user’s most-streamed artists of the year, and the way in which those artists are streamed in other cities. It’s objective and driven by a user’s listening history.
If what that has to do with your music listening habits isn’t immediately clear, it also posted the top ten lists for each city. Noah Kahan, Sza, and Lizzy McAlpine took the top three spots in Burlington.
The theme park / immersive art exhibition (yes, you read that right) is a real thing, and the Los Angeles Times has a great story about it with some really cool photos. It will apparently open sometime this winter.
Spotify and Apple Music have both released their end-of-year roundups, and now it’s YouTube Music’s turn. This year, YouTube Music will create a custom album art based on what you’ve listened to in 2023, as well as match your top songs to different moods.
You can also access your Recap from the regular YouTube app for the first time, but it might not have any stats if you aren’t a YouTube Music listener.
Spotify had a bunch of artists record videos to their fans for its year-end Wrapped lists. Weird Al used his to joke about Spotify payouts from right inside Spotify’s platform.
If you’ve ever poked around the world of high-end audio, you’ve come across Roon — it’s basically a very fancy riff on the classic iTunes app that can stream to all sorts of fancy devices. Well, it just got bought out by Harman, the parent company of JBL, Harman Kardon, Infinity, and others. (Harman itself was bought by Samsung in 2016 as part of a bet on connected cars, which, well, sure.)
Along with this forum post, a press release says Roon will not become a proprietary hell app:
Aligned with its ‘work with all’ strategy, HARMAN is committed to growing Roon’s open device ecosystem which includes collaborating with more than 160 other audio brands, delivering audio to more than 1000 high-performance devices.
People who can afford to pay for a high-end music service that works with their high-end music gear love change so we’ll see how this goes!
If you missed the concert film’s box office-shattering debut, you can rent the extended version starting on December 13th (which also happens to be Taylor Swift’s birthday). The extended version includes some extra performances, including “Wildest Dreams,” “The Archer” and “Long Live.” There’s still no word on pricing just yet.
Sure, you can find out from the Nokia Wikipedia page that the famous ringtone comes from Spanish classical guitarist Francisco Tárrega’s 1902 composition “Gran Vais.” But this TikTok from Alexandra Whittingham was a much nicer way for me to learn that fact.
Software engineer Thomas Barlow has been making TikToks showing off a small musical quartet of step motors that he made possible with an Arduino, MIDI sequences, a little coding, and some other gear. He made a video showing how (and he published code and a tutorial on GitHub).
Anyway, who knew step motors are perfect for Radiohead?
TikTok’s main feed now has an “add song” button that lets you save songs to your Spotify Liked Songs playlist. Spotify says both free and paid US and UK members will get it.
If you don’t see it yet, make sure to update both apps and set Spotify as as your default streaming service in the TikTok app (Settings > Music).
Update November 14th, 2023, 11:45AM ET: TechCrunch notes you can also pick Apple Music or Amazon Music.
