Spotify

The idea is to verify that a plan member actually lives with the plan manager, according to a Spotify support page reported on by 9to5Google. Basically, it seems like a way to crack down on non-affiliated people from using a family plan to save money on Spotify.

A man named Mike Smith was recently sentenced to 18 months in prison, and a fine in excess of $8 million, for creating an AI system that faked billions of streams and earned him millions in royalties. Wired’s Kate Knibbs explains how Smith pulled it off, how he got caught, and what this case means for the internet’s growing slop problems.

If you’re tired of the Spotify desktop app gobbling up a big chunk of your computer’s RAM, Spotifast for Linux, macOS, and Windows takes a leaner approach and typically needs just 100 to 250MB. A Spotify Premium account is required to actually stream music instead of just browsing, and if you need another reason to switch, Spotifast includes a Mini Player that supports Winamp 2 skins.

Premium subscribers already get 12 hours of (primarily English) audiobook streaming every month, and that perk is now expanding from 22 to over 180 countries be the end of 2026. The offering includes 350,000 titles, “including new catalogs in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, and more, spanning over 120 languages.”

The feature is rolling out to Spotify Premium subscribers, presenting you with questions about music trivia, album cover art, and audio track previews. You can find a music quiz by scrolling down on the “Now Playing” view of a participating artist’s song.

There are a lot of complaints about a Spotify outage on Downdetector, and when we checked ourselves, cached playlists seem to work just fine, but logging in fresh or trying to stream new music and playlists popped up error messages pointing us to try songs stored offline.

A new “Premium early access” feature for users in India forces users without a subscription to wait three extra days for access to new albums:

The band’s Amelia Meath says they’re back “to continue to employ everyone that we employ,” after what’s been an “incredibly hard” year off Spotify, but implored fans to listen on other platforms instead. Their new album Ow ∞ came out last week, when the pair spoke to The Verge for our weekend questionnaire.

Swifties with a Premium subscription can watch all 58 of Taylor’s videos in Spotify’s “Switch to video” mode, from her first-ever video for 2006’s “Tim McGraw” to “Opalite.”

A new settings toggle rolling out starting today excludes kids and family music from your taste profile and recommendations. With it turned on, your kids can listen to their music on repeat without it taking over your Spotify Wrapped, Discover Weekly, and Daily Mix.

The long-running lyrical breakdown and live performance series will now be available to stream on Spotify as it continues to grow its video efforts. Verified first came to Spotify last year as part of a limited rollout, but now archival episodes are being added alongside new installments every week.

Midjourney isn’t the only one getting into body scanners, and Neko Health has touted long lists of potential clients and investors ahead of the US launch. Now it says the SoHo location at 300 Lafayette Street is nearly ready to open, with seven scan rooms for its “non-invasive and radiation-free” $499 check.

The feature, which initially launched on iOS, offers preset playlists for running. It’s available to Premium subscribers in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden on both mobile platforms, Spotify says.

It’s been nearly six years since Nintendo stopped making the 3DS but that hasn’t preevnted the console from learning new tricks. If you’ve got a 3DS that can run homebrew apps you can turn the clamshell into a wireless remote for controlling Spotify using files and instructions you’ll find on GitHub.

Podnews found evidence of the new ad-skipping function appearing “for Premium users in selected markets,” with the button appearing on screen as soon as ads, promos, or intros start. In a statement to the publication, Spotify noted that many people are skipping those things anyway: “We’re exploring ways to make podcast listening and viewing more intuitive for Premium subscribers based on how people use the platform.”

A new partnership with licensing house Merlin has given artists on labels like Sub Pop, Warp, Epitaph, Domino, Stones Throw, Ninja Tune, Mad Decent, Polyvinyl Records and more the “option to participate” in Spotify’s “superfan” remix tool, which launched in May with UMG as the first participant.

It’s the first company to reach the audio streaming milestone, showing 9 precent year-over-year growth in premium subscribers. Monthly active users climbed to 777 million, up 12 percent since the same quarter last year.

You’ll find the feature in the three-dot menu next to tracks on your playlists. Now you can remind yourself of how you discovered a song, or leave a message to someone you’re sharing the playlist with. Playlists have always felt impersonal compared to a mixtape or mix CD. This closes the gap slightly.

Spotify has launched its first chart dedicated entirely to music videos. The global top 50 videos are ranked daily by stream count, and are available at the Charts hub and Music Video Playlists hub.

Spotify gave free users the ability to separate out their kids’ listening habits in May, but limited the initial rollout to Argentina, Colombia, Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, and Sweden. Now Spotify is expanding the feature to free users in the US, UK, Australia, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

The first artist partner for Spotify Reserved is Role Model, who is also announcing a tour today. More tours that are part of the program will be announced this week.

Spotify’s bringing its editor commentary from The Drop Weekly to its New Music Friday playlist, so you can hear from the playlist’s curators about why they picked some of their weekly new release highlights. This week they’re spotlighting Olivia Rodrigo, Ayra Starr, ANOTR, Adéla, and Emei.

After updating, the much-maligned sparkle icon — meant to celebrate 20 years of Spotify — will revert back to its former flat self.

The audio streaming platform has reportedly approached concert promoters to obtain licensing rights to show live video of music festivals, and has already starting to add some live event videos, including a show Dua Lipa hosted in Mexico City. Last month, Spotify announced new tools for reserving concert tickets.

After an initial rollout earlier this year, Spotify officially announced on Thursday that the feature is available for “all users globally.” Spotify also says that, for Premium users, downloads for offline listening will also keep going even when the app is closed.

Tap the scissors icon, trim your clip, and then save it to your library, where it can be shared from a dedicated “Your Clips” collection that houses all of your saved clips.

Pixel users can now AI-generate disco ball-style icons for their entire phone. Haters, shield your eyes.