Tausi Insider

Photo : Piotr Piatrouski ( Shutterstock ) Spotify and Apple Music may be great for music discovery , but they don’t do a great job telling you more about who you’re listening to. You could know every lyric to “Don’t Stop Believin’,” but if you don’t know what year it came out, you’re going to let your trivia team down. (I t’s 1981, by the way.) NowPlaying is an app that wants to become the encyclopedia of music trivia. It gives you more information about the song, album, artist, or band you’re listening to, and goes into some pretty great details along the way— including where the song or album was recorded, and the names of all of the musicians who worked on any track. The app listens to songs playing around you, or links with your Apple Music account to pick up songs from your playing history, which makes it pretty convenient to look up trivia. It packages that information in a nice interface, as well. To give you a sample of what you can expect, we looked up Green Da...

Elon Musk's declaration of war on Apple in a series of tweets on Monday (Nov. 28) gives Spotify and Fortnite maker Epic Games a powerful ally in taking the tech giant to task over its 30% App Store fees. Lisa Bernhard has more. https://www.tausiinsider.com/spotify-among-musks-allies-in-fight-against-apple/?feed_id=331956&_unique_id=64598bda68251

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek speaks at an event in New York, on Aug. 9, 2018. Lucas Jackson/Reuters Spotify CEO Daniel Ek renewed his attack on Apple on Wednesday in a series of tweets alleging the iPhone maker “gives itself every advantage while at the same time stifling innovation and hurting consumers”. On Monday, the world’s richest person Elon Musk criticized the fee Apple AAPL-Q charges software developers – including his Twitter business – for in-app purchases, and posted a meme suggesting he was willing to “go to war” rather than pay it. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. It has previously said the 30 per cent cut it takes on purchases made in its App Store is used to protect consumers in areas such as fraud and privacy. Spotify SPOT-N has previously submitted antitrust complaints against Apple in various countries, alleging the 30 per cent charge has forced Spotify to “artificially inflate” its own prices. Ek tagged a number of sympathetic busi...

Photo : Rawpixel.com ( Shutterstock ) It’s the time of year when everyone shares their Spotify’s Wrapped statistics, b ut there’ s a new and unique way that some people are sharing their top artists . What is Instafest? Instafest is a third- party app that’ s been making its rounds, where m usic listeners get to showcase their top artists in a three -day festival lineup for mat and share it with the world. Here’s how to make yours. How to make your dream “music festival” Creating your ultimate music festival is easy. When you go to the Instafest.app link, you’ll be prompted to sign in with three options: Spotify, Apple Music, or Last.fm. Choose whichever platform you use the most to have the most accurate results . Log in with that account and accept the terms. Will y ou be giving your data away to advertisers ? Yes, probably. G/O Media may get a commission 13% Off Meta Quest 2 Bundle Enter a new reality This bundle packs in the Meta Quest VR headset itself, two controllers...

Apple Music wants to help you and your friends sing along to your favourite songs with a new feature it’s rolling out just as people gather for end-of-year parties. Apple Music Sing gives the user the ability to adjust a song’s vocals and an enhanced beat-by-beat lyric display, which both draw on the platform’s massive song library. The result is what Apple AAPL-Q hopes will be an effortless invitation to karaoke. “The level of engagement around our lyrics features is pretty phenomenal and we’re going to extend on that and make it not just easy for fans to read along to lyrics, but also to sing along with their lyrics,” Rachel Newman, global head of editorial at Apple Music, tells The Associated Press. Display lyrics have been enhanced, going from line-by-line previously to syllable-to-syllable now, including breaking out the backup vocals and animating them separately. For duets, the lyrics switch from the left side of the screen to the right depending on who is singing, making it e...

Image : Apple We all have the songs we have to sing along to— w hether they pop up on the radio, a streaming playlist , or the Sonos speaker in the office bathroom , when that track hits your ears, you’re grabbing the imaginary mic . And now, if you have Apple Music, you actually have a free karaoke machine in your pocket at all times , thanks to Apple Music Sing . Apple Music Sing is a new, free feature for Apple Music that works on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV 4K. With it, you can turn any compatible song into a karaoke moment. It builds off the popularity of the services’ real-time lyrics feature ( which competing platforms like Spotify have also taken on), and makes Apple Music feel like a sing-a-long app for you and your friends. Apple Music Sing turns your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV into a karaoke machine First, Apple has updated real-time lyrics to “dance to the rhythm of the vocals,” which is a fancy way of saying the app dynamically highlights each word as it’s sung....

Senators have removed controversial wording from the federal government’s online streaming bill that digital video creators feared could have led to the regulation of user-generated content on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. The move, designed to reassure people who post videos on digital platforms that they are beyond the bill’s scope, follows failed attempts by Conservatives in the House of Commons to amend the clause. Bill C-11 would update Canada’s broadcast laws so that they cover streaming platforms, including Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube. Under the new rules, those platforms would have to promote and support Canadian creative work, including songs, TV programs and films. Many people who make their living posting videos on YouTube have raised concerns about C-11 in evidence to parliamentary committees studying the bill, as has YouTube itself. Some TikTok creators have warned they would be prepared to leave the country if the legislation saddles them with bureaucracy...

Photo : Netflix This week’s look at the secret world of kids and teenagers sees us examining a dubious TikTok orthodontic trend, singing songs about poop, and enjoying the absolutely delightful teen show Wednesday . Strap in. Everyone is watching Wednesday You’re probably asking yourself, “Steve, what are the kids watching on the television machine?” The answer: Wednesday . (The cool kids, anyway.) The series has only been available for streaming for a couple weeks, but it’s already one of the five most-successful Netflix series ever. Wednesday gives its comically dark protagonist a breezy series full of weird monsters, mysteries, jokes that are actually funny, and all the goth you can handle. It’s a great show on its own terms, but it’s also interesting because of just how many generations have discovered and been delighted by the character of Wednesday Addams. She first appeared in 1938 in cartoons drawn by Charles Adams for The New Yorker— although back then she didn’t have a ...

Screenshot : Joel Cunningham Spotify Wrapped is such a simple idea: It does nothing but show people a summary of what they listened to in the last year, but in a way that is loaded with fun bespoke data , and oh-so-shareable . It’s a fun way to reflect on the past 365 days , which is why more and more companies are capitalizing on the trend . The latest to do so is Nintendo, which has launched its own “Nintendo Switch Year in Review ” for 2022. Here’s how to check out yours. If you haven’t heard of Nintendo Switch Year in Review, you’re not alone. For some reason, Nintendo doesn’t make its Year in Review available directly on the Switch, which definitely hampers the number of players exposed to the fun feature. ( I, for one, only found out about it thanks to social media chatter.) To be fair, Nintendo does have a featured article in the Switch’s News tab discussing it , but that isn’t much for outreach. I had to refresh News a couple times to see it, and I only bothered to do tha...

Screenshot : Redactle We all fell in love with Wordle this year, and by “we” I mean all of us nerds who have five minutes to kill over coffee each morning and choose to do so with a word game. I’ve personally spent most of the year perfecting my Wordle strategy , and finding alternative games to occupy me once I’ve completed that day’s puzzle. In addition to standard Wordle, the past 12 months blessed us with dozens of other guessing games that borrowed one or more of Wordle’s features—five-letter solutions, or yellow and green squares, or sometimes just the concept of guessing and getting hints. Here are 14 of the best. https://www.tausiinsider.com/14-of-the-best-wordle-variants-of-2022/?feed_id=327300&_unique_id=64137ec266592

Photo : Tada Images ( Shutterstock ) One-time passwords (or OTPs) are an easy way to add a bit of security to account logins. Once you provide the correct password, you receive an SMS with a unique code. Enter the code, and you’re in. Of course, after that, the code is useless, but it doesn’t automatically delete off your phone. It’s a text like any other, and if you’re like me, these useless texts live on your phone forever . Luckily, Google changed things this year . Now, you can go to “Message organization” and choose “ Auto-delete OTPs after 24 hours .” From now on, these SMSs will delete themselves after one day, which should clean up your inbox considerably. https://www.tausiinsider.com/tausiinsiders-22-favorite-android-hacks-of-2022/?feed_id=327200&_unique_id=64128f31686e3

Finally . Anyone running iOS 16 (or macOS Ventura, for that matter) can edit or undo iMessages they send in error . When you send an iMessage, you have 15 minutes to edit it, after which time the message will lock itself in. Be warned, though: Any edits you make will be visible in an edit history available under a convenient “Edited” tag, so this feature is best for making small corrections you’d usually fix with a follow-up message. If you’d rather cover up a message entirely, delete it instead. You have two minutes after sending a message to remove it from your device and the devices of others in the chat. Of course, they have the same power, too. https://www.tausiinsider.com/45-of-tausiinsiders-favorite-iphone-hacks-of-2022/?feed_id=327058&_unique_id=6410f00c74c23

Screenshot : Khamosh Pathak We spend a lot of time on our iPhones doing simple, repetitive tasks we shouldn’t have to do. In fact, those simple, repetitive tasks can and should be handed over to your iPhone, so you can get back to tasks you really want to do, like scroll Instagram and TikTok. If you’re willing to spend a couple of minutes on setup, you can use the Shortcuts app to automate many features and actions you use every day. What are iPhone automations? There’s a special tab in the Shortcuts app called Automation . Here, you can define actions that are automatically triggered when something happens. (And that “something” is quite a long list.) For example, your iPhone can trigger a shortcut automatically when you arrive in a specified area, when you connect your iPhone to a Bluetooth network, or simply when it’s 6 p.m.. That gives you a lot of room to play with. Let’s first set up an automation so you have an idea of what we’re talking about. We’ll set up a simple one in ...