Jay-Z’s ‘4:44’ album makes its way to most streaming services

After a week of Jay-Z’s 4:44 being a Tidal and Sprint exclusive, the new album comes to most major streaming services. We say most as Spotify is missing from the list of services it’s available in. We’re not surprised as the hip-hop mogul pulled his catalog from the service a few months ago. He seems to be in better terms with Apple as 4:44 is available on both iTunes and Apple Music. The album is also available on Google Play Music and Amazon Music. Some of the services even have “The Story of O.J.” animated video.

Source: Engadget

Taylor Swift brings back her catalog to music streaming services

Eva Rinaldi/Flickr

After pulling out her back catalog from music streaming services, Taylor Swift is getting back together with the likes of Spotify, Google Play, and Amazon Music. Her management made the announcement on Twitter saying this was to celebrate the sale of over 10 million copies worldwide of her latest album, 1989. Swift pulled out of streaming services like Spotify because she said they didn’t compensate artists fairly. She had particular trouble with Spotify’s free tier. But now it seems all of that is behind her and her catalog should start showing up at your music streaming service of choice.

Source: The Verge

Google offering four free months of Play Music access to new subscribers

Google is giving away one extra month free for new subscribers to its Play Music service. It’s usually a 90-day free trial but they seem to be trying something different for now. There isn’t any indication this would be a permanent thing or it’ll be something temporary but if you’re thinking of using Google’s music subscription service, now might be the best time to try it out.

You can scan up to 50,000 songs from Google’s music library. There is a free tier of the service but it comes with ads. If you pay US$9.99 per month or $14.99 for a family account, you won’t be hearing ads and you get to listen to over 35 million songs, download these music for offline listening, and have access to YouTube Red.

Source: The Verge

Samsung partners with Google to make Play Music default music player and service on its devices

After Samsung shut down its U.S. mobile music service, Milk Music, the South Korean tech company turns to Google and makes its Play Music the default music player and service on its new phone and tablets worldwide. This begins with the new Galaxy S8 and S8+. As a bonus, Samsung users will get to upload 100,000 of their own songs to Google Play Music for free, which is double the storage capacity Google offers its users. New Samsung phones also get a three-month trial of Google Play Music’s subscription service and access to YouTube Red.

Google has also promised it’ll work with Samsung’s Bixby, the company’s own personal assistant software, so you can ask it to play a particular song, among others.

Source: Tech Crunch