Quick tip: You can see songs that have been pulled from Spotify

Here’s a quick tip you Spotify users might or might not know. By default the music streaming service hides the songs that have been pulled from its service. But if you want to check if a particular song is out of its roster, you can head to settings, which is located at the cog wheel on the upper right corner of Your Library section and just select Show unplayable songs/Show unavailable songs in playlists. If you’re on the desktop client, head to Edit > Preferences and then scroll down to Display Options. From there, you can see grayed out song titles. It won’t show any information if the song is coming back or why it left in the first place. But if you want to see which songs you might want to download so you can have them in your collection, this is a good thing to turn on.

Source: The Verge

Report claims Tesla wants to build its own streaming music service

Rumour has it Tesla is currently in talks with music labels to build its own streaming music service in its cars. Why are they doing this? Because they can. According to music industry sources, the company is talking to labels to help create this music service that will be bundled with the cars. There are supposedly going to be multiple tiers of the service, starting off with a Pandora-like web radio offering.

Why they won’t just integrate existing services, we can’t say. A Tesla spokesperson told Recode, “We believe it’s important to have an exceptional in-car experience so our customers can listen to the music they want from whatever source they choose. Our goal is to simply achieve maximum happiness for our customers.

Study shows music streaming services are shortening musical intros

Music streaming services aren’t just disrupting traditional record labels. It seems they’re changing the way songs are made, too. A new study from Hubert Léveillé Gauvin, a doctoral student in music theory at The Ohio State University, finds that songs are getting shorter instrumental introductions to try and accommodate the shortening attention span of listeners. And it seems the streaming services—such as Spotify and Pandora—are to blame.

Gauvin listened to and analyzed songs that made it into the top 10 from 1986 to 2015 and found “a dramatic shift away from long intros” and “a marked increase in tempo.” Songs back in the mid-80s had intros averaging over 20 seconds, now they’re down to five seconds on average so they immediately get to the lyrics. Tempo has also increased by around eight percent.

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There are now 50 million Spotify subscribers

Spotify has hit another milestone in less than half a year. The music streaming service adds 10 million new paying subscribers in around five months, pushing them up to having 50 million users. To put it in perspective, Spotify spent less than half a year adding around half an Apple Music. Apple’s own streaming service hit 20 million in December, adding three million subscribers in three months.

This boost in subscribers for music streaming services underscores the changing consumer habits when it comes to music. More and more people it seems would be willing to pay a fee for all-you-can-access music instead of buying per song or per album. It would seem Spotify has the advantage at the moment, if these figures are anything to go by.

Source: CNET + Spotify