Prince pulls music from streaming sites Spotify and Rdio

Prince has had this love-hate relationship with the Internet and its services. He seems to empathize and agree with Taylor Swift’s criticism of freemium streaming services. So, what does he do? He pulls his music catalogue from the likes of Spotify and Rdio. If you want to hear his music online, right now you can see it on Tidal, SoundCloud, Deezer, and Google Play. There’s no word yet if Google plans to pull out his catalogue. We’re not sure if he’s coming to Apple Music. But for now, you’ll have a limited number of services to gain access to his funk-heavy tunes.

Source: MacWorld

Update on Saturday, July 4, 2015 at 7:04PM by Nicole Batac

Prince still has his catalogue on Deezer. Original article has been edited to reflect changes.

SoundCloud signs royalty agreement with Merlin to gain access to 20,000 indie labels

SoundCloud you probably heard of or are already using but we’re sure Merlin might be a new name to you. Merlin works with 20,000 indie labels and distributors to work out licensing and loyalty deals, which is what they’ve done with SoundCloud. This will bring labels like Beggars Group (Vampire Weekend), Domino (Animal Collective), Secretly Group (Bon Iver), Kontor Records (Tiësto), and a lot more to SoundCloud’s streaming service. These musicians will also be offered compensation when you play their music.

SoundCloud already has a deal with Warner Music Group and is rumoured to unveil its own streaming service this year. They‘re still, however, having a tough time convincing Sony and Universal to join because the site also hosts copyrighted material without permission. We’re going to have to watch and see if this plan will push through and if they can provide a better alternative to streaming options we have out at the moment.

Source: SoundCloud | Via: Engadget

SoundCloud updates Android app to infuse Material Design

SoundCloud took a bit of inspiration from Android’s Material Design with its latest update. It now supports Lollipop notifications and has rounded menus and a more spacious action bar. It also blurs out the background when you pause a song. Facebook integration has also been updated as well as French translation addition. A bug that stops stream paging prematurely has also been squashed as well as login crashes affecting some Samsung devices running Android 4.2.2.

Source: Android Police | Download: Google Play Store (Free)

SoundCloud introduces new hub to centralize your favorite tunes

Taking one more step to developing its own subscription service, SoundCloud introduced a new interface to make the service work. Its new hub called Collection has been brought to iOS and web apps (Android version is coming in 2015). It is designed to bring all your favorite audio in one place. The Collection shows you the artists you follow and liked tracks and playlists without having to jump between sections. It’ll let you shuffle your favorite songs and find out if a new DJ mix or radio show pops up.

Source: SoundCloud | Via: Engadget