Beyoncé takes digs at Spotify in new song off her Tidal-exclusive album with husband Jay-Z

Beyoncé has just released a new joint album with her husband Jay-Z on his own streaming service Tidal (where the pop superstar is also a shareholder) and one of the songs find her taking a dig at competitor Spotify. Beyoncé doesn’t hold back in “Nice” as she sings "Patiently waiting for my demise / 'cause my success can't be quantified / If I gave two fucks about streaming numbers / would have put Lemonade up on Spotify." Bey’s 2016 album Lemonade was released exclusively on Tidal.

Called Everything Is Love, the album features nine tracks with each credited to the couple a.k.a. The Carters and comes in at under 40 minutes. Using their clout as one of the biggest power couples in the music industry, the album is definitely seen as a way to help turn Tidal’s fortunes. The streaming service has had its fair share of controversies recently—including allegations of late royalties and inflated streaming numbers. Whether this would help retain users is a different question. It could spike trial sign-ups and one-month subscriptions, but will people keep coming back to the service? We can’t say. We don’t have access to Tidal’s exact subscriber base but it’s believed to be far smaller than Spotify’s 75 million paid users (as of March) or Apple Music’s 50 million (as of May, with this number including trials).

Source: Engadget

Spotify takes R Kelly out of its official playlists

As part of the music streaming service’s new “Hateful Content & Hateful Conduct” policy, Spotify announced it would be taking out R Kelly’s music from its official playlists and recommendations (for example, playlists like Discover Weekly). While the R&B singer’s music will remain on the service, Spotify will no longer actively promote it. "We want our editorial decisions—what we choose to programؙ—to reflect our values," Spotify told Newsbeat. What classifies as hate content for Spotify is: "Content that expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics, including, race, religion, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability."

The company says it has been working on this global policy for “some months” and even invited users to report content it feels violates this policy. R Kelly has been the center of sexual assault allegations for years but has denied the claims.

Source: BBC

You can now share songs you listen to on Spotify right to Instagram Stories

Gone are the days of having to take tedious screenshots to share what you’re listening to on Spotify to Instagram Stories. The social network and music streaming service will now let you directly share the song, playlist, or album you’ve been listening to. On top of that, a link for the said song/playlist/album will show up on your Instagram Story so your followers can listen to. Just like other Stories, you can add stickers and text to your post. According to Instagram, this new Stories integration will also let third-party apps post content right to Facebook Stories as well, but the Spotify support is “coming soon.”

Source: The Verge

Spotify adds on-demand listening to its free tier

Free users of Spotify were previously only able to play songs on shuffle while on mobile. That’s about to change, kind of. Spotify is offering on-demand listening to 15 of its top playlists, including the personalized Discover Weekly. This selection reaches up to 750 songs or around 40 hours of listening. On top of this, custom playlists get new personalization tools. As you add tracks, it’ll begin to learn what you like and suggest more songs you can add. And when you’re streaming on a limited data plan or in a area with poor coverage, there is a new data saver toggle that optimizes music to save bandwidth. These new features will be arriving in the coming weeks.

Source: Android Police