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

Spotify makes music discovery and sharing with QR-style Spotify Codes

Sharing music on Spotify right now is a bit of a tedious affair. It involves tapping through a bunch of menus before you can send a link to someone. Spotify is simplifying the process with its new Spotify Codes feature. This QR-style format is currently only available on mobile but is easily accessible.

If you want to share a song with your friend, all you have to do is tap on the three dot menu option and you’ll see Spotify Codes on top with the album cover. The code itself is a wave-like figure beside the Spotify logo. From there, your friend can open his or her Spotify account and head to Search tab. You’ll now see a camera icon on the search bar. Tap on that and scan the image and it’ll automatically play the song on his or her device. If you aren’t together, screenshots of the code works, too. They can pull up the images from their Gallery as well to get the song to play.

Source: TechCrunch

Spotify brings ‘Behind the Lyrics’ to Android

Spotify updates its Android app to bring a feature iOS users have had since over a year ago. Called “Behind the Lyrics,” this feature was introduced in collaboration with Genius, a former rap lyric site turned musical storyteller. The feature shows thing like what inspired them when they created the song and things like “lyrical excerpts, fun facts, and stories straight from the artists themselves.” If you want to see specific playlists that show these features, try Behind the Lyrics: Hip Hop and Today’s Top Hits.

Source: Droid Life

Spotify might be entering the hardware space

Looks like Spotify doesn’t just want to stick with software. A new job listing on the company's website shows that they're looking to build "a category defining product akin to Pebble Watch, Amazon Echo, and Spectacles" designed to "affect the way the world experiences music and talk content." There isn't that much information about the device but based on the listing it will be internet connected and will come "directly from Spotify," meaning it won’t just be an integration with a third-party company.  

Aside from that, there seems to be another listing that shows Spotify wants to dabble into voice control. This will be handy for both software and hardware. Don't expect this to surface anytime soon, though. Especially since the hardware job listing even states that the person who fills the position will "define the product requirements." 

Source: The Verge