✖️ Spotify & the Roman slave trade 🏛️ Oculus Go: a VR game-changer? 🚀 Does music still work as social glue 👯
Hi everyone,
Sometimes I get bored with the music I’m currently into and the filter bubble I’ve built for myself. I know I have friends with interesting music tastes, and I would benefit from exposing myself to their favourite music… but it’s really hard to do so without speaking to my friends or spending time digging through their libraries.
So I conceptualised a way for Spotify to bring passive music discovery through friends into their product. Check out the lead article!
Love,
Bas
P.S. See you at BIME in Bilbao next week?
From me, for you
How can we restore music's status as social glue in the age of streaming?
The case for a passive discovery mechanism for friends’ playlists on Spotify.
www.musicxtechxfuture.com • Share
Streaming music & video
What Spotify can learn from the Roman slave trade
Mark Mulligan looks at how the Roman slave trade drove down labour cost, which created the economic complications contributing to the collapse of the Roman empire. And then explains what it means for getting to a more sustainable streaming landscape.
'Vilifying YouTube is like moaning about the weather or Brexit'
AEI Group’s Diluk Dias: “Before downloads and streaming, ringtones were the first digital format that people would pay for. I went to see labels [to start selling them] and they laughed me out of the building. It proved to me that innovation happens outside of the industry.”
Beyond streaming: augmented reality, VR, and the internet of things
How augmented reality audio will let you soundtrack your life
It’s easy to grasp how users will see AR content through screens, and later glasses, but how will they hear augmented reality?
Sonos's secret weapon in the smart speaker wars: becoming a platform
As tech titans release familiar-looking smart speakers, Sonos is hoping to set itself apart by opening its sound system up to developers–and giving users more freedom.
Facebook announces $199 ‘Oculus Go’ standalone VR headset
This could be a game changer.
Facebook plans ‘Venues’ for watching concerts, sports, movies in VR
Facebook plans to launch a virtual reality “Venues” app next year that Mark Zuckerberg says will allow people to “watch live concerts, and live sports, and movies.” Expanding their social footprint into VR.
Wide view: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency & Money
Blockchain is a new model that makes the existing model obsolete
“This is a big shift. The combination of a shared, open database with permissionless innovation and an incentive system that prevents winner-take-all markets is a total game changer.”
Cryptocurrency mining affects over 500 million people. And they have no idea it is happening.
Websites, particularly filesharing and porn sites that are blacklisted from many ad services, are now turning to scripts that mine cryptocurrency through visitors’ browsers.
“Mining parasitizes the user’s CPU, where ads parasitize the user’s attention, emotions, bandwidth, and often, their laptop or smartphone battery, and supports an industry of personal data harvesting that is a big headache in of itself.”
How a messaging app challenged traditional banks and captured 45% of the market
Messaging platform KakaoTalk has successfully entered the banking industry in South Korea. Interesting piece on the potential influence of messaging platforms.
www.counterpointresearch.com • Share
Fun
This man devoted the last seven years to studying “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
Ben Sisto has turned his quest to learn everything about the Baha Men single into an art project called “Who Let Who Let the Dogs Out Out.”
First evidence that online dating is changing the nature of society
Dating websites have changed the way couples meet. Now evidence is emerging that this change is influencing levels of interracial marriage and even the stability of marriage itself.
www.technologyreview.com • Share
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📰 Last week: Algorithm designed concert hall 😍 Blockchain takes on ticket fraud ⚔️ Standing out in the age of VUIs 👂
Regular insights about the future of music, media & tech. Written & composed by @basgras.
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