You don't need to pay for expensive software tools in order to analyze what people are saying about your brand online, according to Jazmin Griffith, the founder of social listening agency Que Lo Que. Social listening, or the act of tracking customer sentiment through social media comments and posts, is an important practice for any business with an online presence. "There's a lot of data out there," John Box, the CEO of Meltwater, a SaaS platform that provides social listening services, previously told Inc.
But to anyone tracking the data over the past few years, it was inevitable. In 2022, Bad Bunny's Un Verano Sin Ti redefined the market, driving Latin music's streaming growth to new heights. It later became the first Spanish-language album nominated for Grammy Album of the Year. The takeaway is simple: When you have accurate, real-time data, you don't guess where culture is going, you know.
Spotify's "Smart Reorder" option, announced on Wednesday, is available now in the Spotify app for Premium subscribers. To try it out, open a playlist and tap the "Mix" button then "Edit." The "Smart Reorder" button should be at the bottom of the editing screen.
Instagram's social media algorithm explained works through multi-stage filtering that gathers posts from followed accounts, scores roughly 500 posts using machine learning predictions, and ranks them according to expected engagement. Content ranking favors Reels most heavily, followed by carousels and Stories, while saves count three times more than likes in determining reach. Key signals include watch time, where videos retaining viewers for at least 70% of duration rank twice as high.
And, make no mistake, they will be five songs you're really into right now, because that's how many of these services work-and it's not because everyone else has the same taste in music as you. For instance, any Spotify playlist that says "created for" in the header is catered to the individual user, based on their listening history. There's nothing wrong with that, necessarily-it can be nice to know you're going to hear songs you like. But there are downsides.
AI slop seems to be everywhere. Low-quality digital content made with artificial intelligence has flooded our feeds, screens and speakers. Is there anything we can do about it? If you want fewer cartoonish videos of dead celebrities, creepy or absurd images or fake bands playing synthetic tunes, a few platforms have rolled out settings and features to help minimize AI-generated content.
Musicboard, an app for music discovery and recommendations, has been struggling, according to its users. Over the past several months, users said the app experienced outages, the website went offline, and the Android app disappeared from the Play Store. This has concerned its devoted, if small, user base. (The app has been downloaded around 462,000 times to date, according to market intelligence provider Appfigures.) On Reddit, users have been recommending alternatives and offering each other support as they wait for any update.
The only song here that really matters. Written just hours after the murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and released a few days later, Springsteen names names (looking at you, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem) and speaks bold, specific truth. With a title that recalls his own impactful Streets of Philadelphia, a melody reminiscent of Bob Dylan, and an urgency not felt since Neil Young's Ohio, it may not be groundbreaking musically, but Streets of Minneapolis is exactly what we need right now.
The new index will be released semi-annually, and will be derived from polling of nearly 60 independent artists, managers, and music lawyers. "The Index's goal is to increase transparency in a historically opaque market and share insights and perspectives, which we hope will empower music creators to make the best financial and catalog management decisions for themselves," Duetti CEO Lior Tibon says.