TikTok will soon let you stream full songs in its app via a new integration with Apple Music. The company's new Play Full Song feature makes it possible to link your Apple Music account to TikTok, and play any song that strikes your fancy directly in the app while you're scrolling. Starting a song is as simple as tapping a button in the Sound Details page or your For You page.
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.
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.
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 is lowering its eligibility criteria for podcasters to monetize their videos on the platform, dropping the minimum episode requirement to three, minimum consumption hours to 2,000, and engaged audience member threshold to 1,000 over the last 30 days. When the company introduced its partner program to monetize video content last year, creators needed to have published 12 episodes, hit 10,000 consumption hours over the prior 30 days, and had at least 2,000 people stream their content in the last 30 days to be part of the program.
The company on Wednesday said it is introducing a new Messages feature that will let users see what their friends are streaming in real time and send requests to start Jams, the app's collaborative listening feature. Users would first have to navigate to their Settings and turn on the "listening activity" feature in the "Privacy & Social" section. Once that's done, your listening activity will appear at the top of Messages chats.
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.