Graham Spencer

1054 posts on MacStories since January 2011

Former MacStories contributor.
graham@macstories.net

Unofficial Remixes From Dubset Arrive on Apple Music and Spotify→

Josh Constine, writing for TechCrunch:

The first unofficial single-track remixes just went live on Spotify and Apple Music thanks to their partnerships with music rights management service Dubset.

Apple struck a deal with Dubset in March, and Spotify did in May, BPMSupreme reported. But the remixes are finally beginning to stream today, starting with this DJ Jazzy Jeff remix of Anderson .Paak.

This sounds like good news for users, DJs, content owners as well as Apple and Spotify. Dubset will scan a mix uploaded to its service and use the Gracenote audio fingerprinting database to detect which songs were used in the mix. Royalties paid by Apple and Spotify will be distributed to the original rights holders.

Stephen White [Dubset CEO] says 700 million people listen to mixed content a month, making it a big opportunity. But record labels have historically fought against unofficial mixes because they considered them piracy since they weren’t getting paid. Dubset gives them a fair share, so they’ll permit remixes and mix sets to stream on the major platforms. Royalty revenue from the platform is shared with rights holders while Dubset gets a cut.

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Tim Cook Says VR Is Nice, but Augmented Reality Is the Future→

Adario Strange, writing for Mashable, picks up on Tim Cook’s answer to a question that was posed to him last Friday when he was interviewed by Senator Orrin Hatch at the Utah Tech Tour.

“AR [augmented reality] I think is going to become really big,” said Cook. “VR [virtual reality], I think, is not gonna be that big, compared to AR … How long will it take? AR gonna take a little while, because there’s some really hard technology challenges there. But it will happen. It will happen in a big way. And we will wonder, when it does [happen], how we lived without it. Kind of how we wonder how we lived without our [smartphones] today.”

This is not the first time that Tim Cook has commented on the potential for AR. Soon after the release (and phenomenal success) of Pokemon Go, Tim Cook said that Apple was “high on AR in the long run” when answering a question during an Apple earnings call:

It also does show that AR can be really great. We have been and continue to invest a lot in this. We are high on AR for the long run, we think there’s great things for customers and a great commercial opportunity. The number one thing is to make sure our products work well with other developers’ kind of products like Pokemon, that’s why you see so many iPhones in the wild chasing Pokemons.

You can watch the full Tim Cook interview from the Utah Tech Tour on YouTube.

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‘Spoken Editions’ Section Makes Official Debut on iTunes→

Roger Fingas, writing for AppleInsider:

Following a false start in September, Apple on Monday launched an expected “Spoken Editions” section on the iTunes Store, letting people hear audio versions of written content from online publishers.

The section currently includes articles from over 40 sources, such as Reuters, Wired, IGN, Jezebel, Playboy, and the Huffington Post. People can also access the material from Apple’s dedicated Podcasts app.

I like this idea, and could see myself subscribing to some Spoken Editions when it expands to other publications, particularly those in Australia. I listened to a few Spoken Edition articles, and whilst the recording quality was generally quite good, I was a little surprised to hear some obvious pronunciation errors and general reading mistakes which hadn’t been edited out.

The Spoken Editions are featured on the front page of the Podcasts section of the US iTunes Store, but they are also accessible via this link (which will also work even if you are outside the US).

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