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Posts tagged with "spotify"

Recommending Music on Spotify with Deep Learning→

This summer, I’m interning at Spotify in New York City, where I’m working on content-based music recommendation using convolutional neural networks. In this post, I’ll explain my approach and show some preliminary results.

A fascinating post by Sander Dieleman explaining how he designed a deep neural network to provide music recommendations based on Spotify data. It’s a technical read, but there are Spotify player widgets to listen to songs picked up by the network, which is capable of learning specific pitches, chords, sounds, and other factors such as Chinese voices. Dieleman says that hopefully some of these audio-based recommendations will go into A/B testing soon, with a focus on recommending new music that isn’t generally picked up by traditional recommendation engines. Impressive.

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Spotify Actions for Launch Center Pro

I recently tweeted about a change in the Spotify app for iOS – which I’ve been using to listen to music every day1 – that broke my shortcut to search for songs and artists from my Launch Center Pro action grid. I’ve been trying to identify the culprit and I’ve read documentation about Spotify’s URL scheme and integration with the web app, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to make searches typed in Launch Center Pro work with Spotify again. Therefore, I’ve tweaked my Spotify action setup and settled on a compromise that’s (kind of) working for now.

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Spotify for iOS Adds Offline Search for Downloaded Music→

Released today, version 1.3 of Spotify for iOS adds a seemingly obvious feature that, however, was missing from the app: search for downloaded music when in offline mode. Spotify recently revamped their apps to include an iTunes-like organization system called Your Music, and the improved search feature will look for songs cached on your device when the app is offline.

As an aside (and speaking of Launch Center Pro), here’s the action I’ve been using to quickly search for songs on Spotify without navigating to the search screen every time. It’s a huge timesaver and it works with offline search as well.

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Streaming Music and the Lack of Substance→

Khoi Vinh, writing on Medium:

[…] what I find is absent from streaming music is everything that complements the act of listening to music. It’s the very thing that digital music, more even than records and CDs, should excel at: metadata.

Who produced that debut album from Lorde? Who were the musicians who played with her on it? Where was it recorded, and when? Does Lorde thank God, her parents, and/or her cat for making the record possible? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, because I’ve only ever experienced Lorde’s music via Spotify, where such information is absent entirely.

Remember when Apple promised richer, digital equivalents of liner notes and album artwork with iTunes LP?

What I don’t want is a PDF copy of that album’s included artwork, nor do I want glitchy Flash-like interactive experiences that sidestep my music app when I purchase music from the iTunes store. The former feels lazy and the latter feels like a cheap gimmick. I’d rather see lyric metadata in the songs I purchase from iTunes, which would show up when that album artwork is tapped on iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches. Heck, Nine Inch Nails was doing simple stuff like embedding individual pieces of artwork into their digitally downloaded songs and that was actually cool. Making digital music feel like it has more substance doesn’t need to be complicated. And if it’s just metadata we’re talking about, then there’s no reason little things like this couldn’t be done by any service to make music feel much more tangible.

 

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Spotify Brings Free Music to Tablets and Mobile Devices, Adds Led Zeppelin to Music Library

Spotify’s opening up their entire music library to tablet and mobile devices today, with a twist. Free subscribers listening on tablets running Android or iOS will gain on-demand access to playlists, artists, and albums, mirroring the desktop experience. On smartphones, Spotify is adding shuffle play to their previous Spotify Radio offering, which lets free subscribers stream music from any artist or playlist. As always, free subscribers will have to listen to an occasional ad between songs. Check the table below for a quick comparison of Spotify’s current offerings:

Spotify’s online music streaming service is rolling out in 22 more countries today as well, making Spotify available in a total of 55 markets.

Lastly, Spotify is announcing that Led Zeppelin’s entire catalog of music will soon be exclusively available to stream, with the company doling out two albums every day until the Zeppelin’s entire discography is available. It’s equivalent to Apple gaining rights to sell The Beatles’ music on iTunes.

Be sure to visit the Spotify Blog for the latest news.

Spotify for iPad: A UI Analysis with A Rdio Perspective

Spotify for iPad, released this morning, is a beautiful app. It’s solid, providing fast and reliable access to Spotify’s huge catalogue of songs and artists, and it presents content inside a great-looking package that, as I’ve already written, reminds me of Reeder’s sepia tones.

What follows is a brief examination of the app’s interface and functionalities. I have been using Rdio to completely fill my music listening needs for the past six months, but I was looking forward to trying Spotify for iPad to give it a fair shot. Read more

Spotify for iPad Now Available

After years of speculations and subtle hints, music streaming service Spotify is today unveiling its official app for the iPad. The Next Web has the first details on the app; you can find Spotify for iPad on the App Store.

Fully optimized for the Retina display and taking advantage of Apple’s AirPlay technology to stream audio to other sources, the official Spotify app has been completely re-imagined to use the device’s larger screen, and give users more space to browse music, access their playlists, and inbox. The app uses a Twitter-like panel navigation to load playlists and artists, with music controls available at the bottom alongside an option to enlarge the album view. Relying on linen and sepia tones reminiscent of apps like Reeder, Spotify for iPad doesn’t simply look like a bigger version of its iPhone version – something the company is even joking about in the promo video. For instance, the larger screen has allowed Spotify to introduce features like instant, unified search for artists, albums, and playlists, or a full-screen cover art view that users can swipe on to change songs.

Spotify for iPad requires a Premium subscription. We will update this post with more information and our first impressions during the day, as the app is propagating now in iTunes. In the meantime, you can find more screenshots and a video after the break.

Update: Here’s our look at Spotify for iPad.

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