Big things are afoot with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant: more than 50 new features unveiled yesterday at a conference for Alexa developers. There is a full roundup here on Amazon’s developer […]
Tag: features
YouTube adds clips, polls and subscriber-only chat features
YouTube is adding some useful new features for people livestreaming on its service, although it’s fair to say they’re catching up with Twitch to some extent. The three new features […]
TikTok gets its own ‘mini-programs’ feature called Jump
Apps within apps sounds very meta, but such ‘mini-programs’ have been an important part of the growth of messaging app WeChat. In the west, Apple is trying to popularise the idea […]
Apple Music, Deezer and JioSaavn launch new tools for artists
Streaming services aren’t just competing for listeners: they’re competing to offer the most useful tools and resources for artists. There’s a trio of announcements on that score today. Apple Music […]
Instagram shopping features extend to artists with Merchbar
Instagram is one of the key social platforms for many musicians, and we’ve been following the Facebook subsidiary’s experiments with shopping features with keen interest. Could Instagram and other social […]
Chartmetric adds more services to ‘cross-platform performance’ ranking
Back in 2019, music analytics firm Chartmetric launched its ‘Cross-Platform Performance’ metric, trying to come up with a single metric measuring artists’ performance across a range of streaming services and social […]
Discord adds ‘Stage Discovery’ feature to find live audio events
Social service Discord has been growing rapidly from its start as a messaging app predominantly for gamers. One of its recently launched features was called ‘Stage Channels’, and it brought […]
TikTok’s new ‘Green Screen Duet’ feature remixes videos
TikTok is having a busy month rolling out new features (and tests of new features) for its app. The latest is called ‘Green Screen Duet‘, and is a combination of […]
Spotify adds sharing features for podcasts and canvas videos
Spotify has added some more social features to its service, although they’re focused on how people share music and podcasts out externally. Spotify’s ‘canvas’ videos – the looping clips that artists can upload […]
Apple’s new ‘App Tracking Transparency’ feature goes live
Apple’s latest software update for iPhones, iOS 14.5, is out, and it brings with it a feature that has been sparking debate across the digital advertising industry ever since it […]
Spotify expands podcast charts and livestream listings
There’s a flurry of Spotify stories today from across its business. Starting with a revamp for its podcast charts. Listeners can now see rankings of individual episodes as well as overall […]
Hey Spotify… Streaming service launches new voice controls
Spotify is officially launching its ‘Hey Spotify’ voice controls, which are a significant step towards an Alexa/Google Assistant/Siri style voice assistant for the streaming service. For now it’s only available […]