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Spotify has expanded its Music Quiz feature, allowing Premium subscribers to test their knowledge across more than 2,000 artists through questions about music, album covers, and audio previews. The quizzes are accessible via the Now Playing view and are initially available in multiple countries, with plans to add more languages and artists later.
Dynamic Lyrics, a third-party app, displays time-synced song lyrics on a car's infotainment screen via Apple CarPlay once linked to Apple Music or Spotify. Unlocking the feature permanently costs a one-time $9.99 fee, and users need iOS 26 to enable it on CarPlay.
Neko Health, the Swedish preventative-health startup co-founded by Spotify's Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne, has opened in New York after raising nearly $1 billion and amassing a global waitlist of over 300,000 people. The company charges $500 for a one-hour scan covering dozens of biomarkers, blood, skin and metabolic screening, which is not covered by insurance but may qualify under Health Savings Accounts.
Apple Music offers two lossless streaming tiers: a standard Lossless mode at 24-bit/48kHz CD quality, and a Hi-Res Lossless mode at 24-bit/192kHz for dedicated hi-fi equipment. Neither is enabled by default since they consume significantly more data, so users must manually turn them on through device settings on iOS, Android, Windows, or other supported platforms.
Pandora emailed subscribers in September 2026 announcing a price increase of at least one dollar per month, effective October. The SiriusXM-owned company said the change would help fund improvements to recommendations, reliability, and content access, adding 'we haven't made this decision lightly.'
Audible, owned by Amazon, launched three AI-powered features: a character guide that identifies speakers in real time and offers character bios, interactive stories, and supplemental imagery for locations mentioned in books. The character guide debuts with the Audible Original 'Dracula' on October 1, alongside '1984' and 'Exoplanet,' while the location-imagery feature launches first in 'The Cultural Tutor' by Sheehan Quirke.
Neko Health, the preventative-health startup co-founded by Spotify's Daniel Ek, has launched its full-body scanning service in the United States after raising $700 million. The company joins rivals like Midjourney and Function Health in building businesses around consumer body scanning and early-disease detection. TechCrunch's Equity podcast spoke with Farooq Abbasi of Preface Ventures, an investor in Neko, about how the startup compares to competitors in this space.
Spotify experienced a widespread outage on September 29, 2026, with user reports on Downdetector peaking at over 19,000 complaints during the morning. By early afternoon, the number of reported issues had dropped sharply, though more than 1,000 users were still reporting problems as of 1:07 PM ET.
Listeners, many of them younger users, have been posting on the sparsely trafficked Spotify comment sections of NPR podcast episodes, turning the underused feature into an informal chat space. The comments sections, rather than containing feedback on the episodes themselves, have filled with casual back-and-forth conversation among a recurring group of users.
Spotify has launched Running Mode, a new feature available to Premium subscribers in select markets on both iOS and Android. The AI-powered tool builds playlists around song BPM to match a chosen run type, offering structured intensity curves, voice guidance and a Prompted Playlist option for further customization. Unlike the earlier Spotify Running feature discontinued in 2018, it does not track pace but instead lets users select their preferred run style upfront.
NPR staff discovered that middle schoolers were using the Spotify comment section under an episode of its Wild Card podcast to chat with friends, initially mistaking the flurry of cryptic, emoji-laden posts for bot spam. This American Life host Ira Glass investigated the phenomenon, learning that kids sought out podcasts with few existing comments specifically to use as a private-feeling space. NPR says a similar pattern occurred previously on an episode of Ted Radio Hour.
NPR staff discovered that streams of odd emojis and abbreviations under Spotify episodes of its podcast 'Wild Card' were not bot spam but messages from underage kids using the comments as a group chat, according to reporting on 'This American Life.' Producer Hannah Chin identified the pattern after colleagues had already flagged the posts to Spotify as bots, and host Ira Glass later found a similar case had occurred on NPR's TED Radio Hour.