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Tech News
In a lifestyle interview, comedian Demi Adejuyigbe shared details about his daily tech use, including an iPhone 17e, a MacBook Pro, roughly nine hours of daily screen time, and 72 unanswered emails. He also explained that he dropped Spotify for Apple Music after learning about the streaming CEO's investments in AI and military-contracting firms and the platform's ICE-related ads.
Spotify has launched Memberships, a feature letting podcast creators sell exclusive perks like bonus episodes, early access and reduced ads directly through their Spotify podcast page. Creators keep 90 percent of membership revenue and can set multiple pricing tiers, while listeners can subscribe in a few taps. To qualify, shows must be hosted on Spotify for Creators or Megaphone and meet minimum listener and episode thresholds.
Spotify users have long reported music starting automatically in their cars even after disabling the 'Start music automatically' toggle in Android Auto. Spotify's support team says the issue often stems from connected Bluetooth devices sending a 'play' command upon reconnecting, rather than from the app itself. There is no single fix, though toggling settings, unpairing Bluetooth devices, or removing Spotify from Android Auto can sometimes help.
Apple has published the full list of its own apps available on HomeView at launch, including Messages, FaceTime, Home, Music, and Weather, among others. Four apps—Audiobooks, Classical Music, News, and TV—require an iPhone connection to function. Third-party apps with existing CarPlay versions, such as Spotify, are also expected to be supported from day one.
According to the Wall Street Journal, YouTube is negotiating with publishers and could launch an audiobooks feature as early as next year. The report says YouTube has discussed bundling the feature into its $16-a-month ad-free Premium subscription, though pricing and whether individual books would be sold remain unsettled. YouTube has not confirmed the plans.
YouTube announced it is expanding its labeling system to flag songs identified as primarily AI-generated on YouTube Music, with plans to extend the labels to the main YouTube app. The company says detection relies on its own tools plus input from music partners, though it hasn't specified how much AI content a track needs to qualify.
YouTube Music introduced a labeling system that flags songs made with generative AI, appearing on the player page and within the main YouTube app. Partners can classify tracks as Fully Gen AI, Partly Gen AI, or No Gen AI, with YouTube using both partner disclosures and its own detection tools to apply the labels.
YouTube Music has started displaying an "AI" label beneath track titles for songs fully or partly generated using AI, including cases where AI created major elements like vocals. Tapping the label reveals details on how AI was used in the track. YouTube says similar labels will eventually appear in the main YouTube video player as well.
Spotify announced that iPhone users running iOS 27 can now ask Siri to play music, podcasts, or audiobooks without saying 'on Spotify.' Siri learns a user's preferred music app over time and automatically routes playback requests to it, supporting features like personalized recommendations, resuming podcasts, and AI-generated Prompted Playlists. The feature requires an iPhone 15 Pro or later with Apple Intelligence enabled, and is available globally except in the EU.
Spotatui, a Rust-based terminal UI fork of spotify-tui, now streams Spotify audio natively without requiring the official app or spotifyd, acting as its own Spotify Connect device for Premium users. The project also supports local files, Subsonic/Navidrome, Internet Radio, YouTube, Qobuz, and Apple Music on macOS, with features like synced lyrics, a real-time FFT audio visualizer, and a cross-source play queue.
Spotify has introduced a new website, technology.spotify.com, to offer its internal developer and enterprise software solutions to external clients. The company has been gradually expanding its enterprise offerings since 2020, including open-sourcing Backstage and selling platforms like Confidence, Portal, and Xirp in recent years.
Michael Smith, a 54-year-old from North Carolina, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined $8 million after orchestrating a large-scale AI music streaming scam. He used thousands of fake accounts and up to 10,000 bots to generate billions of streams of AI-created songs, earning millions in royalties and surpassing major artists' streaming figures. The FBI-led investigation uncovered the extent of his operation, which involved creating hundreds of thousands of AI tracks to sustain the fraudulent streams over several years.