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unSherlocked→

Great follow-up by Dr. Drang on our episode about Sherlocking:

In the fall of 2005, Apple added direct podcast support to iTunes. To normal people, this was what put podcasting on the map. Instead of fiddling around with RSS URLs, third-party apps, and special playlists, users could now find and subscribe to podcasts very easily from within iTunes itself. There’s been a lot of criticism of how Apple has allowed iTunes to grow into an unwieldy behemoth of an app, but I don’t think anyone complained about the addition of podcasts. It was both useful and well implemented.

The Apple ecosystem has changed a lot since 2005, but the essence of Sherlocking is the same: sometimes Apple’s solutions cover the basics, leaving room for third-party developers to thrive; other times, they really sherlock a third-party product with a much better integrated solution. As Drang notes, though, Apple’s podcast Sherlocking in 2005 didn’t have the same result with the Podcasts app in 2012, which has left plenty of opportunities for developers of third-party podcast clients.

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Albums Down, Stream Equivalents Nearly Double→

Ed Christman, writing for Billboard:

While digital streaming revenue growth continues to offset the decline in digital album and track sales, the music industry still has the same problem it has wrestled with for over a decade: physical music’s decline is outpacing digital’s growth.

The numbers aren’t completely surprising considering the trend suggested in a report from January, but I find it interesting to think about the future of streaming services and consolidation.

Right now, the big independent players (Spotify, Rdio, and Deezer) tend to implement both on-demand and radio features; radio services like Pandora and iTunes Radio still exist, but they haven’t expanded outside the US (except for Australia and iTunes Radio); Google and Apple are still working on their own streaming solutions, with Google seemingly focusing on curation and Apple now in charge of Beats Music.

If this industry trend continues on a worldwide scale and big tech companies (including Amazon and Microsoft, too) iterate on their streaming products, it will be interesting to see how many of these names will stick around and which ones will be integrated with other products, get acquired, or shut down. Will music streaming become a feature of smartphones and computers?

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My Launch Center Pro Setup

My Launch Center Pro Home screen and Utilities group.

My Launch Center Pro Home screen and Utilities group.

Over the past two years, we’ve covered Launch Center Pro, one of my favorite apps for iPhone and iPad, several times here at MacStories. We’ve detailed major updates that were released by Contrast and published a complete guide to go from novice to advanced user; we’ve also focused on the hidden features for power users that the developers recently snuck into a seemingly minor update. And yet, in spite of the coverage, I’ve never really addressed the question that I often receive from MacStories readers – How do you use Launch Center Pro?

In this post, I’m going to detail the actions and groups that I use with Launch Center Pro every day. I keep Launch Center Pro in my dock, and I use it for actions that are both work-related or simple shortcuts to my favorite music streaming app or animated GIFs. I’ve realized that quickly mentioning an action or including examples in a review isn’t the best way to explain how I’m using the app, and hopefully this post will provide a good overview of my practical use for a fantastic utility that I rely on.

Below, you’ll find a breakdown of my Launch Center Pro setup with sections for the app’s Home screen and groups. The screenshots will show my iPhone setup, but I keep the same actions on my iPad. Whenever possible, each action will have a download link to install it on your device.

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Tweetbot for Mac Updated with Support for Multiple Twitter Images

Following an update released on iOS last month, Tweetbot for Mac has been updated to version 1.6 today, adding support for multiple images shared through Twitter’s sharing service. The update also includes a “Play” button for Instagram thumbnails and various bug fixes.

Support for multiple Twitter images mirrors the implementation of the iPhone app, with inline previews for tweets that contain multiple photos and the ability to share multiple images at once by attaching them (up to four) to the compose box. Tweets with multiple images show a carousel in their detail views, and, on OS X, you can click on the image indicators to move across pictures manually. Both on iOS and OS X, Tweetbot still doesn’t support Twitter’s animated GIFs, introduced by the company in June.

Tweetbot for Mac 1.6 is available on the Mac App Store.

Google Buys Songza→

In more music news, Google just announced they’re acquiring Songza, a music streaming and recommendation service available in the US and Canada.

The Verge writes:

Google announced today that it’s acquiring the streaming-music service Songza for an undisclosed sum. Over the coming months it will be integrating the company’s smart playlist creation into Google Play Music and perhaps YouTube. Songza will remain an active and independent app for the time being. The purchase highlights the increasingly competitive landscape emerging around music, as Apple, Amazon, and Google all seek to differentiate their mobile products by offering top-notch streaming services.

Here’s the Google announcement:

They’ve built a great service which uses contextual expert-curated playlists to give you the right music at the right time. We aren’t planning any immediate changes to Songza, so it will continue to work like usual for existing users. Over the coming months, we’ll explore ways to bring what you love about Songza to Google Play Music. We’ll also look for opportunities to bring their great work to the music experience on YouTube and other Google products.

Songza also notes that “no immediate changes” are planned, although that usually means that specific features will be integrated into other Google products or that the acquired app (Songza is available on both iOS and Android) will be removed from sale:

Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re becoming part of Google. We can’t think of a better company to join in our quest to provide the perfect soundtrack for everything you do.

Songza went through several iterations, and in 2011 it relaunched to focus on curated music recommendations provided by its own team of music experts; in 2012, the company launched a Concierge feature to recommend music based on situations and moods, with filters to refine selections and vote songs. Here’s a Billboard article with a review of Concierge from March 2012.

There are many parallels with Beats Music, which seems to confirm that human music curation as an aid to algorithms and traditional search matters.

Music curation is one of themes of 2014 at this point – even Spotify revamped their app homepage to prominently feature curated playlists and recommendations based on mood and time of the day. It’ll be interesting to see what Apple and Google will do with their acquisitions.

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Rdio Acquires TastemakerX→

From the Rdio blog:

Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we are growing our team with the acquisition of TastemakerX, a leading music discovery and curation service. Based in San Francisco, TastemakerX was founded in 2011 to help artists connect with fans. TastemakerX enables listeners to discover new music, build and listen to virtual collections, and view artists based on social discovery.

The interesting part, as noted by Brad Hill at RAIN News, is that this acquisition follows the news of Spotify acquiring The Echo Nest (the leading music intelligence company) back in March, when I purposefully included a note on third-party services using it for essential music discovery/recommendation features.

Rdio announced they’d stop using The Echo Nest after the company was acquired (smart and obvious move). Here’s a VentureBeat article from last year with more details on TastemakerX.

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