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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A Company Made of People→

Allen Pike (via Brent Simmons) writes about Tim Cook’s Apple:

Of course, this is a shift, not a revolution. Apple will never get to the point where their culture tolerates, say, employees publicly tweeting that their CEO should step down. Indeed, as a public company with fierce competitors, they’re obligated to maintain decorum and secrecy around things that are materially sensitive.

Still, around the things that aren’t core secrets - developer relations, employee personality, and standing up for their values - Apple is feeling more like a chorus of real people and less like a monolith.

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“App: The Human Story” Documentary Wants to Capture the Story of Apps and App Creators

Launched by Story & Pixel on Kickstarter today, “App: The Human Story” is a documentary based on a theme that’s extremely dear to me and, I believe, to MacStories’ readers: the story of apps and their cultural impact over the past seven years.

By highlighting what “it means to be human in a world of technology”, the documentary doesn’t simply want to focus on the evolution of the App Store and iOS devices – rather, Story & Pixel (who are Jake Schumacher and Jedidiah Hurt, with Adam Lisagor as executive producer) aim to document the human effort, the stories, and the voice of people who craft software. And not just any computer software, but the cultural and economic phenomenon of the decade – the app.

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Long Live Photos→

Joseph Linaschke, who runs ApertureExpert, has a great take on Apple’s decision to discontinue Aperture and focus on a single Photos app:

Before we can look to the future, let’s look at the past. Aperture itself has been around since 2005; nearly a decade. And of course it started being written well before that, so we are talking about 10+ year old code. The cloud, the iPhone, and pocket sized digital cameras that surpass the quality of film not only didn’t exist, but were barely a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ or any technologist’s eye. Aperture is a photo editing and management tool written for users used to an old school workflow. Go on a shoot. Sit down to edit. Share when you’re done. But that’s not the world we live in anymore. Today we want to shoot, share immediately with a cool effect, edit on an iPad, sit down at your 4k display and get serious, pick up the iPad and show off what you’ve done, mix, repeat. We want our devices, our libraries, our experience integrated and seamless. This simply can not happen with Aperture as it is today.

Also, don’t miss his comment follow-up and analysis of the Photos.app screenshot shared by Apple. In short, Joseph argues, Photos 1.0 may not ship with all the features of Aperture as you know it today, but he is confident that Apple will continue to iterate on the product.

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Picturelife Launches New Plans, Redesigned iOS App

Picturelife, a photo management and storage service that I’ve been trying since early 2014, has launched a major redesign today that includes a refreshed iOS app, a new website, new plans, and a new free storage tier. While I’m still not sure whether or not Picturelife will become my primary photo management solution (especially considering Apple’s Photos and iCloud announcements at WWDC), I’ve been impressed (as a free user) with the service so far, and today’s updates are noteworthy.

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New Graphics at Apple Retail Stores→

ifoAppleStore’s Gary Allen has posted photos of the new back-lit wall graphics Apple has begun installing at selected retail stores, noting the change of mood from previous wall graphics:

The new graphics were photographed like magazine ads, showing the iPad/iPhone being used in actual situations, complete with their surrounding people and places. Their colors, tone and brightness is much richer and darker than the previous graphics, a noticeable difference that’s been the subject of Tweets and other on-line postings by store employees and visitors.

I don’t know if this is one of the first results of Angela Ahrendts’ work, but I like the lifestyle approach. Showing what you can do with a product is, I think, a more powerful (and relatable) message than a product closeup shot, especially when you’re inside an Apple Store and the product is already there on a table.

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Apple Launches 2014 Back To School Promotion

Apple has launched its annual Back To School promotion today, giving qualifying education customers extra credit when buying a Mac, iPhone, or iPad. As in previous years, Apple’s promotion allows customers to receive $100 of extra credit when purchasing a Mac, and $50 when buying an iPhone or iPad. Apple is giving away Apple Store Gift Cards, which can be used for Apple Store purchases (unlike iTunes gift cards for digital purchases given away in previous years).

The 2014 Back To School promotion runs until September 9 and qualifying customers in the US include “faculty, staff, students, and parents” of any public or private K12 and higher education institution. Apple published a PDF document on its website with further details on eligible customers and products available in the promotion.

For more details on gift cards and educational pricing, you can check out Apple’s official page for Back To School 2014. The promotion is live today in the US and international markets including Canada, the UK, and several European countries.

Apple Announces Q3 2014 Conference Call for July 22

Apple’s third quarter earnings report and conference call will take place on July 22nd, 2014, according to an Investor Relations update on Apple’s website first noted by setteBIT. Apple will provide a live audio webcast of the call.

Apple plans to conduct a conference call to discuss financial results of its third fiscal quarter on Tuesday, July 22, 2014 at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET.

In the second quarter of 2014, Apple posted revenue of $45.6 billion and sold 16.4 million iPads, 43.7 million iPhones, and 4.1 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $10.2 billion.

For Q3 2014, Apple set its guidance at revenue between $36 billion and $38 billion, with gross margin between 37 percent and 38 percent. Apple didn’t release major new products since their Q2 earnings call, but updated its MacBook Air line with faster processors and announced its acquisition of Beats Electronics and Beats Music for a total of $3 billion. The company also recently introduced a new entry-level iMac and upgraded its low-end iPod touch, but, more notably, held its annual WWDC in San Francisco where they announced iOS 8, OS X Yosemite, and a variety of new technologies that will launch this Fall. Apple is rumored to introduce new versions of the iPhone, iPad, as well as a wearable device later this year.

In the year-ago quarter, Apple posted revenue of $35.3 billion. The company sold 14.6 million iPads, 31.2 million iPhones, and 3.8 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $6.9 billion.

We will provide live updates from the conference call on our site’s homepage on July 22nd starting at 2 PM PT.