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What Your Emojis Say About The Music You Listen To

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It may come as a surprise perhaps, but were you aware that there are over 35 million Spotify playlists with an emoji in their title? What artists has the most emojis associated to his name? And which emojis are they?

The beauty of emoji is that they transcend so-called regular languages, eliminating the barriers that often prevent us from communicating easily and freely with people from anywhere in the world. Those cute, simple images convey thought via chat and social media by representing elements of a universally accepted language that can be used by people anywhere in the world to describe how they feel and what they are doing in ways that would otherwise be impossible to communicate.

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Listen to 6AM’s Pioneers of Detroit Techno Playlist

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As we all know the 1980s were a landmark era in the history electronic music. It was at the end of the decade that techno began to take form, soon becoming the popular genre that we know today.

All of this would not be possible if not for the pioneering efforts of artists that founded and produced techno in Detroit during those formative years. Detroit artists the likes of Juan Atkins, Eddie Fowlkes, Derrick May, Jeff Mills, Kevin Saunderson, Blake Baxter, Santonio Echols, and Will Thomas shaped the sound of techno as we know it, pretty much writing the manual for techno music.

On the eve of this year’s Movement Electronic Music Festival, and as a way of saluting the icons of Detroit techno, we are proud to present our latest Spotify Playlist featuring music produced by the Pioneers of Detroit Techno. Check out our selection and discover their music below:

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Yoshitoshi Boss Sharam Shares 10 Los Angeles Inspired Tracks

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On May 6th Yoshitoshi founder and label-head Sharam is heading to Los Angeles’ Avalon Nightclub, where he is scheduled to play with special guest Oliver Dollar.

Today, the veteran producer and DJ shared with us ten tracks inspired by the city of Los Angeles, which you can listen to in the playlist below. When introducing the selection, Sharam stated: “This playlist showcases some of the highlights from Yoshitoshi’s recent catalogue as well some other huge tunes that have been featured in my recent sets.  Please enjoy and I hope to see all my LA fans at the Avalon May 6th for my show with Oliver Dollar!”

Tickets are available via Seetickets and don’t forget that we are also running a ticket giveaway for the upcoming show, which you can enter here.

 

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Spotify May Be Developing Its Own Music Hardware

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After achieving success as an online music streaming service, Spotify may be looking to take the next step.

Reports are suggesting that the music streaming giant is planning to introduce its own music hardware. This was bolstered by a recent job listing which announced that Spotify was looking for a senior product manager for “a category-defining product akin to Pebble Watch, Amazon Echo and Snap Spectacles.” The listing also stated that the selected candidate will be tasked to create “frictionless and creative Spotify experiences via fully-connected hardware devices.”

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Artist Advice: How To Use Spotify To Get Ahead Of The Game

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Guest post by entrepreneur and author George Goodrich. George co-founded DemoDrop.com and StudioSessions.Tv, two music-tech companies with bases in Los Angeles and Amsterdam. An avid techno and house music listener, George specializes in crafting innovative digital strategies to help artists thrive, with experience working dance music events in Australia, Europe and Mexico for The BPM Festival. His latest book Slotify Method: How to Use Spotify Playlists to Launch Your Career in Music dives into the growing importance of Spotify as a tool for emerging artists, with tools on how to gain millions of streams, make money off of Spotify and gain attention from labels and talent buyers. The book is available for purchase on Amazon.

 

I just read an article titled “Guide to Dance Music Marketing” that touched on the subject of Instagram Bots (really?), SoundCloud Playlists and YouTube Playlists. The scariest part of the article was the “2017” in the title.

Today more than ever it is crucial to take advantage of the best and newest technology on music platforms available. 80% of people going to YouTube are looking for a specific song (not your music) and SoundCloud continues to irritate its creators by taking away key features. Believe it or not, Spotify is dominating in artist discovery and helping launch new artists careers.

Spotify is quickly becoming more and more popular in the electronic music community. Many artists have jumped on the bandwagon and are developing a solid and thriving presence on this relatively new platform. Artists like T.E.E.D., with his randomly titled playlists like “Office” and “Bedroom”, or Dosem with his regularly updated “Housestrike” playlist are gathering hundreds of new followers and generating thousands of streams. Even Marco Carola is dropping Spotify Playlists to promote Music On. Here are three key parts of Spotify that can get you ahead of the game.

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10 Lesser-Known Tools and Platforms to Discover New Music

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Are you tired of your music library and in dire need of finding new tunes? You can search billions if not millions of songs with just click-through streaming services like Spotify and Pandora but it will take too much time to go over each list. So where do you start? You could ask a friend or depend on social media and the various charts out there, but there are also tons of gizmos to help you find great music based on what you already like.

Here are 10 lesser-known tools and platforms you can use to discover new music:

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How Spotify Can Help You As An Artist

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There is a lot of speculation these days about music streaming services and how they can help musicians/producers  make an overall impact in the highly-competitive music business industry.

Right now it seems like you can find almost every fresh and up-and-coming producer on Spotify. Aren’t you wondering why? Read and find out how Spotify can help you as an artist:

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Soundcloud Annual Revenue Increased 43% to Nearly $28 Million

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Remember when plenty of people thought SoundCloud’s days were numbered? Earlier in the year news making the rounds told a story of a company struggling to make revenue, not moving forward technologically and in dire need of cash flow.

Things are now taking a turn for the best however, perhaps explaining why Spotify has been rumored to be in advance talks to acquire its current music streaming rival. According to financial data analyzed by Digital Music News, SoundCloud has managed to bolster revenue up by 43% in the past year to a total nearing $28 million.

Most likely driven by advertising revenue, the increase points to much needed positive change for the company, especially after reported losses of $43.9 million in 2014. The information comes courtesy of company financial intelligence purveyor PrivCo,

H/T: Digital Music News

Spotify In Talks To Acquire SoundCloud

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Spotify is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire rival music service SoundCloud just months after the launch of paid streaming service SoundCloud Go.

According to information from the Financial Times, an official announcement on the subject could come soon. Spotify and SoundCloud representatives refused to comment when contacted by both the FT and Variety.

Although SoundCloud Go hasn’t captured many users, it’s the platform’s 175 million total user base that has ignited the interest of Spotify. Spotify is the current leader of the streaming market with more than 40 million paid subscribers, beating second-placed Apple Music who retains 17 million paid subscribers.

Other than their paid streaming service, Spotify and SoundCloud offer fairly different platforms for music streaming. Although the former dominates on established artist catalog size and number of subscribers, SoundCloud offers the perfect platform for any artist to upload their music, thus opening the door to a vast consumer base that Spotify right now does not strictly market to. While Spotify continues its dominance in subscribers and catalog size, SoundCloud serves as the ideal platform for emerging artists to upload their own music, remixes, and mixes, tapping into a vaster consumer base. Broadly speaking, SoundCloud’s catalog is far larger, providing 125 million tracks for streaming albeit from a far wider range of artists that includes unknown and up-and-coming musicians.

Despite the fact that SoundCould was alleged to be seeking a buyer for $1 billion, its last official valuation was at $700 million.

Was Spotify Hacked? User Credentials Leaked Online

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A list of Spotify account credentials for hundreds of users was leaked to the website Pastebin in what seems to be either a security breach or a leak from the inside. These details include usernames, passwords, emails, and other account info – a number of users are reporting that their accounts were targeted as a result. Some cited changes to their music preferences, while others claimed they were unable to log in to their accounts as their passwords had somehow been changed.

As an anonymous victim reported In a statement to Tech Crunch, “I suspected my account had been hacked last week as I saw ‘recently played’ songs that I’d never listened to, so I changed my password and logged out of all devices.”

This would neither be the first nor the second breach that Spotify has encountered thus far, so we can’t be 100% sure whether the data come from a new breach or was previously acquired and just leaked recently. Either way, it is definitely be possible that there are many more account credentials that may be leaked in the future.

Asked about the incident, a spokesman denied allegations that Spotify was attacked :

“Spotify has not been hacked and our user records are secure. We monitor Pastebin and other sites regularly. When we find Spotify credentials, we first verify that they are authentic, and if they are, we immediately notify affected users to change their passwords.”

The page with the leaked information is dated April 23, although statements from many affected users indicate that the issues began last week. Some also said they received emails on Sunday, telling them that their passwords had been changed. As another user explained, “I was definitely hacked and later tried googling ‘Spotify hack news’ last night to no avail… I noticed it last night when I opened Spotify on my phone and saw someone was using my account somewhere else.”

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In order to protect the victims, we must refrain from posting a link to the Pastebin page to protect the victims (as many other sources have done). However, we will post a screenshot with all personal data censored out. Please remain on high alert if you notice that your account has been suspiciously accessed, especially if you’ve linked Spotify with your social media pages or you use the same password to log in to other websites. Several users have even reported suspicious activity on their Skype, Facebook, Uber, and even bank accounts. Even if your account was not tampered with, we highly recommend that you change your password immediately – better safe than sorry!

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