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Spotify's shared playlist queue feature expands to Polestar 2 vehicles
Last year, Spotify started beta testing Group Sessions. It's a feature that allows up to six people to share control over the music playing in the background of a physical or virtual get-together. Those involved can queue up songs, podcasts and playlists, as well as skip tracks they don't like. In an expansion spotted by The Verge, you can now take advantage of Group Sessions in the first (and currently only) Android Automotive car, the Polestar 2.
Once a driver starts a session, everyone else in the car can join by scanning the Spotify code that appears on the Polestar 2's front display. One important limitation is that only those with Spotify Premium accounts can join, so not just anyone can hijack your playlist and turn a fun road trip into an exercise in patience. The driver can also revoke access at any time because, as Polestar correctly points out, "passengers aren't always right."
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Bad Bunny is Spotify's most-streamed artist of 2020
Spotify
‘Tis the season for top 10 lists, so nearly every streaming service or content-hosting website will release its “best of” roundups between now and the end of the month. Spotify is one of the regulars, and as part of its annual Wrapped festivities, the company has revealed its top charts for the year. For 2020, Bad Bunny is the most-streamed artist on the platform globally with over 8.3 billion streams, followed by Drake, J Balvin, Juice WRLD and The Weeknd — in that order. Billie Eilish is the most popular female artist for a second straight year with Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa and Halsey rounding out the top 5.
The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” is the most-streamed song globally with almost 1.6 billion streams this year, while Bad Bunny’s YHLQMDLG is the top album — amassing over 3.3 billion streams. Other popular albums, in order of global rank, include The Weeknd’s After Hours, Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding, Harry Styles’ Fine Line and Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia. When it comes to the rest of the top-five singles, “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I, “The Box” by Roddy Ricch, “Roses - Imanbek Remix” by Imanbek and SAINt JHN and “Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa finish up that list.
In 2019, Spotify bet big on podcasts and it continued to do so in 2020. This year, future Spotify exclusive show The Joe Rogan Experience is the most popular podcast globally. That’s a pretty impressive feat considering it just debuted on Spotify in September. And of course, that’s a great sign considering the podcast will become exclusive to the service at the end of the year and reports indicate the agreement is worth over $100 million. Interestingly, Rogan’s show falls to number two on the US chart, with NPR News Now eclipsing it for the top spot in the States. TED Talks Daily, The New York Times’ The Daily, The Michelle Obama Podcast and Barstool Sports’ Call Her Daddy also make up Spotify’s year-end top five. As far as podcast genres are concerned, Society & Culture is number one, followed by Comedy, Lifestyle & Health, Arts & Entertainment and Education.
In typical Spotify fashion, the company also noted some trends for 2020. Unsurprisingly, the service saw 1,400+ percent increase in work-from-home-themed (WFH) playlists between April and May. What’s more, the company says about 65,000 playlists were created by users with the title “Black Lives Matter” or “BLM.” Perhaps as a coping mechanism, Spotify users contributed to a 180 percent increase in health and wellness podcast listening in 2020. And overall, the most popular time to listen to a podcast this year on the platform was between 6AM-9AM.
While the US top charts stack up similarly to the global lists, there are some interesting changes. The full collection of top-five charts for the US are as follows:
US Most Streamed Artists:
Juice WRLD
Drake
Lil Uzi Vert
Post Malone
Taylor Swift
US Most Streamed Female Artists:
Taylor Swift
Billie Eilish
Ariana Grande
Halsey
Megan Thee Stallion
US Most Streamed Songs:
“The Box” by Roddy Ricch
“Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd
“Blueberry Faygo” by Lil Mosey
“ROCKSTAR (feat Roddy Ricch)” by DaBaby, Roddy Ricch
“Life Is Good (feat Drake)” by Drake, Future
US Most Streamed Albums:
Legends Never Die, Juice WRLD
Eternal Atake (Deluxe) - LUV vs. The World 2, Lil Uzi Vert
Hollywood’s Bleeding, Post Malone
After Hours, The Weeknd
Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial, Roddy Ricch
US Most Popular Podcasts:
NPR News Now
The Joe Rogan Experience
The Daily
Call Her Daddy
The Michelle Obama Podcast
US Most Popular Podcast Genres:
Comedy
Society & Culture
Lifestyle & Health
News
Education
In this article: spotify, 2020, top charts, charts, music, music streaming, podcast, podcasts, bad bunny, the weekend, joe rogan, the joe rogan experience, billie eilish, juice wrld, wrapped, news, gear, entertainment
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Epic, Spotify among others against Apple and Google app policies ally
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TORU YAMANAKA via Getty Images
A diverse variety of companies including Epic Games, Spotify, Match Group, Tile and others have formed an alliance to pressure Apple, Google and others to change their app store rules. The Coalition for App Fairness debuted today, stating that “Apple taxes consumers and crushes innovation,” and that it will advocate “freedom of choice and fair competition across the app ecosystem.” The group plans to push for new regulations governing how app stores can be run.
Many of the members, including Epic, Spotify and Tile have already filed some sort of action against Apple or Google. Spotify has filed a complaint in the European court over high fees and Apple rules that favor its own products, while Tile has accused Apple of reducing its usability on iOS in favor of its own app, FindMy. Epic Games, meanwhile, tried to bypass the App Store altogether and found itself terminated from the store, developer tools and all.
Coalition for App Fairness
The coalition will allow those companies to pool resources and lobby as a group, while giving clout to smaller developers who could never tackle giants like Apple or Google alone. It’s open to “companies of any size, in any industry who are committed to protecting consumer choice, fostering competition and creating a level playing field for all app and game developers locally,” according to the coalition.
The group has proposed a code of conduct it wants Apple and other store owners to adopt. It requests that developers should not pay “unfair, unreasonable or discriminatory fees,” that developers should have access to the platform’s technical details and that they shouldn’t be forced to use an exclusive app store, “including payment obligations.”
Apple has always argued that it applies the same rules — and 30 percent cut — to all developers, with some of the revenue being used to run the store and pay for security, app review, hosting, distribution, fraud protection and payment processing. In the case of subscriptions, it has noted that the fees drop to 15 percent after the first year. As it noted with Spotify, “[They] wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem, but now they're leveraging their scale to avoid contributing to maintaining that ecosystem for the next generation of app entrepreneurs. We think that's wrong.”
In this article: Epic Games, Spotify, Match, Coalition for App Fairness, App Store, Google Play, competition, oversight, news, gear
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
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