From a report: Looking for a specific podcast has always been a straightforward process: Plug in the title or the host's name in an app store or search engine and you're golden. But when you're not sure what you're looking for or just want to peruse your options based on a topic, you've had to rely on articles with roundups of different shows, random Twitter recommendations, or bounce from platform to platform with your query. Sites like Listen Notes and Audiosear.ch (until it shut down in 2017), among many other startups determined to crack podcast discovery, were created to solve this problem by aspiring to be the Google for podcasts. But now Google wants to be the Google for podcasts.

Starting today, the company announced that it's updating its search function to include playable episodes within the search results around a topic. So if you're looking for "podcasts about grilling" or "knitting podcasts," results will surface with relevant episodes "based on Google's understanding of what's being talked about on a podcast," according to a Google blog post, "so you can find even more relevant information about a topic in audio form."

In its second-quarter report, Spotify said its subscribers rose 31% year over year to hit 108 million subscribers at the end of June. "That figure was weaker than Spotify expected but keeps it well above its closest competitor, Apple Music, which had 60 million subscribers as of June," reports CNET. From the report: Spotify also said Wednesday that 232 million people now use its service at least once a month, up 29% from a year earlier. Spotify, unlike Apple, has a free tier that lets anyone listen to music with advertising. Apple has never disclosed a monthly-active-user stat; almost all people who use Apple Music are subscribers. Spotify's growth in monthly active users beat the best-case prediction the company made in April, coming in 4 million above the 228 million high end of guidance. But its subscribers -- who make Spotify way more money than ad-supported free listeners -- were at the low end of its expectations. Its 108 million figure scraped into its guidance range of 107 million to 110 million.

Its subscriber growth was relatively weaker because fewer people signed up for its heavily discounted student plan. Spotify also said it would make up for the latest quarter's shortfall by the end of the year. Looking ahead, Spotify predicted that it will have 110 million to 114 million paid subscribers by the end of September and that its monthly active users will increase to between 240 million and 245 million. By the end of the year, it expects to cross the milestone of a quarter of a billion monthly listeners.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Doom, there's now mobile versions in the Google Play Store, reports Android Police, "and since this is a 25th-anniversary release, it includes the fourth expansion Thy Flesh Consumed. It's the complete package folks, and it's finally available on Android as an official release."

And in addition, three Doom re-releases are now available for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, reports the Verge -- though there was one little glitch: Bethesda says it'll get rid of the strange requirement that players must log into an online account before they play the newly re-released versions of Doom, Doom II, and Doom 3, which went live yesterday. Players quickly criticized Bethesda for the seemingly ridiculous limitation -- the first of these games was released more than 25 years ago, at a time when there was obviously no internet requirement. The online login will be made optional in a coming update, Bethesda said today.
The re-releases were part of QuakeCon 2019, reports IGN, noting that Bethesda also showcased Doom Eternal's multiplayer, "revealing new details about the unique 1v2 Battle Mode."

Forbes hails the re-releases as "id Software's fast-paced, ultra-violent...classic shooters," adding that "It appears the re-releases are actually Unity remakes, though whether much has changed beyond resolution support remains to be seen." But they may also have some other minor differences, Engadget reports: There have been a few other complaints as well, such as the addition of copy protection, graphical changes (such as filtering that softens those 1993-era graphics) and apparent music tempo slowdowns on the Switch. That's not including the removal of downloads for the old PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. It's not a fiasco, but these clearly weren't the straightforward ports some were expecting.

Apple's mobile apps routinely appear first in search results ahead of competitors in its App Store, a powerful advantage that skirts some of the company's rules on such rankings, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. From the report: The company's apps ranked first in more than 60% of basic searches, such as for "maps," [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] the analysis showed. Apple apps that generate revenue through subscriptions or sales, like Music or Books, showed up first in 95% of searches related to those apps. This dominance gives the company an upper hand in a marketplace that generates $50 billion in annual spending. Services revenue linked to the performance of apps is at the center of Apple's strategy to diversify its profits as iPhone sales wane. While many of Apple's products are undoubtedly popular, they are held to a different standard by the App Store. Apple tells developers that downloads, user reviews and ratings are factors that influence search results. Yet more than two dozen of Apple's apps come pre-installed on iPhones and are shielded from reviews and ratings.

[...] Audiobooks.com, an RBmedia company, largely held the No. 1 ranking in "audiobooks" searches in the App Store for nearly two years. Then last September it was unseated by Apple Books. The Apple app had only recently begun marketing audiobooks directly for the first time. "It was literally overnight," said Ian Small, Audiobooks.com's general manager. He said the change triggered a 25% decline in Audiobooks.com's daily app downloads. [...] Apple's role as both the creator of the App Store's search engine and the beneficiary of its results has rankled developers. They contend Apple is essentially pinning its apps No. 1, compelling anyone seeking alternatives to consider Apple apps first. [...] Phillip Shoemaker, who led the App Store review process until 2016, said Apple executives were aware of Podcasts' poor ratings. Around 2015, his team proposed to senior executives that it purge all apps rated lower than two stars to ensure overall quality. "That would kill our Podcasts app," an Apple executive said, according to Mr. Shoemaker, who has advised some independent apps on the App Store review process since leaving Apple. The proposal was eventually rejected, Mr. Shoemaker said.

While tech giants like Microsoft and Google are building cloud gaming platforms for the latest blockbuster titles, one start-up is taking a different approach. From a report: London-based firm Antstream says it wants to bring a streaming experience to retro gaming enthusiasts. The company has developed a cloud gaming service that gives players access to a library of over 2,000 classic video games. It's a model that CEO Steve Cottam sees going global. And to bolster that ambition, the company has raised its first significant round of funding, led by the Chinese tech giant Tencent and backed by British venture firm Hambro Perks. For Antstream, the project is about resurrecting an experience long buried in old devices like the Commodore 64 and the Amiga. Cottam told CNBC in an interview that the idea for the company stemmed from what he's been seeing elsewhere in the entertainment industry. "You've got Spotify and Apple for your music, while in movies you've got Netflix and Amazon," he said. "It's so easy to find that content, but games just got lost because of all these different formats, and they didn't work on modern devices."

Author and programmer Jeff Geerling explains in a blog post why the new Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan. Unlike previous Pis that didn't require a fan or heatsink to avoid CPU throttling, the Pi 4 is a different beast and "pretty much demands a fan," writes Geerling. "Not only does the CPU get appreciably hot even under normal load, there are a number of other parts of the board that heat up to the point they are uncomfortable to touch." After 5 minutes at idle, he recorded the CPU/System-on-a-Chip (SoC) was around 60C, and it climbed to the 60-70C range when using the USB ports.

"[I]magine if you're truly using the Pi 4 as a desktop replacement, with at least one external USB 3.0 hard drive attached, WiFi connected and transferring large amounts of data, a USB keyboard and mouse, a few browser windows open (the average website these days might as well be an AAA video game with how resource-intense it is), a text editor, and a music player," writes Geerling. "This amount of load is enough to cause the CPU to throttle in less than 10 minutes." So, Geerling did what any programmer and DIYer would do and decided to add a fan himself to the official case -- and in addition to the blog post describing the process, he made a 22-minute-long video showing you what he did. From the post: Without any ventilation, it's kind of a little plastic oven inside the Pi 4 case. A heat sink might help in some tiny way, but that heat has nowhere to go! So I decided to follow the lead of Redditor u/CarbyCarberson and put a fan in the top cover. [...] After installing the fan, I booted the Pi and ran "stress --cpu 4" and let it go for an hour. The entire time, the CPU's temperature stayed at or under 60C (140F), a full 20C lower than the throttling point.

There are some other options which may be even easier than modifying the official case, like the Fan Shim from Pimoroni or purchasing a 3rd party case with a fan built in. But this option was easy enough and all I needed to complete the project was a $4 fan and a $7 hole saw drill bit (which I can use for other projects in the future).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple plans to fund original podcasts that would be exclusive to its audio service, according to people familiar with the matter, increasing its investment in the industry to keep competitors Spotify and Stitcher at bay. Executives at the company have reached out to media companies and their representatives to discuss buying exclusive rights to podcasts, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the conversations are preliminary. Apple has yet to outline a clear strategy, but has said it plans to pursue the kind of deals it didn't make before. While Apple doesn't charge for the Podcast app or run its own advertising on the platform, adding exclusives and growing the Podcasts app could give some consumers another reason to stick to their iPhone or subscribe to complementary paid services like Apple Music. "Apple also has an advertising division focused on ads in the App Store, which theoretically could eventually be applied to Podcasts if it continues to increase its user base," the report notes.

We're reviving an old Slashdot tradition -- the review. Whenever there's something especially geeky -- or relevant to our present moment -- we'll share some thoughts. And I'd like to start with Jonathan Coulton's amazing 2017 album Solid State, and its trippy accompanying graphic novel adaptation by Matt Fraction. I even tracked down Jonathan Coulton on Friday for his thoughts on how it applies to our current moment in internet time...

"When I started work on Solid State, the only thing I could really think of that I wanted to say was something like, 'The internet sucks now'," Coulton said in 2017 in an epilogue to the graphic novel. "It's a little off-brand for me, so it was a scary place to start..."

So what does he think today? And what did we think of his album...?

Citing a report from Bloomberg, The Verge reports that Amazon is working on a mobile home robot and a high-end Echo to compete against the Apple HomePod and Google Home Max. From the report: We first heard about Amazon's plans to build a wheeled home robot in April last year. The project is reportedly codenamed "Vesta" (after the Roman goddess of the hearth), and rumors suggest it's a sort of "mobile Alexa" that's able to follow users around their homes. Today's report doesn't add significantly to this picture, but it seems Amazon is still keen to build the mobile device. It was apparently slated to launch this year but wasn't ready for mass-production. Engineers have reportedly been pulled from other projects to work on Vesta, and Gurman reports that prototypes are "waist-high and navigate with the help of an array of computer-vision cameras." They can also be summoned using voice commands.

Along with its mystery robot, Amazon is also reportedly working on a high-end Echo device that's due to be released next year. Bloomberg says the cylindrical speaker is wider than existing Echo products in order to fit in extra speaker components, and it could launch alongside a high-fidelity version of Amazon's music streaming service.

The music app that is adding subscribers to its service at the fastest rate is not Apple Music or Spotify or Google Music, it is Amazon, Financial Times reported this week [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From the report: The number of people subscribing to Amazon Music Unlimited has grown by about 70 per cent in the past year, according to people briefed on its performance. In April Amazon had more than 32m subscribers to all its music services including Unlimited and Prime Music. By contrast, Spotify, the world's largest streaming service with 100m subscribers, is growing at about 25 per cent a year. "Amazon is the dark horse [in music]," said Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Midia Research. "People don't pay as much attention to it [as to Apple and Spotify], but it's been hugely effective." [...] Amazon has gained momentum in recent months, propelled by its ubiquity with consumers and Alexa, its popular intelligent assistant, which can play music through voice commands issued to its wireless Echo speaker.

NPR reports of the various parks and recreation centers in North America that are using sonic devices to repel teens from the premises. Philadelphia, for example, has 30 parks and recreation centers that are outfitted with a small speaker called the Mosquito. "It blares a constant, high-pitched ringing noise all night long -- but one that only teenagers and young adults can hear," reports NPR. "Anyone over age 25 is supposed to be immune because, basically, their ear cells have started to die off." From the report: Philadelphia parks officials have been installing the device since 2014, reported WHYY's Billy Penn, intending to shoo rowdy youths from the premises. And it's not the only U.S. city to do so. Mosquito's Vancouver-based manufacturer Moving Sound Technologies works with roughly 20 parks departments around the country to implement the youth-repellent devices, says president Michael Gibson. It's intended to prevent loitering and vandalism by teens and young adults at public facilities. But some say this age-based targeting is a form of prejudice. Philadelphia City Council member Helen Gym refers to the devices as "sonic weapons" -- and she's working to get them removed.

[I]n Philadelphia, Parks & Recreation defends its use of the Mosquito, saying the devices are operational from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. only, and they're just one part of an overall anti-vandalism strategy that includes fences and gates, security cameras and night watch staff. For now, the city is moving forward with installation. Despite the backlash, two new Mosquito devices are being installed at other city playgrounds as part of major renovation projects.

Samsung has been one of the only large smartphone manufacturers to insist on keeping the headphone jack in its flagship phones. But that is about to come to an end with the Galaxy Note 10. According to photos published by the FCC, showing both the bottom and top of the phone, there's no headphone jack in sight. The Verge reports: The FCC seems to have briefly shared these images by mistake. Samsung followed the usual protocols in requesting confidentiality for external photos of the Note 10 test device, and yet here we are. Whoops. There are two different models at the FCC, but neither includes 5G. So as with the S10 series, Samsung will likely produce a standalone 5G model. Aside from the headphone jack being a goner -- renders of the phone had already suggested this was coming -- we get a look at the triple-camera system on the back. There's another sensor positioned under the flash, which could be the same 3D time-of-flight depth sensor that Samsung included in the Galaxy S10 5G. The Note is usually where the company throws in everything it can, so it makes sense for it to carry over everything from the top-tier S10 model. The center-aligned front camera cutout is also faintly visible in one shot. Samsung is expected to formally announce the Note 7 at an August 7th Unpacked event in Brooklyn, New York.

In a blog post on Monday, Spotify announced that it will prohibit individual musicians from directly uploading their songs to the streaming service. The new move requires a third party to be involved in the business of uploads. From a report: The company announced the change on Monday, saying it will close the beta program and stop accepting direct uploads by the end of July. "The most impactful way we can improve the experience of delivering music to Spotify for as many artists and labels as possible is to lean into the great work our distribution partners are already doing to serve the artist community," Spotify said in a statement on its blog. "Over the past year, we've vastly improved our work with distribution partners to ensure metadata quality, protect artists from infringement, provide their users with instant access to Spotify for Artists, and more."

"The best way for us to serve artists and labels is to focus our resources on developing tools in areas where Spotify can uniquely benefit them -- like Spotify for Artists (which more than 300,000 creators use to gain new insight into their audience) and our playlist submission tool (which more than 36,000 artists have used to get playlisted for the very first time since it launched a year ago). We have a lot more planned here in the coming months," the post continued.

Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders into the Xinjiang region, where authorities are conducting a massive campaign of surveillance and oppression against the local Muslim population, are being forced to install a piece of malware on their phones that gives all of their text messages as well as other pieces of data to the authorities, a collaboration by Motherboard, Suddeutsche Zeitung, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the German public broadcaster NDR has found. From the report: The Android malware, which is installed by a border guard when they physically seize the phone, also scans the tourist or traveller's device for a specific set of files, according to multiple expert analyses of the software. The files authorities are looking for include Islamic extremist content, but also innocuous Islamic material, academic books on Islam by leading researchers, and even music from a Japanese metal band. In no way is the downloading of tourists' text messages and other mobile phone data comparable to the treatment of the Uighur population in Xinjiang, who live under the constant gaze of facial recognition systems, CCTV, and physical searches. [...] The malware news shows that the Chinese government's aggressive style of policing and surveillance in the Xinjiang region has extended to foreigners, too.

"[This app] provides yet another source of evidence showing how pervasive mass surveillance is being carried out in Xinjiang. We already know that Xinjiang residents -- particularly Turkic Muslims -- are subjected to round-the-clock and multidimensional surveillance in the region," Maya Wang, China senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said. "What you've found goes beyond that: it suggests that even foreigners are subjected to such mass, and unlawful surveillance."

On July 1st, 1979, Sony revolutionized the way we listen to music when it released the iconic Walkman TPS-L2, the first real portable music player. "Boomboxes and portable radios had been around for a while, but the Walkman made portable music private, ushering in a whole new era of people listening to music away from home," writes Chaim Gartenberg for The Verge. The Walkman stood the test of time by continuing to sell well even through the CD era. "[It] would go on to see numerous hardware iterations over the years, including 'Discman' CD models and MiniDisc players, as well as more modern portable media player devices that Sony still sells today," writes Gartenberg. It wasn't until Apple unveiled the iPod in 2001 and digital downloads began to dominate that Walkman sales started to plummet.

What do you remember about the Sony Walkman? Do you have any fond memories of the music player that are worth sharing? Let us know in a comment.

Pre-saving albums on Spotify can give music labels access to personal user data like emails addresses and playlists, according to a Billboard report. From a report: To pre-save music, which adds a release to a user's library as soon as it comes out, Spotify users click through and approve permissions that give the label far more account access than the streaming giant normally grants them -- enough to track what they listen to, change what artists they follow and potentially even control their music streaming remotely. This lets labels access some of the data that streaming companies usually guard for themselves -- which they want in order to compete with the streaming giants on a more even playing field. But at a time when the policies of online giants like Google and Facebook has made online privacy a contentious issue, music's pre-saving process could begin to spark concern among consumers, and perhaps even regulators.

Labels also ask for far more permissions than they need. Spotify users who, for example, tried to pre-save the Little Mix single "Bounce Back" from links shared by the act or its label, Sony Music, were prompted to agree that Spotify could allow Sony to "view your Spotify account data," "view your activity on Spotify" and "take actions in Spotify on your behalf." The exact permissions Sony requests are only visible to those who click through to the corresponding submenus, so users may not fully understand all that they're agreeing to -- or that the changes apply to their account unless they change it on Spotify's website.

Spotify is reportedly seeking a refund for overpayments made to songwriters and publishers last year, according to a report from Music Business Worldwide. CNET reports: Last year, a royalty rate-setting panel in the U.S., called the Copyright Royalty Board, ruled that a particular kind of royalty paid to songwriters and publishers should rise 44% or more for 2018 through 2022. The board finalized that rate -- called a mechanical royalty -- earlier this year. Then streaming services like Spotify, Amazon, Google and Pandora appealed the payment increases in March. Now Spotify is saying it paid too much last year and wants a refund, according to Music Business Worldwide.

The CRB rules say the annual streaming royalty rate for US songwriters and publishers between 2018 and 2022 should be set by choosing the highest outcome of three different models, with one model based on a flat fee per subscriber, Consequence of Sound noted. But Spotify's student discount and family plan bundles add a layer of complexity. The Copyright Royalty Board's rules say a family plan is be worth 1.5 subscribers per month and a student plan is equal to half a subscriber per month. The family plan lets six people subscribe for $15 a month, while students pay $5 a month. (A regular subscriber pays $10.) The argument by Spotify seems to be that it didn't take some subscribers into account and overpaid publishers. It's not seeking the 2018 money back immediately, but "offered to extend the recoupment period" until the end of 2019, according to Music Business Worldwide.

Apple today seeded the first beta versions of upcoming macOS Catalina update, iOS 13 update, and iPadOS update to its public beta testing group, giving non-developers a chance to try out the software ahead of their fall public release. Beta testers who have signed up for Apple's beta testing program will be able to download the macOS Catalina beta through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences after installing the proper profile. Those who want to be a part of Apple's beta testing program can sign up to participate through the beta testing website, which gives users access to iOS, macOS, and tvOS betas. Similarly, beta testers who have signed up for Apple's beta testing program will receive the iOS 13 beta update over-the-air after installing the proper certificate on an iOS device. New features in macOS Catalina update includes: macOS Catalina eliminates the iTunes app, which has been a key Mac feature since 2001. In Catalina, iTunes has been replaced by Music, Podcasts, and TV apps. The new apps can do everything that iTunes can do, so Mac users aren't going to be losing any functionality, and device management capabilities are now handled by the Finder app. macOS Catalina has a useful new Sidecar feature, designed to turn the iPad into a secondary display for the Mac. For those with an Apple Watch set up to unlock the Mac, there's now an option to approve security prompts in Catalina by tapping on the side button of the watch. Macs with a T2 chip in them also support Activation Lock, making them useless to thieves much as it does on the iPhone. There's a new Find My app that lets you track your lost devices, and previously, this functionality was only available via iCloud on the Mac. There's even a new option to find your devices even when they're offline by leveraging Bluetooth connections to other nearby devices, something that's particularly handy on the Mac because it doesn't have a cellular connection. For developers, a "Project Catalyst" feature lets apps designed for the iPad be ported over to the Mac with just a few clicks in Xcode and some minor tweaks. Apple's ultimate goal with Project Catalyst is to bring more apps to the Mac.

A music industry hit parade including Spotify, Amazon and Universal is moving to stifle an emerging threat to the sector's business model: fake streams [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; an alternative source was not immediately available.] From a report: [...] A growing army of online bots posing as human listeners is distorting the distribution of these revenues, inflating listening figures for certain tracks to earn higher royalty payments and chart placings. A coalition of 21 technology groups, record labels and music publishers on Thursday agreed a "code of best practices", in the first collective push by the biggest players in music to combat stream manipulation. The group, which also includes Warner Music and Sony Music, warned that "industrial-scale" impersonation of users by "troll farms" was distorting perceptions of what music is popular, according to the document seen by the Financial Times, and vowed to thwart such manipulation by weeding out the bots from the music fans.

YouTube and Universal Music Group have teamed up to revamp more than 1,000 videos from artists including Lady Gaga, Tom Petty, Billy Idol and the Spice Girls. From a report: The goal is to "ensure current and future generations will get to enjoy these timeless classics as they've never before been experienced." At launch, 100 music videos have already been remastered and are available "in the highest available video and audio quality." This includes: Billy Idol, Beastie Boys, Boyz II Men, George Strait, Janet Jackson, Kiss, Lady Antebellum, Lady Gaga, Lionel Richie, Maroon 5, Meat Loaf, No Doubt/Gwen Stefani, Smokey Robinson, The Killers, Kiss, and Tom Petty.