Spotify Jumps Into Social Audio, Acquires Sports-Focused Live Audio App (nbcnews.com) 15
Spotify said Tuesday it has acquired the company behind the live audio app Locker Room, giving the music and podcast platform a new foothold in a space that has seen a surge of interest following the rise of the app Clubhouse. From a report: The company, Betty Labs, launched Locker Room in October as a sports-focused platform for live audio conversations. Spotify said it plans to "evolve and expand" the app "into an enhanced live audio experience for a wider range of creators and fans." Locker Room will soon expand and rebrand to become more like Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces: a forum for live conversations about music, culture and all manner of topics. "Creators and fans have been asking for live formats on Spotify, and we're excited that soon, we'll make them available to hundreds of millions of listeners and millions of creators on our platform," Spotify's chief research and development officer Gustav Soderstrom said in a statement. The acquisition comes amid a surge of interest in live audio following the meteoric rise of Clubhouse, an app that has drawn more than 10 million users in under a year, amassed a $1 billion-plus valuation and inspired Facebook, Twitter and others to develop their own Clubhouse competitors.
Phone app (Score:2)
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So, this is basically a "party line" type thing, right?
LOL, I remember back as a kid, when we only had landlines.
There was a number we found you could dial and I guess it was a trunk line service folks used, but you could get a bunch of people on there, and we kids took it over, would chat all the time on it, never knew who was there, etc....met some new friends and a couple of cute girls that way.
They finally
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I had to look up this clubhouse thing...I don't do social media so I wasn't familiar with this.
So, this is basically a "party line" type thing, right?
Honestly, I have no idea. I didn't read past the summary, but that seems to be about it. Another place for self-important "media personalities" to broadcast their drivel.
"Excuse me newly elected senator....I have something I'd like for you to listen too from your teen years, before we discuss my new appointment."
My own Facebook history likely has enough cringe on it that I've already exempted myself from public service. It's the only social media I participate in, and I've only been on the platform for a relatively small portion of my life. With the multitudes of platforms, and having been posting since they knew how to write, I can't imagine ho
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I'll go one step further.
I"m SO glad I grew up before cell phones where EVERYONE has a fscking camera all the time.
We'd not have had nearly so much fun if there were the risk of a picture somewhere, or a CCD camera somewhere....not to mentioned having our parents track our every move via our phones, etc.
It was nice growing up in an age of plausible denia
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It was nice growing up in an age of plausible deniability.
Cheers to that.
I am too old or is the world getting crazy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Social Audio? WTF?
Is it just me, or are most people not having real friends anymore, it's all about having the highest number of fake virtual friends, likes, ratings and all that gamified nonsense that's not worth anything of real human value?
Re:I am too old or is the world getting crazy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Millenials were born in this batshit crazy world. To them, this is normal. Similar to kids growing up in war-torn countries, playing and laughing in devasted streets and buildings. Humans are resilient, at least on the surface. But deep down inside, the damage is very real.
But hey, what do I know. I'm just an old man yelling at Amazon clouds.
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But then again, we are the ones making these services.
Re: I am too old or is the world getting crazy? (Score:2)
No, people are pushed into this. Don't blame the kids.
We got, sadly, physical proof that if you raise children in a lightlesd basement, naked, on the floor, eating out of dog bowls, they will think that's just normal and never wonder if that may be weird. (I still remember the pictures from Romania.)
The main problem with people nowadays... us too... is an extremely exaggerated anxiety. Everyone is constantly afraid of everything. That is why some people hate foreigners, gays, whatever. Why they want to "con
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It seems that way, and it really hurts with young men trying to get women.
If you are a standout young man today where you actually know how to talk to people in meatspace AND will approach women, you have a leg up on about 98% of your competition regardless of bank account.
Hell, it even makes it easy for us old guys to pick from the younger of the female herd, as that their peer level men don't know and have actual real social interaction
So it's gonna be like games now ... (Score:1)
Everything's gonna be a 3D open-world RPG with crafting and collectibles and microtransactions.
Every service is gonna be everything everyone else is.
Until they realize that they got nothing of value over anyone else, and in a sane world, it would be one set of open protocols with various open-source client and server modules with no duplication that's costing us all, no ads (since no value means no pay), and probably way more (optional) and nicer functions that actually exist for the user.
But hey, it's nice