Stairway to heaven: Spotify's worried about the future, but its present is looking good

4/25/23 7:00PM

Stairway to heaven‍

‍Spotify announced yesterday that it has reached half a billion monthly active listeners. That marks a 22% increase compared to the previous year, making it the company's strongest first quarter ever, sending shares in SPOT up 5%.

The company wasn't quite as successful at getting those subscribers to cough up for their music — the number of paying subscribers only rose 15% — but it nevertheless caps the end of a solid quarter for the company, which had to layoff around 600 employees in January.

‍AI ft. Drake

‍The results come after a TikTok-inspired revamp of its app and with the company currently navigating a delicate balance between the benefits and costs of AI, with the CEO, Daniel Ek, calling the technology “cool and scary”.

On the one hand, the company has recently introduced an exciting new feature, AI DJ, which provides personalized music selections introduced by a lifelike DJ voice powered by AI — a feature that already reaches millions of active users every week.

On the other hand, the company faces the challenges of AI generated songs infringing on copyright, an issue which hit the headlines last week after a song created by AI, featuring fake versions of Drake and The Weeknd, had to be pulled from the platform after Universal Music claimed an infringement. That song racked up over 600,000 plays on Spotify alone, demonstrating the viral potential of AI-generated content.

We wanted AI to do our work, so we could spend our time making art. For now, at least, it seems like the other way round is more likely.

Rani Molla5h

Amazon expands low-price Haul section to 14 new markets as Amazon Bazaar app

Amazon is expanding its low-cost Amazon Haul experience to a new stand-alone app called Amazon Bazaar.

Amazon launched its Temu and Shein competitor a year ago as a US mobile storefront on its website and has since expanded to about a dozen markets. Consumers could purchase many items for under $10, as long as they were willing to stomach longer delivery times.

Now, thanks to success in those places, the programming is expanding to 14 new markets — Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Nigeria — with a new app and name: Amazon Bazaar.

“Both Amazon Haul and Amazon Bazaar deliver the same ultra low-price shopping experience, with different names chosen to better resonate with local language preferences and cultures,” the company said in a press release.

Amazon extends Haul’s ultra low-price shopping experience to 14 new destinations with new Amazon Bazaar app

Big Tech’s most important infrastructure is at the bottom of the sea

While data centers on land are getting all the attention, Big Tech’s vast network of undersea fiber-optic cables carry 99% of all international network traffic.

Jon Keegan5h

Jon Keegan6h

After watching small drones reshape the battlefield in Ukraine, the US Army has announced plans to buy 1 million drones over the next two to three years, according to a report from Reuters.

The military threat of China’s dominance of the quadcopter-style drone industry is also driving the decision. But China’s control over much of the supply chain for drones, including rare earth magnets, sensors, and microcontrollers, will make it much harder for American drone manufacturers to catch up.

Rani Molla

They’re Out There

The wildest stuff Elon Musk said at Tesla’s shareholder meeting

Get ready to text and drive while the Optimus robot cures poverty.