YouTube channels the spirit of Netflix, Google subsumes Songza, Wikipedia creates a new AI, Adele admits streaming is the future, and the pop songs of 2015 get mashed up into one.
YouTube is keen to become the new Netflix, with sources claiming the Google-owned company is actively pursuing the rights to stream movies and TV shows.
According to the Wall Street Journal, negotiations are at an early stage, but Google is keen to have “a robust collection of original programming and licensed programming in 2016 and beyond.”
Right now, details are very thin on the ground, but our guess is that YouTube is trying to add content to its new subscription service, YouTube Red. One way of persuading people to pay $10-a-month for YouTube would be to add a range of licensed content. YouTube Red already boasts homemade content from the likes of PewDiePie and Rooster Teeth.
There is already strong competition in the streaming arena, including Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Instant Video. However, YouTube has a famous brand, hundreds of millions of users, and the backing of Google/Alphabet. All of which means YouTube could represent a serious threat to the competition if it starts aggressively buying up both old and new content.
Google is killing Songza, with the website and app due disappear on Jan. 31, 2016. Google acquired Songza in July 2014, and has slowly but surely been adding Songza’s features to Google Play Music. And Google hopes all Songza users will now switch to using Google Play Music.
The Songza founders claim the two services have now reached parity, hence Songza has become surplus to requirements. However, that will offer little comfort to those who, for whatever reason, preferred Songza to Google Play Music.
As is so often the case, Google has acquired a rival service purely to subsume its best features into its own offering. Meanwhile, the Songza founders are happy telling you to switch over to Google Play Music in between bouts of feverishly counting the money sitting in their bank accounts.
Wikipedia has created a new artificial intelligence designed to recognize potentially bad edits and flag them to human editors. In addition, the person responsible for a revision that’s deleted will now receive a notification informing them why their edit hasn’t been accepted.
The Objective Revision Evaluation Service (ORES) “functions like a pair of X-ray specs,” seeing through attempts to fool the team of humans maintaining order at the online encyclopedia. Wikipedia has always employed tools to monitor content, but ORES is the first one that’s able to differentiate between malicious edits and human errors.
Adele isn’t a fan of streaming music services such as Spotify and Apple Music. So much so that her new album 25 isn’t available to stream on these services. Except on Pandora, when the odd song from it will play randomly. Which isn’t ideal.
However, Adele has admitted that streaming is the future, telling Rolling Stone:
“[Streaming] probably is the future, but, eh. There are kids I know who are, like, nine who don’t even know what a f**king CD is! I’ve got my CDs out on display in my house just to prove a point. Maybe CDs will have a massive comeback like vinyl did.”
We doubt CDs will make a comeback in any big way, despite recently discovering that most of our readers still own CD players. As for Adele, we suspect she’ll have to embrace the new medium at some point in the future, even if it around the time she releases an album titled 72.
And finally, we have the United State of Pop 2015 video, as put together lovingly by DJ Earworm. This year, as every year, DJ Earworm has produced a mashup of the biggest pop songs released over the previous 12 months into one glorious whole. This year’s song is titled 50 Shades of Pop.
Artists to have made the cut include Adele, Ariana Grande, Drake, Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, Sam Smith, and Taylor Swift. Even if you’re not a fan of pop music, this is still worth watching. And who knows, perhaps you’ll discover a new appreciation for Fetty Wap or The Weeknd.
Will you be subscribing to YouTube Red? Are you sorry to see the end of Songza? Is Wikipedia still plagued by factual errors? Should Adele embrace streaming as the future of music? How many songs did you recognize in 50 Shades of Pop 2015?
Let us know your thoughts on the Tech News of the day by posting to the comments section below. Because a healthy discussion is always welcome.
Image Credits: Rego Korosi via Flickr
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