Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 09/18 – Streaming Has Changed How Music Sounds

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

Google won’t support screen repairs on your watch but will extend support of Chromebooks. How Spotify and other streamers have changed the way music sounds. And the software update coming to AirPods that might change the way you listen. Sponsors: Miro.com/podcast Collective.com/ride Links: Google won’t repair cracked Pixel Watch screens (The Verge) Google Extends Lifespan of Chromebooks With 10-Year Update Policy (WSJ) How the Lazarus Group is stepping up crypto hacks and changing its tactics (Elliptic) AI Startup Writer Raises $100 Million to Pen Corporate Content (Bloomberg) Streaming Is Changing the Sound of Music (WSJ) Apple’s AirPods Pro just got much better — no matter what port is on the case (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme right home for Monday, September 18th, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough today. Google won't support screen repairs on your watch, but will extend support of Chromebooks, how Spotify and other streamers have changed the way music sounds,

and the software update coming to AirPods that might change the way you listen. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Don't let your pixel watch crack, because Google has confirmed the company does not offer repair options for cracked pixel watch screens. Google's hardware warranty policy apparently does not cover accidental damage. Quoting the Verge. Several Pixel Watch owners have vented their frustrations about the inability to replace cracked screens, both on Reddit and in Google support forums. The Verge has also reviewed an official Google support chat from a reader who broke their pixel watch display after dropping the wearable. In it, a support representative states that Google, quote, doesn't have any repair

centers or service centers for the device. At this moment, we don't have any repair option for the Google Pixel Watch. If your watch is damaged, you can contact the Google Pixel Watch customer support team to check your replacement options. Google spokesperson Bridget Starkey confirmed to the verge. Google's warranty leaves owners on their own to deal with damage caused by drops or accidental strikes, and according to Google's store, there's no option for an extended warranty to go with a Pixel Watch. If your pixel watch is accidentally damaged, that's it. is despite the fact that a repair would technically be possible. I-Fixit notes in its Pixel Watch tear-down that while the screen isn't easily accessible, the watch itself holds promise for future

repairability. The site also has a detailed how-to for replacing a cracked, broken, or dead screen. However, it's unclear where the average person would source a replacement part, especially as Google does not offer repair options for the device. One commenter on the I-Fixit guide suggests buying an intact Pixel Watch off eBay, but that only seems mildly cheaper. and perhaps more wasteful than buying a used or new Pixel Watch replacement. This is troubling, considering the Pixel Watch features a circular domed glass display. While it's an attractive design, it can be easily cracked if you're not careful. During our review period last year, my colleague Chris Welch cracked his within a few days,

even though he hadn't done anything out of the ordinary or bang the device against hard services. I myself have not experienced a crack despite dropping mine multiple times, but our differing experiences are more likely due to luck than anything else. Google is not the only one guilty of making smartwatch repairs difficult. Repairing an Apple Watch has historically been an expensive and difficult endeavor. For example, without AppleCare Plus, Apple cites a flat $299 estimate for a Series 8 and $499 for an Apple Watch Ultra. With AppleCare Plus, that price drops to $69 for the Series 8 and $79 for the Ultra, not including the cost of AppleCare itself. That said, at least you can send in an Apple Watch for repair, even if buying a new one might be more cost.

cost-effective in the long run. This isn't great, considering that Google is expected to launch a new Pixel Watch 2 in October with what appears to be a nearly identical design, end quote. Sticking with Google for a moment and product support, actually, Google plans to offer Chromebook software updates for up to 10 years, starting in 2024, so no current device will expire within the next two years. This comes after mounting criticism that schools across the world were facing the financial burden of essentially unsupported devices. Quoting the journal. The disclosure of the policy change comes after an August column in the Wall Street Journal detailing schools' struggles with expiring Chromebooks. Chromebooks are ubiquitous in classrooms

around the country, but some education software doesn't work after what Google calls the auto-update expiration date. Unsupported Chromebooks can't be used for mandatory state testing, even if the hardware still appears functional. When the laptops expire, school districts recycle them, sometimes at a cost and spend millions of dollars on replacements. Google currently sets expiration dates based on the release date of specific models. Newer models have eight years of support, while older Chromebooks have five. Starting in 2024, Google will support a given laptop platform, a certain combination of hardware components, for 10 years after the first device in the platform hits store shelves. These so-called platforms aren't unique to specific brands or manufacturers and can be found in a

variety of distinct models. The change retroactively and automatically applies to devices released since 2021. On pre-2021 Chromebooks users will have the option to extend support once they have hit their death date. In practice, this means any model set to expire within the next two years can receive an extension of two to three years depending on the model. For example, Google's own pixel book slated to expire in June 2024 can now receive updates until June 2027. With the multi-year extension, schools and families can keep Chromebooks a bit longer, saving money and preventing the laptops in decent working condition from becoming e-waste. Doubling the lifespan of Chromebook's original expiration dates could save public schools and taxpayers in estimated $1.8 billion, according to

USPRG, a public interest research group, end quote. Apparently, the North Korean hackers have been ramping up their attacks on crypto recently. The North Korea-tied Lazarus Group has been accused of stealing nearly $240 million in crypto in the past 104 days. And the interesting bit is they seem to have shifted tactics focusing more now on centralized services. Quoting elliptic, an analysis of Lazarus' latest activity suggests that since last year, they have shifted their focus from decentralized services to centralized ones. Four of the five recent hacks discussed previously are of centralized virtual asset service providers. Centralized exchanges were previously Lazarus's target of choice prior to 2020, before the rapid rise of decentralized finance or the

defy ecosystem. There are a number of possible explanations for why Lazarus' attention may have once again shifted back to centralized services. Number one, increased focus on security. Elyptych's previous research into defy hacks of 2022 found that one exploit occurred every four days, each stealing on average $32.6 million. Cross-chain bridges, which were a relatively new form of service in early 2022, became some of the most frequently hacked types of defy protocol. These trends have likely prompted improvements in smart contract auditing and development standards, thus reducing the scope for hackers to identify and exploit vulnerabilities. Then, susceptibility to social engineering.

For many of their hacks, the Lazarus Group's attack methodology of choice is social engineering. The $540 million hack of Ronan Bridge, for example, was attributed to a fake LinkedIn job offer. Nevertheless, decentralized services often boast small workforces and as the name suggests, are, to varied extent, decentralized. Hence, gaining malicious access to a developer may not necessarily equate to gaining administrative access to a smart contract. Finally, centralized exchanges, meanwhile, will likely operate bigger workforces, thus widening the scope of possible targets.

They are also likely to operate using centralized internal information technology systems, allowing Lazarus malware a greater chance to penetrate the intended functions of their business, end quote. Interesting raise. AI writing startup writer. used by L'Oreal, Spotify, and Uber to create digital marketing campaigns, has raised $100 million led by iconic growth at a greater than $500 million valuation. This is interesting because aside from replacing call centers, using AI to generate better

marketing, text, and copy at scale, often targeted down to the user, has been one of the more obvious use cases for this new AI. Quoting from Bloomberg, so much of every technology evolution and revolution at work has made us work harder and longer hours, from email to social media to always on communication platforms like Slack. The CEO of Ryder said, I think Generative AI is actually able to reduce much more of the cognitive manual labor that opens up a much more creative day, end quote. Writer plans to use the cash infusion in part to invest in its AI models in order to make them more capable. With the latest financing, the company has raised a total of $126 million, end quote.

Yes, but remember when I went to that meta-briefing about how they were going to use AI, for all of their ad stuff. Again, anyone that can do this probably will. It's just a question of who has the model that people like using more. Over the weekend, the journal had an interesting piece taking a look at how Spotify and other streaming services have transformed the sound of music. Songs are shorter, they say. Albums are longer and artists collaborate more across genres. Quote, in 1972, the Temptations hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. winning three Grammys with a seven-minute version of the song Papa was a Roland Stone. Before the Temptations sing a word, an instrumental introduction featuring organ, guitar, bass,

and a high hat symbol ebbs and flows for more than four minutes. If the group were in the studio today, the title chorus would likely have been featured much earlier in the song. That's because music streaming services pay artists based on the number of plays each month, and to count as a play, a user must listen to the song past the 32nd mark. If a song you've never heard before takes a long time to get to the hook or simply has an extended intro, there's a good chance that you may simply hit the button to go to the next song. To keep the skip rate as low as possible, musical artists are increasingly moving a song's hook or chorus to that initial 30-second sweet spot. Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding, the host of the Switched-on Pop podcast, have coined the term Pop Overture to describe a new trend in which a song, quote,

will play a hint of the chorus in the first five to ten seconds so that the hook is in your ear, hoping that you'll stick around till about 30 seconds when the full chorus eventually comes in, end quote. Creators are modifying more than just the introductory sections of tracks for optimal performance on streaming. Every track that is listened to for more than 30 seconds counts as a play, but whether a listener makes it all the way through a song helps to determine whether a streaming service like Spotify will recommend similar songs in the future. As the Grammy-winning producer and performer Mark Ronson said in an interview in The Guardian, all your songs have to be under three minutes and 15 seconds,

because if people don't listen to them all the way to the end, they go into this ratio of non-complete herd, which sends your Spotify rating down, end quote. For a musician, getting a song on Spotify's popular today's top hits playlist means real money. A study by researchers at the University of Minnesota and the European Joint Research Center found that songs on the list gained an average of 20 million streams worth up to 163,000,

thousand dollars in royalties. As a result, according to an analysis by blogger Michael Talberg, the average length of hit songs has dropped by more than 30 seconds since 2000 when it was over four minutes. Nearly two-thirds of the songs that achieved the number one spot in the first half of 2021 were under three minutes long. Ironically, these tracks would have fit comfortably on early recording cylinders and phonograph records whose limitations were considered a major artistic impediment in the early 20th century. As songs get shorter, albums are getting longer. Culture 2 by the hip-hop group Migos, the number one album in America in February 2018, included 28 tracks and clocked in at an hour and 45 minutes, almost double the length of

Migos' previous Grammy-nominated release. Chris Brown's heartbreak on a full moon in 2017 had 45 songs. In 2022, the British indie band Pocket of God took this trend to an extreme with their album 1000 by 30. Nobody makes any money anymore. The title said at all. The band was protesting, adequate compensation by offering an album comprising 1,000 tracks of just over 30 seconds in length. The first song is titled, Point Zero-02, referring to how many cents the artists ended up receiving each time a song was played. This trend, too, is a response to the incentives of streaming. When fans stream a new album from their favorite acts, they tend to listen to the whole thing the first time through, so the more songs the album contains, the more income it generates.

Taylor Swift's 22 album Midnights occupied all of the top 10 slots on the Hot 100 chart shortly after its release. When Ed Shearin's album, Divide was released in 2017, all 16 of its songs made it into the top 20. It sparked a backlash in the British music industry, which was concerned that other artists were missing out on the benefits of occupying the top chart positions. The UK's official charts company adopted a new rule that an artist could have a maximum of three tracks in the top 100 at a time, regardless of the actual streaming numbers. The streaming economy is also altering release strategies for new music. In the era of records and CDs labels tried to maximize the sales of an album before the artist's next one hit the store shelves.

In 2017, by contrast, the rapper Future released two albums in consecutive weeks, and both of them hit number one. Brock Hampton, another hip-hop artist, dropped three albums that year. Streaming also means more opportunity for genres that usually didn't get shelf space in the era of physical retail. Latin and K-pop artists are showing up more and more frequently in Spotify's Global Top 100. More than 10 million music consumers follow Viva Latino. making it the third most followed playlist on Spotify, end quote. Finally today, the reviews of the new AirPods Pro with USBC charging are out. But aside from that change, the USBC inclusion, and the addition of some dust resistance,

there's not really much to write home about. Apparently, the real noticeable change is coming soon from a software update on iOS 17, and you don't necessarily have to buy new AirPods Pro to get this. advantage, quoting the verge. All second-generation AirPods Pro owners get to enjoy the new software features that are being introduced alongside iOS 17, adaptive audio, personalized volume, and conversation awareness. I've only just begun testing and getting familiar with all three, and I plan to update our AirPods Pro review in the near future after putting in more time with them. But I can already tell that these are some of the most significant new tricks that Apple has brought to the AirPods in quite some time.

They're not all original ideas. Sony and Samsung have been offering a speak-to-chat feature for several years, now, but as usual, Apple's implementation is second to none. Adaptive audio is meant to be a set-it-and-forget-it mode that blends active noise cancellation and transparency, canceling loud distractions where needed, while also helping you stay present in your environment. In my experience so far, this feature rarely cancels my surroundings to the same degree as the full noise cancellation mode. I wouldn't use it on a plane, but it reduces outside sound enough to not take away from my music, even at lower volumes. To my ears so far, it's basically an even smarter version of the adaptive transparency that Apple debuted with last year's AirPods Pro. If you're regularly wearing your AirPods Pro on a busy

city street, you should give adaptive audio a try. I think this is something Apple will continue to refine and tweak as it collects feedback from customers about which sounds they do and don't want their earbuds to let through. Conversation awareness is designed to make it easier to chat with people for brief interactions without having to remove your earbuds. Start speaking and your music volume will instantly get dialed way down while transparency mode activates to help you clearly hear whatever's being said back to you. Apple says the feature reduces overall background noise while enhancing the voices of anyone you're talking with. So far, I've been very impressed with conversation awareness. It's smart enough to avoid being triggered by a cough or other non-speaking

noises, but if you're like me and have a habit of quietly singing along with your music, that'll quickly become a problem if you keep this setting on. Personalized volume is the new trick I've experimented with the least so far. I'm someone who just prefers manual control over how loud my audio is instead of letting software make random adjustments based on my past preferences. I'll try to give it a chance more over the next few weeks and see how good Apple is at knowing what I want or if I find myself reaching for the volume for a manual override.

Aside from those three main new features, Apple says, the latest AirPods firmware also adds convenience and control on calls with press to mute and unmute for AirPods third generation, AirPods Pro, first and second generation, and AirPods Max, as well as significant improvements to the automatic switching experience for all available AirPods across Apple devices with the latest software updates, end quote. Nothing for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.