Music

It's official: "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" by the Wu-Tang Clan has been sold by the United States government. An announcement from the United States Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York made it official that the album was sold to an anonymous buyer. The album had previously been purchased by one Martin Shkreli for a winning auction bid of $2-million USD. The album was seized by the government after Shkreli's arrest and sold after convictions on counts of fraud in Shkreli's associated pharmaceuticals company Retrophin.

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Many cars now come with Bluetooth support, which means satellite radio service is less relevant than ever. Despite that, SiriusXM is still a thing and for those who prefer the satellite radio experience while driving, it has a new plan called Platinum VIP. The new plan offers service for two cars, including streaming access, under a single rate.

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Spotify added a "What's New" feed to their app, at long last. This is a page where users will find new releases from the artists they follow. Simple enough, yes? Should've probably been in the app for a long time now, right? This should drive a lot of traffic in Spotify beyond allowing users to see new tracks from their favorite artists and content creators too - because there's a bell, and a blue dot.

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Spotify and Giphy, the platform that lets you easily find and share short animated images, have teamed up to combine the two products into one...sort of. The companies are enabling artists to combine their music with GIFs of their performance, but it won't work quite the way it sounds. Rather than a GIF playing music, the images will let users click through straight to the artist's Spotify page.

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There's a new song out in the world today by the 90's R&B group All-4-One. This new single is a parody of a song released decades ago, appearing here via Xbox All Access Records, itself a parody of the actual Xbox All Access gaming system. The group, the actual All-4-One music group, came together to record a brand new music video for the song "It's All There (I Swear Remix)" to promote Xbox All Access for gamers.

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If you're a streamer or video creator who is paranoid about getting hit with a copyright strike, Riot Games has a new solution. The company has launched "Sessions: Vi," a new album of "completely free" music for creators and streamers to use during their live streams, in their videos, and more -- even if they monetize their content.

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Seinfeld, the show about nothing and arguably the most popular sitcom ever, finally has an official soundtrack. Yes, it has been more than 20 years since the show's controversial finale, but that doesn't diminish the album's excellent tracks and the role they played in emphasizing the show's ample humor.

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Spotify, the platform that has dominated music and, more recently, podcast streaming may be eyeing its next big thing: selling tickets to music events, including live and virtual concerts. That's according to a new report that cites people "familiar with the matter." This business expansion, assuming Spotify proceeds with it, would benefit from the company's existing mass of user data.

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Amazon has announced a new promotion with Disney that'll reward some of its Amazon Music users with up to six months of Disney+ access for free. As you'd expect, there are some limitations on what is otherwise a great promotion, the biggest one being that you must subscribe to the company's Amazon Music Unlimited plan to get the perk.

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Sonos and IKEA have revealed their latest SYMFONISK speaker, and while we may have already seen the new wall-mounted model there are some key details the two companies have confirmed today. The picture frame style is the speaker most obviously intended to be wall-mounted that we've seen from Sonos or IKEA so far, aiming to blur the distinction between a piece of art and a piece of music hardware.

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Today Sony made the Sony WF-1000XM4 earbuds official, delivering the earbuds in full detail for release. These earbuds (or headphones, whatever you want to call them) work with High-Resolution Audio Wireless with LDAC. These earbuds also work with Edge-AI, DSEE Extreme. With this technology, compressed digital music files can be upscaled in real time.

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As of today, Apple Music supports Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. This means that tracks that work with said technology will be played as "immersive audio experiences" on a select set of Apple devices. Today we're going to take a peek at the devices that will be able to take advantage of this upgrade. We're also taking a peek at the best ways to drop in on the new tech to hear the difference as clear as possible.

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