Spotify Is Now Tracking Your ‘Online Activity’ Even When You’re Not Using Spotify

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From Spotify’s updated Terms & Conditions (effective August 19th), which you probably didn’t read.

I. You’re now being tracked even when you’re not on Spotify, often through Spotify ‘business partners’.

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II. In addition, Spotify is now even tracking your friends’ profiles.

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III. Under the new terms, Spotify is not obligated to follow the privacy laws of your country.

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IV. If your data does happen to be breached, that’s your problem.

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The post Spotify Is Now Tracking Your ‘Online Activity’ Even When You’re Not Using Spotify appeared first on Digital Music News.


Source: Industry News

How Straight Outta Compton’s Director Is Purposefully Ignoring Violence Against Women

Dee Barnes has written an article for Gawker titled Here’s What’s Missing From Straight Outta Compton: Me and the Other Women Dr. Dre Beat Up. Here’s an excerpt…

 

Straight Outta Compton...

 

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That’s right. F. Gary Gray, the man whose film made $60 million last weekend as it erased my attack from history, was also behind the camera to film the moment that launched that very attack.

He was my cameraman for Pump It Up!  You may have noticed that Gary has been reluctant to address N.W.A.’s misogyny and Dre’s attack on me in interviews.  I think a huge reason that Gary doesn’t want to address it is because then he’d have to explain his part in history.  He’s obviously uncomfortable for a reason.

Gary was the one holding the camera during that fateful interview with Ice Cube, which was filmed on the set of Boyz N the Hood. I was there to interview the rapper Yo Yo.  Cube was in a great mood, even though he was about to shoot and he was getting into character.<!–/*
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// ]]>Cube went into a trailer to talk to Gary and Pump It Up! producer Jeff Shore.  I saw as he exited that Cube’s mood had changed. Either they told him something or showed him the N.W.A footage we had shot a few weeks earlier.  What ended up airing was squeaky clean compared to the raw footage.  N.W.A were chewing Cube up and spitting him out.  I was trying to do a serious interview and they were just clowning—talking shit, cursing.  It was crazy.

Right after we shot a now-angry Cube and they shouted, “Cut!” one of the producers said, “We’re going to put that in.”  I said, “Hell no.”  I wasn’t even thinking about being attacked at the time, I was just afraid that they were going to shoot each other.  I didn’t want to be part of that.

“This is no laughing matter,” I tried telling them.  “This is no joke.  These guys take this stuff seriously.”  I was told by executives that I was being emotional.  That’s because I’m a woman.  They would have never told a man that.  They would have taken him seriously and listened.

It was that interview that was the supposed cause of Dre’s attack on me, as many of his groupmates attested.  My life changed that night.  I suffer from horrific migraines that started only after the attack. I  love Dre’s song “Keep Their Heads Ringin”—it has a particularly deep meaning to me.  When I get migraines, my head does ring and it hurts, exactly in the same spot every time where he smashed my head against the wall.  People have accused me of holding onto the past; I’m not holding onto the past.  I have a souvenir that I never wanted.  The past holds onto me.

+‘Straight Outta Compton’ Almost Beats ‘Ant-Man’, $56 Million Opening Weekend

People ask me, “How come you’re not on TV anymore?” and “How come you’re not back on television?”  It’s not like I haven’t tried.  I was blacklisted.  Nobody wants to work with me.  They don’t want to affect their relationship with Dre.  I’ve been told directly and indirectly, “I can’t work with you.”  I auditioned for the part that eventually went to Kimberly Elise in Set It Off.  Gary was the director.  This was long after Pump it Up!, and I nailed the audition.

Gary came out and said, “I can’t give you the part.” I asked him why, and he said, “‘Cause I’m casting Dre as Black Sam.” My heart didn’t sink, I didn’t get emotional; I was just numb.

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Source: Industry News

Universal Music Planned on Partnering with MegaUpload Just Two Days Before the Raid

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Kim Dotcom had a meeting with Universal Music Group regarding a partnership just two days before the Megaupload raid. The two parties were interested in creating an advertising network that would target the largest piracy index… Google.

Universal also promised to help improve Mega’s reputation with the MPAA and RIAA.

Listen to a recording of the meeting below…

 

Nina Ulloa covers breaking news, tech, and more: @nine_u

Image by fzurell, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 (CC by 2.0).  

The post Universal Music Planned on Partnering with MegaUpload Just Two Days Before the Raid appeared first on Digital Music News.


Source: Industry News

Diplo: “Technology Has Never Benefited the Artist. It’s Always Benefited the Audience.”

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…from an interview with Charlie Rose, which also featured Sonny Moore (aka Skrillex).

Charlie Rose: Look at this clip with [Spotify CEO] Daniel Ek, here it is.

Daniel Ek clip (from 5/1/2014): What I hope is that we can take this technological shift and move it from not just being about listening to music to being about even how we create music.  When you think about the internet, the internet is not just audio, it’s audio, it’s visual, and it’s interactive. What’s the future of music going to be if the format isn’t just about the actual sound itself anymore, it’s about the sound that’s the visual, and perhaps it might even be the interactive part.

Sonny Moore (aka Skrillex): That guy’s cool.

Thomas Pentz (aka Diplo): Yeah.

Charlie Rose: — would you agree with him, is the point? In essence he said the same thing you guys agree with.<!–/*
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// ]]>Skrillex: — yeah, for sure, I think inevitably it’s all coming together —

Charlie Rose: — the technology, yeah —

Diplo: — for us, the one thing that helped lead us to be more successful this year, is a lot of the guys that are older that battle streaming services, that battle distribution systems, instead we embrace it, 100%. We’d rather people listen to our music than trying to make every cent we can make off of it.  That’s important for us to get our music heard more than to grab every penny we can get.

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Skrillex: The way I’ve look at it is you have to divide, it’s like what a market is.  It’s like you have different aisles, you have the girls section, you have the socks section, maybe someone is only going to buy socks.  If you’re going to take away from that area, there’s a whole different demographic that only go to that aisle.  So, there’s a whole other demographic of people that buy CDs.  So those people that — but this is my philosophy, I’m not telling anyone else they have to do it that way but — you know, people go to Spotify and subscribe, that’s how they get their music.  And that’s a whole group of people, and if you take it away from them you’re alienating a group of people that’s never going to see your music.  And they’re not going to change.  A lot of times they’re not going to buy a CD because you took yourself off of Spotify.

Charlie Rose: Does it also mean that people who might not have a chance of getting a record made may now have access to getting their music heard?

Diplo: Well technology has never really benefitted the artist, it’s always benefitted the audience.

Charlie Rose: But today — is that true today, do you think?

Diplo: Yeah, when I first had a cassette tape, I was immediately recording stuff illegally off the radio, it’s always been in the favor of the audience to make it easier for them and it’s not going to get any easier for the artist.  We’re actually — the more you fight it the more you’re wasting your time, because the audience is going to find easier and easier ways to find the music, and its not — you can’t stop that, you know?

Rose: And the easier you make it for the audience to find it, the better off you’re going to be. That’s what you’re saying.<!–/*
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// ]]>Skrillex: — that’s the philosophy.

Charlie Rose: Accessibility is the key word.

Diplo: —that’s why we’re doing it here today, we’ve always rode that wave, you know, and if we had fought it we’d still be in our studios complaining.

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Skrillex: The one thing I am kind of bummed about, is like recently all the major labels – and we distribute through majors because we — they all took — made it so all the full songs on SoundCloud are being taken down and limited to clips, and shorter previews.  And it’s like at the end of the day, those kids on SoundCloud — they’re actually — we’re some of the biggest people on SoundCloud with the most followers, and that’s a huge asset to our overall business of how people listen to our music.  And there’s kids that only go on SoundCloud and will not ever buy at iTunes and even never go to Spotify, and that’s how they listen to music.  And what that does is it eliminates a huge asset and is cutting off our music to an audience that could potentially come to your shows and be fans.

So, it’s — there’s definitely a lot of controversy in all these things, but I almost wish if was just up to the person that owns the art at the end of the day, the way they want it to be heard.

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Source: Industry News