Are music streaming services too good to be true? According to the U.S. Congress, the answer is yes. Google changes course on a privacy decision with Chrome. And Facebook announces a new, wireless version of the Oculus virtual reality headset.
 |
 |
 |
Trending on Google, a new law could affect how much streaming music services pay artists. Apple Music and Spotify have become the go-to music library of choice for many of us. That means we’re all streaming artist’s works instead of buying individual songs or albums. Well now a new U.S. law may create a new agency that ensures those artists are paid fairly for their work. This agency would be the new go-to place to negotiate licences for streaming music in the U.S., presumably making Apple and Spotify cough up some more cash. If it does happen, it looks like Apple will be in a better position to absorb that cost. An analyst report released yesterday says Apple Music converts users to paying subscribers at more than 2.5x the rate of Spotify.
Trending on Reddit, Google is reversing a change it made to its Chrome browser following criticism. The controversial feature was that Chrome automatically logged-in users as soon as they logged into Gmail. This caused some people to raise privacy concerns, as it might lead to you sharing more data with Google than you want to. (Though at this point I assume they know everything about me.) Anyway, Google says it will add a new control to disable the automatic Chrome sign-in, soon to be released in Chrome 70. But the default will remain that people still get logged in automatically. And as we know at this point, the vast majority of people never change the default settings. Of course, Google knows that too.
Trending on Bing, –that’s right, I said Bing… Facebook has unveiled a new wireless virtual reality headset, the Oculus Quest. It’s slated to go on sale in the Spring for $399 USD. It comes with hand-held controllers that provide a sense of presence while they’re in the VR world. Facebook hopes that more people will be excited about virtual reality if they can wear something that’s not tethered to a computer. After all, it wants to get 1 billion people using VR. And so far it has not even reached one per cent of that goal.