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This week’s stories include:
- Bandcamp acquisition and layoffs
- Paid TikTok
- Amazon AMP closure
- and more
Bandcamp sold again.
Just 18 months after they purchased it, Epic Games sold Bandcamp and nearly half of Bandcamp’s employees have been laid off.
The new owners suggest they’ll keep many of Bandcamp’s popular features, but if you’re concerned, it’s a good time to remind you that can run your own store online and reduce the fees you’re paying to sell your own merch.
Paid TikTok?
Something interesting was discovered in a line of TikTok’s code, and TikTok has confirmed: they are indeed testing a paid, ad-free version of their service, rumored to be 4.99/month. This test is currently running in a single English-speaking market outside the US.
Goodbye Amazon AMP
Amazon shut down its AMP radio service, and it follows Spotify Live as an interactive audio feature that has been discontinued in 2023.
Spotify playlists using your voice memos?
Maybe arising from the ashes of Spotify Live, a new patent application suggests Spotify is working on a mixtape generator that can pull audio from your voice memos so you can make an old-school mixtape where you can talk over the music to add your own perspective.
U2’s Vegas residency at Sphere
Lastly, If you want to know if the new venue Sphere is as weird as it looks, cultural critic Steven Hyden went to see U2, and hilariously wrote all about his somewhat adoring view from the general admission section of Vegas’ newest home of spectacle, and the TLDR is: It’s pretty mind-blowing, but maybe in a dystopian way.
