Spotify's new feature, Weeknd's $70 Million Crib & the latest at Incentify
In today's round-up of the week in Music, we talk about Spotify's feature that lets creators produce radio shows, The Weeknd's house hunt & updates on our product launch.
We write a daily newsletter on all things Music, and the Business and Tech behind it. If you’d like to get it directly in your inbox, subscribe now!
Happy Friday everyone!
Not gonna lie, It has been a tough week here at Incentify.
As announced last week, we have been building a social network for Music over the past few months, and our MVP which lets users share and discover playlists across multiple platforms like Spotify & Apple Music was slated to be launched this week 📅
However, as luck may have it, this Monday, our core backend engineer lost 95% of the project’s code due to his MacBook Pro busting up suddenly.
Poof, gone, vanished in thin air 💥💨
With no memory backup or cloud storage, this setback has rolled our release date back by a few days, as he is having to re-write the entire thing again 👨🏻💻
Folks, if anything, let this serve as a PSA for always backing up your work. Even Apple products are turning out to be unreliable off late.
However, we are not bogged down by this, and with his speed of execution, we expect to be back up on our feet pretty soon. More on that later 👀
Meanwhile, if you haven’t already, please check out our website, it talks about what we are building, and if it seems interesting to you, feel free to DM me.
We would love to have your feedback!
Spotify’s latest Music + Talk feature 🗣
Last fall, Spotify introduced a new format that combined spoken commentary with music, allowing creators to reproduce the radio-like experience of listening to a DJ or music journalist who shared their perspective on the tracks they would play.
Today, the company is making the format, which it calls “Music + Talk,” available to global creators through its podcasting software Anchor.
How does it work? 👇🏻
Creators who want to offer this sort of blended audio experience can now do so by using the new “Music” tool in Anchor, which provides access to Spotify’s full catalog of 70 million tracks that they can insert into their spoken-word audio programs.
Spotify has said this new type of show will continue to compensate the artist when the track is streamed, the same as it would elsewhere on Spotify’s platform.
In addition, users can also interact with the music within the shows as they would otherwise — by liking the song, viewing more information about the track, saving the song, or sharing it, for example.
How cool is that?
I personally am a big fan of old-school radio shows, which not only play music, but a good curated episode can give perspective behind the story of the tracks and artist, an experience vanilla streaming cannot.
Check out this video breaking down how this new feature by Spotify works 👇🏻
Elsewhere, The Weeknd snaps up a $70 Million Mansion 🤑
I’m not sure about you, but someone is definitely kicking it back this weekend 😎
R&B star Abel Tesfaye, aka, The Weeknd, bought a 33,000 sq ft mansion spread out over 1.6 acres in Los Angeles for an estimated sum of $70 million 💰
Overlooking the Bel-Air Country Club, the house has nine bedrooms and includes a bevy of amenities, including a sports court, a spa with a sauna, an indoor pool, an outdoor infinity pool with a waterfall, a movie theater, a gym, and a music studio 🎙
Not a bad spot huh? 👇🏻
Previously owned by Dutch Media entrepreneur Reinout Oerlemans and his wife Danielle Oerlemans, the house was bought by the couple back in 2015, was just $21 million, and they worked on renovating it for over 3 years.
More than 3x over 7 years, not a bad markup, right? 📈
With his last album ‘Blinding Lights’, breaking all sorts of streaming records, The Weeknd’s net worth was reported to be around $100 Million by the Cosmopolitan, earlier this year.
Does that mean he just spent 70% of his net worth on a house? Who knows 🤷♂️
Is that enough motivation for you to work on whatever inspires you, over this Weeknd? 😉
Have a good one guys, and we’ll talk next week 🍻
If you liked this newsletter from Incentify, why not share it with someone you like?
P.S- Follow us on Instagram and Twitter for more such content on all things Music and Culture, now!