Music + Tech Round-Up July 4 2014

It’s almost the weekend, Wireless has started and the clock is slowly ticking towards hometime. First, however, it’s time for our Music + Tech Round-Up. Enjoy!

Google Buys Songza

Google has reportedly bought Songza, a US streaming service, for $39m. For those unfamiliar with Songza, the company generates personalised playlists for users by using their location, time of day and even the weather. Songza’s data on listening habits of consumers could prove to be useful to Google, who is trying to improve its own music service, Google Play.

Ed Sheeran’s x Breaks Spotify Streaming Records

After debuting at the top of UK album sales charts, x by Ed Sheeran has become the most streamed album in a week ever on Spotify by gaining 6,248,130 streams of his album in the first week of its release. This title was previously held by Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.

Globally, Ed Sheeran has also scored the most streams in the first week of release in Spotify history, beating Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2.

£16m Funding Injection For The Creative Industries

There’s no ‘right’ way to get into the creative industries and once you’re in, it can be a tough game. The government is looking to help this, pledging £16m to improve several aspects of the creative industries, including education, infrastructure, intellectual property protection and exports. This injection is to aid in doubling creative industry exports by 2020.

Sheep To Film Tour de France. Yes, sheep.

In other (rather strange) news, Sony will be filming the Tour de France by strapping cameras onto sheep. This decision seems to have come from their marketing department as a way to demonstrate just how durable their cameras are. While we’ve never heard of sheep being used in this way before, we’re pretty excited to see the results. Let’s hope we see a little more than just grass!

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