Hulu has ordered a docuseries inspired by the influential hip-hop playlist RapCaviar from Spotify and Sony’s IPC studio, reportedThe Hollywood Reporter. RapCaviar Presents will feature the perspectives of artists like Tyler, the Creator, Jack Harlow, Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat and Saweetie. The show has no official release date yet, but is expected to debut on Hulu sometime later this year.
For those who are unfamiliar with RapCaviar, both the 14-million follower strong playlist and companion podcast are known for launching the careers of once unknown artists such as Migos, Lil Uzi Vert and Kyle. For emerging hip-hop artists, getting a track featured on RapCaviar can quickly result in millions of streams and draw the attention of record labels. The creator of the playlist is Tuma Basa, Spotify’s global head of hip hop programming, who hand-picks the music himself.
Filmmaker Karam Gill (Supervillain: The Making of Tekashi 6ix9ine) will serve as executive producer and creative director of the docuseries. The co-EPs are Av Accius and Marcus A. Clarke. The showrunner is Steve Rivo, the writer of the Showtime film about the world’s longest-running music video, You’re Watching Video Music Box.
If the appetite for original programming about music is strong enough, we could possibly see even more documentaries and shows in other genres from Spotify in the future. There’s even a fictionalized series about Spotify in the works. The Playlist, a scripted series about the music streaming service's origin story, will debut on Netflix later this year.
Instagram has been building out its creator subscription program this year and now it's slotting a couple of key pieces into place. Creators can now share subscriber-only feed posts. Those Reels and photos will have a purple badge with a crown symbol to make them stand out. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said this was the feature he's had the most requests about from creators in the program.
Also new is a subscriber chat option. Influencers can hop into group DMs with up to 30 subscribers, perhaps in an attempt to persuade them to spend more time chatting on Instagram instead of, say, Discord. The group chats are powered by Messenger and creators can start them from their inbox or a Story. They'll automatically end after 24 hours. Fans will have access to a subscriber home tab on a creator's profile as well. Paywalled content will be centralized there, including photos, Reels and archived Lives.
📣 Subscriptions Update 📣
Subscriptions are a great way for creators to have a predictable income & for fans to get exclusive content from creators that they love.
This update includes: - Subscriber Chats - Subscriber Reels - Subscriber Posts - Subscriber Home pic.twitter.com/5PzDTcwn8d
Mosseri says tens of thousands of creators in the US now have access to the subscription program, which enables them to charge fans up to $100 per month to access exclusive content. Instagram started testing creator subscriptions in January with paywalled Stories and livestreams. Subscribers also get a purple badge that appears next to their usernames on comments and in DMs.
Parent company Meta is offering creators other incentives to build an audience and share content on Facebook and Instagram. Last month, Meta said it won't charge a commission on earnings creators make through the apps until 2024. The company previously stated it wouldn't take a cut of their Facebook and Instagram incomes through the end of this year.
The studio is working with 20th Century Games on an untitled Aliens game for PC, consoles and virtual reality. It will be a single-player, action-horror game. The developer will reveal more details at a San Diego Comic-Con panel on July 21st.
To date, Survios' games have mostly been for VR, including a racing title called Sprint Vector and a licensed The Walking Dead offering. It has made one non-VR game so far, a boxing title based on the Rocky/Creed franchise. The studio's Aliens game is likely some time away — Survios is still putting together a team to work on it. However, VR is typically a good fit for horror games. Alien: Isolation's VR mode alone might be enough to convince you of that.
Twitter's recent troubles include more than its battle with Elon Musk. The social media giant has suffered a global outage that started shortly after 8AM Eastern. Users reported a variety of glitches, including generic "error" messages and even broken website alerts. The issue affected both Twitter's web version as well as apps, including third-party clients.
We've asked Twitter for comment. The company's status page made no mention of platform outages as of this writing.
Nintendo has acquired the Japanese CG production company Dynamo Pictures and plans to rebrand it as "Nintendo Pictures," the company announced. Its aim with the new subsidiary is to develop visual content using Nintendo IP and focus on "the planning and production of visual content including CG animation." Dynamo worked with Nintendo before on the Metroid: Other M game also has credits on anime TV series like Evangelion: 2.0.
Nintendo is gearing up for its Super Mario Bros. movie starring Chris Pratt, which was recently delayed to April 2023. The live adaptation of Detective Pikachu based on the Pokémon franchise was successful enough that a sequel is in the works, but the last major cinema release was way back in 1993 with Super Mario Bros. starring Bob Hoskins.
Movies and TV series based on gaming IP are a popular trend at the moment, with movies like Sonic based on Sega's popular character seeing impressive success. Sony recently released an Uncharted film and HBO is producing a TV series based on The Last of Us starring Pedro Pascal. With its latest acquisition, Nintendo could be ready to bring more of its content to the small and big screens, which is (hopefully) good news for fans of its games.
Sony has announced the first new batch of games for its higher PlayStation Plus tiers since it revamped the service. Along with the three titles that are available for PS Plus Essential members and those in the current Extra and Premium libraries, subscribers will have access to a bunch more games as of July 19th.
One of those is Stray, a cyberpunk adventure game in which you play as a cat with a drone companion. It's the first time that a third-party title will be available on a higher PS Plus tier on its release date. You'll have access to the PS4 and PS5 versions.
Members will also be able to check out PS5 blockbuster Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. The PS4 version of Final Fantasy VII Remake was previously available to claim through PS Plus. However, for a while, those who snagged it were unable to get Intergrade without paying for the full game. Square Enix eventually relented and offered an upgrade path.
Also on July 19th, Extra and Premium members can play Marvel's Avengerson PS4 and PS5 at no extra cost. Things haven't exactly goneincrediblywell for that but the gameplay is solid. Crystal Dynamics just added the latest playable character, The Mighty Thor (Jane Foster), a few weeks ago.
On top of those, you'll have access to a bunch more Assassin's Creed games, Saints Row entries and some other games:
Assassin’s Creed Unity (PS4)
Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag (PS4)
Assassin’s Creed Rogue Remastered (PS4)
Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry (PS4)
Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection (PS4)
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected (PS4)
Saints Row Gat out of Hell (PS4)
Spirit of the North: Enhanced Edition (PS5)
Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure (PS4)
Jumanji The Video Game (PS4)
Paw Patrol on a Roll! (PS4)
ReadySet Heroes (PS4)
Premium members will be able to dive into a couple more PlayStation Portable titles in the form of No Heroes Allowed! and LocoRoco Midnight Carnival as well. That's a fairly solid slate of additions overall, with something for just about everyone.
Sony says it will continue to shakeup the PS Plus lineups on a monthly basis. It will refresh the Essential library at the start of each month and add new games to Extra and Essential a couple of weeks later. Bear in mind that games will cycle in and out of the Extra and Essential tiers, but you'll have access to Essential titles you claim as long as you maintain a PS Plus subscription.
Back in February, TikTok said it was working on new ways to age-restrict certain types of content in an effort to ramp up its safety features for teens. Now, the company is sharing more about its rating system, called Content Levels, which it plans to roll out “in the coming weeks.”
The company has compared its approach to the ratings systems used by the movie and video game industry. It’s meant to filter out videos with more “mature” themes from the feeds of its teen users. It will apply to videos that wouldn’t otherwise break TikTok’s rules but may be inappropriate for younger users of the app.
With the change, when teens between the ages of 13 and 17 encounter a video that contains “mature or complex themes,” they’ll instead see a notice that the video is age restricted. “When we detect that a video contains mature or complex themes, for example, fictional scenes that may be too frightening or intense for younger audiences, a maturity score will be allocated to the video to help prevent those under 18 from viewing it across the TikTok experience,” TikTok explains in a blog post.
The company didn’t share how it would determine these maturity scores, or what criteria it would use to classify its videos. TikTok noted that the feature is still an “early version” and that they plan to add additional capabilities in the future. Company executives have previously said they also want TikTok users to be able to choose what type of content they are comfortable with.
TikTok
In the meantime, the app is also adding a new way to filter out unwanted topics from their “For You” page. The update, also expected in the coming weeks, will enable users to mute certain words or hashtags they no longer wish to see videos about.
TikTok also offered an update on its work to avoid potentially problematic “repetitive patterns” in its For You recommendations. The company previously said it was testing ways to avoid overloading people with a lot of content about topics that can be potentially troubling, like mental health or eating disorders. Now, TikTok says those early tests have been successful, and that users in the United States are less likely to see many videos about these topics at once. TikTok is now working on making the feature available in more countries and languages.
The iOS 16 public beta is here, which means you can get a taste of Apple’s upcoming mobile software before its stable release. As we saw at WWDC in June, the iPhone is slated to get a whole new lock screen, edit and send options in iMessage, improved dictation, a Medication tracker, new sharing features and more. iOS 16 is shaping up to be a beefier update than years past, and you might (understandably) be itching to test it out.
As always, I have to remind you that installing any beta software comes with risks. Some of your favorite apps might stop working, or worse, your phone might be completely bricked. If you’re still set on running the beta, please make sure to back up your data. You can access the preview by enrolling on Apple’s website, which will push a download option to your phone’s Software Update section.
Just as with the iOS 15 public beta last year, basically all the features announced at WWDC are ready for testing. The only things missing would require developers to make some changes, like integrating an API for the new live activity update box on the lock screen. And the redesigned CarPlay, won’t be available until next year. I can’t get into every single change, and will save my more complete evaluations for our full review when iOS 16 is officially released.
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New lock screens are a visual refresh
Once my phone restarted after installing the beta, the change was obvious. Instead of the clock and list of notifications my eyes had grown tired of, there was a box at the bottom of the page telling me the software had updated. The clock font was a thicker, blockier style, which I immediately wanted to change. I long-pressed the wallpaper, but that brought up the page for me to enter my passcode.
I found a bug where I couldn’t access the editor or switch pages until I set up Face ID. Basically, you can’t tweak or change lock screens without logging into your phone, but when you enter your passcode, the system takes you straight to your home page, bypassing the lock screen altogether. Face ID allows your iPhone to stay on the page after having unlocked your phone.
Once I got into the Lock Screen creator, I could choose from eight styles and two colors for the clock, as well as add up to five widgets across two boxes at the top of the page. I picked the weather, air quality and UV index widgets, and then added two more profiles with different wallpapers featuring my favorite photos (you can also choose your preferred emoji, people or color). There’s also options based on the weather or “Astronomy,” which uses your position to show where you are on a globe. It can also display the moon or solar system.
Each page can be linked to a Focus mode, though there must always be a default lock screen that isn’t tied to anything. Speaking of, Apple also added Focus filters to let you have finer control over what you want to interact with in certain modes. You can choose which tab groups appear in Safari with your Work profile and pick a different calendar to see when set to Play. iOS 16 also offers Allow and Silence lists when you’re setting up your Focus modes, and will provide suggestions around Lock Screen content that would be relevant to each profile.
Screenshots
The revamped Lock Screen also features a new “live activity box” at the bottom. The idea is that when you’re following a sporting match or recording an interview for example, you can stay updated without having to leave the app open. Developers need to integrate the new API for this to work. Right now, it works with Spotify and Apple’s timer app, making it easy to pause or skip ahead in my music and cancel my countdowns.
Messages gets better
One of the most useful changes coming with iOS 16 is the ability to edit and unsend chats in iMessage. For now, this works best with people who are also using the public beta — anyone on iOS 15 will see a second message that says “Edited to” followed by your new words. Just like what people on Android used to see when iPhone users used emoji reactions on texts.
You’ll have 15 minutes after sending a message to access the options for “Undo Send” or “Edit.” When you rescind a message, by the way, your friend will see an alert saying “[friend’s name] unsent a message.” Texts that had been updated have the word “Edited” next to the read receipt below the bubble.
Screenshots
Apple also updated the dictation experience. Now, when you tap the microphone on the iPhone’s keyboard, the QWERTY setup stays in place instead of being taken over by a waveform animation. A small tab with a microphone icon appears over the input field when you’re not speaking, so you know dictation is still enabled.
You can tap mistakes in the box and continue dictating to fix them, which is similar to what Google did with its updated voice engine on the Pixel 6. Unlike on Android, though, iOS 16 doesn’t allow you to speak commands like “Send” or “Delete all”. This dictation interface didn’t appear when I was typing in the App Store’s search bar, though, so despite this being a systemwide feature, it still appears to be missing in places.
Visual Lookup is the most fun
Of all the updates the iOS 16 beta brings, my favorite has to be in visual lookup. Or, as I prefer to call it, the quicker-sticker-maker. Basically, you can long-press a subject in any picture in the Photos app and copy it without the background and paste it somewhere else.
I was impressed with how accurately the system picked out subjects, whether it was a coworker smizing against a blue sky, or a model in a flowing dress in front of a building. Sadly, it doesn’t work on things in the background — I couldn’t get it to highlight a dog behind its owner.
Screenshots
When you paste your selection into a Message field, it’s automatically sent as a cutout with a transparent background — i.e. a sticker. But often, the system would think I was trying to send a picture and add a black background, which took away from the effect. This is a known bug, though, so it shouldn’t be happening by the time iOS 16 is ready for its stable release.
Apple also added video support for Live Text, which scans images for text and picks them out so you can interact with them. This will work in the Photos app, as well as anything that uses the iOS player, which includes fullscreen videos from articles on the web. Third-party services with custom controls won’t automatically support this, but developers can integrate the ability if they wish.
Medications and health features still need work
I was looking forward to seeing the new Medications feature in the Health app and, satisfyingly, it’s straightforward and intuitive. I easily found my daily pill, and Apple offers US users the option to scan their packaging label. The database is still somewhat sparse, and I couldn’t find the specific brand and dosage of Vitamin B12 that I take every day, but I imagine as more people use this and plug their own pills in, there will be more entries soon.
While it’s helpful that you can choose frequency intervals like daily, alternate days, specific days of the week and more, I wish there were a way to choose an end date. You can set a specific day to start your meds, but for short-term situations like a course of antibiotics, for example, you’ll have to manually delete the entry after you’re done.
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The most intriguing aspect of Medications is that if you enter substances that have risky interactions, the system should flag it for you. This isn’t limited to drugs — Apple also prompts you to add whether you consume alcohol, marijuana or tobacco. Through this, I found out that my birth control might increase the effects of marijuana, and the Health app labeled this as a Moderate drug interaction.
I’m allergic to a few different drugs, including some major antibiotics, and I’ve listed this information in my medical ID in the Health app in case of an emergency. When I added one of the antibiotics in Medications, I wasn’t alerted about it. Granted, the information in the medical ID is simply a list of words as opposed to a piece of data Apple can use to match against other information. And I probably wouldn’t encounter a situation where I’m dispensed medication that contains something I’m deathly allergic to. But it would be nice to see Apple think about how to approach situations like this.
Concerns about medical privacy are at an all-time high and I almost didn’t want to list my birth control in Medications, though I do feel that Apple’s privacy policy is one of the better ones around. Still, if there was a way for this information to be hidden behind a passcode, I would feel a bit better.
Sharing, accessibility and a long list of other updates
I’ve barely covered the list of changes iOS 16 will bring, but we’ve covered what will have the biggest impact on your daily experience. If you frequently collaborate with others, the new Safari group tabs can be helpful. I created a group and shared it with fellow deputy editor Nate Ingraham as we tested the new software. I had the Engadget home page and Apple’s iOS summary open, and the next day he had added some other reference pages, but he also noticed I had been looking up the cast of Ms. Marvel.
Sharing photos with your friends and family is also easier if they’re using iOS. You can create a shared photo album and images added will be synced with all members. Family Sharing has also been updated to make child accounts easier to set up, and your kids can send you Screen Time requests through Messages (and you can approve or decline from the chat, too).
Screenshots
I didn’t have time to check out some of the other new features like the assistive Door Detection tool or Sound Recognition. But I did try Live Captions, which provides subtitles for audio playing through all apps on your phone. Though Apple’s version is occasionally inaccurate and slightly slow compared to Android, I appreciate that I can tap the box on iOS and choose to pause Live Captions or tap the microphone icon to switch to transcribing sounds in my surroundings. I can also minimize the Live Captions box on iOS, leaving only a floating circle on the screen that stays out of the way till I need subtitles again.
Apple also added a new Safety Check tool that “allows you to disconnect from people, apps and devices you no longer want to be connected to.” You can review the people and apps that have access to your location, photos, calendar or contacts and revoke permissions, or choose nuclear options like “Emergency Reset” or “Select All and Stop Sharing.” Changing these options requires you to sign in, either with a passcode or by Face ID. There’s also a new Lockdown Mode that the company announced earlier this month, which is “an extreme, optional protection” for those who “believe you may be personally targeted by a highly sophisticated cyberattack.”
I’ve been enjoying the iOS 16 public beta, and though I still hesitate to recommend installing beta software, most people who aren’t risk-averse will enjoy the updates. If you’re worried about stability and losing your data, you can always wait till the final release (typically in the fall) to get the new features.
A much-loved YouTube account featuring calm hip-hop beats is back online today, after two popular radio live streams (the oldest of which has been playing non-stop for two years) got yanked from the platform due to bogus copyright claims. In a tweet, the owner of the Lofi Girl channel — which has been streaming relaxing ambient music since 2017 — announced that the streams have relaunched after a nearly 48-hour hiatus.
The origin of the DMCA claims came from FMC Music, a Malaysian record label. After receiving a counterclaim from the creators of Lofi Girl, YouTube manually reviewed FMC’s complaint and came to the conclusion that the record label had no ownership over the music.
“Confirmed the takedown requests were abusive & terminated the claimants account 😔 we've resolved the strikes + reinstated your vids – it can sometimes take 24-48 hours for everything to be back to normal! so sorry this happened & thx for your patience as we sorted it out,” wrote YouTube on Twitter, in response to Lofi Girl’s request on Monday that the streams be reinstated.
But FMC Music is alleging that it is also a victim in this affair. A spokesperson from the label told local news site Malaysiakini that hackers broke into its YouTube account to file the copyright infringement claim. The record label said that it reported the incident to Google. Its YouTube account has since returned back online.
The relatively unknown record label was hit hard with online abuse over the weekend, as fans of Lofi Girl flocked to its social media channels and demanded to know why it filed the fake claim. Most of Lofi Girl’s largely Gen-Z and younger Millennial fanbase rely on the music to study, relax or meditate.
In an ironic twist, Lofi Girl also has a considerable Malaysian fanbase, who were also quite unhappy about the channel’s removal. In a Reddit thread on r/Malaysia entitled, “Who the hell is FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia and why did they copywrite strike lofi girl?”, a despondent fan urged others to “make some noise” on the record label’s socials.
“For context, I was studying while listening to lofi girl before both of their streams got taken down by a certain FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia. Now their livestreams can't be accessed in Malaysia. What gives them the right to take down the best channel on youtube,” wrote the user.
Malicious copyright strikes are hardly a new incident on YouTube. Game creater Bungie decided to take one creator to court after they allegedly filed nearly 100 fake copyright claims. Lofi Girl noted that an accidental takedown in 2020 also took the account offline, and called for a stronger vetting process for DMCA claims at YouTube. “This event has shone a light on an underlying problem on the platform: It’s 2022, and there are countless smaller creators out there, many of which engaged in this discussion, that continue to be hit daily by these false claims on both videos and livestreams,” Lofi Girl wrote in a tweet.
For the first time in the history of the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Television Academy has nominated a non-English series for Outstanding Drama. Netflix’s Squid Game earned the distinction on Tuesday when the organization announced the nominations for the 2022 awards. In addition to Outstanding Drama, the runaway hit earned 14 total nominations, including an Outstanding Lead Actor nod for star Lee Jung-jae.
Depending on how you want to count the nominations, Netflix either earned the most or second-most of any streaming company on the list. All told, Netflix productions scored 105 nominations this year, second only to the 140 netted by HBO and HBO Max, but the grouping of HBO’s cable and streaming operations under one umbrella has been an ongoing source of controversy within the industry.
HBO also had the most-nominated series with Succession. The show earned 25 nods from the Academy, including nominations for Outstanding Drama and two Outstanding Actor considerations for Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong. With 20 nominations, Apple’s Ted Lasso earned the most nominations of any streaming-exclusive series. Jason Sudeikis will get a chance to defend his best actor win from last year. Thanks to shows like Ted Lasso and Severance, Apple had a strong performance. It earned 51 nods, up from 35 the year prior. Notably, Jon Stewart, who returned to late-night TV last year with the Problem with Jon Stewart on TV+, was snubbed in the Outstanding Variety Talk Series category.
Disney’s performance was a mixed bag. On the back of 17 nominations for Only Murders In The Building, Hulu more than doubled its nominations from last year to 58. Disney+, however, only came away with 34 nods, a significant drop from the 71 it netted last year. That said, other streaming platforms didn’t do nearly as well as even Disney+. Amazon’s Prime Video secured a modest 30 nominations, while Paramount+ and Peacock only came away with 11 and three nods apiece.
