Spotify revamps its app in a TikTok-style  

Here is the top trending news from the world of technology. News that we feel every tech enthusiast should keep a tab on.

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Spotify revamps its app in a TikTok-style  

In the coming weeks, when you login to your Spotify account you’ll find that the app is adorning a brand-new look. This’s because the streaming giant on Wednesday unveiled a completely new look for its app that apparently has lot of similarities with TikTok. The most visible TikTok like feature being the short-form video feed, which has been immensely popularized by the Chinese short video app. A new ‘Smart Shuffle’ mode for playlist recommendations and a podcast autoplay feature are some of the new features that you will get to experience on Spotify’s newly redesigned app.

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Google’s rival DuckDuckGo enters the AI Race with DuckAssist

Privacy friendly search engine DuckDuckGo, which competes with search engine giant Google, has come out with a new AI feature called DuckAssist. DuckAssist will provide instant and direct replies to search queries that will appear on the top of the traditional search results. It will use the natural language technology from OpenAI and Anthropic to resource and summarize the information available on popular platforms Wikipedia and Britannica. By combining generative AI technology and Wikipedia, DuckDuckGo is hopeful of drastically increasing the numbers of instant answers and likewise increase its user base. DuckDuckGo’s another notable competitor Microsoft Bing has already ChatGPT into its search engine

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Apple backs a music startup started by its Former Executive

According to media reports, Apple is backing a music startup called Gamma that describes itself as an alternative to traditional record labels. Gamma has been started by former Apple Music Global Creative Director Larry Jackson.  However, there is no clarity about the financial details of the deal or how much money Apple has pumped into the startup. In the past, the Apple has backed up many small startups but has resisted from acquiring high profile startups. Gamma said that in ensuing period it plans to collaborate with many popular artists including Snoop Dogg and Rick Ross.

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Instagram is back after global outage

Meta’s platform Instagram suffered a major outage globally on Wednesday with the latest report claiming that the photo sharing app is back to its normalcy. According to Downdetector.com, nearly 46,000 users faced problems accessing Instagram in the U.S. while 2,000 users and 1,000 users were affected in U.K and India respectively. Few days backs Microblogging platform Twitter had also suffered a brief outage due to API issue

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Byju’s planning a pre-IPO funding round

India’s edtech giant Byju’s is planning to raise nearly $250 Mn in what is been touted as a pre-IPO round. According to reports, Byju’s subsidiary firm Aakash Educational Services will be raising the funds on behalf of Byju’s as the latter has been struggling to raise funds due to prolong problem in due-diligence process. Byju’s had acquired three-decade old brick and mortar coaching institution Aakash for almost $1 Bn, making it one of the costliest acquisitions in India’s startup industry. Off late, Byju’s has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons. From massive layoffs to speculative news about its alleged financial malpractices, the Bengaluru based startup has been in the thick of controversy.