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Spotify gets serious about its country music curation
Country music fans are flocking to streaming services and Spotify's latest hire shows the company is taking that segment of its audience seriously. The streaming service nabbed SiriusXM's John Marks to head its curated playlists for the genre. If you'll recall, Spotify, and other services, have made a big push with playlists built by both the artists themselves as well as notable personalities in the biz. While you may not recognize the name, Marks has a knack for discovering new talent and budding acts before they make it big time. For example, he was spinning tunes from artists like Florida Georgia Line, Brandy Clark, Chase Rice and others before they became popular. Spotify already has deals in place for exclusive country releases and to promote emerging acts, as it's already posted content from artists like Hunter Hayes that can't be streamed on-demand anywhere else. If you look to curated playlists to find new music, just know that Spotify's country collections are now in capable hands. [Image credit: ABC via Getty Images]
CMT Artists is an iPhone app designed specially for country music lovers
Viacom knows it has to spread the love equally amongst its properties, as any great parent company would do. In this particular scenario, it means releasing a new music discovery app for Country Music Television, just like it did for MTV back in October of last year. With CMT Artists, it's clear that Viacom took a complete cue from MTV's version, offering easy access to in-depth artist pages, exclusive interviews, news and music videos. There are also a number of other useful tidbits, including the ability to easily identify unfamiliar songs, either by typing in lyrics or via the Sound ID feature. Naturally, CMT Artists focuses on country tunes and the musicians behind them, as opposed to the broader approach taken by MTV. And even though the application was designed with the iPhone's screen in mind, there won't be an issue installing it on larger iOS devices if you choose to do so.
Rocking the Objective-C[ountry]
What happens when you tweet a silly off-the-cuff remark about wanting a Country/Objective-C song called "Retain My Heart (Or you might point to an invalid memory reference)"? Magic. That's what happens. Absolute weekend-ready magic! Italian Mac aficionado and brilliant songsmith Andrea "Camillo Miller" Nepori jumped into my e-mail in-box and delivered exactly what I had asked for: a heartfelt country rendition of what has got to be one of the lamest geekiest puns I've ever made. Nepori tells me that he recorded the music on his iPhone, adding a little reverb and compression in GarageBand before sending it on over to TUAW. A big round of public acclaim for the next biggest geek hit! Bravo! Download your own copy here (mp3) or listen to the embedded version in the continuation of this post. The little Objective-Country pun? Thanks to Neil Twist.
