Adele, who initially declined to allow her music onto Apple Music, has brought her new single ‘Hello’ to the streaming music service. The single is also available on iTunes.

Adele hasn’t had the easiest of relationships with streaming music services. She refused to allow Spotify to stream 21 until long after its release, and didn’t sign up to Apple Music until the company did a U-turn on its initial plan not to pay royalties to artists during the three-month free trial. Apple changed its mind after Taylor Swift wrote an open letter to Apple.

It’s been four years since Adele’s last album, 21, and her follow-up, 25, is scheduled for release on November 20. The singer-songwriter said she was sorry it had taken so long.

“[25] is about getting to know who I’ve become without realising,” Adele added. “And I’m so sorry it took so long, but you know, life happened.”

25 can be pre-ordered from iTunes from today.

Filed under: Apple Music Tagged: Adele, Adele (singer), Apple Music, Hello, iTunes, Spotify

Check out 9to5Mac for more breaking coverage of iTunes, Apple Music, and Apple Music.

What do you think? Discuss “Initial Apple Music holdout Adele brings her new single ‘Hello’ to the service from today (iTunes too)” with our community.

While revealing its Q3 earnings earlier today, Pandora announced that it will pay $90 million to labels in royalties as a settlement to play music released prior to 1972. Federal copyright laws didn’t start protecting sound recordings until 1972, meaning that copyrights of clips released prior to then are governed by state laws (via WSJ).

Pandora stopped paying royalties on pre-1972 music a few years back and was subsequently sued by the Recording Industry Association of America. Pandora says that pre-1972 music accounts for just 5 percent of the music its service plays. The settlement prevents the parties from suing until the end of 2016, after which Pandora will have to negotiate a licensing deal.

Among the music companies settling with Pandora are Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment, Access Industries’ Warner Music Group and ABKCO Music & Records. The settlement, which was negotiated over the past two weeks amounts to about 10% of Pandora’s annual revenue.

Pandora today noted that its quarterly loss increased in Q3 of 2015, but active listeners increased and revenue rose 30% to $311.6 million. Active listeners rose to 78.1 million, up from 76.5 in the year ago quarter. Total listener hours rose 3 percent in Q3 2015. The growth comes despite the recent launch of Apple Music, which currently has 6.5 million paying customers and 15 million users total.

Filed under: Apps Tagged: Apple Music, Music, Pandora

Visit 9to5Mac to find more special coverage of Apps, Apple Music, and Music.

What do you think? Discuss “Pandora reaches $90M settlement to continue playing pre-1972 music” with our community.

Apple today, just a short while after updating iMovie, has pushed an update to its iTunes U app on iOS. The update bumps the app to version 3.1 and includes a handful of new features, enhancements, and under-the-hood fixes. 

For one, posts made in iTunes U can now include images. This will be incredibly useful for students and teachers to easily show the progress being made on a certain task or how to do something. The grade book has also been refreshed to display a student’s average grade within a course, a capability that probably should have been there from the beginning. The grade book can also now display minimum, maximum, and average grades in a class for an assignment.

Perhaps most notably, this update a design that better takes advantage of the larger display of the forthcoming iPad Pro. The iPad Pro will likely be incredibly popular among the education market, so it makes sense that Apple updated one the top education apps prior to the device’s launch. Finally, Apple also notes of various stability and performance improvements, as well.

iTunes U 3.1 for iOS can be downloaded now from the App Store for free. The full changelog can be seen below:

• Posts can now include images
• Grade book displays student’s average grade within a course
• Grade book displays minimum, maximum and mean grades for an assignment
• iTunes U is now designed to take advantage of the larger canvas of iPad Pro
• Includes minor stability and performance improvements

Filed under: iOS Tagged: Apple, iOS, iPad Pro, iTunes U, update

Check out 9to5Mac for more breaking coverage of Apple, iOS, and iOS.

What do you think? Discuss “iTunes U updated w/ iPad Pro support, grade book improvements, more” with our community.

Facebook has taken to, shocker, Facebook to explain some of the issues causing significant iPhone battery drain when using its app. The app has received a lot of criticism in the community in recent weeks with users reporting incredibly high levels of background activity time for disproportionally low time with the app actually in use. This included when iPhone users had explicitly turned off Background App Refresh in Settings. Facebook says it has started to fix battery drains issues with the latest version of the app in the App Store, version 42.0.

Ari Grant says there are two main problems with the app as it stands. One of which is a CPU spin state where the app would be instructing the CPU to be constantly doing ‘something’, even if the activity was unnecessary. Hence, the app would be using battery unnecessarily as it was keeping the CPU working without achieving any task for the user.

The other issue is related to improper management of audio sessions. This explains the prolonged background audio sessions. According to the post, if you left the Facebook app whilst watching a video the app would continue audio playback of the paused video. This effectively meant the app was playing silence indefinitely, through the background audio session. Facebook claims the app isn’t doing anything nefarious whilst it is in the state.

The second issue is with how we manage audio sessions. If you leave the Facebook app after watching a video, the audio session sometimes stays open as if the app was playing audio silently. This is similar to when you close a music app and want to keep listening to the music while you do other things, except in this case it was unintentional and nothing kept playing. The app isn’t actually doing anything while awake in the background, but it does use more battery simply by being awake. Our fixes will solve this audio issue and remove background audio completely.

The update released today includes improvements for both of these problems. They are committed to continuing improving battery usage of their app, which will benefit the iPhone platform as a whole — the Facebook app is the #1 most popular app for the phone.

Filed under: AAPL Company, iOS, iOS Devices Tagged: App Update, Facebook

Continue reading more about AAPL Company, iOS Devices, and iOS at 9to5Mac.

What do you think? Discuss “Facebook starting to fix iPhone battery drain issues with latest app update, explains why its happening” with our community.

In its continued research into distracted driving, the American Automobile Association (AAA) today published the results of its latest study that aimed to show the level of mental distraction related to using voice commands on the road. The study included using the iPhone’s Siri voice commands for making calls and changing music while driving and compared those results with using voice activated systems from car manufacturers and other smartphone makers.

Researchers found that potentially unsafe levels of mental distraction can last for as long as 27 seconds after completing a distracting task in the worst-performing systems studied. At the 25 MPH speed limit in the study, drivers traveled the length of nearly three football fields during this time. When using the least distracting systems, drivers remained impaired for more than 15 seconds after completing a task…

The researchers discovered the residual effects of mental distraction while comparing new hands-free technologies in ten 2015 vehicles and three types of smart phones. The analysis found that all systems studied increased mental distraction to potentially unsafe levels. The systems that performed best generally had fewer errors, required less time on task and were relatively easy to use.

In the study (visualized in the chart below), Apple scored a 3.4, which puts it in AAA’s “high distraction” category and behind Android’s Google Now feature and several car manufacturers. Products coming in with a better score than Siri included the Ford Taurus, Android’s Google Now feature, the Toyota 4Runner, the Buick Lacrosse, and the Chevy Equinox. On the side of the chart, the study showed Volkswagen, Chrysler, Hyundai, Microsoft’s Cortana feature for Windows smartphones, and Mazda with systems that result in more distraction than Siri.

While the study used smartphones docked within the car to test the platforms, it didn’t make mention of whether or not it considered Apple’s Carplay platform, which allows use of iPhone features from in-dash systems in select vehicles. It’s likely not yet including the platform since it’s only available in a handful of select vehicles, but it didn’t specify what specific features it used to test platforms from the car manufacturers. For the most part, however, the voice command experience with CarPlay is comparable to using a docked iPhone.

To go along with the data, AAA published some video showing how it performed the tests:

Earlier this year AAA launched a road safety campaign that showed real videos of young people getting in accidents while the results of its smartphone related distracted driver study was published last year. 

Filed under: Apple Car, iOS Tagged: AAA, American Automobile Association, mental distraction

For more news on iOS, Apple Car, and mental distraction continue reading at 9to5Mac.

What do you think? Discuss “AAA study ranks mental distraction of using iPhone voice commands on the road vs other platforms” with our community.

Apple yesterday released iOS 9.1 to the public with a handful of improvements, but the one that the general public was most excited about was new emoji. While most of the emoji additions were self-explantory, one piqued the interest of many users: an eye inside of a speech bubble. Wired and Jeremy Burge both now note, however, that this emoji is Apple’s way to show its support for a new anti-bullying campaign launched today by the Ad Council.

Called the “I Am A Witness” campaign, the movement hopes to give teenagers the courage they need to speak up whenever they see or experience bullying. The Ad Council hopes that Apple adding the emoji to iOS 9.1 will help raise awareness for its campaign and bullying in general.

The design of the emoji is actually the combination of two already existing emojis, the eye emoji and the left speech bubble. By creating the emoji from preexisting images, Apple was able to fast track the emoji’s addition to its keyboard.

“When we first asked about bringing this emoji to the official Apple keyboard, they told us it would take at least a year or two to get it through and approved under Unicode,” says Wittmark. The company found a way to fast-track it, she says, by combining two existing emoji.

In addition to Apple, companies including Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, and Google have expressed their support for the I Am A Witness anti-bullying campaign.

Filed under: iOS Tagged: Apple, bullying, emoji, iOS 9.1

Check out 9to5Mac for more breaking coverage of Apple, iOS, and emoji.

What do you think? Discuss “Apple supporting anti-bullying campaign with mysterious new eye emoji in iOS 9.1” with our community.

Apple added 4K editing to iMovie for iOS last month, but only on iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPad Pro. In version 2.2.1, iMovie for iOS expands 4K editing to also support iPad Air 2 so you can shoot video on your new iPhone 6s or 6s Plus and edit it on the latest 9.7-inch tablet.

You’ll need a new 4K 21.5-inch iMac or 5K 27-inch iMac (or Mac with a 4K display) for pixel-for-pixel editing, but it’s good to see Apple supporting the still top-of-the-line 9.7-inch iPad with powerful editing features; iPad Pro doesn’t launch until November. Apple introduced 4K video shooting for the first time on its products with the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.

The update also includes bug fixes for issues with iCloud Drive, the Photos video editing extension, right-to-left languages, and more. Full release notes below:

What’s New in Version 2.2.1

• Create and share movies at 4K resolution on iPad Air 2 with iOS 9.1*
• Fixes an issue that could prevent users from creating new trailers in some languages
• Resolves issues importing and removing projects from iCloud Drive
• Addresses interface issues that could appear in some right-to-left languages
• Addresses interface issues that could appear in iMovie extension for Photos
• Performance and stability improvements

* iMovie supports 4K on iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPad Air 2, and iPad Pro

iMovie for iOS is available on the App Store.

Filed under: Apps Tagged: 4k, IMovie, iPad Air 2

Continue reading more about Apps, iPad Air 2, and 4k at 9to5Mac.

What do you think? Discuss “iMovie for iOS expands 4K editing to iPad Air 2, fixes iCloud Drive + Photos extension issues” with our community.

App publisher Glu today announced its latest game, which is also its latest celebrity partnership with actor Jason Statham starring as the game’s main playable character. The free game is a first-person shooter that some players will notice bears a similarity and seems to borrow from some of Glu’s past FPS games including the Contract Killer series.

“As Glu’s first male celebrity partner, Jason Statham’s over 55 million social followers add a new demographic to the company’s celebrity gaming platform,” said Niccolo de Masi, Glu Chairman and CEO. “Mr. Statham’s creative input throughout the game’s development has ensured a unique and authentic action-adventure experience his fans will enjoy worldwide.”

As part of Statham’s elite paramilitary team SPEAR, players work side-by-side to dismantle terrorists and rogue states that conventional forces can’t touch. Enemies of freedom can run, but they can’t hide from Sniper X!

The celebrity tie-in, featuring Statham’s name, likeness, and voice, follows Glu’s successful “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood” game that reports last year said was on pace to take in around $200 million.

Sniper X with Jason Statham is available on the App Store now for iPhone and iPad. The game is free to download but includes in-app purchases for in-game items, which is also the approach Glu took for the successful Kim Kardashian game.

Official trailer from Glu below:

Filed under: Apps Tagged: app, App Store, glu, iPad, iPhone, jason statham, sniper x, sniper x with jason statham

Check out 9to5Mac for more breaking coverage of Apps, iPhone, and iPad.

What do you think? Discuss “Glu’s new ‘Sniper X’ first-person shooter stars Jason Statham for its latest celebrity tie-in” with our community.

With yesterday’s release of iOS 9.1, Apple has finally pushed out the last bit of iPhone and iPad software that it was publicly testing. With that out of the way, the company has internally shifted its focus to the next mobile OS release on its roadmap: iOS 9.2.

As seen in the chart below, 9to5Mac has recently seen a significant uptick in the number of readers running iOS 9.2, indicating that the software has moved into wider testing among more Apple employees.

While iOS 9.1 introduced over 150 new emoji icons and Wi-Fi calling on Sprint devices, iOS 9.2 will likely be focused more on resolving issues discovered with the iPad Pro. That device will ship with iOS 9.1 pre-installed, so a quick software update after release to address outstanding bugs seems likely.

However, the exact changes in 9.2 are yet to be revealed, and it could include new features or enhancements that Apple has yet to announce.

As with all recent iOS updates, it should enter a developer beta very soon, then enter a public beta testing period a few weeks before release, though there’s no indication of exactly when this process will start.

Filed under: iOS Tagged: ios 9.2

Check out 9to5Mac for more breaking coverage of iOS and ios 9.2.

What do you think? Discuss “Now that iOS 9.1 is out the door, Apple turns its attention to 9.2 internally” with our community.

Google has updated its Chrome web browser for iPad on iOS 9 to support each of the new operating system’s new multitasking features on the latest models. Chrome (version 46.0.2490.73 to be specific) now supports Split View for running the browser next to other updated apps, Slide Over for referencing it over any app, and Picture in Picture for minimizing videos playing within Chrome to view from other apps including Split View mode. The release notes also highlight “improved handling” for RTL, or right-to-left, languages.

Chrome’s support for iOS 9 multitasking features is especially beneficial for iPad users as Safari doesn’t allow you to view two browser tabs side-by-side, but running Safari and Chrome alongside each other enables dual browsing on the tablet. Split View is supported on iPad mini 4, iPad Air 2, and the upcoming iPad Pro due out next month.

Older iPads that don’t support Split View can still benefit from Slide Over, which lets you view a slimmed down version of Chrome over other apps, and Picture in Picture with iPad Pro, iPad Air or later, and iPad mini 2 or later supported.

Chrome previously updated to support iOS 9 in general, but did not yet support iPad multitasking. iPad users can grab today’s enhanced version for free on the App Store.

Filed under: Apps Tagged: Chrome, Google, iOS 9, multitasking, Picture in Picture, slide over, Split View

For more news on Apps, Google, and iOS 9 continue reading at 9to5Mac.

What do you think? Discuss “Chrome for iPad adds Split View, Slide Over, & Picture in Picture multitasking on iOS 9” with our community.