Apple TV+ took four prizes in the TV craft awards, and may win more in the broader BAFTA Television Awards. Photo: Apple TV+
The BAFTA Television Craft Awards — a branch of the BAFTAs, often thought of as the British Oscars — awarded wins to Apple TV+ hit series Slow Horses and Silo, the iPhone giant said Sunday.
The acerbic espionage drama Slow Horses won for best editing and best sound. Sci-fi series Silo landed wins for best production design and best original music.
In addition, Apple TV+ received further nominations in the upcoming BAFTA Television Awards.
Apple TV+ wins BAFTA Television Craft awards for Slow Horses, Silo and more
Apple TV+ took two awards apiece in the 2024 BAFTA Television Craft Awards for its acclaimed espionage drama Slow Horses and its sci-fi hit Silo. Slow Horses landed Best Editing: Fiction and Best Sound: Fiction, while Silo won for Best Production Design and Best Original Music.
The BAFTA Television Awards recognize the best British programs, performances and productions each year. Outside of the craft awards subset, Apple TV+ got further nominations for the upcoming awards, below.
Apple landed four BAFTA Television Craft Award wins in total, including:
Slow Horses
Editing: Fiction — Sam Williams
Sound: Fiction
Silo
Production Design — Gavin Bocquet, Amanda Bernstein
Original Music: Fiction — Atli Örvarsson
Upcoming BAFTA Television Awards nominations
Apple TV+ also got nominated for four category awards at the 2024 BAFTA Television Awards that take place Sunday, May 12:
Slow Horses
Drama Series Supporting Actor — Jack Lowden
Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas
Entertainment
The Enfield Poltergeist
Specialist Factual
Previous BAFTA wins for Apple TV+
Apple TV+ has previously won BAFTA Television Awards:
Best Drama Series in 2023 for acclaimed hit Bad Sisters, along with the show’s awards for Best Supporting Actress (Anne-Marie Duff) and Best Titles & Graphic Identity for Peter Anderson Studio.
Apple’s limited series The Essex Serpent landed Best Costume Design for first-time BAFTA winner Jane Petrie in 2023.
In 2022, 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room won Editing: Factual, and 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything earned Sound: Factual.
Italian hi-fi maker Volumio has just launched a new audio device called the Motivo Streamer, Transport & Headphone Amplifier, which is best described as a high-res music streamer and iPad rolled into one compact and stylish package.
To control the device, Volumio has combined a sleek-looking 8-inch touchscreen with a retro-styled haptic control dial to make the whole entertainment experience feel more immersive. It boasts a range of software and hardware connectivity options, which means you can use it with any of the best music streaming services. It’ll also play nicely with your current home entertainment set up and a pair of the best noise-cancelling headphones, thanks to wide connectivity options.
Under the hood, you’ll find a Sabre ES9038 DAC (that’s a digital to analogue converter), which supports all of the best-quality high-resolution music files. It also boasts dual-output analogue XLR balanced and RCA unbalanced outputs.
With Volumio’s Premium software, which is included as part of the device, you’ll be able to access any of your favorite streaming services, including Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz and more. In short, the Volumio Motivo is built for audiophiles and with wireless streaming compatibility to the best Sonos speakers and Google Cast speakers, it can fit seamlessly into wired or wireless setups.
(Image credit: Volumio)
Slick styling and Smart suggestions
We’ve covered Volumio’s products before, and we always fall for its blend of state-of-the-art audio that’s housed in modern designs with artisanal touches. But new technology from Volumio makes its latest products even more appealing because they bring AI smarts to your listening experience.
When we first wrote about Supersearch we did say that, of course, you can just use the ChatGPT app and ask it for music recommendations, but this experience is much slicker and more straightforward. The Motivo also comes with Volumio’s ‘Infinity Playback’ tool, which continues to bring you music you’ll like once you reach the end of the recommendations. Sure this all sounds similar to the experience you’ll already get from the likes of Spotify and Tidal, but again, having all of these features built directly into one product makes it infinitely easier.
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We don’t have pricing or availability details about the Volumio Motivo just yet, but it’s not going to be cheap. The Volumio Integro launched for around $1,400 / £1,025 / AU$2,499 and although it’s a different sort of device, it should give you a rough idea about what to expect.
April 28, 2003: Apple opens the iTunes Music Store, revolutionizing the music industry and digital distribution of content.
At a time when getting music online mostly means illegal downloads from pirate services like Napster, iTunes quickly proves that customers will pay for songs — provided the service is good enough.
iTunes Music Store opens
The ability to share free music was one of many major disruptions the internet brought in the 1990s and 2000s. Faster connections made downloading and sharing tracks less painful. And the widespread presence of CD-RW drives (which shipped on around 40% of new PCs by winter 2000) made sharing songs or even whole albums quick and easy.
Surprisingly, Apple — traditionally ahead of the curve on multimedia — initially missed out on letting users burn their songs to CD. Although the company marketed the iMac G3 as an internet computer (one of the words the “i” in its name evoked was “internet”), it took until February 2001 for an iMac to ship with a CD-RW drive.
“I felt like a dope,” Steve Jobs later admitted, having made a rare misjudgment about where the industry was headed.
iMac lets users ‘Rip, Mix, Burn’ CDs
The 2001 iMac rolled out with an advertising campaign describing the computer’s ability to let users “Rip, Mix, Burn” their own CDs. This earned Apple the ire of entertainment industry moguls, who suggested that the company condoned piracy.
The Apple ads coincided with the launch of iTunes 1.0, which started out as software for ripping music from CDs and then organizing it on Macs. Later in 2001, Apple launched the first iPod, which rapidly grew to become the company’s biggest-selling product. The combined success of the iPod and iTunes made Jobs contemplate ways to simplify online music sales.
The challenge for the iTunes Music Store came in convincing music labels that digital distribution, which risked further diminishing CD sales, made sense from a business perspective. Other companies’ previous attempts to sell MP3s failed, due to limited catalogs, ugly user interfaces and an insistence that users pay subscription fees.
Apple planned to change that. However, to do so, it needed to sell record labels on breaking down albums into individual tracks costing 99 cents each.
Jobs eventually won over the heads of the “Big Five” record labels — BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. As a result, the iTunes Music Store launched on this day in 2003 with more than 200,000 tracks on offer. Within six months, the number of songs in the iTunes store doubled.
These days, downloaded songs have given way to streaming on services like Apple Music and Spotify. However, the opening of the iTunes Music Store remains immensely significant. It showed Apple’s willingness to move into a new market. And it also created a new profit-splitting revenue stream for the company.
The later expansion of iTunes to sell TV shows, music videos and movies also helped turn Apple into a full-fledged media company. Cupertino continues to build on these efforts today by creating its own original video content for Apple TV+.
Without iTunes’ breakout success, it’s questionable whether Apple would have even created an App Store.
What was the first song you ever downloaded on iTunes? Leave your comments below.
We love to give practical buying advice on the latest gadgets here at TechRadar. But sometimes what we love even more is to indulge in the most ridiculous, high-end, cutting-edge, luxurious tech on the planet. That’s what we bring you in these Money no Object columns – you can read the whole series here.
I want one of these, reader. The fact that I remember the 1996 original helps, but just look at it – how its vertical design showcases the six-strong selection of CDs you’re spinning today. Don’t you want people to see that? Wouldn’t it be great to see your music again, as you listen to it? And I challenge anyone not to squeal with glee when the the orb of light mechanism (or ‘CD clamper’, as it is affectionately known) quickly, smoothly scales up or down to whichever disc you’ve cued up.
You may remember the Bang & Olufsen Recreated Classics series from 2020, when the company reclaimed, recreated and launched the Beogram 4000c (a turntable initially made in the 1970s) which sold out in 23 hours – well, only 200 were sourced.
Cut to April 2024 and there’s now a second Recreated Classic receiving the 200-units only B&O treatment: the Beosound 9000 CD player, originally launched in 1996. Only this time, instead of the built-in AM/FM radio that came with the original, you get a set of the company’s Beolab 28 speakers, for all of the streaming smarts using Chromecast, Airplay or Bluetooth plus Bang & Olufsen Radio – which can all be controlled by the included Beoremote or the Bang & Olufsen App.
Wait ’til the CD-clamper moves… (Image credit: Future)
It’s beautiful, because it’s more sustainable
I’ve been lauding B&O’s commitment to cradle-to-cradle manufacture (meaning that in essence, every component that goes into a B&O product should be able to come out again, and be reused, even in a totally different product) since the modular, easy-to-service Beosound Theatre I got to hear in 2022. In a glorious nod to Sustainability Week 2024 (which is this very week, folks!) the Beosound 9000c involves using what was already out there, making it better, and re-releasing.
To clarify, Bang & Olufsen sourced 200 of the original Beosound 9000 CD player (from house sales, warehouses, and even auction sites, apparently), and returned them to the company’s factory in Struer, Denmark – the same place they were first created, in ’96. B&O tells me that the CD players were then disassembled and thoroughly inspected by a team of skilled technicians, including many of the same colleagues who worked on the Beosound 9000 in the 1990s, using the original workshop tables. Yes, strong ‘getting the band back together’ vibes – and you love to see it.
Every component was painstakingly cleaned and repaired of course, but it wasn’t simply a case of servicing ’em and selling again. Bang & Olufsen found an engineer to remake the CD mechanism, and the design team re-machined and re-anodized all the aluminum parts. These were hairline brushed, etched and pearl-blasted, so that the team could invert the deep black and natural finishes (using spray this time, rather than the rather more wasteful 1996 dipping technique) of the original colorway.
The corresponding Beolab 28’s meanwhile are new, featuring natural aluminum lamellas on the speakers with a Cosmic Black aluminum base to match the player.
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The Xenera font, though (Image credit: Future)
I miss the days of talking about albums – and this feels like a return to them
The original Beosound 9000 was designed by revered designer David Lewis, who believed in slow evolution – that any product should have a long life, both in terms of desirability and endurance.
But for me, the Beosound 9000c’s main draw is its ‘autovisuality’ – i.e., the concept of the basic functionality being exposed, so that your music can be displayed, thus each user remains ‘in touch’ with music. I miss the days of listening to a full album and talking about it; this feels like a return to that.
And it doesn’t stop there, the Beosound 9000c contains several mechanical movements that delight me still. Aside from the CD clamper’s linear movement, the motorized glass lid of the Beosound 9000c opens and closes with the same uniform movement whether it’s lying down, standing up or hanging on the wall. Two optical sensors and a digital time control constantly monitor the door, which opens (or closes) within the set time limit of 3.5 – 4.0 seconds. And if a child’s finger reaches in during any of this, it simply stops.
I love it; I love that each CD is cued up not only by the hovering of the clamper, but with Xenera (or calculator font) text in red to tell you what you’re listening to, running alongside the CDs. Oh, and it’ll play any recorded CDs too (although not SACDs) so your old ‘mixtape CDs’ are also on the menu.
Ready for the delicate topic of coin? The Bang & Olufsen Recreated Classic Beosystem 9000c (which gets you the 9000c CD player and Beolab 28 wireless stereo speakers) is priced at €50,000 / $55,000 / £45,000 (so around AU$85,000).
It isn’t affordable, and I know that. But remember when CDs were new? I do. Remember when the artwork wasn’t actually that good, so CDs were largely silver-holographic affairs with a bit of small black writing on them just to cover the basics? Okay, and did you also take a sharpie to them, for quicker location in your CD book in the car? I used to do it for my mom. Now, I could re-spin those ‘ERIC CLAPTON, SLOWHAND!’ CDs on the wall (or on its stand), complete with my own early-90s scrawl, and think of her. To me, that’s priceless.
Samsung’s wireless earbuds come with a touchpad and support various touch gestures, including a touch and hold gesture that can be assigned to launching apps like Spotify and Bixby or performing actions such as increasing and decreasing the volume
But did you know that the touch and hold gesture cannot be used to launch the Samsung Music app? You would expect a music app made by Samsung would be fully supported by the company’s wireless earbuds, but that isn’t the case for the Samsung Music app.
At long last, Samsung is fixing that oversight. An update to Samsung Music finally adds the option to fire up the app by touching and holding the touchpad on Galaxy Buds earbuds when they’re connected to a phone or tablet.
Why wasn’t this functionality already available? Well, only Samsung can answer that question. We’re assuming that Samsung didn’t think its music app was used widely enough to warrant proper support. After all, the world has moved almost entirely to apps that can stream music off the internet, something Samsung’s Music app cannot do (it does have Spotify integration, but Samsung doesn’t have a streaming service of its own).
Google Assistant has been here for a long time, but now it’s time to move on from Google Assistant to Google Gemini. Gemini is Google’s brand-new, more intelligent digital assistant that better understands natural language and can keep a conversation going. It launched on Android phones and tablets a few weeks ago but hasn’t completely replaced Google Assistant yet.
Google Gemini might soon get Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music integration
Gemini currently lacks a few skills that Google Assistant has, including music streaming integration. However, that feature appears to be in the works. Android enthusiast @AssembleDebug has found (via Piunika Web) that Google is currently testing music streaming service integration for Gemini. They were able to make some changes to the app and find its Settings screen that shows music streaming options.
When the ‘Music’ settings page is accessed, it appears blank but says, “Choose your default music provider.” This is similar to Google Assistant’s music streaming integration page. So, it is likely that Gemini will feature integration with Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, among others (depending on the country).
Hopefully, Google will soon finish its testing and roll out music streaming services integration to Google Gemini to fully replace Google Assistant.
Today, Samsung launched the Music Frame wireless speaker in India. The speaker was launched alongside the company’s 2024 TV lineup but isn’t available for pre-order or purchase yet. While the speaker’s pricing has been revealed, Samsung is mum about its availability in the Indian market.
Music Frame pricing in India
In India, the Music Frame (HW-LS60D) wireless speaker is priced at INR 29,990 ($358). It has been listed on Samsung India’s website, but the website says it is currently out of stock. Since Samsung hasn’t launched its 2024 soundbar lineup in the country, it is possible that the Music Frame will be launched in a few days alongside the company’s new soundbars.
This speaker is bundled for free with some Neo QLED and OLED TVs from Samsung that were launched today.
Music Frame features
The Music Frame is Samsung’s first wireless speaker with a completely different form factor. It resembles a real photo frame; you can even attach printed photos to it. You can even customize the frame’s bezels to match your interior design preferences. Inside, it features a six-speaker system featuring two tweeters, two mid-range drivers, and two woofers. You can watch how it looks and sounds in our hands-on video below.
It features Active Voice Amplifier, Dolby Atmos (Dolby Atmos Music and Dolby Atmos), Dolby Digital Plus, Night Mode, SpaceFit Sound Pro (for automatic audio tuning as per the room’s dimensions and placement of the speaker), and Voice Enhancer. It even features Wireless Dolby Atmos and Q-Symphony 4.0. It can be connected wirelessly to a Samsung soundbar or TV for a more immersive audio experience.
The speaker features an optical port, Bluetooth 5.2, and Wi-Fi b/g/n. It also features wireless AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Roon Connect, Spotify Connect, and Tap Sound for audio mirroring. It can be controlled using Samsung TV’s or soundbar’s remote controller. It can be controlled using Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and SmartThings. It has a USB port on the rear, which can be used to connect the SmartThings Dongle (VG-STDB10A), making the Music Frame a Smart Home Hub that can control SmartThings and Zigbee devices.
Since it has built-in microphones, it supports Alexa and Bixby voice assistants.
Music Frame is ‘Roon Tested’
It is the first Samsung device with the ‘Roon Tested’ tag, which means it works flawlessly with Roon. If you don’t know what Roon is, it is an audiophile-grade music platform that integrates online and offline music. It supports Hi-Res Lossless music and advanced music routing features. Roon was acquired by Samsung a few months ago.
Spotify’s elusive lossless music experience is being teased again, this time based on code uncovered by The Verge in recent builds of the Spotify app for Android.
More than three years have elapsed since Spotify announced its intention to offer a “HiFi” premium option that would give users access to a catalog of CD-quality music tracks. Originally the company said the tier would go live by the end of 2021, but a shift in the wider streaming market upended that idea.
Apple Music has since rolled lossless listening into its standard subscription price, while Amazon stopped charging extra for its lossless music library. The moves effectively kiboshed Spotify’s original strategy of marketing an exclusively lossless HiFi tier.
That said, it doesn’t sound as if lossless is coming as a free perk. The latest rumors suggest that Spotify now aims to offer lossless audio playback in an optional “Music Pro” add-on that will also include new DJ remix features, which let subscribers “speed up, mash-up, and otherwise edit” tracks from their favorite artists, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Spotify will reportedly make basic versions of these remixing tools available as part of its Premium subscription (currently $10.99 a month, or $5.99 for students). Meanwhile, the more expansive offering will be part of a “Supremium” tier that will include its long-delayed lossless audio feature.
How much the “Supremium” tier will cost is unknown. Similarly, the intended price of the lossless “Music Pro” add-on for premium subscribers has not been revealed, but given that major rivals include lossless in their standard plans, asking users to pay anything more than a nominal fee in unlikely to go down well.
iOS 18 is expected to be the “biggest” update in the iPhone’s history. Below, we recap rumored features and changes for the iPhone. iOS 18 is rumored to include new generative AI features for Siri and many apps, and Apple plans to add RCS support to the Messages app for an improved texting experience between iPhones and Android devices. The update is also expected to introduce a more…
A week after Apple updated its App Review Guidelines to permit retro game console emulators, a Game Boy emulator for the iPhone called iGBA has appeared in the App Store worldwide. The emulator is already one of the top free apps on the App Store charts. It was not entirely clear if Apple would allow emulators to work with all and any games, but iGBA is able to load any Game Boy ROMs that…
Apple’s hardware roadmap was in the news this week, with things hopefully firming up for a launch of updated iPad Pro and iPad Air models next month while we look ahead to the other iPad models and a full lineup of M4-based Macs arriving starting later this year. We also heard some fresh rumors about iOS 18, due to be unveiled at WWDC in a couple of months, while we took a look at how things …
Best Buy this weekend has a big sale on Apple MacBooks and iPads, including new all-time low prices on the M3 MacBook Air, alongside the best prices we’ve ever seen on MacBook Pro, iPad, and more. Some of these deals require a My Best Buy Plus or My Best Buy Total membership, which start at $49.99/year. In addition to exclusive access to select discounts, you’ll get free 2-day shipping, an…
Apple today said it removed Game Boy emulator iGBA from the App Store for violating the company’s App Review Guidelines related to spam (section 4.3) and copyright (section 5.2), but it did not provide any specific details. iGBA was a copycat version of developer Riley Testut’s open-source GBA4iOS app. The emulator rose to the top of the App Store charts following its release this weekend,…
Apple’s first set of new AI features planned for iOS 18 will not rely on cloud servers at all, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. “As the world awaits Apple’s big AI unveiling on June 10, it looks like the initial wave of features will work entirely on device,” said Gurman, in the Q&A section of his Power On newsletter today. “That means there’s no cloud processing component to the…
Spotify is reportedly working on adding remixing tools to its streaming service, giving users a way to reimagine their favorite tracks.
The news comes from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) whose sources state people will be able to “speed up, mash-up, and otherwise edit songs” however they want. The article explains that one of the purported additions is a playback feature for controlling how fast or how slow a track plays. When you’re finished with a remix, you can then share it with other Spotify users, but not to third-party platforms or social media. There are licensing agreements in place that will prevent people from sharing their creations.
The availability of these tools will differ depending on the type of Spotify subscription you have. The “more basic features” such as the speed control will be on the basic plan; however, the “advanced song modification features” will be on the company’s long-rumored Supremium tier.
Imminent launch
Several lines of code were discovered by Reddit user Hypixely on the Spotify subreddit revealing the company plans on introducing the remix patch as the “Music Pro” add-on. Accompanying text also talks about lossless audio arriving on the platform which could be referring to Supremium. The name of the plan isn’t explicitly stated, but the clues are there. The fact that lossless was mentioned alongside the remix update could hint at an imminent release for both, although it may still be a while before we see either one.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the platform is currently hashing out the details with music rights holders. Development is still in the early stages, but once everything comes out, it could upend the way we enjoy music.
Analysis: if you can’t beat them…
Arguably, some of the more popular versions of songs are remixes. Fan reinterpretations can alter the meaning of the original and even serve as an introduction to a new generation. As the WSJ points out, people like to add their own unique twists on a classic or edit them for dance challenges or memes. That type of content can be a very effective way of discovering new music. How many times have you seen people in the comments section asking for the source of a song or movie or whatever? It’s quite common.
As great as fan remixes may be, they’ve apparently become a bit of a problem. Musicians and labels don’t get paid for the content utilizing their work. The WSJ mentions how a “sped-up cover version” of the song “Somewhere Only We Know” by the rock band Keane has over 33 million tracks on Spotify. Record executives see this and force these platforms to do something.
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There are different solutions to this problem. Spotify chose the path of “if you can’t beat them, join ‘em.” It’s a win-win scenario for everyone involved. Rather than ban the content, the company is choosing to embrace the remixes. People can be creative and artists can get paid.
You can queue songs in Apple Music so that the tracks you want to hear play automatically, one after another. You don’t need to wait for the song to end and manually play the next one.
I also have a pro tip for clearing the queue if you want to start over, because Apple Music doesn’t have an easy “clear” button on the iPhone.
Plus, you can let friends add songs to the queue from their own phones — even if they don’t have an Apple Music subscription.
The fastest way to add a single song to your Apple Music queue is with a swipe gesture. Swipe to the right on a song and you’ll see two buttons. The purple button is Play Next; the orange button is Play Later. Play Next will play the track after the current song is over, then go back to what was playing before. Play Last will add the song to the bottom of the queue. Keep swiping all the way to the right to Play Next.
Add a song or album to the queue from the ⋯ menu
Next to a song, you should see a ⋯ button. Tap it to bring up the menu, then tap either Play Next or Play Last. You can use this method to add an entire album, station or playlist to your Apple Music queue. From the list view, the ⋯ menu is in the upper right corner. You also can tap and hold on an album, station or playlist to add it to the queue without opening it first.
Queue music with SharePlay
New in iOS 17, you can use SharePlay to build a queue of music collaboratively. You don’t need to pass your unlocked iPhone around in the car; people can add songs from their own devices. (They don’t need an Apple Music subscription.) If your phone is plugged into a speaker, or connected to Bluetooth or CarPlay, you’ll see a SharePlay button on the Now Playing screen. To let other people to join, you can simply hold your phones together top-to-top. Alternatively, you can have them scan the QR code or your phone. They can add songs to the queue using the same swipe gestures or from the ⋯ menu.
Clear your song queue in Apple Music
Remove a single song or the whole queue. Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Now you know how easy it is to add songs to your Apple Music queue. But what if you want to remove songs? To do that, from the Now Playing screen, tap the Playing Next button in the bottom right. Swipe left on a song to remove it.
If you build up a long list of songs that you don’t end up finishing, there’s unfortunately no easy way to remove them all from your iPhone. On the Mac, you can click the Playing Next button on the right side of the toolbar and click Clear, but there’s no such button on the iPhone.
However, there is a Shortcut you can add called Clear Apple Music Queue. It does exactly what it says in the name — run the shortcut and your queue is emptied.
Download the Shortcut here. After you add it, you can ask Siri, “Clear Apple Music queue” to execute the command. Or you can run it from the Share menu or add a widget.
You also can reorder your Apple Music track list by dragging the ☰ up or down. The three buttons on top control the order of the playlist:
Shuffle will play the remaining songs in the queue in a random order.
Repeat will play the queue back from the beginning when it reaches the end.
Autoplay will continue playing songs similar to what you were playing before.
April 28, 2003: Apple opens the iTunes Music Store, revolutionizing the music industry and digital distribution of content.
