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Musician Prince has sent take down notices to most of the major streaming services to have his music removed.

As of writing, Spotify, Rdio, Google and Deezer have already removed the tracks while Tidal still had them available. Apple Music did not have Prince's music to start with.

"Prince's publisher has asked all streaming services to remove his catalog. We have cooperated with the request, and hope to bring his music back as soon as possible," read Spotify's page.

The artist's choice follows that of Taylor Swift, who has vocally been against free streaming music.

Supercell, the major mobile game maker, is shutting down 'Smash Land' this month, a surprise flop for the company.

The developer behind Clash of Clans, Boom Beach and Hay Day will completely discontinue the game on September 1st.

Smash Land launched just three months ago but could not gain any traction. Clash of Clans remains the top-grossing game for Android and iOS, Boom Beach is #6 and Hay Day is #16, and Supercell was hopeful they had another hit.

"Despite its popularity and positive feedback from players, it was proving difficult to reach the high standards set by our other games," the company said. "We did not want to continue for the sake of continuing as that is not the Supercell way. We won't be accepting any new purchases from today (Wednesday 1 July 2015) and the game will fully shut down on Tuesday 1 September 2015."

Microsoft has announced that their Surface 3 tablet with 4G LTE will now be available in more nations.

The device had been available for the past few weeks in Japan and will now be available in Germany and the UK followed by the U.S., France and Spain later in the year for both business and retail customers.

Says the company: "We see particular excitement for our LTE-enabled Surface 3 with businesses and their sales forces, which is why this initial announcement is focused on business availability. We're already hearing from customers that have deployed Surface Pro 3 that sellers are saving hours per week in many cases. Having a more mobile option in Surface 3 (4G LTE) is only going to create more opportunities."

The devices will run Windows 8.1 Pro and will be upgradeable to Windows 10 later in July. Microsoft is offering two models, each of which has 4GB of RAM and has either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage.

Earlier this week, Facebook introduced a new updated logo, although there have been minimal changes.

"When Facebook's logo was first created in 2005, the company was just getting started and we wanted the logo to feel grown up and to be taken seriously. Now that we are established, we set out to modernize the logo to make it feel more friendly and approachable. While we explored many directions, ultimately we decided that we only needed an update, and not a full redesign. We worked with Eric Olson -- whose typeface Klavika was used in the original logo -- and developed a custom typeface to reflect where we are now and where we are headed," said the company.

Most of the changes are very subtle including the double-story "A" now being single-story, but otherwise the logo is relatively the same with a more "grown up" presence.

Source:
Underconsideration

According to a new report, Microsoft is looking into acquiring struggling chip maker AMD, a move that would help the software giant to revive its own chip operations and save on costs.

Microsoft had its own chip design division nearly a decade ago, but has since moved on to AMD and Nvidia for its consoles and other hardware. Microsoft uses a specialized AMD SoC for its Xbox One.

AMD was once valued at over $20 billion, but now has a market value of just $1.8 billion, a figure that would be nothing to Microsoft who has a value of $350 billion including over $90 billion in cash.

For its Xbox One console, Microsoft pays an estimated $100 to AMD for use the SoC, and at nearly 13 million units sold to date, AMD appears to only be alive thanks to its Xbox One partnership. If Microsoft were to acquire and integrate AMD, it could save money on its consoles and potentially in the future save on smartphones and tablet if they can get AMD chips on par with Qualcomm and Intel in the mobile realm.

Amazon has announced today the launch of retail operations in Mexico, giving customers in the nation the chance to buy millions of items.

Until now, Mexicans only had access to the Kindle e-book store, and today's launch was Amazon's largest ever, internationally.

The site is Spanish language and Amazon has also rolled out iOS and Android apps as well as fulfillment services for marketplace users.

Due to a notoriously shaky postal system in Mexico, Amazon has also made it possible to pick up many of your items from hundreds of locations across the nation. These will not be Amazon Lockers, but rather pickup location operated by trusted business partners.

"The expansion of Amazon.com.mx represents Amazon's biggest international launch ever," said Juan Carlos García, Amazon's Country Manager for Amazon Mexico. "With convenient and secure payment options and fast delivery, our goal is to deliver a world-class shopping experience for customers in Mexico."

Chinese startup giant Xiaomi has released their first smartphone outside of Asia today with the Redmi 2 now available in Brazil.

Besides being sold in Brazil, the company is also manufacturing the devices there. By doing so, Xiaomi gets to avoid the massive taxation electronics companies face on imports. However, the labor and parts are much more expensive in Brazil than they would be back in China.

Brazilian smartphone sales are expected to jump to 64 million this year, making it one of the largest markets on the planet, coveted by all the major smartphone makers.

"It's a major undertaking because up until today, we didn't have that complexity in our supply chain," said Xiaomi's global VP Hugo Barra. Brazil is tough because "it requires re-architecting a lot of our supply chain from the components suppliers to financial systems to everything else."

The Redmi 2 will sell for just 499 reais ($159 USD). The device runs on Xiaomi's own Android-based MIUI operating system, a 720p 4.7-inch IPS display, a Snapdragon 410 64-bit processor and 2MP/8MP cameras.

Following its initial rollout to users in New York City, Facebook's Messenger payment platform is now available to all U.S. users.

Says the company: "To pay friends via Messenger, all you have to do is add a debit card so you can pay straight from your checking account without fees. To request payments, simply type the dollar amount and it will hyperlink users to a payment window. Alternatively, you can click the coin icon below the text box."

Facebook recommends keeping your checking accounts synced to Messenger (of course they do), but if you do not feel comfortable doing so you can enter your information anytime you make or receive a payment.

Notably, you do not even need a Facebook account any longer to use Messenger, making it even easier to pay your friends.

The Internet seemed to take offense to a 'sassy' response from Siri when asked "what is zero divided by zero."

Siri has been known to be sarcastic, but this answer goes right for your self-esteem.

This is what Siri will respond: "Imagine that you have zero cookies and you split them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get? See? It doesn't make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies, and you are sad that you have no friends."

Media and content giant Vivendi has announced their acquisition of an 80 percent share in video sharing site Dailymotion.

The company paid 217 million euros for the stake, which is owned by European telco Orange.

Vivendi says the acquisition will give them access to "particularly attractive music and audiovisual content." Dailymotion offers content from independent producers, premium partners and millions of regular users.

The content behemoth also owns Universal Music Group and Canal+ Group, and adding Dailymotion to the mix will allow for "the joint development of original and distinctive content and formats that will meet the expectations of a whole new generation of digital consumers."

AC/DC, one of the most notable bands to not be available on streaming services, is finally signing up.

The rock band - which has sold over 72 million albums in the U.S. - has long been against digital in general and just had their catalog added to iTunes in 2012, nine years after the store launched.

This week, the band's catalog will be available via streaming services like Spotify and Rdio and the new Apple Music.

AC/DC remained a holdout well after other bands bit the bullet, including Metallica, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, each of which joined in 2012 after years of rejecting the format.

Source:
NYT

Samsung has confirmed plans to build more handsets running its own Tizen operating system, with launch scheduled for this year.

According to the sources, Samsung will launch a few Tizen phones at different price points although specs and design are still unknown.

Samsung has been long trying to break their dependence on Google's Android, and thus built Tizen which now runs their smartwatches and smart TV sets.

The company has been selling its sole Tizen smartphone in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and has sold over 1 million units to date.

Although OnePlus has been slowly releasing important tidbits about its upcoming OnePlus 2 flagship, there is still little known about the actual design. That is, until today.

Thanks to a new report, we have two alleged leaked photos of the device, which should look pretty familiar to OnePlus One owners.

The front of the phone looks almost exactly the same as its predecessor with straight edges and the bottom/top having curved sides but the back is where the more significant differences appear to lie. The rear side has a lining around the camera that appears to connect to a fingerprint reader, which would be interesting since OnePlus has not even mentioned such a feature as of yet.

So far, the company has confirmed a customized Snapdragon 810 processor and USB C connectors, the first smartphone to include the future standard.

OnePlus will officially launch the device on July 27th at an event that will only be available in VR.

Since its launch in 2011, Apple's iTunes Match service has allowed users to store 25,000 songs in their iCloud but it appears that that figure is set to increase significantly.

Among the yet unannounced features of iOS 9 is the fact that subscribers to iTunes Match will now be able to store 100,000 tracks, a number that should satisfy even the biggest music fans on the planet.

Apple's Eddy Cue also confirmed again that Apple Music subscriptions will include iTunes Match, so there is no need to pay for two subscriptions. iTunes Match costs $25 per year as a standalone and allows you to upload and store all your physical music in the cloud for playback anywhere.

Sonos users who were considering Apple Music based solely on what their speakers support should be happy as Apple has confirmed that the service will be available on Sonos speakers by the end of the year.

John Paczkowski of Buzzfeed says Apple confirmed the two companies are working together to ensure the connected speaker system will support the new streaming music service.

Unfortunately, that also confirms that Apple Music will not launch with Sonos support, which could put it at a disadvantage against Spotify, Google Play and others, at least for a little bit.

Apple Music will launch on June 30th in conjunction with iOS 8.4 and the launch of the Beats 1 Internet radio service.