Bose has acquired the high-end audio brand McIntosh, a move the company says will "significantly" expand its product lineup and open "new opportunities in the automotive sector." The Verge reports: McIntosh has already designed a sound system for some Jeep models, but Bose's audio setups are found within a wider range of cars from automakers like Chevy, Honda, Nissan, Cadillac, and many others. It doesn't look like Bose or McIntosh will make any changes to their existing products. Bose says it will continue to launch its headphones, speakers, soundbars, and in-car audio, while McIntosh and Sonus faber will keep developing premium audio products, including amplifiers, loudspeakers, and turntables. "Over the last six decades we've delivered the best premium audio experiences possible; now, with McIntosh Group in our portfolio, we can unlock even more ways to bring music to life in the home, on-the-go and in the car," Bose CEO Lila Snyder said in a press release. "We look forward to honoring the heritage of these brands, investing in their future and pushing the boundaries of audio innovation to bring customers experiences they've never heard before."

"Here's how Apple's next major product will work," writes Bloomberg's Mark Gurman: The company has been developing a smart home command center that will rival products like the Amazon Echo Hub and Google Nest Hub... The product will run many of Apple's core apps, like Safari, Notes and Calendar, but the interface will be centered on a customizable home screen with iOS-like widgets and smart home controls... The device looks like a low-end iPad and will include a built-in battery, speakers and a FaceTime camera oriented for a horizontal landscape view. The square device, which includes a roughly 6-inch screen, has sensors that let it change the interface depending on how far a user is from the screen. It will also have attachments for walls, plus a base with additional speakers so it can be placed on a table, nightstand or desk.

Apple envisions customers using the device as an intercom, with people FaceTiming each other from different rooms. They'll also be able to pull up home security footage, control their lights, and videoconference with family while cooking in the kitchen. And it will control music throughout the home on HomePod speakers. The device will work with hundreds of HomeKit-compatible items, a lineup that includes third-party switches, lights, fans and other accessories. But the company doesn't plan to roll out a dedicated app store for the product. Given the lack of success with app marketplaces for the Vision Pro, Apple Watch and Apple TV, that's not too surprising.
Looking ahead, the article concludes "The success of this device is still far from assured. Apple's recent track record pushing into new categories has been spotty, and its previous home products haven't been major hits."

But Gurman shares the most interesting part on X.com: If the product does catch on, it will help set the stage for more home devices. Apple is working on a high-end AI companion with a [$1,000] robotic arm and large display that could serve as a follow-up. The company could also put more resources into developing mobile robots, privacy-focused home cameras and speakers. It may even revisit the idea of making an Apple-branded TV set, something it's evaluating. But if the first device fails, Apple may have to rethink its smart home ambitions once again.
Gurman also writes that Apple is also working on a new AirTag with more range and improved privacy features (including "making it more difficult for someone to remove the speaker.")

If you have Spotify's soon-to-be-bricked Car Thing, there are a few ways you can give it a new lease on life. YouTuber Dammit Jeff has showcased modifications to Car Thing that makes the device useful as a desktop music controller, customizable shortcut tool, or a simple digital clock. Ars Technica's Kevin Purdy reports: Spotify had previously posted the code for its uboot and kernel to GitHub, under the very unassuming name "spsgsb" and with no announcement (as discovered by Josh Hendrickson). Jeff has one idea why the streaming giant might not have made much noise about it: "The truth is, this thing isn't really great at running anything." It has half a gigabyte of memory, 4GB of internal storage, and a "really crappy processor" (Amlogic S905D2 SoC) and is mostly good for controlling music.

How do you get in? The SoC has a built-in USB "burning mode," allowing for a connected computer, running the right toolkit, to open up root access and overwrite its firmware. Jeff has quite a few issues getting connected (check his video description for some guidance), but it's "drag and drop" once you're in. Jeff runs through a few of the most popular options for a repurposed Car Thing:

- DeskThing, which largely makes Spotify desk-friendly, but adds a tiny app store for weather (including Jeff's own WeatherWave), clocks, and alternate music controls
- GlanceThing, which keeps the music controls but also provides some Stream-Deck-like app-launching shortcuts for your main computer.
- Nocturne, currently invite-only, is a wholly redesigned Spotify interface that restores all its Spotify functionality.

"Now and Then" by the Beatles has been nominated for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance at the 2025 Grammy Awards -- marking the first time a song created with the assistance of AI has earned a Grammy nomination. From a report: When "Now and Then" first came out in late 2023, the disclosure that it was finalized utilizing AI caused an uproar. At the time, many fans assumed that the remaining Fab Four members -- Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr -- must have used generative AI to deepfake the late John Lennon. That was not actually the case. Instead, the Beatles used a form of AI known as "stem separation" to help them clean up a 60-year-old, low-fidelity demo recorded by Lennon during his lifetime and to make it useable in a finished master recording.

With stem separation, the Beatles could isolate Lennon's vocal and get rid of excess noise. Proponents of this form of technology say it has major benefits for remastering and cleaning up older catalogs. Recently, AudioShake, a leading company in this space, struck a partnership with Disney Music Group to help the media giant clean up its older catalog to "unlock new listening and fan engagement experiences" like lyric videos, film/TV licensing opportunities, re-mastering and more.

Block will abandon development of its Web5 decentralized internet project and reduce investment in music streaming service Tidal to focus on bitcoin mining hardware and self-custody wallets, the payments company announced in its third-quarter letter to shareholders. The Jack Dorsey-led firm cited strong market demand for its bitcoin mining products and Bitkey wallet as key drivers behind the strategic shift.

App developers Musi and Sarafan Mobile have sued Apple and Google in California federal court over app removals they claim were unjustified, highlighting tensions over the tech giants' intellectual property enforcement policies. Musi's music-streaming app was removed after YouTube complained about interface infringement, while Sarafan's "Reely" app was taken down following Instagram's claims about logo similarity.

Both developers say the platforms breached their agreements by removing apps without sufficient evidence. The lawsuits underscore broader concerns about Apple and Google's dominance in app distribution. Their private IP dispute systems operate outside traditional legal frameworks, with platforms making unilateral decisions that can effectively shut down businesses, according to University of New Hampshire law professor Peter Karol. [...]

"In a court proceeding, you can see here's a complaint with the allegations, and then we have the defendant respond, and then we have a judge come out with an opinion saying, 'Is the mark valid? Is the mark infringed?'" said Lisa Ramsey, law professor at University of San Diego. Google and Apple's systems, meanwhile, are "a black box."

Nintendo has announced a mobile app called Nintendo Music, which lets users listen to classic video game soundtracks from Nintendo games spanning the last few decades, including Splatoon, Animal Crossing, and The Legend of Zelda. According to The Verge, the app is available on iOS and Android but only Switch Online subscribers will be able to stream the tunes. From the report: The app features curated playlists themed around games, moments, moods, or characters, though you can also build your own. It also supports streaming as well as downloading tracks for offline listening. Curiously, it includes a spoiler feature that lets you filter out tracks that, somehow, might spoil a game you haven't played or finished yet. And if you just want some Hyrule white noise, the app also lets you "loop songs or extend select tracks to 15, 30, or 60 minutes for uninterrupted listening." Here's a list of all the regions the app will be available in.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Hollywood Reporter: Grab your wagons and oxen, and get ready to ford a river: A movie adaptation of the popular grade school computer game Oregon Trail is in development at Apple. The studio landed the film pitch, still in early development, that has Will Speck and Josh Gordon attached to direct and produce. EGOT winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul will provide original music and produce via their Ampersand production banner. Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the movie will feature a couple of original musical numbers in the vein of Barbie.

The Lucas Bros. (Judas and the Black Messiah) and Max Reisman are set to pen the screenplay about the game that is meant to mimic 19th-century pioneer times, following a covered wagon train heading west. Created in 1971, the game reached cult status among American grade schoolers by the 1990s as one of the first educational computer games allowed in schools -- and for its hilariously dark storylines filled with broken arms, typhoid and dysentery. The film will likely debut on Apple TV+, but details are scarce at the moment.

More than 10,500 artists and creators -- including ABBA's Bjorn Ulvaeus, actress Julianne Moore, actors Kevin Bacon and F. Murray Abraham, as well as former Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon, author James Patterson and Radiohead's Thom Yorke -- signed a statement condemning AI companies' unauthorized use of creative works for training their models. The initiative, led by former AI executive Ed Newton-Rex, demands an end to unlicensed training data collection amid mounting legal challenges against tech firms. "The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted," reads the statement.

The protest comes as major artists and publishers battle AI developers in court. Authors John Grisham and George R.R. Martin are suing OpenAI, while record labels Universal, Sony and Warner have filed lawsuits against AI music creators Suno and Udio. The signatories reject proposed "opt-out" schemes for content scraping, calling instead for explicit creator consent.

"The Wayback Machine, Archive-It, scanning, and national library crawls have resumed," announced the Internet Archive Thursday, "as well as email, blog, helpdesk, and social media communications. Our team is working around the clock across time zones to bring other services back online."

Founder Brewster Kahle told The Washington Post it's the first time in its almost 30-year history that it's been down more than a few hours. But their article says the Archive is "fighting back." Kahle and his team see the mission of the Internet Archive as a noble one — to build a "library of everything" and ensure records are kept in an online environment where websites change and disappear by the day. "We're all dreamers," said Chris Freeland, the Internet Archive's director of library services. "We believe in the mission of the Internet Archive, and we believe in the promise of the internet." But the site has, at times, courted controversy. The Internet Archive faces lawsuits from book publishers and music labels brought in 2020 and 2023 for digitizing copyrighted books and music, which the organization has argued should be permissible for noncommercial, archival purposes. Kahle said the hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties from the lawsuits could sink the Internet Archive.

Those lawsuits are ongoing. Now, the Internet Archive has also had to turn its attention to fending off cyberattacks. In May, the Internet Archive was hit with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a fairly common type of internet warfare that involves flooding a target site with fake traffic. The archive experienced intermittent outages as a result. Kahle said it was the first time the site had been targeted in its history... [After another attack October 9th], Kahle and his team have spent the week since racing to identify and fix the vulnerabilities that left the Internet Archive open to attack. The organization has "industry standard" security systems, Kahle said, but he added that, until this year, the group had largely stayed out of the crosshairs of cybercriminals. Kahle said he'd opted not to prioritize additional investments in cybersecurity out of the Internet Archive's limited budget of around $20 million to $30 million a year...

[N]o one has reliably claimed the defacement and data breach that forced the Internet Archive to sequester itself, said [cybersecurity researcher] Scott Helmef. He added that the hackers' decision to alert the Internet Archive of their intrusion and send the stolen data to Have I Been Pwned, the monitoring service, could imply they didn't have further intentions with it.... Helme said the episode demonstrates the vulnerability of nonprofit services like the Internet Archive — and of the larger ecosystem of information online that depends on them. "Perhaps they'll find some more funding now that all of these headlines have happened," Helme said. "And people suddenly realize how bad it would be if they were gone."
"Our priority is ensuring the Internet Archive comes online stronger and more secure," the archive said in Thursday's statement. And they noted other recent-past instances of other libraries also being attacked online: As a library community, we are seeing other cyber attacks — for instance the British Library, Seattle Public Library, Toronto Public Library, and now Calgary Public Library. We hope these attacks are not indicative of a trend."

For the latest updates, please check this blog and our official social media accounts: X/Twitter, Bluesky and Mastodon.

Thank you for your patience and ongoing support.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you dread the thought of calling to change an airline ticket or negotiate your internet bill, a new artificial intelligence tool may provide a solution. DoNotPay, which offers an assortment of consumer-friendly services like tracking subscriptions, generating burner phone numbers, and searching for unclaimed property, now features a bot that will call customer service numbers for users, navigate through phone menus and sit through hold music, then politely but firmly advocate on users' behalf.

The company shared examples of its AI calling a cellphone provider for help porting a phone number and talking with an airline to cancel a flight within the 24-hour cancellation window. Joshua Browder, CEO and founder of DoNotPay, says getting updates on lost luggage and seeking compensation for flight delays are also common use cases. DoNotPay already offered tools to connect to customer service agents via chat windows, and to draft and send emails, faxes, and even snail mail to companies on behalf of users.

But while the service's artificial intelligence had enough smarts to wait on hold for users, then hand over a call when an agent was available, until recently AI models were not capable of carrying on a convincing voice conversation with a human operator in real time. Browder says that changed with Open AI's GPT-4o model, unveiled in May. "That has reduced the delay by about 70%, so instead of it taking three seconds to come up with a response, it now takes under a second, and that's finally fast enough to hold these phone conversations," he says. "So now we're doing thousands of these calls."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Donald Trump said Apple CEO Tim Cook called him to discuss the billions of dollars that Apple has been fined in the European Union. Trump made the statement during his appearance on the PBD Podcast -- and said that he won't let the EU "take advantage" of US companies like Apple if reelected. "Two hours ago, three hours ago, he [Cook] called me," Trump said. "He said the European Union has just fined us $15 billion... Then on top of that, they got fined by the European Union another $2 billion." In March, the EU fined Apple around $2 billion after finding that Apple used its dominance to restrict music streaming apps from telling customers about cheaper subscription deals outside the App Store. The EU later won its fight to make Apple pay $14.4 billion in unpaid taxes.

"He [Cook] said something that was interesting," Trump said. "He said they're using that to run their enterprise, meaning Europe is their enterprise. "I said, 'That's a lot... But Tim, I got to get elected first, but I'm not going to let them take advantage of our companies -- that won't, you know, be happening.'" Trump has talked to several Big Tech executives over the past several months. "During an interview this week, Trump said he spoke with Google CEO Sundar Pichai to complain about all the 'bad stories' the search engine shows about him," notes The Verge. "Elon Musk recently spoke at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Trump over the summer 'a few times,' according to the former president."

Google's NotebookLM app has been updated to let you generate custom podcasts from almost any source material. The AI software is also dropping the "experimental" tag. Wired reports: To make an AI podcast using NotebookLM, open up the Google Labs website and start a New Notebook. Then, add any source documents you would like to be used for the audio output. These can be anything from files on your computer to YouTube links. Next, when you click on the Notebook guide, you'll now see the option to generate a deep dive as well as the option to customize it first. Choose Customize and add your prompt for how you'd like the AI podcast to come out. The software suggests that you consider what sections of the sources you'd like highlighted, larger topics you want further explored, or different intended audiences who you want the message to reach.

One tip [Raiza Martin, who leads the NotebookLM team inside of Google Labs] shares for trying out the new feature is to generate the Audio Overview without changes, and while you're listening to this first iteration, write down any burning questions you have or topics you wish it expanded on. Afterwards, use these notes as a launching pad to create your prompts for NotebookLM and regenerate that AI podcast with your interests in mind. [...] Yes, Google's NotebookLM might flatten the specifics of a big document or get some details mixed up, but being able to generate more personalized podcasts from disparate sources truly does feel like a transformation -- and luckily nothing like turning into a giant bug. You can view some examples of AI-generated podcasts here.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Starting on October 14, 2024, news outlets including Yahoo and NME reported that year-over-year, the U.S. vinyl market was down 33 percent. The data for these articles came from a weekly report from Billboard called "Market Watch," which automatically updates with data provided by the company Luminate. Amid the vinyl revolution, this news signified a shift in buyer habits: a sales decline among vinyl for the first time in 17 years.

On October 15, Discogs contacted Chris Muratore, director of partnerships at Luminate, who confirmed that the reported data is incorrect. Vinyl sales are actually up 6.2 percent. Billboard has since added language to their "Market Watch" report, clearing up the error. Luminate has been the gold standard for physical music sales numbers for decades. However, at the beginning of this year, the company changed its reporting process, frustrating many record store owners and industry personnel.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This fall, thousands of fake albums were added to Spotify, with some appearing on real artist pages, where they're positioned to lure unsuspecting listeners into streaming by posing as new releases from favorite bands. An Ars reader flagged the issue after finding a fake album on the Spotify page of an UK psych rock band called Gong. The Gong fan knew that the band had begun touring again after a surprise new release last year, but the "latest release" listed by Spotify wasn't that album. Instead, at the top of Gong's page was a fake self-titled album supposedly released in 2024.

The real fan detected the fake instantly, and not just because the generic electronic music sounded nothing like Gong's experimental sounds. The album's cover also gave the scheme away, using a generic font and neon stock image that invoked none of the trippy imagery that characterized Gong's typical album covers. Ars confirmed with Gong member Dave Sturt that the self-titled item was an obvious fake on Monday. At that time, Sturt said the band was working to get the junk album removed from its page, but as of Tuesday morning, that album remained online, along with hundreds of other albums uploaded by a fake label that former Spotify data "alchemist" Glenn McDonald flagged in a social media post that Spotify seemingly ignored.

On his site, McDonald gathered the junk album data by label, noting that Beat Street Music, which has no web presence but released the fake Gong album, uploaded 240 junk albums on Friday alone. Similarly, Ancient Lake Records uploaded 471 albums on Friday. And Gupta Music added 483 just a few days prior, along with 600 junk albums from Future Jazz Records uploaded between September 30 and October 8. These junk albums don't appear to be specifically targeting popular artists, McDonald told Ars. Rather, generic music is uploaded under a wide range of one-word artist names. However, by using that tactic, some of these fake albums appeared on real artist pages, such as Gong, experimental rock band Swans, and English rock bands Asia and Yes. And that oversight is on Spotify, McDonald suggested. "We are aware of the issue, have relocated the content in question, and are considering our further options against the providing licensor," a Spotify spokesperson said. "When we identify or are alerted to attempts by bad actors to game the system, we take action that may include removing stream counts and withholding royalties. Spotify invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of bad actors attempting to collect unearned royalties."

A new study reveals that the human sense of smell is far more sensitive than previously thought, capable of distinguishing odors and their sequences within just 60 milliseconds. CNN reports: In a single sniff, the human sense of smell can distinguish odors within a fraction of a second, working at a level of sensitivity that is "on par" with how our brains perceive color, "refuting the widely held belief that olfaction is our slow sense," a new study finds. Humans also can discern between various sequences of odors -- distinguishing a sequence of "A" before "B" from sequence "B" before "A" -- when the interval between odorant A and odorant B is merely 60 milliseconds, according to the study, published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior. [...]

The new findings challenge previous research in which the timing it took to discriminate between odor sequences was around 1,200 milliseconds, Dr. Dmitry Rinberg, a professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology at NYU Langone Health in New York, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Nature Human Behavior. "The timing of individual notes in music is essential for conveying meaning and beauty in a melody, and the human ear is very sensitive to this. However, temporal sensitivity is not limited to hearing: our sense of smell can also perceive small temporal changes in odor presentations," he wrote. "Similar to how timing affects the perception of notes in a melody, the timing of individual components in a complex odor mixture that reaches the nose may be crucial for our perception of the olfactory world."

The ability to tell apart odors within a single sniff might be an important way in which animals detect both what a smell is and where it might be in space, said Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta, a professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the new study. "The demonstration that humans can tell apart smells as they change within a sniff is a powerful demonstration that timing is important for smell across species, and therefore is a general principle underlying olfactory function. In addition, this study sheds important light on the mysterious mechanisms that support human odor perception," Datta wrote in an email. "The study of human olfaction has historically lagged that of vision and hearing, because as humans we think of ourselves as visual creatures that largely use speech to communicate," he said, adding that the new study helps "fill a critical gap in our understanding of how we as humans smell."

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a copyright infringement verdict against Internet provider Grande, which failed to take action against allegedly pirating subscribers. The jury's $47 million damages award in favor of the major music label plaintiffs is vacated. According to the Court (PDF), individual tracks that are part of an album, should not be counted as separate works. TorrentFreak reports: After hearing both sides, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the jury verdict yesterday. Grande's arguments, suggesting that the district court mistakenly upheld the verdict earlier, were rejected. "The district court did not err in upholding the jury's unanimous liability verdict because Plaintiffs satisfied each element legally and factually," the decision reads. "The court correctly interpreted the law and instructed the jury on the relevant legal standards in light of the factual issues disputed by the parties, and Plaintiffs introduced ample evidence from which a reasonable jury could find in Plaintiffs' favor." [...]

In addition to the material contribution challenge, Grande and its supporters also pointed out that terminating Internet access isn't a "simple measure," as the jury concluded. Instead, it is drastic and overbroad, which could also impact innocent subscribers. The Court of Appeals rejects this reasoning. Instead, it states that the jury could and did conclude that terminations are a simple measure. There is no evidence to reach a different conclusion. All in all, the Court sees no reason to reverse the jury's verdict that Grande is liable for contributory infringement. This means that the jury verdict is affirmed.

Nintendo has a new piece of game hardware coming in 2024. It's not the Switch 2, it's the Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo, a new motion-sensing alarm clock that will rouse you from sleep with the sounds of video games like Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and more. Polygon adds: The $99.99 alarm clock includes 35 wake-up "scenes" from Nintendo Switch games. Users will "experience immersive sounds and music" from those scenes, which are styled to match Nintendo's franchises. Alarmo will also track users' sleep and motion; Records will keep track of how much you move around, similar to the Pokemon Go Plus Plus sleep tracker that Nintendo released for Pokemon Go/Pokemon Sleep (and the long-promised, but seemingly abandoned QOL project).

Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo will feature various alarm settings, Nintendo said in a news release. The clock's Steady Mode features an alarm that will gradually get more intense the longer you stay in bed. Gentle Mode offers "a more consistent intensity level." And Button Mode is a classic snooze button mode, where you've gotta smack Alarmo to shut it up. Nintendo's new interactive, motion-sensing alarm clock also features "sleepy sounds" -- soothing music that will hopefully lull you to sleep at night.

Novelist Christopher Farnsworth has filed a class-action lawsuit (PDF) against Meta, accusing the company of using his and other authors' pirated books to train its Llama AI model. Farnsworth seeks damages and an order to stop the alleged copyright infringement, joining a growing group of creators suing tech companies over unauthorized AI training. Reuters reports: Farnsworth said in the lawsuit on Tuesday that Meta fed Llama, which powers its AI chatbots, thousands of pirated books to teach it how to respond to human prompts. Other authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and comedian Sarah Silverman have brought similar class-action claims against Meta in the same court over its alleged use of their books in AI training. [...] Several groups of copyright owners including writers, visual artists and music publishers have sued major tech companies over the unauthorized use of their work to train generative AI systems. The companies have argued that their AI training is protected by the copyright doctrine of fair use and that the lawsuits threaten the burgeoning AI industry.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Somewhere over the streets of San Francisco's Mission, a microphone sits surveilling ... for banger songs. Bop Spotter is a project by technologist Riley Walz in which he has hidden an Android phone in a box on a pole, rigged it to be solar powered, and has set it to record audio and periodically sends it to Shazam's API to determine which songs people are playing in public. Walz describes it as ShotSpotter, but for music. "This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. But it's not about catching criminals," Walz's website reads. "It's about catching vibes. A constant feed of what's popping off in real-time."

ShotSpotter, of course, is the microphone-based, "gunshot detection" surveillance company that cities around the country have spent millions of dollars on. ShotSpotter is often inaccurate, and sometimes detects things like fireworks or a car backfiring as gunshots. Chicago, one of ShotSpotter's biggest clients, is finally allowing its contract with the company to end. Bop Spotter, on the other hand, is designed to figure out what cool music people are blasting from their cars or as they walk down the street. "I am a chronic Shazam-er. Most songs I listen to come from first hearing them at a party, store, or on the street," Walz told 404 Media. "Years ago I had the thought that it'd be cool to Shazam 24/7 from a fixed location, and I recently learned about ShotSpotter, and thought it'd be amusing to do what they do with music instead of gunshots. Was a great weekend project."

Walz said that the phone itself is rigged to a solar panel, and that it records audio in 10-minute blocks while in airplane mode. "Then it connects to WiFi to send the file to my server, which then split it into 20-second chunks that get passed to Shazam's API. The device doesn't Shazam directly, that would use way too much power. Probably $100 of parts," he said. BopSpotter's website has a constant feed of songs it hears, as well as links to play the songs in Spotify or Apple Music. As I'm writing this, BopSpotter has picked up "Not Like Us" by Kendrick Lamar, "The Next Episode" by Dr. Dre, and "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley (a Rick Roll already?) among dozens of songs in the last few hours. The site also has a constant feed of the device's power levels. So far in three days, it has detected 380 songs. "I thought the solar panel would be annoying but it provides 4 times more power than the phone needs," Walz said. "The hardest part was scoping out which pole to actually put it up on. I had to balance finding a busy location where lots of music could be picked up, with enough sunlight, and good connection to a public wifi network."

Walz didn't say where exactly the phone is located.