Apple’s new app for classical music, Apple Music Classical, is now available for download for everyone, but you need an Apple Music subscription (it is not available in select countries at launch). There are more than 5 million tracks available on the app right now, as well over 50+ million data points with data attributes of 20,000+ composers, 115,000+ unique works, and 350,000+ movements. App’s specialized search engine helps you comb through the archive, Apple announced.

Bandcamp has announced that users can now build playlists from a collection of purchased music. Songs can be added from a track or album’s context menu or with one long press on a track. Playlists can also be downloaded for offline listening. Bandcamp promises more playlist features are in the works.

Producer Aphex Twin and the engineer Dave Griffiths have launched an app called Samplebrain, which translates inputted sounds into similar samples. The “sample mashing” design software has been in the works for some 20 years. Aphex Twin describes the app: “What if you could reconstruct source audio from a selection of other mp3's/audio on your computer? What if you could build a 303 riff from only acapellas or bubbling mud sounds? What if you could sing a silly tune and rebuild it from classical music files? You can do this with Samplebrain.”

Audius is a brand-new decentralized streaming platform built for all the artists, not just the ones signed with labels. Decrypt reviews it: "Its biggest problem on paper is the fact that there are so few recognisable artists on there, and the ones that you will likely have heard of, don’t have much content uploaded. From another perspective, though, that's a positive advantage; if you're a trendsetter rather than a follower of fashion, it's a great way to discover new and unsigned artists... It offers quality, free streaming, with a quick and easy sign-up process to jump you straight into the action... It’s a refreshing way to dive into the unknown while hopefully discovering some hidden gems along the way".

To make it easier to navigate their expansive archives, Pitchfork has created the Reviews Explorer, an interactive tool designed to help you discover new albums, rediscover old ones. Type an artist’s name into the search bar, select that artist from the dropdown menu, and see their reviews, plus reviews of similar artists, arranged by rating in a graphic interface. You can also filter the results to show which album recommendations are designated as “Best New Music” releases, and sort reviews by date.

Instrumental startup flagged Arizona Zervas nearly two years before Columbia signed the American rapper, Lil Nas X was on its radar months before Columbia came calling, while Tones and I was recognized by the tool long before the Australian-born artist signed to Elektra Records. Instrumental has built-in a new approach to finding musical talent looking only at data – from social media and streaming numbers. Wired presents the tool.

Spotify announced the acquisition of Betty Labs, the creators of Locker Room, a live audio app focused on sports talk, with the aim to build its own rival to the buzzy Clubhouse live-audio chat app, MBW reports. Spotify’s deal values Betty Labs at around $50 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. Betty Labs first launched Locker Room for sports fans in October 2020. Spotify said it plans to rebrand the app (but keep it separate) to “evolve and expand” Locker Room into an enhanced live audio experience for a wider range of creators and fans, offering sports, music, and cultural programming along with interactive features that enable creators to connect with listeners in real time.

The use of Splice, a highly rated app for mobile video editing, has boomed during the pandemic, as people stuck at home experimented with making their own tracks, Bloomberg reports. The company specializes in royalty-free samples, which allow people to use drum sounds or flutes from a large library for a monthly fee. The company has just raised an additional $55 million from investors, raising the value of the company at close to $500 million.

Hype Machine’s new program Merch Table lets users input their Spotify playlists and purchase those songs via Bandcamp. Merch Table works relatively simply - plug in the Spotify playlist url code into the search bar, press the “Find releases” button, and results of the songs listed begin to compile, taking you to each artist’s Bandcamp page to purchase tracks directly.

Google Search announced on Thursday that users can hum or whistle a song to their mobile devices, and Google Search will find its name and artist as well as relevant search results like music videos. The search might result in several different songs, with the percentage of probability of each song. It works like this: A user can tap the mic icon in Google’s search app or the Google search widget and either tap the “search a song” button or tap the mic button and say, “What’s this song?”. If using Google Assistant, they can say, “Hey, Google, what’s this song?” Then, the user just sings, hums, or whistles the tune for 10 to 15 seconds - and voilà.