The Verge There are more digital subscriptions around than ever, and among them, you may well have a music streaming service (or two or three). What with “free” trials and trying to find a service you really like, it’s easy to suddenly realize you’re oversubscribed. Luckily, canceling a music subscription — or switching to a free tier — isn’t too difficult. And remember that you can always sign up again. It doesn’t have to be goodbye forever. Here’s how it’s done on the four best-known platforms. The options will be similar on other services. Spotify Spotify has a variety of plans for individu ..read more

MrBeast’s 252 million YouTube subscribers are nipping at the heels of T-Series. | Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images Despite his immense popularity and online presence, Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast) has never been the most subscribed channel on YouTube — though that may not be the case for long. T-Series, India’s largest music label and movie studio, currently holds the top spot with 263 million YouTube subscribers, but MrBeast is rapidly closing in on that figure with 252 million subs. With its leading position now threatened, T-Series published a new video on Monday encouraging ..read more

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge When you load your music streaming app of choice onto your mobile device, your audio quality settings are worth taking a minute or two to configure. If you don’t have these set to as high a quality as possible, you’re missing out on the best audio experience your streaming apps can offer. Because they are managed separately for streaming music over cell and Wi-Fi networks and for downloading tracks to your device for offline listening, there is a tradeoff. Increased sound quality and fidelity means more data gets used (which might be a concern if you’re ..read more

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge In a motion Meta filed on Friday to try and get the FTC’s monopoly claims dismissed, it includes details of how much advertising revenue Instagram brought in over the last few years. At $32.4 billion for 2021 alone, that’s even more than YouTube, which pulled in $28.8 billion in the same year. Business Insider previously pointed out the lead it has over Google’s video unit, and mentions that YouTube gives up 55 percent of each advertising dollar it makes to content owners who upload videos while Instagram coughs up a lot less. Image: Composite of filing from D ..read more

YouTube’s Multiview will allow Coachella fans to stream four extra stages on one screen. | Image: YouTube YouTube’s official livestream of this year’s Coachella music festival will feature a technology many football fans are familiar with. Multiview, which allows viewers to watch multiple livestreams on the same screen while tuning into one audio feed, will be available to viewers of the festival’s stream on any YouTube TV app — no need to subscribe to YouTube TV, the platform announced on Thursday. Just as multiview on NFL Sunday Ticket enables audiences to watch four different games at once ..read more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One year after YouTube turned on revenue sharing for its shortform video feature, a growing chunk of creators are getting paid for it. More than 1 in 4 creators in YouTube’s Partner Program are now earning money with YouTube Shorts, the company announced on Thursday. Given there are over 3 million creators in YouTube’s ad sharing program, that amounts to roughly 750,000 Shorts creators in total. The company doesn’t break out how much it has paid Shorts creators specifically. It has paid $70 billion to creators in total over the last three years, with the ..read more

Photo by Larina Marina, Getty Images People bought 43 million vinyl records last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). That’s 6 million more than the number of CDs sold in 2023, marking the second time since 1987 that’s happened and reflecting the steady 17-year-running growth of vinyl sales. Vinyl, which tends to be pricier than the newer format, also far outstripped CDs in actual money made, raking in $1.4 billion compared to $537 million from CDs. The RIAA’s report shows that CD revenue was up, too, but in terms of physical products sold, people actually b ..read more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube TV subscribers can now watch several programs at once on smaller devices — not just big TV screens. As noted by 9to5Google, the service’s multiview feature has rolled out on iOS and iPadOS, although the Android crowd will have to wait for it to arrive “in the coming months.” So, Google’s leaving its own crowd out of watching several March Madness games while on the go. Ouch. Multiview lets you watch four different things at the same time. The feature started out focused squarely on sports, and... that very much remains the case. YouTube TV has ma ..read more

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Assets from Turbosquid Pitchfork exploded as the music industry changed, then was cut down to size by another wave of technological change. Was that it? {props.credit ..read more

Photo by Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC via Getty Images YouTuber MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) has struck a deal with Prime Video to host a new reality competition series called Beast Games. The show will have 1,000 contestants competing for a $5 million reward, which the press release claims is “the biggest single prize in the history of television and streaming.” There aren’t any details yet about what kinds of challenges Beast Games contestants will participate in. It’s a remarkable turn of events, even for someone who’s hosted many similar competitions on his YouTube channel, like recent ones where ..read more