Streaming music site SoundCloud has been growing in popularity, due in part to its social media integration, and now claims 175 million monthly users. However, the service has been at odds with the music industry since it has not been paying royalties. SoundCloud recently reached an agreement with Warner Music and last week “announced that it had struck a deal covering some 20,000 independent record labels through Merlin, an organization that represents small companies in digital negotiations,” reports The New York Times. “The Merlin deal follows another SoundCloud arrangement announced last month with the National Music Publishers’ Association, which also covers a range of smaller companies.”

Futurist Ray Kurzweil, currently serving as director of engineering at Google, predicts that humans will become artificially intelligent hybrids by the 2030s. Kurzweil believes that our brains will connect directly to the cloud using nanobots, tiny robots constructed from DNA strands. The thousands of computers in the cloud will then augment our intelligence. “Our thinking then will be a hybrid of biological and non-biological thinking,” he said. According to CNN: “The bigger and more complex the cloud, the more advanced our thinking. By the time we get to the late 2030s or the early 2040s, Kurzweil believes our thinking will be predominately non-biological.”

There are currently 2.6 billion smartphone subscriptions worldwide, and while developing markets have been leveling off, less mature markets are starting to experience significant growth. According to the latest annual Mobility Report from Ericsson, we should expect to see 6.1 billion smartphones in circulation by 2020, at which point phones will exceed the number of active fixed line subscriptions globally. Ericsson projects that the total number of mobile subscriptions will reach 9.2 billion in five years, as less developed markets continue their expansion. Continue reading Ericsson: 70 Percent of World Will Have Smartphones by 2020

Against the wishes of some of top congressional Democrats, the FCC approved a proposal this week that could provide large cable providers with the ability to raise their prices. The agency voted 3-2 “to limit the power of state and local regulators over cable TV packages and prices,” reports National Journal, and “declared that it will assume that there is ‘effective competition’ for cable services nationwide.” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler sided with the commission’s two Republicans and the cable industry. Democrats argued that limiting regulations could lead to consumers paying higher prices for access to news, sports and other programming.

In shipping news, retailers and tech companies continue to compete for consumers’ attention by offering fast and affordable delivery options. While Amazon, Google and others continue their plans for drone delivery — and companies continue to experiment with one- and two-hour delivery in major cities — recent news has surfaced that Apple is teaming with Postmates to offer same-day delivery of Apple Store items, Walmart is developing a new three-day shipping service, and Amazon is introducing free shipping on thousands of smaller goods. Continue reading Free Shipping and Speedy Delivery a New Focus for Companies

IDC announced this week that wearable devices have experienced eight consecutive quarters of solid growth. According to the new report released Wednesday, 11.4 million wearables shipped worldwide during the first quarter, up from 3.8 million shipped during Q1 last year. IDC credits lower prices and a greater variety of wearables, such as smartwatches and activity trackers, for the increase in global sales. Fitbit led the charge last quarter by shipping nearly 4 million devices, followed by Xiaomi, Garmin, Samsung and Jawbone. Continue reading Researcher Announces Impressive First Quarter for Wearables

Microsoft and Toshiba are joining forces to develop products and services that address the Internet of Things. “This mirrors the combination of IBM’s cloud service with ARM-based IoT development platforms,” reports Electronics Weekly. “The plan is to bring together Microsoft’s Azure IoT Cloud infrastructure with IoT applications running Toshiba’s sensors and wireless comms devices,” including Toshiba’s ApP Lite processor, driving recorders and cloud storage services. “IoT is bringing in a dramatic technology transition that is reshaping the nature of networks, the meaning of service, and the way we live and work,” said Shigeyoshi Shimotsuji, VP at Toshiba.

Magic Leap unveiled a development platform this week at MIT’s EmTech Digital conference as part of the company’s effort to encourage filmmakers, game developers and others to create augmented reality experiences on its platform. The SDK, to be released soon, works with the Unreal and Unity game engines. The company also announced that it spent part of its $592 million in recent funding to build a 300,000 square foot Florida facility for manufacturing its photonic lightfield chip. “This chip powers its augmented reality headset that works by shooting light directly onto your eye, rather than sticking a screen in front of it,” explains TechCrunch.

Twitter and the NBA have teamed up to deliver custom timelines and hashflags graphics for fans online through the first official partnership between the social platform and a major sports league. “Twitter users on most iOS and Android apps can access the NBA Finals timeline by searching #NBA or #NBAFinals on their mobile devices,” reports Mashable. The timeline will include “Tweets” that feature posts related to the Finals, “Commentary” that limits what is shown to select media and analysts, and “Video” that features Vines and clips from the Cavaliers, Warriors and NBA. The timeline will also include the live score of each game.

Showtime is joining HBO in introducing its own Internet streaming service that will offer unlimited on-demand access to original series, movies and sports programming without requiring a traditional TV subscription. In addition, it will include a live feed of Showtime’s broadcasts for both coasts. The cable network announced yesterday that it plans to debut the standalone service in July to coincide with the season premieres of “Masters of Sex” and “Ray Donovan.” The service will initially be available on Apple devices for $11 per month. Continue reading Showtime to Debut its Internet Streaming Service This Summer

Dish Network is in discussions to merge with T-Mobile US, say people familiar with the matter. While financial specifics remain unresolved, the people indicate that the combined company would be led by Dish Chief Exec Charlie Ergen as chairman, and his T-Mobile counterpart John Legere as CEO. The deal would merge the second-largest satellite TV operator in the U.S. with the fourth-largest wireless carrier. Dish has a current market capitalization of $33 billion, slightly higher than T-Mobile’s $31 billion. Continue reading Merger Talks Between Dish and T-Mobile at the Formative Stage

Hewlett-Packard, 20th Century Fox and James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment announced a five-year partnership yesterday to create a new immersive entertainment experience to market future releases of the “Avatar” franchise. While features of the unnamed project were not discussed, HP will provide cloud-computing services and data security in addition to managing and analyzing collected data, reports Bloomberg. The second “Avatar” film is scheduled for a December 2017 release. Additionally, the filmmakers are working with Disney on a theme park experience and Cirque du Soleil on an “Avatar” inspired show this fall.

Through an exclusive deal with the NFL announced yesterday, Yahoo will host the first free, live webcast of a regular-season football game when the Buffalo Bills take on the Jacksonville Jaguars October 25 in London. “For the NFL, the streamed game is an experiment to understand the complex economics of digital streaming and gauge the audience for watching American football in the rest of the world,” notes The New York Times. “For Yahoo, winning the digital rights to the popular game is a rare victory against more successful rivals like Google and Facebook, who compete with it for attention and ad dollars.”

As the battle heats up with tech companies over artificial intelligence and digital assistants, SoundHound released an app this week called “Hound” that promises to enhance voice search with its ability to quickly and efficiently handle complex questions. According to Keyvan Mohajer, SoundHound founder and chief exec, Hound has a leg up on the competition since it performs voice recognition and natural-language processing in a single step, as opposed to translating speech to text and then performing a search using that text. Continue reading New Hound App Could Prove Rival to Siri, Cortana, Google Now

Customer satisfaction with cable TV, Internet and phone service providers has fallen to a seven-year low, according to a study from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. When surveyed about satisfaction involving 43 industries, consumer response placed television and Internet companies tied for last place. Recent merger talks have placed TV and Internet providers under particular scrutiny, while disappointing customer service and rising prices have taken on a different dynamic in an era of streaming options such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. Continue reading Study: Declining Customer Satisfaction with TV, Internet Service