Adele’s Album ’25’ Now Available on Apple Music, Spotify, and More

Grammy award-winning singer Adele’s latest album, 25, became available on Apple Music and competing streaming services at midnight last night, seven months after its initial release.

According to Billboard, the full album can also be found on Spotify, Amazon Prime and Tidal, following months in which only the singles “Hello”, “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)”, and “When We Were Young” could be found on music streaming platforms.

Sony released physical and digital copies of Adele’s 25 in November, when it broke the single-week sales record in the U.S., shifting 3.38 million albums. The previous record was set by *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached in 2000, which sold 2.42 million copies in its first week.

The move comes after reports in November last year suggested that Adele had personally chosen not to share the album on streaming music services.

That decision came after Taylor Swift initially refused to share her songs on streaming platforms that offered free tier listening services. Swift later took a stand against Apple when it emerged that the company didn’t intend to pay artists during the Apple Music free trial period. But after the company reversed course, she too changed her mind and allowed Apple Music to stream 1989 and her other albums.

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Netflix Offline Viewing Now Expected to Launch ‘By the End of the Year’

After Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that the company is keeping an “open mind” in regards to offering offline viewing to its customers, a new report from LightReading this week hints that the feature could be coming to the streaming platform “by the end of the year” (via Gizmodo). The information comes from industry insider Dan Taitz — COO of Penthera, a company that works on mobile video — who described a potential “landscape shift” in the streaming video market when an offline viewing option arrives on Netflix.

“We know from our sources within the industry that Netflix is going to launch this product,” says Taitz. “My expectation is that by the end of the year Netflix will be launching download-to-go as an option for their customers.”

Another source, Frost & Sullivan Principal Analyst Dan Rayburn, called Netflix’s offline viewing feature an “open secret” within the streaming community. Rayburn commented that rumors have been swirling “for months” about the impending launch of a download-to-go alternative for Netflix subscribers, potentially even prior to Hasting’s comments on the service back in April.

“It’s a natural progression for Netflix to want to have some of their content available for consumers to watch offline, and we’ve been hearing for months now that they are in fact going to roll something out soon,” says Rayburn.

Netflix’s biggest roadblock on the service could be copyright issues with downloaded film and TV shows, according to Rayburn, who mentioned that — besides Netflix’s own original content — it’ll be a studio-by-studio basis to see how much content is supported as an offline viewing option.

Prior to Hasting’s optimistic comments in April, Netflix Chief Product Officer, Neil Hunt, had previously said offline viewing was “not a very compelling proposition” in the company’s future because it would add too much complexity into a simplistic service. Given that rival platforms, like Amazon and YouTube Red, now offer users the ability to watch downloaded videos offline, it makes sense for Netflix’s interest in the feature to be piqued.

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BitTorrent Announces iOS and tvOS Apps for New Media Streaming Platform

BitTorrent has announced it is launching a new content distribution app called BitTorrent Now, which lets users stream music and video from a library of independent artists and filmmakers.

The app will soon be available for iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, and offers a catalogue of free, paid, and ad-supported, on-demand content, including VR content as and when it becomes available.

Use of BitTorrent’s Bundle format will allow content creators to require users to register or pay for media distributed through the platform, and give them greater control over how their content is offered, presented, and shared:

This is what happens when artists have agency: our shared culture becomes more diverse, more whole; more sustainable. And that’s why we started BitTorrent Bundle: to give artists options. Not rules. The freedom to share your story, no matter what form it takes. The right to know, understand, and reach your audience. The right to choose your business model.

The app’s launch can be seen as an attempt by the company to distance itself from the file-sharing protocol of the same name and reframe its brand as a legitimate media service, quite apart from the pirated content often associated with the peer-to-peer network.

The app doesn’t currently rely on peer-to-peer technology, although The Verge reports that BitTorrent is working to include support.

BitTorrent Now is “coming soon” to iOS and Apple TV. Those who request an invite to the service will receive updates on its availability.

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WhatsApp users are making 100 million calls daily

WhatsApp users are now making over 100 million calls every day, which translates to over 1,100 calls per second. The popular messaging service crossed 1 billion users earlier this year, with recent reports stating that the app is now used by 95% of all smartphone users in India and 94% of smartphone owners in Brazil, two of its largest markets.

The milestone highlights WhatsApp’s importance in growth markets, where the service is becoming the go-to platform for communication. Making or receiving voice calls on WhatsApp is very straightforward, and the feature works over Wi-Fi, 4G, 3G, and even 2G data connections. There’s even an option to reduce voice clarity to reduce bandwidth usage, which is an added bonus for those on metered connections.

Do you use WhatsApp’s voice call feature?

Will EU roaming become more expensive after Brexit?

Are we in for a roaming price hike when the UK leaves the European Union?

With the British voters having chosen to leave the European Union in the June 23 referendum, one of the many areas affected by “Brexit” is the cost to British consumers of using their phones on the continent. As it stands, EU law restricts how much operators based in one member state can charge for calls, texts and data in another. And in the next year roaming fees between EU countries will be abolished altogether.

So following the referendum result, what does the future hold for European roaming?

Staying in the EU would’ve meant an end to roaming fees altogether from June 2017.

Right now UK networks are bound by EU caps on roaming prices. Starting April 30 2016, calls could cost no more than €0.05, texts no more than €0.02, and data no more than €0.05 per megabyte. Should the UK stay in the EU, roaming fees would be abolished altogether by June 15, 2017.

In effect, that would give subscribers to one EU network coverage throughout the union — assuming the appropriate roaming agreements are in place — thus opening up competition between international providers, particularly in border areas.

When the UK leaves the EU British networks would (eventually) be free to charge whatever they wanted for roaming on the continent. And equally, subscribers to EU networks would once again have to pay to roaming fees when visiting the UK.

Even so, this wouldn’t happen overnight. Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union provides a two-year negotiation period for a member state seeking to leave the union. During this time the UK would remain subject to EU treaties and laws, including the planned abolition of roaming rates in June 2017. Article 50 won’t be invoked until David Cameron’s successor as prime minister takes over this autumn, so it’s possible “Brexit” won’t be concluded until later in 2018.

In theory there’d be nothing stopping networks from raising roaming prices — but this couldn’t happen overnight.

This could place carriers (and their customers) in a precarious position whereby European roaming is free for a time, only for roaming fees to be reintroduced 18 months later.

Even so, in a competitive market like the UK, rivalry between the carriers would likely keep post-Brexit roaming prices in check. While UK operators’ roaming prices in some countries are extremely expensive, networks like Vodafone and EE have surprisingly palatable rates for many destinations outside the EU, including the United States, Australia and Canada. The situation may even highlight the issue of roaming fees, and allow some operators to differentiate by offering inclusive EU roaming even after the UK and EU part ways.

For the moment though, the big four haven’t said much about any planned roaming changes, offering basically no information to the BBC as part of a recent feature leading up to the referendum. As with many other aspects of the Brexit issue, customers may just have to wait and see what happens once the dust has settled.

Massive HTC Nexus S1 ‘Sailfish’ specs leak, everything unveiled

HTC is widely thought to be making the next two Nexus phones for Google, internally dubbed M1 (Marlin) and S1 (Sailfish), and while there have been a few rumours about them over the last few weeks or so, nothing has emerged quite so detailed as the latest, enormous leak.

Android Police claims that its sources know exactly what to expect from the Nexus S1, the one codenamed Sailfish. It has listed pretty much the entire spec sheet and the site says that it is “confident of the quality” of its main source.

If true, the Sailfish, or S1, is likely to be the smaller device made by HTC. It is said to have a 5-inch 1080p Full HD display with 440ppi.

Inside will be a 2GHz quad-core 64-bit processor (exact type currently unknown) and 4GB of RAM. There is a 2,770mAh battery and 32GB of storage. Android Police doesn’t yet know if this is just a base model with other storage sizes available.

READ: Next Nexus (2016): Release date, rumours and everything you need to know

The rear camera is claimed to be 12-megapixels, with an 8-megapixel snapper on the front. There’s a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, it says, and a USB Type-C port at the bottom.

Bottom firing speakers are included, as is a top-mounted headphone jack.

Lastly, the site says the phone will come with Bluetooth 4.2.

The incredible leak (if genuine) follows news yesterday that the Marlin, M1, will run on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 SoC. Neither, of course, have been corroborated by either HTC or Google.

10 best 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays available now

The 4K movie revolution has started. With 4K Ultra-HD Blu-rays now available and increasing in number all the while, it is becoming easier to watch your favourite movies in the best format possible.

With high quality video transfers and high dynamic range (HDR) visual tech as found on the Sony XD93 4KHD TV, home movie viewing has never been better. Just make sure you match your new 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player with a suitable 4K TV with HDR and away you go.

We’d also suggest you add a 7.1 surround sound system to your set-up, but even TV speaker technology has come on leaps and bounds of late, if space is at a premium.

The only question left is what to actually watch? That’s why we’ve chosen our top 10 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays you can rush out and buy today. You can’t go far wrong with any of these.

READ: What is HDR, what TVs support HDR, and what HDR content can I watch?

Others, such as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and a UK edition of The Martian, are coming soon, but from all those currently available, these are our picks of the bunch.

Just click through the gallery above to find out which ones we’ve chosen, which we’ve listed in order from our 10th favourite to our first.

Enjoy.