Spotify announced Tuesday that it hit 751 million total monthly active users (MAUs) for quarter-four of 2025. That record-high is an 11 percent jump from the year before and a significant bump from the third quarter's 713 million MAUs.
The quarterly earnings report also showed a 10 percent jump year-over-year in Premium subscribers, from 263 million to 290 million. Europe makes up the greatest number of the Swedish company's premium subscribers (36 percent), with North America coming second at 25 percent.
Spotify contributes a few factors to its growth, including AI. "We consider ourselves the R&D department for the music industry. Our job is to understand new technologies quickly and capture their potential, which weve done time and again," Gustav Söderström, Co-CEO of Spotify, said in a statement. The entire industry stands to benefit from this [AI] paradigm shift but we believe those who embrace this change and move fast, will benefit the most. In late 2025, Spotify announced it would get rid of some of the AI "slop" on its platform and have "artist-first AI music products" though the specifics were very vague.
The company also claims that December's Spotify Wrapped was bigger than ever, with over 300 million engaged users and 630 million shares across 56 languages. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/spotify-now-has-more-than-750-million-monthly-users-124103630.html?src=rss
The House Judiciary Committee wants the US Department of Justice to turn over all its communications with both Apple and Google regarding the companies decisions to remove apps that shared information about sightings of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Several apps were removed from both Apples App Store and Googles Play Store in October. Politico reported that Raskin has contacted Attorney General Pam Bondi. The coercion and censorship campaign, which ultimately targets the users of ICE-monitoring applications, is a clear effort to silence this Administrations critics and suppress any evidence that would expose the Administrations lies, including its Orwellian attempts to cover up the murders of Renee and Alex, Raskin wrote to Bondi. Mat SmithThe biggest stories you might have missedThe iPhone 17e will reportedly bring some key upgrades without raising the priceHBO Max is finally coming to the UK and Ireland SpaceX is pivoting to focus on a Moon base before MarsHow to disable Rings creepy Search Party featureSay goodbye to AI-assisted mass surveillance for now.RINGRingRings Super Bowl ad showcased its Search Party feature, scaring the pants off anyone concerned about a mass surveillance state and, well, the state of everything at the moment. Search Party turns individual Ring devices into a surveillance network. Each camera uses AI to detect pets running within its field of view, and feeds are pooled to help identify lost animals. If it can handle pups, why not people? Heres how to disable it. Continue reading.Inside the Ive-designed interior of Ferraris luxe EVThe Luxurious Luce.FerrariFerrariOn a lighter note, consumer tech! Ferraris new car is no Apple Car. This is the Ferrari Luce (light in Italian), the actual name for the EV formerly known as Elettrica, and we (well, Tim Stevens) were lucky enough to get a walkthrough with Sir Jony Ive himself. Thats because the interior was designed by LoveFrom, founded by Ive after leaving Apple in 2019. OpenAI acquired the design firm for $6.5 billion, and while the company has had numerous projects, the Luce could be its biggest yet. Its filled with playful touches and a lot of, well, glass. If that tilting screen doesnt shout iPhone design, what does?Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-doj-may-face-investigation-over-removal-of-ice-agent-tracking-apps-121500737.html?src=rss
Waymo has gotten a step closer to offering robotaxi rides to the public in Nashville, Tennessee. The company the city and making sure they can operate as fully autonomous rides before launching a paid service in the location. Waymo announced that it was planning to bring its robotaxis to Nashville in September 2025, with the intention opening up rides to the public sometime this year. The company has been testing its technology in Nashville since then, but it has yet say when itll start accepting bookings for rides.The company conducts extensive testing in every new city before deploying its robotaxi service. It starts by having safety drivers map the area and then updating its software with information learned from those tests, since each city has its own driving rules and conditions. Despite its testing, Waymo has had to issue a software recall several times in the past after its vehicles malfunctioned when faced with real hazards on the road. Its vehicles were previously seeing hitting gates, chains, telephone poles and stationary vehicles. Most recently, it issued a recall because its robotaxis failed to stop for school buses.At the moment, Waymo vehicles are already open to the public in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Phoenix, as well as in Atlanta and Austin through a partnership with Uber. Its active in a lot more locations, including New York, New Orleans, Seattle and even Tokyo, Japan, but its not serving riders in those locations yet. Nashville is in the list of new locations where Waymo is conducting or planning to conduct driverless trials, along with Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Orlando, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, Washington and London, UK. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/waymos-vehicles-are-now-fully-driverless-in-nashville-120412343.html?src=rss
When a train disaster disrupts one of Europe's busiest corridors, what happens to airfares? In Spain, the answer became uncomfortably clear after the Adamuz rail accident sent flight prices soaring. The accident killed 46 people and knocked out the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed AVE line. Airline Iberia has now responded by capping economy fares on the route at EUR 99 per trip through February 19, a move it first applied to Madrid-Andalusia flights in January after the same accident made rail travel to cities like Málaga and Seville impossible. The airline operates up to 14 daily flights in each direction on the Madrid-Barcelona route, giving it significant capacity (and pricing power). Business class and Puente Aéreo fares remain untouched.As reported by El Periódico, the price cap didn't materialize in a vacuum. Spain's Consumer Affairs Minister Pablo Bustinduy announced that the government plans to impose mandatory price ceilings on alternative transport during infrastructure emergencies, calculated from the average fare in the month preceding the disruption. The goal, as Bustinduy put it, is to ensure "nobody can profit extraordinarily from an emergency or necessity."TREND BITEIberia's fare cap sits at the intersection of crisis response and brand strategy. When essential infrastructure fails, the companies that control alternatives face a binary choice: extract maximum value from captive demand, or demonstrate restraint and bank the reputational dividend. Iberia chose the latter. For brands operating in sectors where demand can spike overnight due to external shocks energy, logistics, travel, telecommunications the calculus is shifting. Voluntary restraint now buys goodwill and may stave off heavier-handed regulation later.
Another day, another wave of gaming layoffs. Today it's Riot Games with the announcement that it's cutting jobs on its pair-based fighting game 2XKO. For context, a representative from Riot confirmed to Game Developer that about 80 people are being cut, or roughly half of 2XKO's global development team. "As we expanded from PC to console, we saw consistent trends in how players were engaging with 2XKO," according to the blog post from executive producer Tom Cannon. "The game has resonated with a passionate core audience, but overall momentum hasnt reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term."The console launch for 2XKO happened last month. Cannon said the company's plans for its 2026 competitive season have not altered with the layoffs. He added that Riot will attempt to place the impacted people at new positions within the company where possible.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/riot-games-is-laying-off-half-of-the-2xko-development-team-215423279.html?src=rss
House Judiciary Committee member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has asked the US Department of Justice to turn over all its communications with both Apple and Google regarding the companies' decisions to remove apps that shared information about sightings of US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers. Several apps that allowed people to share information about where they had seen ICE members were removed from both Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store in October. Politico reported that Raskin has contacted Attorney General Pam Bondi on the issue and also questioned the agency's use of force against protestors as it executes the immigration policy set by President Donald Trump. "The coercion and censorship campaign, which ultimately targets the users of ICE-monitoring applications, is a clear effort to silence this Administrations critics and suppress any evidence that would expose the Administrations lies, including its Orwellian attempts to cover up the murders of Renee and Alex," Raskin wrote to Bondi. He refers to Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were both fatally shot by ICE agents. In the two separate incidents, claims made by federal leaders about the victims and the circumstances of their deaths were contradicted by eyewitnesses or camera footage, echoing violent interactions and lies about them that occurred while ICE conducted raids in Chicago several months ago. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/doj-may-face-investigation-for-pressuring-apple-google-to-remove-apps-for-tracking-ice-agents-212145181.html?src=rss
Users on ChatGPT's free and Go plans in the US may now start to see ads as OpenAI has started testing them in the chatbot. The company announced plans to bring ads to ChatGPT. At the time, the company said it would display sponsored products and services that are relevant to the current conversations of logged-in users, though they can disable personalization and "clear the data used for ads whenever they wish.Our goal is for ads to support broader access to more powerful ChatGPT features while maintaining the trust people place in ChatGPT for important and personal tasks, OpenAI wrote in a blog post. Were starting with a test to learn, listen and make sure we get the experience right.These ads will appear below at the bottom of chats. They're labeled and separated from ChatGPT's answers. Ads won't have an impact on ChatGPT's responses. Ads won't appear when users are conversing with ChatGPT about regulated or sensitive topics such as health, mental wellbeing or politics. Users aged under 18 won't see ads in ChatGPT during the tests either. Moreover, OpenAI says it won't share or sell users' conversations or data to advertisers. A source close to the company told CNBC that OpenAI expects ads to account for less than half of its revenue in the long run. Currently the company also takes a cut of items bought through its chatbot via the shopping integration feature. Also according to CNBC, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told staff on Friday that the company will deploy "an updated Chat model" this week.The tests come on the heels of Anthropic running Super Bowl ads that poked fun at OpenAI for introducing advertising. Anthropic's spot asserted that while ads are coming to AI, they wont appear in its own chatbot, Claude.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-starts-testing-ads-in-chatgpt-191756493.html?src=rss
Ring aired a Super Bowl ad touting its Search Party feature that didn't quite get the intended buzz. Instead, the commercial scared the pants off of anyone concerned about a mass surveillance state.
The feature is advertised as a way to reunite missing dogs with their owners, a noble cause indeed, but Search Party does this by turning individual Ring devices into a surveillance network. Each camera uses AI to identify pets running across its field of vision and all feeds are pooled together to potentially identify lost animals. I've never seen a slope quite so slippery, as the technology could easily be rejiggered to track people.
Government: how can we get Americans to accept constant surveillance?Ring: PuppiesAmericans: PUPPIES!!!!!! mark david (@M___D____M_____) February 9, 2026
It's also worth noting that this isn't a new feature. Search Party was first announced last year. In that time it has been used to find 99 lost dogs in 90 days of use, according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Approximately ten million pets go missing in America each year. Many people aren't keen on helping to create a surveillance state for a tool with what looks to be around a 0.005 percent success rate. That percentage is sure to rise with mass adoption, but you get the jist.
With that said, many Ring users are looking for a way to disable the feature, as it's enabled by default. Engadget has got you covered.
How to Disable Search Party
Thankfully, this is fairly easy to do. Just open the Ring app and tap the menu in the top-left corner. Next, select Control Center. Then, tap Search Party and toggle the settings to Disable for both Search for Lost Pets and Natural Hazards. Repeat this process for each camera.
PSA: If the Ring search party commercial weirded you out during the Super Bowl, it is very easy to turn off1. In the menu, go to Control Center2. Scroll down to Search Party3. Go into whichever options are available in your area (not pictured)4. Tap the blue icon to turn off pic.twitter.com/L3qaxu2pJQ Nick Veronica (@NickVeronica) February 9, 2026
There has also been some confusion as to what Ring will share with law enforcement agencies. If you want to go a step further, delete all of your saved videos by tapping the History icon and then "Delete All."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/heres-how-to-disable-rings-creepy-search-party-feature-185420455.html?src=rss
YouTube is launching YouTube TV Plans this week, after revealing the program back in December. These are genre-specific subscription packages that let users opt into a curated version of the service and save a few bucks in the process. Yeah. It's pretty much cable, proving you can't cut a cord if it's made out of invisible radio waves.
There more than ten plans available and they are all cheaper than the typical asking price of $83 per month. There's a Sports Plan that costs $65 per month and includes channels like FS1, NBC Sports Network and all of the ESPN networks. Subscribers will pay $72 per month to add some news channels like CNN and CSPAN to the sports package.
The Entertainment Plan costs $55 per month and includes networks like Bravo, Comedy Central, FX and the Food Network, among many others. There's a beefier version of this that costs $70 per month and adds in family channels like the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, along with news channels.
Signing up for one of these plans still provides various perks of a standard YouTube TV subscription. These include unlimited DVR, multiview and the ability to add up to six members on one account. Of course, those with deep pockets can spring for some premium add-ons like HBO Max, 4K Plus and the NFL Sunday Ticket.
YouTube
Some plans are rolling out later in the week, but YouTube says it could take "several weeks" for every plan to become available. New customers receive a discount for the first three months, which is worth looking into.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/youtube-tv-launches-curated-subscription-packages-this-week-170710000.html?src=rss
Apple's USB-C Magic Mouse is back on sale for about $11 off its usual retail price of $79. At $68, that's a savings of 14 percent for one of Apple's best accessories from a company that does not often run sales.
The multi-touch mouse was first released in 2009 with a modest refresh released in 2015 and the addition of a USB-C port in 2024. The rechargeable mouse features gesture controls and automatically pairs with your Mac when connected via USB. The Magic Mouse can also be used with an iPad via Bluetooth, or with a Windows PC, though in that case, functionality would be limited.
Famously, Jony Ive's design of the Magic Mouse sees its charge port on the underside of the body, rendering it unusable while charging. In 2024 there were rumors of a more comprehensive redesign coming but nothing has materialized since.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-magic-mouse-drops-to-only-68-152708721.html?src=rss
