music – PSafe Blog

How Clutter Can Slow Down Your Phone Without You Knowing It

PSafe Newsroom — Sun, 22 Oct 2017 22:00:01 +0000

Ever wonder why your phone runs slower, even when you close all your apps? The answer is simple: you have too much clutter on your phone. If there is so much junk bogging your processor down, where is it, though? In this case, the clutter is deep in your Android’s hard drive. Click here to use quick cleanup to remove useless junk files, temporary files, cache, and trash that are taking up too much storage space on your phone and slowing it down:

The Issue with Temporary Files and Cache Files
Even after you close your apps, the seeds that were planted during their usage are still on the hard drive, in two key ways. The first involves temporary files. Every short-term function during the usage of your Android apps uses temporary files, whether to store a previous version of your app, a new update, or records of any changes during the app’s usage. When you close the app, all the temporary files are deleted (depending on how the app was designed), only to create more the next time you open the app.

Temporary files can slow your processor and drain your battery if the app is left on in the background. However, after the app is closed, there are still pieces of clutter building in your hard drive. These files are not temporary, and while essential to the app’s function, they do not delete themselves. These files are called cache files, and they may be the reason your Android is running slow.

Every time your apps need to store long-term information, like backups and other pieces of information they will need on a later date, they store them into a cache file. However, with every new usage of the app, cache files stack on top of outdated cache files, and the pile builds until your hard drive is stuffed with useless cache junk.

Since cache files cannot be accessed through your phone, they can be difficult to find. There are many ways to delete your outdated cache files without having to go through your hard drive file by file. Simply use quick cleanup on your Android to delete the outdated temporary and cache files from the nooks and crannies of your phone’s hard drive.

After getting rid of all of your junk files, you will notice significant changes to your Android’s hard drive. You will have to run quick cleanup every once in a while to keep your phone running smoothly; cache builds up every once in a while. Just be sure to make your Android run faster by deleting your phone’s clutter.

How Much Space Does Music Downloaded from Spotify Take Up?

PSafe Newsroom — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 00:00:29 +0000

The bottom line is that files and apps can take up a lot of space on your phone. For many avid music-listeners, this may also include thousands of songs, depending on how much space you have on your phone. There are solutions to this inevitable reality of a lack of storage space, if you value the convenience of downloaded music and do not feel like paying hundreds of dollars in fees. Use the Quick Cleanup feature to clean up your phone so that you can dedicate more space to music. Click here to use clean up your files now:

In this day and age, gigabyte storage on your phone is king. You may use up those precious gigabytes of storage for text messages, photos, and beyond. But your phone also collects a lot of junk files, temporary files, cache, and trash over time. Quick Cleanup will quickly remove all of these useless files from your phone so that you have more room for music files.

Long gone are the days of portable MP3 players and portable CD players separate from cell phones. There is no need to pull out a disc or any other hardware other than your phone. Further, for many people, streaming services are ever-growing in popularity. Unfortunately, streaming songs off of the Internet eats cellular data, which could eventually lead to exorbitant fees at the end of the month for anyone who does not have an unlimited data phone plan.

Luckily, Spotify Premium allows users to download songs to their phone for added convenience. There is no buffer time or lag, and it has the potential to save users a lot of money long term on cellular data. However, songs do take up space on your phone, but the added convenience outweighs any qualms; you could even add your downloaded music to an external SD card, which will save you even more space on your phone.

The question about how much space downloading songs from Spotify takes up varies depending on a few factors. Primarily, this depends on the quality of the content you are downloading. Premium users have multiple options, but individual songs can take up nearly 10 MB of space on your phone. On the low end, they can take up around 3 MB per song. That seriously adds up and could theoretically dampen your experience with your phone due to a lack of free space.

For most music listeners, the convenience and cost-effectiveness of downloading songs makes it more than worth it. It is OK to sacrifice the storage space on your phone, particularly if you are smart about it.

How Many MP3 Files Do You Keep on Your Phone?

PSafe Newsroom — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 14:00:20 +0000

Now that smartphones can perform an incredible number of functions, there’s not really a reason to buy or carry around other devices, such as mp3 players or e-readers. After all, you can download books and music to your phone. One downside to this practice is that these files can take up a lot of space on your phone. If you want to make more room on your phone for music files, photos, videos, and books, use Quick Cleanup to remove junk files that are taking up too much storage space on your device:

DFNDR’s Quick Cleanup feature will instantly remove all junk files, trash, cache, and temporary files from your internal storage and SD card to free up space on your phone. That way, you won’t have to take the time to delete these files manually from each app on your device. It’s a quick way to create more room on your phone for the files that you really want, such as more apps, music files, photos, and videos.

How Many mp3 Files Can You Keep on Your Phone?

The amount of mp3 files and other files that you can store on your device largely depends on the age and specs of your phone. Older smartphones typically have very little internal storage space (8GB to 16GB), and the ability to hold very little external storage space (as little as 32GB). In comparison, many newer smartphone models now come with 32GB to 64GB of internal storage, and microSD card expansion up to 256GB — that’s a lot of space for music, photos, videos, and books.

What Are The Pros to Storing mp3 files on Your Phone?

Regardless of how much space you have on your device, storing mp3 files on your phone can be very convenient. You’ll still be able to listen to music even if you don’t have an Internet connection, and the task will take up very little of your phone’s battery in comparison to streaming music. While streaming music may be a fine practice when you have a Wi-Fi connection, streaming music without Wi-Fi can use up a lot of your data.

The Cons?

If you have an older smartphone, then you likely won’t be able to store that many mp3 files on your phone. Plus, your mp3 files have to compete with your apps, photos, videos, and other files for storage space. In order to make sure your phone doesn’t run out of room, you may want to keep a select number of your favorite songs on your phone, or else change your playlists now and then. For many users, this might be an undesirable practice — they may prefer to use their data to stream music.

The Best Music Downloading Apps for Android

PSafe Newsroom — Sat, 29 Apr 2017 19:00:18 +0000

It can be hard to choose your favorite music streaming app, but once you do, you’re hooked — at least for a while, anyway, until you’re onto the next best app. Sometimes, though, you want to download music to your phone. Luckily, there are quite a few alternatives to downloading music from the Play store.

If you want to download your favorite songs — legally and often for free — check out one of these music downloading apps below. One of these apps may just become your new favorite music app. At the very least, you won’t have to worry about a strong Wi-Fi connection for streaming when you’re downloading music to your device.

Pure Volume

If musicians want to gain more publicity for their music, they can offer free downloads of their songs on PureVolume. Pure Volume helps you discover these under-the-radar artists by featuring songs, displaying top downloads, and noting popular and new albums. Plus, you can download MP3 songs without even creating a Pure Volume account.

SoundClick

SoundClick is a popular website because it gives users a directory of free music downloads from artists’ personal websites. These are artists who are giving away their music for free, but without SoundClick, you might not know all the artists who offer these free tracks. SoundClick also lets you search through music charts and genres for free downloads. You can also create custom radio stations of your music or download paid songs, too.

Jamendo

The free downloads on Jamendo are legal because the songs are available through Creative Commons. That means that the musicians themselves release their music. Jamendo helps you find unknown musicians whose music you might like through their radio channels. If you like a song, you can then download it. You can also search for new music by browsing through Jamendo’s popular downloads, new releases, and popular songs.

ARTISTdirect

Not every song available through ARTISTdirect is free, but you can find plenty of free music to download. However, the app does have pages of free music in multiple genres. Otherwise, ARTISTdirect also has streaming music to listen to, as well.

NoiseTrade

If you want to download an artist’s whole album, NoiseTrade is the place to do it. Again, artists provide their albums here, so they’re free and legal to download. NoiseTrade is an appealing place for them since users who download their music can tip the artists or promote their favorite new musicians to their friends.

Spotify Launches First Episode of Its Own Original Podcast

PSafe Newsroom — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 16:00:03 +0000

Starting in late February, Spotify began streaming their new original podcast series, Showstopper, which was quickly followed by a second series, Unpacked. Spotify’s third project, The Chris Lighty Story (the working title), is soon to follow, with a premiere date sometime in April.

The first series, hosted by The Fader’s Editor in Chief, Naomi Zeichner, narrows in on the process behind music selection in today’s most popular TV shows. Three episodes have been released thus far, featuring interviews with the music supervisors from Girls, The OC, and Being Mary Jane. The podcast covers everything from lyrics to soundtrack decisions (based on current pop culture and political movements). Zeichner and her guests dive into the intricacies involved in creating a momentous scene on TV with music choices, especially when it comes to featuring artists and songs that can make or break the mood of the moment.

Unpacked, meanwhile, takes on the country’s biggest music festivals, with hosts Matt FX (Broad City’s music supervisor) and Michele Santucci (of Spotify Studios) traveling around the country to interview the creative minds behind festivals like South by Southwest. The Chris Lighty Story will focus on the music industry executive and his part in building the careers of hip hop’s lauded figures LL Cool J, 50 Cent, Missy Elliott, Foxy Brown, and Puff Daddy. The podcast will deal with a range of issues, from Chris Lighty’s own tumultuous path, to the rise of hip hop and the consequences of success.

These projects are the products of partnerships with Panoply Studios (involved in producing Showstopper and Unpacked) and Gimlet Media and Loudspeakers Network (responsible for The Chris Lighty Show). The first two podcasts will be streamed exclusively on Spotify, while The Chris Lighty Show will appear on other platforms just 8 weeks after its release.

Spotify’s objective is to provide opportunities for podcasts to reach the platform’s diverse audience pool, according to an interview between Nieman Lab’s Nicholas Quah and Spotify’s Dossie McCraw. McCraw, who is the company’s head of podcasts, claims that Spotify will be able to help podcast publishers with “creative, marketing, and event production support,” hoping to tap into users’ vested interest in music, music history, and key figures in the development of the industry.

This move comes at an interesting time, as companies like Apple, Pandora, and Spotify are all competing to provide fresh, accessible content to their music-streaming users in novel ways. It will be interesting to see how these platforms progress and evolve as they vie for wider audiences and new angles for streaming opportunities.

Is Snapchat About to Enter the Music World?

PSafe Newsroom — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 18:00:04 +0000

There’s no doubt that Snapchat has risen to the top of the social media kingdom. It’s now common to see live videos of Snap users at concerts, performances, or even just listening to music on their own. Actors and musicians, too, have taken advantage of the platform. Music has become an integral part of the platform’s participation in people’s everyday lives, documenting their most exciting (or mundane) moments in quick 10-second bytes that disappear after 24 hours.

Snapchat’s Musical Partnership
However, even within the past few months, Snapchat’s involvement in the music industry has strengthened. In December, the company announced their integration with one of the world’s most popular apps, Shazam. This allowed users to open the camera and film their surroundings while identifying the song that’s playing in the background. Snapchat users were able to discover new music and share it with friends easily, while promoting new artists and records at the same time.

Snapchat Previews New Songs
Snapchat has taken the relationship with the music industry one step further by creating Snap filters which feature exclusive new music, sometimes even before the songs have been released (with the artist’s permission, of course). The first lens filter that had music in the background sampled the song “Now and Later” by Sage the Gemini. This resulted in Sage the Gemini gaining over 4 million followers on Spotify. More recently, Ed Sheeran turned to Snapchat to give a brief 30-second preview of a new song; this, too, was only available for a weekend before it disappeared.

A Personal Touch
Artists and producers alike have taken to the Snapchat model, as it doesn’t breach any licensing laws and has no threat of piracy, unlike YouTube or Facebook where the content is uploaded “forever.” Furthermore, because of the personal touch of filming from an individual’s perspective (without character limits), fans can access exclusive events like the VMAs through what feels like a candid lens. Music videos and performances were uploaded directly for millions of viewers to watch instantaneously, without editing or special effects.

The Future of Snapchat
Many artists and DJs also have their own Snapchat accounts, which allows them to market themselves in an open way. As Snapchat continues to grow from their partnerships with other creative enterprises, it’s quite probable that more song previews and exclusive premieres will continue to be showcased on the app — even if only for a few hours.

Google’s Security Patch Improves Pixel’s Audio Issues

PSafe Newsroom — Sat, 25 Mar 2017 14:00:55 +0000

Sound quality is undoubtedly an important component in a handheld device, especially since we now use our phones like we use computers. We listen to music, watch videos and movies, and use various apps that require audio. That’s why it can be disappointing if we buy a new smartphone and the audio quality isn’t as impressive as the rest of the device. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened to consumers that purchased the Pixel and Pixel XL.

In recent months, Google’s patented Pixel products have received backlash for a major flaw in the listening experience. Thankfully, Google has taken necessary measures to fix this issue in select devices. The issues had primarily affected the Pixel and Pixel XL models. Users had previously complained about the surprising drop in sound quality in the Google Pixel, especially when the audio was turned up to the highest level. It also affected the sound quality of sound-centric apps, such as video services and instrument apps. Devices would struggle to maintain sound at an elevated volume, and the sound would fade in and out with harsh feedback at higher volumes.

Luckily, Google released a security patch update for Pixel devices in order to fix their sound issues. After downloading this update, Pixel users reported an improvement in sound quality at the highest setting; the crackling, static noises the phone emitted previously have since disappeared. The company released a bulletin noting which problems were brought to their attention, and the steps they took to address them. The solution was only reserved for those that followed through with updating their Pixel or Pixel XL, but Google has expanded their security rectifications to Nexus models experiencing similar issues.

It should be noted that other problems were fixed with the new security patch. Although the privacy and security of users were never in imminent danger, keeping every component of protection intact was a priority for Google in the manufacturing of this download. It is recommended that Google fans and Pixel users get the download on their device as soon as possible, to jumpstart a higher quality experience.

Smartphone users should regularly check their personal devices for updates, especially security updates. There are various levels of security a patch can possess, and understanding the level a patch is on can facilitate optimal protection for Pixel users and beyond. This ensures the protection of different tiers of vulnerability that specific devices can be susceptible to.

Introducing: LG’s Tone Studio Headphones

PSafe Newsroom — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 16:00:29 +0000

One of the biggest pains about playing music on your phone is getting your music to start playing right when you plug in your headphones. Luckily, automatic play is one of LG’s Tone Studio headphones’ built-in features, along with several other cool features that make their new product worth checking out. The following will answer a few of your most pressing questions about the new headphones.

What’s the deal with having both earbuds and speakers?

Essentially, these are “headphones” that sit around your neck, so as to leave your ears free. The headphones come with four speakers. Two speakers, responsible for high and middle-range notes, are on top of the neckband, while the two bottom speakers are for the bass notes.

It might sound annoying to listen to neck speakers when you’re out in public, and the Tone Studio headphones have a remedy for that: you can pull out the connected earbuds from the neckband and use them like you would other headphones. Still, for those who may have trouble hearing or else find traditional headphones to be uncomfortable, these could be a great option at home for watching movies or listening to music.

Are they easy to use?

All you have to do is connect your headphones to a Bluetooth-enabled device to make the headphones start working. That’s all the setup; there’s nothing left to do. You can also connect the headphones easily to a laptop or other non-Bluetooth-enabled device with a 3.5mm cable and the Tone Studio jack. Using this physical connection also improves the sound quality.

OK, but how about the sound quality?

The sound quality is good, particularly for Bluetooth headphones. For those of you who buy headphones to drown out rackets, these headphones are for you. Some tech aficionados also suggest that the headphones do a fine imitation of surround sound.

Are there any issues with the sound quality?

Bass-lovers might take issue with the limited bass available with these headphones. If a thumping bass is what you’re looking for, you might not want to get personal speakers like these anyway.

How much will a pair of these headphones run me?

The latest version of Tone Studio headphones aren’t available yet, so the price for these headphones is still currently unknown. However, most sources suggest that the headphones will be priced from $220 to $240 when they’re released. LG suggests that they’ll be shipping out the first batch come March of this year.

Spotify is Available for Free, but at What Expense?

PSafe Newsroom — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 20:06:58 +0000

Spotify, the world’s most popular music streaming service, just suffered a major security crisis. A staggering number of music lovers reported that the freemium streaming service was allowing malware-infested ads to reach its users. Reports posted to Spotify’s company forum stated that running Spotify Free on a desktop was causing browsers to open malicious websites without approval from users.

The problem initially came to the attention of the company after Spotify subscribers took to Twitter to report on suspicious behavior happening on laptops and computers while the streaming service was open on browsers, citing that the service’s ads were filled with links to malware. Others reported that the infected ads opened at regular and frequent intervals without the user’s input. While it was initially believed to be a problem endemic only to Windows 10, it appears that Spotify’s malware woes extended to computers running on Ubuntu and MacOS as well.

As surprising and discomforting as this news may be to subscribers of the popular streaming service, Spotify has actually dealt with similar problems in the past. In 2011, the company experienced the exact same issue, with customers complaining that advertisements were opening and running malware on their computers. Spotify went on to swiftly resolve the issue, but not before issuing a public apology to those affected by the incident.

As of October 6th, Spotify employees tracked the source of the malware down to a single advertisement, which, according to Spotify representatives, has been removed and is no longer a security risk to free Spotify subscribers. Still, even with the problem identified and seemingly solved, this is far from reassuring news, given that of the service’s 100 million users across the globe, about 60% of them subscribe to the free tier.

While this most recent security gaffe has since been fixed by the Spotify development team, and they are currently monitoring activity on the free edition of Spotify in the event that any issues persist, it’s understandable for some to want to take extra precautions to ensure their safety, privacy, and well-being online. If you’re willing to sink a few dollars into your music service a month, upgrading to the ad-free Spotify service would prevent you from receiving unwanted and potentially dangerous advertising from them in the future. However, there are effective steps you can take to remain safe if you do decide to keep the free Spotify service.

If you elect to keep the free version of Spotify, the easiest way to prevent any future malicious ads from infiltrating your devices is to download PSafe Total and PSafe Total Windows. PSafe Total’s antivirus software scans your device 24/7 to detect and remove threats. With the app installed, you can carefreely listen to the free version of Spotify, knowing that PSafe will immediately detect any dangerous ads or threats. As an added bonus, PSafe Total will also optimize your computer or phone’s speed so that Spotify songs don’t lag!

How to Make an Awesome Playlist on Pandora

PSafe Newsroom — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 18:17:51 +0000

Pandora is an excellent way to access a variety of music. With the platform, you can tailor stations to your liking. In fact, Pandora allows you to make a perfect radio station that suits your interests. Plus, you can allow Pandora to play other bands you might like that are similar to your interests. Here are a few ways you can get the optimal experience from Pandora.

Variety is the Spice of Life
Stations can become awfully monotonous if you only have one genre of music rotating. This repetitiveness is going to make you get bored of the station very quickly. Thus, adding different genres will allow the Pandora station to diversify the style of your music. If you do not want Pandora to mix up your music genres, then you can uncheck the “add variety” button in settings.

Be Selective with the Songs You Like
When you upvote every single song you like, then Pandora will play songs that are related to those genres. This can get out of hand, as the range of genres will become so broad that your station won’t be unique anymore. While it is important to diversify your playlist, making it too heterogeneous is just as bad. Finding a happy medium is imperative to having a solid station.

Skip Responsibly
You are only allowed six skips per hour. Don’t abuse this privilege, or you will be stuck listening to awful songs. Allocate these skips throughout the hour so you can skip the songs you absolutely can’t stand. Only allowing yourself one skip per ten minutes will allow you to efficiently use your skips.

I’m Tired of This Track
There’s always that one song that radio stations play over and over again, all day. Pandora has a feature called “I’m Tired of This Track” that allows you to temporarily remove a song from the station. To access this feature, hold your mouse over the album cover presented on the station. There should be an up arrow that appears. Next, there should be an option called “I’m Tired of This Track.” Clicking this will tell Pandora to hold off on playing the song for a while.