Subscribing to a news organization helps support quality journalism, but getting subscriptions set up can be a pain. You've got to manage logins and payment methods for everything separately, and not all operations have the resources to manage a subscription service on their own. That's where Subscribe with Google comes in. This new service lets you sign up for subscriptions on news websites via your Google account.
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For many people, YouTube is their primary source for music. The release of YouTube Red a few years back made the listening experience better by ditching the ads. It also includes some non-music video content. Then there's Play Music, which includes Red. Now, Google's Lyor Cohen says in a talk at SXSW that his team is preparing a YouTube Music streaming service. Okay...
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It's common to open the Play Store client on your phone and then immediately zip over to the "My apps & games" section via the navigation menu. What about subscriptions, though? Google is apparently adding that as a navigation item for some people right below the app shortcut. That's faster access for those with subscriptions and a reminder that subscriptions are a thing for those who don't.
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Last year, there was a rumor that Google was going to follow Apple's footsteps and improve its subscription revenue split with providers by only deducting 15% instead of 30% for distribution and miscellaneous fees. At the time, Recode was optimistic that Google would make the change universal, so that any time a user subscribed to something, the provider would only lose 15% in fees.
We didn't hear anything about this until now, thanks to a bunch of changes published on the Google Developers Blog. There, we learned that subscription revenue sharing with be lowered from 30% to 15%, but unlike last year's hopeful rumor and much like Apple's terms, they will only apply for users retained after 12 months.
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Today the popular paid email app Newton Mail for Android was updated with a new feature called Tidy Inbox. Much like Google's Inbox, it automatically sorts emails into categories. That way insignificant messages from social media or promotional subscriptions don't bother you, but you are still notified of important content. Coupled with Newton Mail's extensive application integration, the new tool is sure to boost productivity.
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Version 7.3 of the Google app began rolling out to users in the beta channel earlier today. There are a few odd little changes to be found poking around in the UI, like a new menu shortcut on many of the Assistant settings screens that leads to the Activity Controls settings, but it's all pretty innocuous. We'll surely see more significant features going live as Google activates them remotely over the coming weeks™. Nevertheless, there are some interesting things to be found during the course of a teardown.
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Amazon has been selling Prime subscriptions for years, but Amazon has to, like, do stuff for you when you're a Prime member. Wouldn't it be nice if Amazon could sell subscriptions for other companies and get a piece of the action? Well, that's the new "Subscribe with Amazon" in a nutshell. It's a marketplace where Dropbox, The New Yorker, Sling TV, and many other entities are now selling monthly subscriptions.
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If were lucky enough to have cable TV back in the 90s (and you were around the right age and/or state of mind) you probably remember countless hours of Cartoon Network. The fledgling channel was nothing less than a classical education in the golden age of Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera shows. Eventually Cartoon Network filled up with its own original programming, but the classic shorts and Saturday morning cartoons moved over to a sister channel, Boomerang, which is still showing off the good stuff. Cord cutters don't get access to Boomerang, but that's about to change.
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Pandora has been streaming music for longer than many of the top streaming services, but it's always gone about things differently. Pandora is based on radio stations rather than specific tracks. Today, Pandora is deploying a new version of its service that's more in-line with competing options. For $10 per month, you can pick songs instead of trusting that the radio station won't stink.
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Google announced a couple weeks ago that billing for Google Drive would move over to the Play Store subscription system. At the time it said this would happen sometime in January, but it looks like it's already live for some people. Time to check your Google Play account page.
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