Several music services are starting to spin some new beats.
I'm Bridget Carey.
This is your CNET update.
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As the year wraps up, several changes are coming to your favorite streaming music services.
For starters, Pandora and other Internet radio broadcasters are gonna have to pay 20% more in royalties To the music copyright holders and artists.
But it's not a huge price hike.
It's really just 0.0017 cents per song strained.
And a [UNKNOWN] pays 0.0014 cents of song.
Now one if the issues with streaming online is that services like Pandora have to pay out more royalties than a traditional radio station.
Pandora's CEO says the company can work with the new rates, and the free service is making some other changes too.
Just recently, it launched a station called Thumbprint Radio.
Where it takes everything is ever light with a thumbs up and mashes it all into one playlist.
It also adds some new music based on the tunes you like.
This is similar to something RDO used to have but Last month, Pandora bought up some of the assets of rdio for $75 million dollars and rdio is shutting down next week on Tuesday, December 22nd.
But if you're a Spotify user, there's a tool that can import your rdio playlist to Spotify.
Now, Spotify is also adding some new features to stay Fresh.
Apps for iPhone and Android now have a feature called Spotify Party, which serves up a mix of music for a party, and you can adjust the mood based on the type of party you're having.
These playlists are made by so-called music experts and you can find this in the Genres and Moods area in the Browse Section.
Of course, you could have made your own party playlist before, but now Spotify is helping you make one.
It's a way to compete with other services that have preset party playlists.
And this is the key focus around the free service Songza, which created specialized playlists based on moods or activities.
Songza was purchased by Google, and it's now shutting down at the end of January.
But every single playlist will still live on inside Google Play Music.
And, yes, you can still stream for free.
That's it for this tech news update, and there's always more at Cnet.com.
From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
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