While the highly-anticipated headset is still a ways away, a designer has created a conceptual Spotify interface for the Apple Vision Pro and it looks absolutely stunning. With three panels filling your entire periphery, Kyuna Petrova’s Spotify UI lets you browse music, view album art, set your queue, see artist info, and play/pause/seek music all at once. The interface also features the signature blurred glass background that changes hues with your environment, creating an immersive app experience that feels incredibly real and within your palm’s reach!
Designer: Kyuna Petrova
Petrova’s Spotify UI for spatial computing is quite different from Spotify’s own desktop computing interface. The larger display in virtual reality offers much more visual real estate for digital assets. The entire UI can be split into four blurred glass canvases – one taskbar on the left, one control bar at the bottom, a main canvas for browsing music, and another for displaying the album art of the active song along with the artist bio. This is an extension of Spotify’s desktop app/website but with just more meat in the sauce. The result breaks the boundaries of the traditional rectangular display, creating something much more immersive.
While the interface doesn’t have a ‘dark mode’, the blurred glass instinctively shifts hues depending on your environment. In a well-lit space, the UI stays light, but in a darker area, it transforms into a dark UI that’s high on contrast and just glorious to look at. It’s a shame Petrova didn’t show what the app looks like when resized, but I imagine the album art and playback control bar take center stage. I’d also love to see immersive visualizations that fill your environment with psychedelic dynamic art as the music plays too. After all, why would I want to stare at a living room when I could look at responsive motion graphics that dance to my music?!
Your college years can be some of the best of your life, but we know it can be tough to enjoy them when you’re scrounging every dollar for textbooks, food and (if you’re lucky) the occasional outing with friends. Money is tight when you’re a student, and that financial stress can be compounded by the reality of having to stay on top of your studies.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s student discounts. Many companies offer their products and apps for less to those struggling through lectures, writing term papers and studying for finals. We’ve compiled a list of the best deals you can get on useful services, along with some things you’ll enjoy in your down time. Just keep in mind that most of these offers require you to prove your status as a student either by signing up with your .edu email address or providing some form of student identification.
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Engadget
Amazon Prime Student
If you’re not piggybacking off of your parents’ Amazon Prime account, you can have the subscription for less while you’re in school. College students can get Prime Student for free for six months, then it costs only $7.49 per month after that. That comes out to about $90 per year, and the membership includes the same perks as regular Prime does, including free two-day shipping, free same-day delivery in select areas, and access to the entire Prime Video library.
While it doesn’t offer a specific student discount, Best Buy has Student Deals that you can sign up to receive. Aside from proving your student status, the only requirement is for you to be a My Best Buy member; that program is free to enroll in. We actually recommend that most people sign up for My Best Buy because some items, especially during site-wide sales, will be even cheaper for members. All student deals will appear in the Member Offers page in your account.
Apple offers some deals to students and educators in the form of knocking down the prices of its most popular laptops and tablets. There isn’t a flat percentage rate across all products; the discounts vary by device. For example, right now students can get a MacBook Air M1 starting at $899, which is $100 less than the normal starting price, and the iPad Pros start at $749, which represents a $50 discount. These are decent savings if you must have a brand new Apple product, but those with tighter budgets should also consider Apple’s refurb program. Also for 2022, students can get up to a $150 gift card and 20 percent off AppleCare when they purchase a qualifying Mac or iPad.
Much like Apple, Samsung doesn't offer a blanket discount across all of its products for students. But you can save depending on what you're looking to buy. For example, you can save hundreds on the latest Galaxy S22 smartphones, and the discount will be deeper if you have a handset to trade in. On the laptop-and-tablet side of things, you can get a Galaxy Chromebook 2 for as low as $350 or a Galaxy Tab S8+ for. as low as $200.
Microsoft also provides students and educators with up to 10 percent off its gadgets, including the already affordable Surface Go 2 and the Surface Headphones 2. And Microsoft’s online store doesn’t only sell Surface devices: You can also find Windows PCs from Lenovo, HP, Acer and others there at discounted prices.
Spotify Premium’s student plan gives you a lot for only $5 per month. Besides access to millions of songs, it also includes Hulu’s ad-supported tier and Showtime’s ad-free service. You’d spend roughly $27 a month if you paid for all three separately at their full prices, making this student offer one of the best you can get.
Pandora also offers students its Premium membership for $5 per month. Pandora’s offering doesn’t include any additional services, but you do get an ad-free experience, personalized music, unlimited skips and unlimited offline play. Plus, you’ll get 60 days of free use before your payments kick in.
Apple also slashes 50 percent off its Apple Music subscription for students, bringing it down to $5 per month. The offer is available for up to 48 months so you can enjoy the rate for the entirety of your college experience. What’s more, the company bundles Apple TV+ in this student offer, so you can watch Apple originals like Ted Lasso and Severance.
Paramount+’s student discount knocks 25 percent off the Essentials monthly plan, so you’ll end up paying around $3.75 per month for access to the service’s content with limited commercials. With this subscription, you can watch shows like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, South Park, RuPaul’s Drag Race and more, but just keep in mind that this particular plan doesn’t include access to your local CBS station.
Discovery+ knocks 40 percent off monthly plans for students, so you can get access for only $3 per month. You’ll pay for the Ad-Lite plan, so there will still be commercials to sit through, but you can get that discounted rate for as long as you are an enrolled student.
Tidal provides student discounts on both of its streaming services: Premium and Hi-Fi. Premium drops to $5 per month, down from $10, while Hi-Fi costs $10 per month, down from $20. Tidal is still often overshadowed by Spotify and Apple Music, but these discounts are a good way to give it a try without spending too much money.
College students can sign up for Hulu’s ad-supported plan for only $2 per month. That’s $4 less than the normal price and a great deal considering all of the content that Hulu has to offer (think: The Handmaid’s Tale, Grey’s Anatomy, Rick & Morty and more). Yes, you have to deal with commercials, but it’s a small price to pay to binge-watch shows like Brooklyn Nine Nine, which can provide a much-needed laugh when you’re drowning in coursework.
If you’re already spending a lot of time watching YouTube, you may have a better experience with YouTube Premium. The Student plan cuts nearly 50 percent off the price so you’ll pay $7 per month for ad-free video viewing, background play, video downloads and access to YouTube Premium Music. The latter is YouTube’s attempt at a Spotify/Apple Music competitor, but it has a long way to go before it can really hold a candle to those services. However, if you listen to most of your music via YouTube already, Premium could be your one-stop-shop for music and video streaming.
Being a student is stressful even in the best of times, but now it’s even more difficult to concentrate and find peace. Headspace is just one of many meditation and mindfulness apps available that can help with that, but it stands apart with an excellent student discount: $10 for the entire year, or $60 less than a normal annual membership. In addition to a large library of meditation lessons and routines to follow, Headspace recently added SleepCasts, a collection of soothing voices reading bedtime stories to help you fall asleep, as well as “mindful” workout routines.
You’re probably using Adobe products if you’re studying anything related to digital art or design. Adobe Creative Cloud is the industry standard in this space but the entire suite of programs is quite expensive at $53 per month. Thankfully, Adobe has education pricing for students that drops the entire creative suite to $20 per month for the first year. That includes the big programs like Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC along with Lightroom CC, Premiere Pro CC, Adobe XD and more.
After your first year, the monthly cost increases to $30 per month. While not ideal, it’s still more affordable for students than it is for industry professionals. If you’re not tied to Adobe programs, you might also consider Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher apps from Serif ($50 each for the Mac or Windows versions), which compete with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, respectively.
Regardless of whether you’re studying music production, students can get 40 percent off Ableton Live Standard or Suite for as long as they are enrolled full-time. That brings Live 11 Standard down to $269 and Suite down to $449 — great discounts on some of the best music software available right now.
Many students have to use Microsoft 365 tools on the regular. If your college or university doesn’t provide you with an account, you can still get Microsoft 365 for free by taking advantage of the company’s student and educator discount. This gives you access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and even Microsoft Teams free of charge, which is a solid deal considering an annual subscription costs $100.
Spending all day and night writing papers is even more frustrating when you don’t have all your writing organized in one place. Ulysses is a popular writing app for mac/iOS that can be used for note taking as well as thesis writing, with features like auto-save and auto-backup, word-count writing goals, markup, plain text support and DropBox integration. Normally, Ulysses costs $40 per year but students can get it for only $12 every six months, or $24 per year. There isn’t a direct alternative for Windows users, but you do have options including Scrivener (a one-time student price of $41.65), IA Writer (a $20 one-time price) and FocusWriter (free and open-source).
Evernote can be an indispensable tool if you like to keep all of your thoughts in one place — everything from class notes to web clippings to to-do lists. Students can get half off one year of Evernote Premium, which brings the price down to $4 per month or $48 for the year. Premium is the way to go if you’re investing in Evernote because it syncs your notes across unlimited devices, gives you offline access, lets you annotate PDFs and search saved documents.
Notion provides students and educators its Personal Pro plan for free just by signing up with a valid .edu email address. While the free version of the service has a ton of features, the Pro plan adds unlimited pages and blocks, file uploads and version history. That means you won’t be restricted if you want to collect your entire academic life in Notion, along with your personal to-do lists, agendas, notes and more.
Aspiring developers can sign up for Github’s Student Developer Pack, which includes discounts and resources that developers can use to learn, create projects and more. Github partnered with a bunch of companies including Educative, Canva, Namecheap, Bootstrap Studio and others to offer students access to many of the services they’ll need as the expand their skills.
Whether you’re itching to get a jump-start on your portfolio or just want an online space to show off your work, Squarespace is a good option as it gives students a 50 percent discount on any of its annual plans. The most affordable option will cost $72 for the year, which is half the normal yearly price of $144. Squarespace is one of many website builders out there, but it’s particularly popular with creative professionals. Its customizable templates make it easy to build a website and make it look exactly how you want it. Plus, you can upgrade down the line to add things like website analytics, custom JavaScript and CSS and e-commerce.
You shouldn’t rely on Twitter to be your sole source of news. With foreign wars, new viruses, Supreme Court decisions and upcoming elections making headlines daily, it’s important to get your news from reliable sources. Yes, it’s daunting to get into the news on a regular basis, but it’s crucial to know what’s going on in the country and the world as a whole. Here are some reputable news organizations that offer student discounts on their monthly or annual subscription plans.
The Atlantic: Starts at $35 per year for digital-only access.
Following Spotify’s launch of the ‘Car Thing’, which turns your car’s stereo system into a Spotify Player, the ‘Home Thing’ is a conceptual device that turns any speaker at home into a dedicated Spotify playback device. Armed with a simple circular interface and a rotating crown, the ‘Home Thing’ is a nifty little accessory for speakers you may have lying around the house. Especially the wired kinds.
Designer: Juan Cruz Ottonelli
The ‘Home Thing’ is a neat little device to give you control over your home-based speakers. Sure, you could use your phone to control them too, but the Home Thing provides a much more reliable experience, especially with older, analog speakers that don’t have Bluetooth connectivity. Plug the tiny puck in and your speaker instantly becomes a Spotify playback device. It can now be controlled via Bluetooth or WiFi, and even manually using the circular touch display.
The display has a rather fun UI and is for the most part touch-responsive. You can tap to play/pause, swipe to switch tracks or view playlists, and access all of Spotify’s features barring probably something as niche as videos (like JRE), because of the circular display. The Home Thing also comes with a rotating crown that works either as a seeking tool, allowing you to rewind or fast forward songs and podcasts, or as a volume tool, although most speakers will probably have their own volume settings.
Spotify has a user base of more than 406 million active users with 180 million subscribers in 184 markets. There’s a reason for the popularity of the music streaming service that other platforms have not achieved yet. The on-point algorithm for suggested music and playlists, user interface and most of all the Spotify Connect feature. The ability to play music and switch from one device to the other seamlessly (without a convoluted Bluetooth connection) is one thing I personally love about Spotify thanks to the Connect function.
While Spotify rules the roost in the audio streaming service market, there’s a compelling reason for the Stockholm-based giant to foray into its own tangible product. A jukebox or a compact audio player is a custom fit for the Spotify interface. Match that with the sublime audio quality – preferably with spatial audio software – and there’s going to be a further increase in the subscriber base in the coming years.
Designer: Design met Pit
This cool jukebox concept dubbed the Spotify Jukebox (or as I like to call it – the Juketify) carries the familiar theme of the audio streaming service’s branding. The light green and black color to be precise. To pep-up things, there is optional light green and off-white color theme as well. The gadget has a modern infusion of the curved display element and the classic radio vibe in the form of the knobs and buttons on top.
The user interface on the Spotify Jukebox is focused on the artist’s album art and the playlist songs. The lyrics appear on the major portion of the screen, so you can sing the song along to satiate your karaoke cravings every now and then. The play/pause, shuffle and battery level indicators allow the user to quickly toggle the options or glance over at the estimated playback time.
The large screen and the round volume button are the irresistible bits of this concept gadget. And yes, of course, it comes with the Connect feature to play from any connected device in a jiffy without any fuzz. I would definitely want to keep it on my work desk, and get that satisfying feeling of working as it plays Lo-Fi playlists with those nostalgic album arts putting me in the zone!
IKEA’s global domination continues with its latest device, a wireless Bluetooth speaker-cum-lamp with Spotify Tap built into it.
Here’s a thought I had a few years ago that’s only becoming more and more concrete as time passes by. The next tech giant won’t come from Silicon Valley or from China, or India. In fact, it won’t come from anywhere because it’s already here. This ‘tech giant’ is uniquely positioned to dominate the Smart Home market if it chooses. It’s already conquered the ‘Home’ aspect thanks to a stellar 70-year journey that just needs the right tech infusion to become an indomitable force. I’ll just cut the drama and suspense because you already know I’m talking about IKEA. The home furnishing brand began dabbling with speakers, thanks to partnerships with Teenage Engineering and Sonos. It also briefly entered the gaming space thanks to a partnership with ASUS ROG. Now, the Swedish company just announced its latest Bluetooth speaker/lamp, a mushroom-shaped object called Vappeby that also happens to be the first-ever speaker with Spotify Tap.
The Vappeby has a unique memorable aesthetic that instantly reminds me of the Koopa mushrooms from Super Mario (its inspiration is, in fact, a toadstool). The lamp shines a diffused glow thanks to a mushroom-cap shade that casts the light downwards, and the entire speaker has just 3 controls on its front to operate the Vappeby’s built-in speaker, and one at the back to toggle the lamp.
The Vappeby comes in two colors for now (blue and gray), and is priced at $65, which is commendably low considering the fact that it also doubles up as a wireless speaker. The first wireless speaker with Spotify Tap built in, no less. The feature, which was only limited to a few wireless headsets up until now, gives you a single-button control over your Spotify account. Tap the button and it continues where you left off on your last song or podcast. Tap again and it chooses something else to listen to… sort of like a large iPod Shuffle.
As far as the overall device goes, it’s designed to be used indoors or even outdoors. The Vappeby boasts IP65 dust and water resistance, so you could technically use it in the rain too (that mushroom-cap sort of doubles as an umbrella for the device), and comes with a built-in battery that charges via USB-C. That being said, for $65, you get what you get. The Vappeby certainly isn’t a smart speaker (don’t expect Alexa or Google built-in), and the light is a pretty traditional light too, “with no smart home integration with either Ikea’s Trådfri platform or the broader Google / Apple / Amazon smart home systems”, reports The Verge.
Contrary to popular belief, the album isn’t filled with “Everything Is Awesome” on loop.
Titled LEGO® White Noise, the album explores a unique aspect of the LEGO experience – their sound. While the bricks are incredibly visual, tactile, and versatile, they also have a uniquely vast and engaging auditory experience. By experimenting with over 10,000 brick combinations, the designers at LEGO have unveiled a 6-track album, featuring 30-minute long audio tracks of just sounds using LEGO bricks, from the familiar rattle of rummaging through a carton of bricks, to actually clipping bricks together to make sculptures/models. The tracks have an incredible ASMR quality to them, and honestly make for perfect background audio while you work, play, code, read, etc. I can’t understate exactly how therapeutic the sound of the LEGO bricks being clinked together are, but just mere minutes into the first track, I feel like a 10-year old child again.
The album was designed to help listeners relax and unwind. The sounds trigger a part of the brain associated with meditation and relaxation, given that our mind associates LEGO with those very attributes too. Just the way the smell of cinnamon and pumpkin get you feeling ‘autumny’, the LEGO White Noise tracks instantly transport you to a place of being happy and carefree. Once again, the folks at LEGO have shown us that their bricks truly have unlimited potential!
Despite college being (potentially) some of the best years of your life, it can be hard to enjoy it if you're scrounging every dollar for books, supplies, food and, if you're lucky, the occasional outing with friends. But there is a silver lining: student discounts. While it seems like good discounts can be harder and harder to find for the rest of us, students can find them fairly easily if they know where to look. We’ve collected the best student discounts we could find on useful services, along with some things you’ll enjoy in your down time. Just keep in mind that most of these offers require you to prove your status as a student either by signing up with your .edu email address or providing a valid student ID.
Shopping
Streaming
Tools
News
Engadget
You shouldn’t rely on social media to be your sole source of news. With foreign wars, new viruses, Supreme Court decisions and upcoming elections making headlines daily, it’s important to get your news from reliable sources. Yes, it’s daunting to get into the news on a regular basis, but it’s crucial to know what’s going on in the country and the world as a whole. Here are some reputable news organizations that offer student discounts on their monthly or annual subscription plans.
The Atlantic: Starts at $45 per year for digital-only access.
While its name probably makes it sound like something an executive at Spotify thought of overnight, the Spotify ‘Car Thing’ has been in the works for years. It honestly makes sense, considering every one of Spotify’s competitors is in the hardware space too – Apple has the HomePod Mini and the AirPods complementing its Apple Music, and Amazon has the Echo series of smart speakers tying in with Prime Music. The Car Thing helps Spotify enter the hardware space too, and solidify its position in the one area where the market still remains untapped, and where honestly people require music/radio/podcasts the most… the car.
Picture this… you’ve got a long, 30-minute drive to work. A decade ago, you’d switch the radio on and listen to the news or some music. Now, you’re most likely to tune into your favorite podcast episode, or play music from a playlist on your streaming service. The software has evolved, although the hardware’s still playing catch-up. Not every car comes with a smart dashboard, and it can be a nuisance to constantly lift up your phone and unlock it to pick a song or a podcast episode… especially when you’re driving. That’s where the Car Thing comes in.
Issued as a limited release, Spotify’s Car Thing provides a bridge between your car’s speaker system and your favorite online streaming service. Available for free to a select group of applicants (you can sign up on Spotify’s Car Thing microsite), the Car Thing is a nifty little dashboard that brings Spotify to life in your automobile. It runs a version of the streaming company’s Car View, a simple interface that’s easy to use and navigate while driving, and while the device DOES have a touchscreen, it comes with physical dials and buttons that you can instinctively operate with your hand as you keep your eyes on the road.
The Spotify Car Thing is built to be compatible with vehicles regardless of make or model and displays a home screen with a touch-sensitive navigation dial slightly overlapping the screen to make the device look visually dramatic. The device comes with voice-controlled search too, and you can simply summon songs, artists, and playlists by using the command “Hey Spotify” before your query. Alternatively, you could rotate the dial to navigate the dashboard, increase or decrease volume, or press it to select songs or play/pause music. A button right below the dial lets you go back to the home screen, and 4 preset buttons on the top let you instantly play songs, stations, podcasts, or playlists of your choice.
Ultimately, the Car Thing works as a bridge between your phone and your car’s speaker system. It doesn’t sport a speaker of its own, instead, it connects to your car’s built-in speaker system either via Bluetooth or an aux cable. It still requires your smartphone too, given that it can’t connect to the internet independently. Sure, that sounds like a bit of a drag, but what Spotify is betting on is a much more intuitive and easy-to-use interface that lets you listen to your favorite talk shows and music without fiddling with your phone as you drive. The Car Thing ships with three mounting accessories for connecting it to a vent, the dashboard, or the CD player, and can be powered either by the USB port in your car, or a USB adapter that fits into the lighter socket. Sadly, the Car Thing isn’t quite available to the general public yet. You need to sign up on the Car Thing website and Spotify states that the device will only be available to “select” Spotify Premium members. To make up for that, the company is giving the Car Thing away at a 100% discount on its $79.99 price-tag. All you really need to pay is a nominal $6.99 shipping fee.
The Car Thing sports a 4-inch touchscreen, with a durable construction and matte-textured rubber controls that are responsive and easy to use.
A rotating dial lets you quickly cycle through elements on your interface, and you can simply push the dial to select an item within your menu or press the home button below to go back to your home screen.
The upper edge of the Car Thing spots 5 buttons – 4 for dedicated presets, and a recessed button on the extreme right lets you either quick/mute a song, or access your settings. The device even comes with 4 microphones on the top, laid out in between each of the buttons, that run Spotify’s adaptive interference cancellation technology to help tune out the background noise and focus on your voice commands.
Each Spotify Car Thing ships in a kit that includes a USB cable to power the device, a 12V adapter for your car’s lighter socket, 3 different mounts to choose from, and a rubber cover for extending the primary dial’s lifespan.
Last year, Spotify started beta testing Group Sessions. It's a feature that allows up to six people to share control over the music playing in the background of a physical or virtual get-together. Those involved can queue up songs,...
It turns out that Apple’s iOS 14.5 update won’t actually let you change your default music service that you use with Siri. Beta users had originally noticed that it appeared as if early versions of the update might allow you to change the default ser...
