The Drum’s top ten tech disruptions of the week: Apple Music pay revealed, Google Maps scales mountains & Walmart waves bye-bye to barcodes?
It’s been a busy week in technology. Here The Drum has rounded up 10 of the top tech innovations that have been touted this week as capable of disrupting the world as we know it.
1. Artists signed up to Apple’s music streaming service will receive a reported $0.002 per play during its three month free trial period. The pre-tax fee will not be turned down by musicians who were initially expecting not to get paid for their work until a timely Taylor Swift intervention pressured the company.
2. Live-tweeting one social media is one method TV networks are using to drive up the engagement of shows. Kimberlee Van Der Wall, social media strategist, told The Drum that studios are having casts live-tweet their opinions during shows to add another layer of depth to the content.
3. Google Maps gave armchair mountaineers the chance to scale 3000 feet up Yosemite El Capitan. Footage of the ascent was captured using a 360 degree camera, showing how the tech can provide viewers non-linear experiences.
4. International newspaper title The Daily Mail announced that it is looking to launch a US TV series featuring presenter Dr Phil McGraw. It will focus on showbiz and online trending topics.
5. French taxi drivers engaged in a strike outside of Nice airport this week to protest against the ride-hailing service Uber. The service, which is disrupting the transportation category with its easy-to-use mobile app, was the target of the protest which created a fair-share of chaos during the Cannes Lions advertising festival.
6. Walmart is developing new watermarks for its products which could one day dethrone the trusty barcode as the default method of pricing goods. To expedite the shopping experience, the retailer is working with invisible product watermarks and trolley cart scanners to help consumers skip the checkout completely.
7. Aoife McGuinness from HeyHuman Agency gave The Drum a roundup of the top creative tech from Sónar+D, a cutting-edge festival in Barcelona that merges creativity, music and technology. These included tech cafes, audiovisual installations and VR experiences.
8. The Drum embarked on a 360 degree tour of Publicis Groupe chief executive Maurice Lévy's office in a new VR film. To celebrate Lévy editing The Drum in a special Cannes edition, we shot the content using the emerging footage capturing method to provide viewers with an immersive experience.
9. In our latest documentary, called ‘The Drum’s The Big Turn On’, we investigated how the sex tech industry is set for “a billion dollar future”, watch it here.
10. There were a lot of tech-laden winners of the Cannes Future Lions. These included a self-powered laptop can run without electricity access, a tattoo paper microchip that measures alcohol content, first aid training for Uber drivers so they can take care of sick people before an ambulance arrives; Snaphelp for Snapchat, which connects struggling bullying victims with healthcare professionals and Treeprint for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), an app which matches a person’s fingerprint with a tree that has a similar print, allowing a donation to help protect it. Check them all out here.