Apple has quietly announced the AirPods Max 2, featuring improved active noise cancellation, an H2 chip, and new features like adaptive audio and AI-powered real-time translation. Like the original model, these headphones start at $549. The Verge reports: As noted by Apple, the AirPods Max 2 offer active noise-cancellation that's 1.5 times more effective when compared to its predecessor. Transparency mode, which allows you to hear your surroundings while wearing the headphones, also sounds "more natural" with the AirPods Max 2, according to Apple. The AirPods Max 2 support 24-bit, 48kHz lossless audio when connected with a USB-C cable, as well as offer up to 20 hours of listening time on a single charge. Other capabilities include loud sound reduction, a camera remote feature that works by pressing the digital crown to take a photo or start a recording, as well as a personalized volume feature that "automatically fine-tunes the listening experience" based on your preferences over time.

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An anonymous reader shares a column: I'm going to take the diplomatic hat off here and say with brutal honesty: basically everybody in the music business hates Spotify except for the people who work there. It's a platform that sucks artists for everything they have, it actively prevents community building, and, despite all of that, the platform still struggles to maintain a healthy profit margin. The streaming business model is fundamentally broken. And eventually, its demise will become more and more obvious to recognize. I'll break down exactly why the DSP era is coming to a grinding halt, why the major labels are quietly terrified, and why the artists who don't pivot now are going to go down with the ship. [...] Jimmy Iovine put it bluntly: "The streaming services have a bad situation, there's no margins, they're not making any money." This model only works for Apple, Amazon, and Google, because they don't need their music platforms to be wildly profitable. Amazon uses music as a loss-leader to keep you paying for Prime. Apple uses it to sell $1,000 iPhones. As for Spotify, or any standalone music streaming company, they're kind of screwed. And guess what -- when the platform's margins are structurally squeezed, guess who gets squeezed first? The artists. [...] What if Jimmy is right? If the DSPs are "minutes away from obsolete," what replaces them? Well, I'm not sure the DSPs are going to disappear overnight, but if you're an artist or a manager trying to sustain yourself in this evolving music economy, the answer is direct ownership. The artists who will survive the next five years are the ones who are quietly shifting their focus away from the "ATM Machine." They are building their own cultural hangars. They are capturing phone numbers on Laylo. They are driving fans to private Discord servers. They are focusing on ARPF (Average Revenue Per Fan) through high-margin merch, vinyl, and hard tickets, rather than begging for fractions of a penny from a playlist placement. We are witnessing the death of the "Mass Audience" and the birth of the "Micro-Community."

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