Published stuff

Over at Stuff, I fret I’m turning into my dad in Spotify Wrapped and Apple Replay were my wake-up call to listen to more new music. I also wrote about the Moto G turning 10, remembering the smartphone that brought quality specs to the masses, and the Sega Dreamcast turning 25 – along with six of the best Dreamcast games.

For TapSmart this week, I grumbled that although Apple Music Classical for iPad is great, it shouldn’t have taken eight months to arrive. If Apple can’t get its bum in gear regarding cross-device apps, why should developers?

Upcoming stuff

So. Many. End. Of. Year. Wrap-ups.

Other stuff

I was concerned when our local McColl’s newsagent recently closed. It housed our town’s main post office and had a great selection of magazines. It’s now reopened… as a Morrisons Daily.

The print section is approximately one eighth of its old size and the magazine selection has been stomped into near nothingness. Depressing.

That leaves WHSmith as the last holdout for magazines where I live. At least that store, while slowly reducing the space given to magazines, continues to maintain and sometimes even expand its range. But I fear how this ongoing erosion of print outlets will affect what’s left of the industry – especially if WHSmith closures spread.

Over in digital, things were also not ideal this week, when I received a surprise £134.99 invoice from Yousician. Now, it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise – I did subscribe to the service a year ago. But I received no communication whatsoever from the company about the renewal. Bad form.

I rattled off a support request, citing the 14-day cooling off period (which applies to the original contract and any subsequent renewal). Expecting to hear nothing back for a while, I instead got two emails almost instantly.

The first was a ‘higher volume of traffic’ BS email. The second was a clearly automated 50% discount offer, which made a mockery of the email that had arrived seconds beforehand.

I’m still mulling over what to do. Yousician is a good service, but I’m properly annoyed about how this was initially handled. Companies should do better. For example, Rebellion Publishing sends subscribers an email three months before their 2000 AD subscriptions are due for renewal, and then one more email every month until the payment is made. It wants you to be aware of the upcoming payment, rather than sneaking it through and hoping you won’t notice.