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Oh no, they added NFTs to Winamp

Winamp version 5.9.1 is here, rejoice! The venerable — nay, aged — but reliable media player has been receiving sporadic updates over the last couple decades, but little truly new functionality has appeared (and that’s just fine by us users). But this new version brings an unexpected and thankfully optional feature: NFT playback.
No, this doesn’t just read out the current valuation of your various square avatars; NFT-type tech has been applied to music as well, offering the capability of limited releases of digital tracks the way you might have a limited vinyl run. At least that’s the idea — I don’t think it’s quite caught on, and with the cryptocurrency world currently in disarray, it’s hard to blame anyone for declining to take part in a potentially risky ecosystem.
“Winamp was a key part of the first digital music innovation, when mp3s changed the way we listen and enjoy music. Now we’re supporting the leading edge of the next one, as more and more artists explore web3 and its potential,” said Winamp CEO Alexandre Saboundjian in a press release.
As you may recall, Winamp was purchased by Radionomy in 2014, and in 2018 a new effort was announced to revivify the brand. The idea, Saboundjian told me at the time, was to act as a unifying layer for all the music services out there, so whether you use Apple Music or Spotify or Tidal or all three, you can just open Winamp and select a track or playlist. It opens up in a different interface, though.
Image Credits: Winamp
That unified experience hasn’t exactly come to pass. In fact the redone app still counts an equalizer among its “coming soon” features. So it’s a little odd to hear that a functioning NFT layer arrived first:
Winamp’s latest version lets music fans link their Metamask wallet via Brave, Chrome, or Firefox to Winamp. It then connects their favorite music NFTs to their tried-and-true player. Winamp supports audio and video files distributed under both the ERC-721and ERC-1155 standards, and is launching this new feature for Ethereum and Polygon/Matic protocols.
To be clear, the fabled new unified player still seems to be a distant prospect. It’s the original, old-school player that’s getting the new feature, alongside a boatload of bug fixes and optimizations. The changes are listed, as they pretty much always have been, in a post on the Winamp forum, followed by ardent thanks from the community and obscure bug reports.
I for one am grateful that this piece of software is still actively maintained. I won’t be using the NFT function, but it’s just one of many things added in 5.9.1, and as soon as the rest of the Winamp users (there are dozens of us!) get around to testing it for me, I’ll go ahead and download it. After all, it really still whips the llama’s ass.

Winamp returns in 2019 to whip the llama’s ass harder than ever

Oh no, they added NFTs to Winamp by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch
Oh no, they added NFTs to Winamp

Meta lays off thousands, FTX collapses, and Twitter has a very weird week

Hey, friends! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we recap the top TechCrunch headlines from the past seven days. Get it in your inbox every Saturday AM by signing up here.
Ready? Let’s go.
most read
Twitter had a week so strange that it could easily make up this entire newsletter, so we’ll keep to the bullet points:
Last week Elon laid off a huge chunk of the company. This week, some of those who were let go were reportedly asked to come back.
Twitter started giving blue verified checkmarks to anyone who’d pay $8. Things got chaotic fast.
Twitter rolled out a new, second checkmark for “Official” accounts. And then got rid of them. And then…brought them back?
By Friday morning, after fake “verified” accounts popped up for everything from companies to athletes to politicians, Twitter paused the $8 verification badge program.
A number of execs quit — to the point where the exits perked the ears of the FTC.
Elon reportedly told Twitter employees that “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question” for the company.
FTX collapses: Once one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, FTX effectively exploded this week. It briefly looked like competitor Binance would step in to acquire FTX, only for Binance to take one look at FTX’s books and back out almost immediately. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has since resigned, and the company has filed for bankruptcy.
Meta layoffs: Meta — the parent company behind Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp — laid off 13% of its workforce this week. With a worldwide headcount of around 87,000 employees, that works out to over eleven thousand roles cut.
Gmail will no longer let you go back to old Gmail: Don’t like the new look that Gmail started rolling out back in July? Bad news. While users could previously revert to the old design, the Gmail team announced this week that the new design will be the “standard experience” for all within weeks.
Google finds exploits in Samsung phones: “Google says it has evidence that a commercial surveillance vendor was exploiting three zero-day security vulnerabilities found in newer Samsung smartphones,” writes Zack Whittaker. “The chained vulnerabilities allow an attacker to gain kernel read and write privileges as the root user, and ultimately expose a device’s data.”
audio roundup
Looking for a new podcast to tune into on your commute? Here’s what’s up in TC podcasts lately:
The Chain Reaction crew broke down the absurd collapse of FTX as it was happening.
Equity (with a guest appearance from TC’s Becca Szkutak) covered the seemingly endless layoffs we’re seeing from tech companies big and small, and what FTX’s meltdown means for it and companies like it.
Darrell was joined on The TechCrunch Podcast by TC senior reporter Dom-Madori Davis to talk about “the coalition of VCs that are standing for reproductive rights” and to recap the biggest tech stories of the week.
TechCrunch+
Not a TechCrunch+ member yet? Here’s what members were checking out most behind the paywall:
How ButcherBox bootstrapped to $600M in revenue: How did ButcherBox grow from a modest Kickstarter to $600 million in revenue in just a few years? Haje outlines the company’s path so far.
The Exchange: In his increasingly popular daily newsletter, Alex Wilhelm wonders: Has everyone been valuing software companies the wrong way all along?
Meta lays off thousands, FTX collapses, and Twitter has a very weird week by Greg Kumparak originally published on TechCrunch
Meta lays off thousands, FTX collapses, and Twitter has a very weird week

Daily Crunch: PSG, Battery Ventures invest $100M in open source password manager Bitwarden 

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.
Hey, hey, hey! It’s going to be a busy week for the TC crew this week. We’re excited about the Apple event, and Y Combinator has its demo day. Alex welcomes you to YC and Apple week on the Equity podcast, and your trusty Daily Crunch team is poised at our laptops to share the cream of the news-crop with you!
Stay tuned, it’s going to be a wild one!  — Christine and Haje
The TechCrunch Top 3
2Dh1?..Spth!Lmng: Bitwarden’s ability to generate hard-to-guess passwords has made it attractive to investors who just pumped $100 million of new funding into the company, which aims to rid the world of people using the same passwords across their personal and business lives, Paul writes.
‘Wild West’ of climate tech: Mike has a story about Ceezer closing on €4.2 million to figure out a better way for businesses to carbon-offset.
DAO makes us proud: Gaming guild Metaverse Magna is now valued at $30 million after raising $3.2 million in a recent round. Tage writes the company plans to build “Africa’s largest gaming DAO.”
Startups and VC
The EU — those guys who ensured we ended up with cookie banners on every damn website you’ve ever visited — are back at it with a new initiative that could have some major-league unintended consequences on open source software, Kyle reports. The EU’s AI Act could have a chilling effect — “if a company were to deploy an open source AI system that led to some disastrous outcome (…) it could sue the open source developers.”
Our brains are melting in the heat, so here’s some truly god-awful puns to match our current mental age:
What’s a pirate’s favorite growth metric? ARR: Userpilot, a product-led growth platform for SaaS companies, raises $4.6 million, Annie reports.
What do you call suburban justice? Lawn and order: Dominic-Madori reports that JusticeText raises $2.2 million to increase transparency in criminal evidence-gathering.
What kind of bees are made of plastic? Frisbees: Hardware startup Mantle is 3D-printing manufacturing tooling, which could drastically reduce the amount of time to make new plastic parts, Haje reports.
My credit card company is proud of my circus skills. They keep telling me I have outstanding balance: Brex’s CRO is leaving to join Founders Fund, and in her fintech newsletter this weekend, Mary Ann talks with him to figure out what drove that decision.
I walked into an EV dealership, and asked them how much they charge: Exciting news for cars-with-built-in-solar-panels fans; EV carmaker Lightyear raised $85 million and starts to gear up for production, Paul reports.
10 onboarding improvements that cut our customer churn by nearly 3x
Image Credits: Hill Street Studios (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Managers who run businesses that rely on recurring revenue are often distracted by the never-ending sprint to maintain favorable KPIs. But one metric may rule them all: customer churn.
If new users can’t quickly figure out how to use (or benefit from) your products, it won’t matter how many new customers you onboard each month. But to reduce churn, marketing and product teams need onboarding goals, says Sam DeBrule, co-founder and head of marketing of Heyday.
In a TC+ guest post, he explains the tactics he and his co-founder used to insert themselves into the customer journey, and how the changes helped them reduce turnover by almost 3x.
“If you’re working on onboarding and saw something you liked here, feel free to steal it.”

10 onboarding improvements that cut our customer churn by nearly 3x

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Manish was behind two of our big stories over the weekend, including crypto exchange Binance announcing it would stop supporting USDC, USDP and TUSD and begin converting the three rival stablecoins into its own stablecoin, BUSD, on September 29. He also writes about India’s information technology junior minister sending a summons to Wikipedia after edits were made to the page of cricketer Arshdeep Singh, “suggesting that some people from Pakistan were behind the act and were attempting to disrupt peace in the South Asian market.”
More to the story: Zack is back with some new developments on Samsung’s data breach notice last month.
Data dilemma: Instagram was handed “a fat fine” by the European Union after it was determined Meta’s social media platform was not properly handling children’s data, Natasha L writes.
Don’t click on that: The Los Angeles School District, the second-largest in the U.S., warned its community of disruptions while the district manages an ongoing ransomware attack, Carly reports.
Trading places: European trading platform Bitpanda added commodities to its list of items that can be traded. Romain writes the move comes as natural gas prices soar across the continent due to the ongoing conflict between Russia and the Ukraine.
Writing the playbook on video games: Rita talks to Tencent’s Steve Martin about the Chinese social networking and gaming company’s ambitions around intellectual property and autonomy.
Daily Crunch: PSG, Battery Ventures invest $100M in open source password manager Bitwarden  by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch
Daily Crunch: PSG, Battery Ventures invest $100M in open source password manager Bitwarden 

Daily Crunch: Embedded finance fintech Pezesha raises $11M pre-Series A equity-debt round

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.
Hey, hey, hey! Good to have you back with us again. Today, we’re mostly amazed at how quiet Twitter gets during Burning Man, and excited that we’re doing a Labor Day sale for TechCrunch Plus, if you’ve been wanting to read our subscription site but you’ve been holding off for whatever reason. — Christine and Haje
The TechCrunch Top 3
Embed that finance: Pezesha, a Kenyan-based fintech startup, is flush with $11 million in new capital as it seeks to bridge the gap between access to financial products and what is a “$330 billion financing deficit for the small enterprises that make up 90% of Africa’s businesses,” Annie reports.
We’re all connected: If you haven’t yet seen yourself in one of your Twitter connection’s Circles, you may soon. The social media giant is launching the “Close Friends” features globally, Ivan reports. Add a bunch of people to your Circle and get tweeting.
No delivery for you: Delivery platform Gopuff has only been in Europe since November 2021, but Natasha L writes it made the decision to discontinue its service in Spain. She cites that perhaps this is to focus more on the United Kingdom market where revenue there is increasing 30% month over month.
Startups and VC
Initialized Capital was VC Garry Tan’s answer to a need first highlighted by Y Combinator. As a partner at the accelerator from 2010 to 2015, Tan spent time working with companies to better understand what they needed from investors after they graduated. This week, he announced he’s back at the helm at YC, and Natasha M interviewed him about what’s next for Y Combinator.
The company behind last summer’s hot social app, Poparazzi, appears to be readying a round two following its $15 million Series A announced in June. A new listing in the App Store under the developer’s account, TTYL, is teasing a pre-release app called Made with Friends, Sarah reports.
When the news hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that’s a-more-news:
Notification bubbles: Devin reports that, at long last, there’s an underwater messaging app.
Money for laundering: Flush with fresh funds, U.K. “eco laundry” startup Oxwash raised $12 million to spin up its growth plans, Natasha L reports.
Faster when further afield: The U.K.’s £5 billion Project Gigabit gives out its first contract to connect rural areas to high-speed broadband, Paul reports.
PriceOye gets the Thiel seal of approval: Islamabad-based startup PriceOye offers a range of electronics products, including smartphones, TVs and home appliances. It just closed a round of funding from investors, including Peter Thiel, reports Jagmeet.
Dodging the SPAC bullet: Alex and Anna wrote a really interesting piece on TC+ (use “DC” for a 15% discount if you’re not a subscriber yet) about SPACs, how they are falling apart, and how Europe may have dodged a bullet on that front.
How to communicate to your crypto community when things aren’t going well
Image Credits: Peter Dazeley (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Because it’s a nascent industry that’s largely unregulated, crypto companies are not generally skilled at crisis communications. (We’re being generous here.)
When a bank or financial services company experiences a massive security failure or a volatility shock, federal laws dictate how it must communicate with its customers. Crypto startups, however, must rely on their own best judgment.
“There’s little benefit in declaring that the sky is falling and begging your community for investment, but an overly rosy outlook won’t fool anyone either,” says Tahem Verma, co-founder and CEO of Mesha.

How to communicate with your crypto community when things aren’t going well

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Last chance to get your game on in the Facebook Gaming app. The social media giant said it is shutting down its stand-alone app at the end of October, Aisha reports. Don’t worry, you can still find your games in Gaming on actual Facebook. When launching the separate app two years ago, it seemed to be more difficult than Facebook bargained for, so it decided to join ’em instead of beating ’em.
Data duh!: Millions of faces and vehicle license plates were leaked online in China, Zack writes.
Ghosts can drive?: A Tesla Model 3 owner filed a class action lawsuit against the electric vehicle maker alleging the car keeps “phantom braking,” Jaclyn reports. 
New security regime: Broadband and mobile carriers in the United Kingdom could face fines of up to $117,000 per day or 10% of their sales if they don’t abide by some new cybersecurity rules, Ingrid writes.
More Elon: Taylor has the 411 on Elon Musk’s new strategy for getting out of the Twitter deal — hint, it involves the company’s whistleblower. Meanwhile, Paul goes over the new subpoena related to the ongoing battle.

Daily Crunch: Embedded finance fintech Pezesha raises $11M pre-Series A equity-debt round

Starbucks to unveil its web3-based rewards program next month

Starbucks will unveil its web3 initiative, which includes coffee-themed NFTs, at next month’s Investor Day event. The company earlier this year announced its plans to enter the web3 space, noting its NFTs wouldn’t just serve as digital collectibles, but would provide their owners with access to exclusive content and other perks.
At the time, Starbucks was light on details as to what its debut set of NFTs would look like, specific features they’d provide or even what blockchain it was building on. It said the plan was likely to be multichain or chain-agnostic, hinting at plans that weren’t yet finalized.
Overall, the coffee retailer kept its web3 news fairly high level, explaining simply that it believed digital collectibles could create an accretive business adjust to its stores and that more would be revealed later in 2022.

Starbucks to launch NFTs this year, offering access to ‘unique experiences and benefits’

While some companies jumped on the NFT bandwagon without much thought as to how their investments would fit in with their larger business goals, Starbucks seems to be attempting a different approach. It sees the collectibles as an extension of customer loyalty. The company brought in Adam Brotman, the architect of its Mobile Order & Pay system and the Starbucks app, to help serve as a special advisor on the project.
Mobile Order & Pay has been one of Starbucks’ biggest successes, in terms of tech innovations. The company was one of the first to introduce the concept of a digital wallet, even before Apple Pay became ubiquitous. And as broader mobile payment adoption has grown, Starbucks mobile ordering has, too. In the past quarter — Starbucks’ fiscal Q3 — mobile orders, delivery and drive-through combined drove 72% of Starbucks’ U.S. revenue. In addition, the mobile ordering sales mix grew to a record high of 47%, up 13% year-over-year, following COVID-driven changes in consumer behavior, the company said.
Starbucks founder and interim CEO Howard Schultz, who returned to the company in April, teased its forthcoming web3 initiative during this week’s earnings call with investors.
“We have been working on a very exciting new digital initiative that builds on our existing industry-leading digital platform in innovative new ways all centered around coffee and most importantly, loyalty, that we will reveal at Investor Day,” Schultz said.
The company had previously announced its plans to host its 2022 Investor Day in Seattle on September 13, 2022.
Schultz continued, “we believe this new digital web3-enabled initiative will allow us to build on the current Starbucks Rewards engagement model with its powerful spend to earn stars approach while also introducing new methods of emotionally engaging customers, expanding our digital third place community, and offering a broader set of rewards, including one-of-a-kind experiences that you can’t get anywhere else, integrating our digital Starbucks Rewards ecosystem with Starbucks-branded digital collectibles as both a reward and a community building element.
“This will create an entirely new set of digital network effects that will attract new customers and be accretive to existing customers in our core retail stores,” he added.
Though the details aren’t yet fleshed out, the approach here sounds potentially interesting — at least compared with some other corporate NFT projects (an admittedly low bar). The company hadn’t before clarified that the NFTs would be tied directly to Starbucks Rewards.
Currently, customers earn Stars with purchases in the app or at Starbucks stores, which can then translate into tangible rewards — like free drinks. It appears that the new NFTs will now be incorporated into part of this loyalty program, somehow. If customers were to “earn” the collectibles through everyday purchases, perhaps, that could potentially onboard more people to the web3 ecosystem. This is one of the challenges the space faces today, where purchases of digital art and collectibles often come at high costs and with sizable fees. What’s more, the digital program could give customers a reason to care about NFTs, if the rewards and so-called “one-of-a-kind” experiences ended up being something actually worth earning. (Of course, that remains to be seen.)
There is some indication that consumers are interested in easier ways to enter the web3 space, however. For example, the crypto rewards app Sweatcoin has become a breakout hit thanks to how it rewards users with “Sweatcoins” for every 1,000 steps they walk. The app this past quarter was No. 4 by global downloads and No. 6 by monthly active users on data.ai’s list of “Top Breakout Apps” — meaning, those that saw the largest absolute growth in downloads in the quarter. There’s also now a good handful of games offering play-to-earn models, which aim to tie a fun activity like gaming to cryptocurrencies or NFTs. These have seen more mixed success as some gamers are opposed to the idea.
During the call, Schultz also stressed the value of catering to the younger consumer. Though his comments were more of a reflection of Gen Z’s demand for Starbucks’ cold drinks and iced shaken espresso — which drove sales in the quarter — a web3-based loyalty program could serve as another way to attract younger consumers to the brand.
“We don’t want to be in a business where our customer base is aging and we have a less relevant situation with younger people,” Schultz said, before touting that the company has “never been, in our history, more relevant than we are today to Gen Z.”
“To me, that cohort is so powerful, and the attachment rate that we have with them and the loyalty is just building,” he added.
Starbucks posted strong earnings in the quarter, beating Wall Street’s expectations despite the economic challenges. The company reported revenue of $8.15 billion versus $8.11 expected, and earnings per share of 84 cents adjusted versus 75 cents expected.
Starbucks to unveil its web3-based rewards program next month