When one door closes, another door opens. Cardcast dead, Google Play Music dying; 8tracks back from the dead!
Shutdowns
For starters Google is preparing to shelve Google Play Music. In an effort to shift attention to YouTube Music, they’re endorsing people to transfer over their libraries, even offering a tutorial:
This came on the same day as Google’s shutdown of Neighbourly and Shoelace last week, a pair of experimental “local social media” apps, as reported by Killed by Google.
Next up Cardcast, a popular card-matching party game in the vein of Cards Against Humanity or Xyzzy mysteriously went offline on May 16. The game was best known for its ease in constructing custom decks, which would currently appear to be lost with its shutdown.
Cardcast would only make a brief announcement, to indicate this wasn’t an accident, and that they had to go with such an arrangement. Although stating that further details would be provided, there hasn’t been any further explanation thus far.
Next up, the Myst Online and Cyan forums were announced to be going offline June 16. The community is transitioning to a Discord Server, with this announcement serving as a warning for people who might want to archive their messages, you can read more about it at: https://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=29240
Updates
In a surprising turn of events, 8tracks returns! And what a heartwarming story it is!
TL;DR: The 8tracks platform & brand are now owned & operated by BackBeat Inc., a new startup which acquired a portion of 8tracks’ assets during its wind-down earlier this year.
Welcome Back announcement taken from https://blog.8tracks.com/2020/04/19/welcome-back-8tracks/
While certain music will not be available due to licensing restrictions, most existing playlists will be available to stream, beginning today.
If you still have the iOS app on your device, it will work out of the box.
Otherwise, we’ll be re-introducing the 8tracks mobile apps and playlist creation (and perhaps a few new surprises) in the months ahead.
Besides a few changes in the business model, and currently being available only in the US, they seem to be working things out. We wish them the best of luck, seeing how brutally competitive the music streaming industry is today.
Discoveries
David Ashley, who you might remember as the sole programmer behind the Genesis port for Breach from last week, recently also released source code on a number of Gameboy Color projects: https://github.com/dashxdr/cgb
