Dating apps are losing their grip on Gen Z, a generation increasingly fed up with endless swiping and shallow matches, and companies are scrambling to find a solution. Recently, Tinder announced a slew of features, including IRL (in real life) dating sessions, to combat swipe fatigue.
Now, Bumble is trying to address this issue, and its answer is generative AI. As reported by TechCrunch, during its Q4 earnings call, Bumble announced a new AI assistant called Bee.
It’s designed to work like a personal matchmaker, learning your values, relationship goals, communication style, and more, and then using all this information to find you genuinely compatible matches.
Bee is currently in internal testing but is expected to roll out to beta users soon.
How does Bee work?
Bee powers a new dating experience called “Dates”. When you first use it, Bee starts with an onboarding conversation to get to know you. It then identifies another user with shared values and intentions, and notifies both people in the app with a description of why they might be a great match.
Bumble
It’s a meaningful departure from the standard swipe-right-and-hope approach. Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd also said that the company will experiment with removing the swipe entirely in select markets. In its place, users will get “chapter-based” profiles, where you can connect with someone over different parts of their life story rather than a single photo.
Bumble might also be focusing on getting the dates offline. Wolf Herd said, “You will also see us take a much more deliberate approach to getting people offline versus just in what people refer to as dead-end chat zones.”
Can Bee really help you get a date?
It seems everything is getting its own spin of generative AI these days. It’s in our glasses, in our phones, in our toys, and in our apps. From answering our questions to managing our health data, AI seems to be permeating every aspect of our lives.
It also seems that whenever a company mentions AI, investors reward it with a surge in stock price. After Bumble reported strong quarterly revenue of $224.2 million and highlighted its AI integration plans, the company’s stock jumped 40%.
So, it’s hard to tell whether these AI agents are genuinely helpful or simply a crutch companies are using to stay relevant. Only time will tell if Bee will be useful and help people find dates, but for now, I am circumspect.
Spotify aims to provide a consistent listening experience that uses minimal data. As a result, your audio quality might be less than ideal, especially if you’re using a pair of high-fidelity headphones or high-end speakers. Here’s how to fix that.
Switch audio streaming quality to Very High or Lossless
The default audio streaming quality in both the mobile and desktop Spotify apps is set to Automatic, which usually keeps the audio quality at Normal, which is only 96 Kbps. Even though Spotify uses the Ogg Vorbis codec, which is superior to MP3, OGG files exhibit slight (but noticeable) digital noise, poor bass detail, dull treble, and a narrow soundstage at 96 Kbps.
Even worse, Spotify is aggressive about adjusting the automatic bitrate. Even though 4G is more than fast enough to stream high-quality OGG files, even with a weak signal, Spotify may still drop the quality to Low, which has a bitrate of just 24 Kb/s. You will notice such a sharp drop in quality, even on a pair of bottom-of-the-barrel headphones.
To rectify this, open the Spotify app, tap your user image, open “Settings and privacy,” and tap the “Media Quality” menu. Once there, set Wi-Fi streaming quality and cellular streaming quality to “Very high” or “Lossless.”
I recommend setting cellular streaming quality to Very high and reserving Lossless for Wi-Fi, since lossless streaming is very data-intensive. One hour of streaming lossless files can take up to 1GB of data, as well as a good chunk of your phone’s storage, because Spotify caches files you’re frequently streaming. Besides, you’ll struggle to notice the difference unless you’re listening to music on a wired pair of high-end headphones or speakers; wireless connection just doesn’t have the bandwidth needed to convey the full fidelity of Spotify lossless audio.
You might opt for High quality if you have a capped data plan, but I recommend doing so only if you stream hours upon hours’ worth of music every single day over a cellular network. For instance, I burn through about 8 GB of data per month on average while streaming about two hours of very high-quality music over a cellular network each day.
Feeling the squeeze when listening to your favorite song?
Set audio download quality to Very high or Lossless
If you tend to download songs and albums for offline listening, you should also set the audio download quality to “Very high” or “Lossless.” This setting is located just under the audio streaming quality section.
If you’ve got enough free storage on your phone, opt for the latter, but if you’d rather save storage space, set it to Very high. You’ll hardly hear the difference, but lossless files are about five times larger than the 320 Kb/s OGG files Spotify offers at its Very high quality setting, and they can quickly fill up your phone’s storage.
Adjust video streaming quality at your discretion
The last section of the Media quality menu is Video streaming quality. This sets the quality of video podcasts and music videos available for certain songs. Since I care about neither, I set it to “Very high” on Wi-Fi and “Normal” on cellular, but you should tweak the two options at your discretion because songs sound notably better at higher video streaming quality levels.
If you often watch videos over cellular and have unlimited data, feel free to toggle video quality to very high.
Make sure Data Saver mode is disabled
Even if your audio quality is set to Very high or Lossless, Spotify will switch to low-quality streaming if the app’s Data saver mode is enabled. This option is located in the Data saving and offline menu. Open the menu, then set it to “Always off,” or choose “Automatic” to have Spotify’s Data Saver mode kick in alongside your phone’s Data Saver mode.
You can also enable volume normalization and play around with the built-in equalizer
Credit: Lucas Gouveia / How-To Geek
Last but not least, there are two additional features you can play with to improve your listening experience. The first is volume normalization, which sets the same loudness for every track you’re listening to. This can be handy because different albums are mastered at different loudness levels, with newer music usually being louder.
Since I’m an album-oriented listener, I keep the option disabled. I can just play an album and set the audio volume accordingly, and I don’t really mind louder songs when listening to playlists, artists, or song radios.
But if you can’t stand one song being quiet and the next rattling the windows, visit the Playback menu, enable “Volume normalization,” and set it to “Quiet” or “Normal.” The “Loud” option can digitally compress files, and neither Spotify nor I recommend using it. This also happens with “Quiet” and “Normal,” since both adjust the decibel level of the master recording for each song, but the compression level is much lower and extremely hard to notice.
Before I end this, I should also mention that you can access the equalizer directly from the Spotify app, where you can fine-tune your music listening experience or pick one of the available equalizer presets. If your phone has a built-in equalizer, Spotify will open it; if it doesn’t, you can use Spotify’s. On my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S21 FE), I can only use One UI’s built-in equalizer.
To open the equalizer, open “Playback,” then hit the “Equalizer” button. Now you can equalize your audio to your heart’s content.
Adjusting just a few settings can have a drastic impact on your Spotify listening experience. If you aren’t satisfied with Spotify’s sound quality, make sure to adjust the audio before jumping ship. You should also check the sound quality settings from time to time, as Spotify can reset them during app updates.
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