Paul Stenhouse: Gmail's testing a 'manage subscriptions' feature, Google One VPN goes to the graveyard, and Spotify's developing music mixing tools

Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

Gmail knows your inbox is overflowing with subscriptions and is trying to help

So it wants to help. It seems they're testing a new feature which adds a "Manage Subscriptions" area. There you will be able to see who is sending you the most emails per quarter. Marketing folks get ready... early screenshots show you'll be able to see who sends you less than 10, 10-20 and 20+ emails per quarter.

It's estimated that Google blocks nearly 15 billion undesired emails daily. You can see why they want to deter folks from sending things that they'll filter out anyway! They already have the one-click unsubscribe feature which is brilliant. They've also recently started requiring companies who are "bulk senders" —who send more than 5000 emails a day— to adhere to new requirements proving they own the domain they're sending from and that the email being delivered has been authorized to be sent by the service sending it.

Yet another product goes to Google's graveyard

Google One VPN is now dead. Google Podcasts was also killed a few weeks ago. It's so commonplace there's a website to memorialize these dead products: killedbygoogle.com. It's up to 295 entries.

Spotify will let creators manipulate songs

According to WSJ, Spotify is developing tools that would allow users to “speed up, mash-up, and otherwise edit” songs, and save them for listening. Some TikTok creators have made pitching up or speeding up songs part of their signature look. The idea is that if you do the editing on Spotify, Spotify knows about it, and can make sure the artists get their appropriate royalties. On TikTok these remixes become "original audio" of the creator and it's unclear if the money makes its way back to where it should.

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