News

Deezer’s Shaker Connects Friends Across Music Apps

The new feature lets users share music with up to 14 people, even if they don’t use the same streaming platform.

Published

3 years ago

November 14, 2023

Nour Nasir

Deezer

Amongst a flurry of updates, improvements, and a recent rebrand, music streaming service Deezer has now announced Shaker. The new feature lets users “access the perfect music mix for any moment with friends, family, co-workers, or anyone you want to spend time with”.

The concept is simple: With a few screen taps or mouse clicks, a mix is generated that blends together a group of friends’ favorite music and includes fun insights into the musical compatibility and guilty pleasures of group members.

Aside from the intuitive interface, the clever thing about Shaker is that it allows users to connect with up to 14 friends using a simple invite link — even if they use a different platform like Spotify and don’t want to download the Deezer app. The Shaker algorithm then starts work by generating a mix of 70 songs tailored to the group’s unique preferences. If they’re unhappy with the selection, they can easily refresh a mix or curate a playlist from scratch.

Also Read: Best Music Streaming Services In The Middle East

“Shaker is designed to create a feeling of connection, encourage people to experience music more freely, erase the boundaries between friends, and create a space where you can discover new songs to fall in love with,“ explained Alexandra Leloup, VP Product at Deezer, “To achieve this, it was key to not only include tailored playlists based on the musical tastes of users and their friends but to make sure everyone can join in no matter which streaming platform they use”.

Shaker aims to help users say goodbye to hours spent curating playlists for their parties, road trips, and sports sessions, creating the perfect fusion of music tastes to connect friends like never before.

News

Instagram Now Lets You Tune Its Algorithm, But There’s One Big Catch

The new controls promise users “agency” over their feed, but asking to see more from accounts you actually follow returns an error.

Published

3 days ago

June 11, 2026

Nour Nasir

Instagram

Instagram has expanded its algorithm personalization feature to the main feed, letting users specify which topics they want surfaced more or less often in recommendations.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri framed the change as a matter of user control. “I believe it’s in our best interest as a business to empower people to shape Instagram into something that works for them, and that people should be able to have a meaningful amount of agency over the products they spend so much time in,” he wrote on Threads.

Though it turns out that agency has limits. The controls only accept interest-based topics, such as “rescue dogs” or “parenting humor”. Requesting “posts from people I follow” returns no results, which is obviously a sore point for creators whose posts rarely reach their own audiences. Mosseri conceded the tension: “Who you follow used to be a meaningful tool people had for shaping their own experience, and as recommendations took over the main feed that tool quietly stopped working”.

Also Read: How To Find & Cancel Pending Instagram Requests

Instagram credits large language models for making its algorithms legible enough to personalize, and says it is “actively working on supporting requests for people, different moods or vibes, content types, and more” – potentially leading to a fully “bespoke” version of the app.