News
Spotify Is Now Available In 80+ Additional Countries
Spotify, the world’s largest audio streaming platform, has recently become available in more than 80 additional countries across Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Thanks to the expansion, Spotify will now be able to potentially attract as much as 1 billion new listeners, who can enjoy its growing catalog of songs and podcasts in 36 extra languages. “These moves represent Spotify’s broadest market expansion to date,” stated the Swedish company.
Currently, Spotify users from all newly supported countries have full access to the streaming platform’s global music catalog, but its podcast catalog is not yet available in certain locations. To make its services more attractive to local audiences, Spotify is determined to work with local creators and partners to expands its music offering by including regional artists.
Spotify has been with us since 2008. The service now enjoys 345 million monthly active users (155 million of which are premium paying subscribers). “For the first time ever, we have the technology to connect the world through audio,” said Chief Executive Officer Daniel Ek at an investor event known as #StreamOn.
During the event, Ek talked about Spotify’s desire to become a full-fledged audio streaming platform offering all kinds of audio content. The service is already home to around 2 million podcasts, and its audiobook library is growing at a similarly impressive pace. Spotify has also announced dozens of new original series, such as sports shows and celebrity talk shows.
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In addition to the market expansion, the company has also announced Spotify HiFi which will be available later this year. Spotify HiFi changes the way people listen to music as it delivers all tracks in CD-quality, lossless format, giving users much more depth and clarity.
Newly supported countries:
Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Curaçao, Djibouti, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lesotho, Liberia, Macau, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Micronesia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
News
Nano Banana 2 Arrives In MENA For Google Gemini Users
Google brings its latest image model to Gemini and Search, adding 4K output and tighter text control for regional users.
Google has opened access to Nano Banana 2 across the Middle East and North Africa, pushing its newest image model into everyday tools rather than keeping it inside the exclusive (and expensive) Pro tier.
The rollout spans the Google Gemini desktop and mobile apps, and extends to Google Search through Lens and AI Mode. Developers can also test it in preview via AI Studio and the Gemini API.
Nano Banana 2 runs on Gemini Flash, Google’s fast inference layer. The focus is speed, but also control. Users can export visuals from 512px up to 4K, adjusting aspect ratios for everything from vertical social posts to widescreen displays.
The model maintains character likeness across up to five figures and preserves fidelity for as many as 14 objects within a single workflow. This enables visual continuity across scenes, iterations, or edits — supporting projects like short films, storyboards, and multi-scene narratives. Text rendering has also been improved, delivering legible typography in mockups and greeting cards, with built-in translation and localization directly within images.
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Under the hood, the system taps Gemini’s broader knowledge base and pulls in real-time information and imagery from web search to render specific subjects more accurately. Lighting and fine detail have been upgraded, without slowing output.
By embedding the model inside Gemini and Search, Google is normalizing advanced image generation for a mass audience. In MENA, where startups and marketing teams are leaning heavily on AI to scale content across languages and borders, that shift lands at a practical moment.
The move also folds creative tooling deeper into search itself, so that image generation is no longer a separate workflow. It now sits right next to the query box.
