Comcast has a plan to take on the likes of Netflix, Apple, and even Amazon, and the Olympics this summer will be its big test.

Comcast’s vision for the future of TV revolves around a technology called “X1,” which is basically the company’s version of Siri. The pitch is that X1 will be the most elegant way of dropping you into whatever you want to watch — fast.

The Olympics will be a powerful indicator of whether people actually respond to that functionality.

NBC is going to broadcast every single Olympic event, which Bloomberg points out is the equivalent of “tuning in 24 hours a day for 250 days.” In the past, you might just tune into the “best-of” broadcast or scroll through the app, but NBC (and Comcast) are hoping you’ll do something a bit different this year.

You’ll be able to use X1 to find specific countries or events, of parachute down into situations like “US is about to win gold.” You’ll hop around by speaking to the remote. “This is the future of television,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told Bloomberg.

And Comcast doesn’t seem to be the only company that thinks so.

Apple’s mantra is “the future of television is apps,” but its recent Apple TV updates show it trying to use Siri to push the boundaries of the app framework. Apple seems to be positioning Siri to be the central interface of TV moving forward, a digital assistant that will grab you the content you want.

There’s a battle brewing over which company will be your robot TV guide, and it has implications that stretch beyond TV.

Comcast compares X1’s voice remote to Amazon’s Alexa, the digital assistant that has been a runaway hit with its Echo speaker. The Echo sits in the corner of your living room and emerges when prompted to order you a pizza or cab, check the weather, play music, or surface random tidbits from the internet. It also can serve as the center of your smart home, triggering things like lights. 

Comcast, which has more than 1,000 people working on the X1, has ambitions for it to be the center of you smart home.

But first it has to win people over as the center of entertainment. MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett is impressed with the technology, but says there’s a potential downside.

“There is a risk that Comcast is positioning X1 as a Mercedes at a time when more of the market is looking at an economy car,” Moffett told Bloomberg.

SEE ALSO: RANKED: 23 Netflix original shows from worst to best

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NOW WATCH: How to find Netflix’s secret categories

Starting in May, more than 22 million US Netflix subscribers began to see a price hike of one or two dollars per month, which will continue to roll out over the next few months.

That increase will be worth about $520 million per year in revenue to Netflix, according to Nomura analyst Anthony DiClemente.

In May 2014, Netflix began to raise the price of its standard streaming plan for new US subscribers, first to $8.99 a month, then to $9.99 a month last October. But if you were an existing subscriber before each of the two price increases, Netflix grandfathered in your plan at the same rate.

That means that many Netflix subscribers are still paying either $7.99 or $8.99 for a plan that normally costs $9.99.

But that grandfathering will cease over the course of the next few months. "We will phase out this grandfathering gradually over the remainder of 2016, with our longest­ tenured members getting the longest benefit," Netflix wrote. This process with started in May, but will happen "slowly," with all affected members being notified by email.

DiClemente estimates that about 480,000 people will cancel, but that this will more than be offset by the extra revenue. And it fits into a broader pattern moving forward.

“We note that this has long been a tenet of our investment thesis on the domestic business, as slowing subscriber trends are more than offset by increased monetization,” DiClemente wrote in a note on Monday.

SEE ALSO: RANKED: 23 Netflix original shows from worst to best

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NOW WATCH: How to find Netflix’s secret categories

With his upcoming authorized documentary, Ron Howard is looking to tell the story that fans don't know about The Beatles.

The first trailer and poster for the feature-length doc "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years" were released Monday along with a firm date for the film's theatrical release: September 16.

Hulu, as part of its vision to stream exclusive documentaries, will begin streaming "Eight Days a Week" the following day on September 17, making it the first documentary feature to premiere exclusively on Hulu following its theatrical run.

The film was made with the full cooperation of band members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, and George Harrison’s widow Olivia Harrison.

According to Deadline, Howard's documentary uses rare and exclusive footage to trace the band's rise to fame from 1962 to 1966, beginning in the days of gigs at Liverpool’s Cavern Club and going through the band's final concert in 1966 at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.

Watch the full trailer below: 

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NOW WATCH: 4 important things you probably missed on this week's 'Game of Thrones'

Miss Universe knows what you think of it. And it’s quietly making a number of changes that might make you rethink the pageant.

Many people criticize Miss Universe for being an antiquated celebration of superficial femininity. While the annual show remains popular with its core audience more than 50 years after it was founded, its image as a brand has seen better days.

That may be changing. Donald Trump unloaded the organization in 2015 after a falling out with its broadcaster, NBC, following his controversial statements about Mexican immigrants. He sold to WME/IMG, which is primarily known as a talent agency but is widely growing its business ventures, including original productions.

In Miss Universe, first of all, WME/IMG saw a chance to obtain a massive global audience that will take advantage of the company’s other relationships within entertainment. (Actress Julianne Hough cohosted this month’s Miss USA competition, and she also happens to be signed with WME.)

The new Miss Universe/Miss USA owners want to take full advantage of that audience in ways the old shows simply left behind. They launched the Miss U app, the first official app for the Miss Universe organization, which allows fans a say in the voting and gives them access to content before and after the shows.

“There’s a huge community around this that we can leverage 365 days a year,” Michael Antinoro, who oversees Miss Universe at IMG Original Content, told Business Insider. “Frankly, in the past, most people looked at the organization, whether it was Miss USA or Miss Universe, once a year when the three-hour special came on TV. It was the only time they thought about it.”

But perhaps more significantly, WME/IMG wants to rethink what it means to be Miss USA or Miss Universe, and how it portrays the women aiming for the prizes.

“Celebrating women 60 years ago was a very different idea of how to do that than now. What we saw in the opportunity here was, first of, to kind of join the conversation that’s happening in 2016. That’s men and women talking about celebrating women and women’s empowerment and getting women to work together to raise all levels and awareness on women’s issues and other issues around the world,” Antinoro said.

That shift in how Miss Universe treats female competitors, means, for example, that Miss USA went to the 51 competitors’ hometowns to spend a day with each of them and shoot footage of their daily lives: their jobs, their families, and everything else that goes beyond the skills of the show.

This year’s newly crowned Miss USA, Deshauna Barber, is an officer in the Army Reserve and impressed viewers by giving an answer in which she defended women being allowed in all combats roles of the military. It was a far cry from the type of blanket, abstract answers competitors have given in the past, and got to the core of Barber's service and ideas about the country.

"There are many ways to define beauty," Antinoro said, "and it’s about confidence and about taking yourself out of your comfort zone."

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NOW WATCH: Disney just released the trailer for its 'Pete's Dragon' remake

Netflix is rolling out a new icon that will be incorporated into its mobile apps, "along with other product integrations in the near future," the company told Business Insider.

The current logo will remain in use, but will be replaced in many instances by this icon.

Netflix's Twitter accounts now display this N icon:

And its profile on Facebook does as well:

Netflix's iTunes, however, still retains the old logo:

The header on Netflix's website has the old styling as well (in an alternate color):

Netflix changed its logo in 2014 to a much more modern look. Here's what that change looked like:

SEE ALSO: Netflix could make an extra $520 million per year because of its price hike

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NOW WATCH: 4 things you might have missed on this week’s ‘Game of Thrones’

Finding the right headphones is a music-lover's never-ending conundrum. Traditional headphones are clunky, while wired earbuds can't seem to stay untangled.

Los Angeles-based startup, Zungle, wants to replace headphones entirely with a pair of sunglasses that sends sound directly through your skull.

The Zungle Panther sunglasses contain bone-conduction speakers where the frames hit the temples. Instead of then transmitting sound waves outside the ears, they send sound waves as vibrations through the skull. The wearer hears crystal clear sound (which the company claims is comparable to normal headphones), while the outside world hears almost nothing.

The user pairs the device to their smartphone via Bluetooth, and opens their preferred music app on their phone. A dial over the right ear can be tapped to start listening to a playlist or an album, and spun to fast-forward and rewind songs.

A built-in, noise-canceling microphone also allows wearers to make and answer calls without picking up the phone, though it's unclear how the quality is for the person on the other line.

The advantages of the Zungle Panter — beyond its coolness factor — are numerous. You can listen to tunes as loud as you'd like on the train without disturbing your neighbor, and spend a fraction of the cost of traditional noise-cancelling headphones. Plus, you can still hear approaching cars and conversations.

The battery leaves something to be desired. It last just four hours of playback and charges through a USB port hidden in the sunglasses.

By now you might be wondering, is it safe? The company makes no claims on its Kickstarter page, though the technology closely resembles that of bone-conduction implants.

These devices, worn by people who are hard of hearing, capture sound in the air, process the sound into vibrations, and transmit the vibrations through bone to the inner ear. More than 100,000 patients globally have been fitted with bone-conduction implants since the late '70s, according to leading device-maker Cochlear. 

The Zungle Panther sunglasses are currently available for pre-order on Kickstarter, and retail for $150.

SEE ALSO: Netflix just rolled out a totally new 'N' icon

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NOW WATCH: These headphones have a hidden display that projects movies right into your eyes

On this week's episode of HBO's "Silicon Valley," our heroes at the fictional startup Pied Piper ran smack into a hard truth about the real Silicon Valley: All the positive buzz in the world can't make up for a fundamentally flawed product.

(Spoilers ahead. But seriously, you should probably go watch "Silicon Valley" first, as this will make it sound like a super-serious business drama, which it definitely is not.)

The episode, titled "Daily Active Users," finds Pied Piper struggling with the titular metric — a measurement that tech companies use to track the number of loyal users who log in and actually use the service every day. It's a key gauge of success and growth for companies like Facebook and Snapchat.

For Pied Piper, the issue presented by the episode is that its Dropbox-like data storage and compression platform may have been downloaded 500,000 times, but it's only yielded 16,000 daily active users. That's not a great rate for a startup that, in the show's universe, is supposed to be the Next Big Thing.

At episode's end, facing the harsh reality that the company may have to shut down, it's revealed that Jared, Pied Piper's overeager business chief, has secretly turned to paying a "click farm" in Bangladesh to use the app and juice up the numbers.

First off: Click farms are very real, and they've expanded their purview from clicking on ads to clicking in apps. Secondly: Click farms are just one way that startups goose their numbers to look better to employees and investors.

A recent report from Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton reveals that as recently as October 2015, Twitter had been turning to sly trickery to improve its profile with Wall Street.

Bilton writes:

"This happens at virtually all social networks; the company sends an e-mail to inactive users who haven’t been on the service in a few months, informing them there is a problem with their username or account, which leads people to log in to fix the situation. Magically, those people become monthly active users even if they were not."

When shutdown is imminent

Before Jared comes up with his secret click farm scheme, Hendricks is prepared to shut down the startup: If Pied Piper is unusably complex, they simply don't have the time to spend or the cash to burn to fix it. Without showing substantial user growth, they can't get more investment capital.

It means that Pied Piper could go from Silicon Valley golden child to flameout case almost overnight. It's way more feasible than it sounds.

The real Silicon Valley is littered with examples of just this kind of problem: Social networking app Path, for example, launched in 2010 with a bang, hitting 1.5 million downloads in a measly 2.5 weeks.

But it took until 2012 for Path to hit 500,000 daily active users. When Path sold to Daum Kakao in 2015, we found out it had 10 million monthly active users. The launch buzz faded quickly and people moved on to the next big thing.

Path had raised $77 million in its lifetime. And not long before the sale, it tried to pivot, releasing a selfie app to expand the Path universe. But whatever Path was building, users simply weren't sticking around at the rate it needed to in order to justify its continued existence as a venture-funded company. 

Back on HBO, Pied Piper CEO Richard Hendricks realizes the problem is his app's complexity and difficulty to use. See, he only beta-tested Pied Piper with engineers, meaning that they never designed it for an Average Joe.

Hendricks comes up with all kinds of cutesy explanations for how it works, and Pied Piper goes on a charm offensive at trade shows and Bloomberg TV to try to sell it to consumers. Nothing works, and the company's daily active users stay stalled.

It's reminiscent of a story going around recently of a startup founder who turned down a $500,000 investment and shut down his startup, citing an unfixable problem with the company's business model. If something is really, fundamentally wrong, it's not an easy fix, even with deep pockets.

And as venture capital money becomes harder to find for early-stage companies, you can expect to see more cases like Pied Piper in the real tech market — investors increasingly want to see actual growth, and it's going to shake out any startup that can't show it.

SEE ALSO: HBO's 'Silicon Valley' nailed a huge question that all tech companies must answer

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NOW WATCH: JAMES ALTUCHER: What HBO's show 'Silicon Valley' gets wrong about Silicon Valley

On the most recent episode of HBO's "Silicon Valley," our heroes at the fictional startup Pied Piper get their own TV commercial, boldly and nonsensically declaring that "Sharing is Tables."

 It's a pitch-perfect parody of a silly Facebook commercial from 2012, the social network's first, which declared that "chairs are like Facebook." Check it out:

 Facebook couldn't resist jabbing back at "Silicon Valley."

When the official "Silicon Valley" Facebook page posted the "Sharing is Tables" ad, a verified account belonging to Facebook decided to chime in with a comment, saying that Pied Piper is actually more like a chandelier.

"It can shine bright one moment and dimly the next. It's both stunning and fragile. Two people close to it may disagree on the design. And when you flip the switch you're pretty sure it'll work. But for a moment you're not sure. Sort of like that," wrote the Facebook account.

That's a reference to a storyline this season where Pied Piper found itself caught between building a product for consumers or business customers.

The production crew of HBO's "Silicon Valley" is tight with the real Silicon Valley — everyone from Zynga founder Mark Pincus to investor and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen have consulted on the show. Google even let "Silicon Valley" post fake news to search results.

So, if nothing else, the show has proved that at least some people in the real Silicon Valley can laugh at themselves — but also that maybe they can dish it out as well as they can take it.

SEE ALSO: Google's moonshot boss reportedly huffed out of a meeting with the writers of HBO's 'Silicon Valley'

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NOW WATCH: The coolest 100 people in Silicon Valley in 100 seconds

Space and transportation entrepreneur extraordinaire Elon Musk has a well-established love for sci-fi, especially Star Trek. He's also a tweet-a-holic.

So when fellow tweet-a-holic and Star Trek star William Shatner wanted Musk to be part of his Star Trek 50th Anniversary special, Shatner tweeted the invite.

When Shatner didn't hear back right away, he tweeted ... 

And Musk replied:

The exchange was so cute that soap opera actor Billy Flynn from "Days of Our Lives" chimed in. Shatner famously got hooked on Days during the holiday season while hanging out in his cabin and he started tweeteing about the show, and about how Flynn gets "no respect."

As for Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX has openly talked about his love for Star Trek, if not for the show's star.

Back in 2014, at the MIT AeroAstro Centennial Symposium he said:

"I love technology. So I, yeah what I mean, particularly when I was a kid I'd just consume like all science-fiction and fantasy, you know, movies, books, anything at all, even if it was really shlucky. So - in terms of sort of key influences, I mean I certainly like Star Trek, because that actually shows like more of a utopian future, like it's not like, things aren't horrible in the future. It's like there's so many bloody post-apocalyptic futures, like okay can we have one that's nice? Just a few. So I like that about Star Trek."

Here is Musk talking about how sci-fi influenced him.

SEE ALSO: This résumé for Elon Musk proves you never, ever need to use more than one page

SEE ALSO: How the queen of Silicon Valley is helping Google go after Amazon’s most profitable business

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NOW WATCH: This unconventional keyboard is a must-have for power-programmers

Steven Spielberg's box office blockbuster "Jaws" just turned 41 years old. The masterpiece originally hit theaters on June 20, 1975 and immediately changed the Hollywood landscape.

After the film's success, movie studios focused their efforts on creating summer "tentpole" releases, with buzz fueled by expensive marketing campaigns and unconventionally wide theatrical releases.

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Eat baby food. Go gluten-free. Reserve Mondays for yellow food and Thursdays for purple food.

These are just a few of the utterly insane eating plans that various celebrities have publicly admitted to trying.

Thankfully, there are better ways to change what you eat and feel healthier. (Spoiler alert: Many of them involve longterm lifestyle changes instead of jumping into a rigid eating plan for a few days).

Here's a list of some of the craziest and inadvisable things celebrities have done to look and feel better, along with a few suggestions that could be healthily incorporated into your life:

SEE ALSO: 17 'healthy habits' you're better off giving up

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Beyoncé reportedly used the "Master Cleanse" to lose weight before "Dreamgirls."

The scoop: Beyoncé reportedly did the Master Cleanse, which involves subsisting on nothing but lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper, before staring in the movie "Dreamgirls" — the idea being that it detoxes your system and accelerates weight loss.

Should you do it? You never need to do a detox. Our bodies do it for us. While our kidneys filter our blood and remove waste from our diet, our liver processes medications and detoxifies any chemicals we ingest. Paired together, these organs make our bodies natural cleansing powerhouses. So stop eyeing that lemon squeezer. It's not worth it.

Reese Witherspoon did the "Baby Food Diet."

The scoop: The Baby Food Diet has been traced to celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson, who's since denied supporting it. It involves eating 14 jars of baby food, with the option of adding in one actual low-calorie meal, each day.

Should you do it? Nope. The jars of baby food are 80 calories. Eat 14 and you end up with roughly 1,000 calories each day plus one real meal. So long as the meal you allow yourself is about 400 calories — think a small piece of grilled fish or lean meat and some sautéed veggies — you'll definitely lose weight. But it'll be because you're not eating food, not because mushed-up fruit is a miracle diet product.

Snooki went on the "Cookie Diet."

The scoop: Snooki reportedly lost weight in 2010 with a diet of cookies. For three weeks, she ate six of the 90-calorie treats a day and one small meal. Alarmingly, the Cookie Diet is not Snooki's creation: Now-retired Dr. Sanford "The Cookie Doctor" Siegal trademarked the plan.

Should you do it? Probably not. Cookie Diet cookies are no Girl Scout Samoas. The recipe's first three ingredients are glycerin (used to add sweetness and moisture), whole-wheat powder (for fiber), and beef protein. They've also got rice crisps (ostensibly for crunch), egg whites (for more protein), wheat bran (for fiber), and a smattering of B vitamins.

One of the breakout characters of "Finding Dory," Pixar's latest movie, is Hank an octopus that lost a tentacle (technically making him a septopus). 

In the film, Hank can change colors to blend in with his surroundings. He's based off of a real creature, the mimic octopus, and it’s even more awesome in real life.

SEE ALSO: 'Finding Dory' has an end-credits scene that answers a big question from the first movie

Hank can change colors and blend in with his surroundings.

And so can real mimic octopi! Watch how this one completely disappears on the sea floor:

True to its name, the octopus mimics other creatures, like lion-fish (middle photos) and sea snakes (bottom photos).

Source: M. Norman, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B (2001)

After nearly three years on and off the market and multiple price chops, the Miami penthouse belonging to singer Pharrell Williams has finally sold.

First put on the market for $16.8 million in 2012, the price was dropped to $14 million in 2013 and again to $10.8 million five months later, property records on Zillow show. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, the enormous penthouse has sold for $9.25 million. Williams bought it for $12.525 million in 2007.

The 9,000-square-foot penthouse sits at the top of the high-rise Bristol Tower in the Brickell neighborhood of Miami. Much of that space is full of his pop art collection.

Dora Puig Real Estate had the listing.

SEE ALSO: This $28.5 million mansion is now the most expensive home for sale in San Francisco

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Pharrell Williams' penthouse definitely looks like his. The first thing you notice when you walk into the grand cathedral-like living room is the art on the walls by his favorite artists.

Throughout the apartment, you'll find art from KAWS, Takashi Murakami, Kidrobot, Keith Haring, and Andy Warhol.

Pop art lines the hallways.

Samantha Bee blasted senate Republicans and the National Rifle Association for following last week's celebrated 14-plus-hour filibuster by killing four gun control bills.

Bee showed a video of failed Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, who let the air out of the filibuster balloon by declaring that gun control wasn't the issue — it was a terrorism issue. Cruz then called the filibuster an example of "political gamesmanship."

"You of all people don't get to call anyone out for political gamesmanship, considering that before getting your a-- handed to you by a screaming carrot demon [Donald Trump], you were best known for trying to shut down the government with 21 hours of bedtime stories," Bee said of Cruz's comments on Monday's episode of TBS's "Full Frontal."

In fact, Cruz did a 21-hour-long filibuster against Obamacare in which he read from Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham," as well as praised White Castle hamburgers, quoted from reality show “Duck Dynasty,” and made references to professional wrestling organization, WWE.

Bee pointed out that Republicans do have a record of supporting gun control in the past. Former President Ronald Reagan opposed the NRA publicly and backed the Brady Bill.

"Nothing like getting shot to put you on the side of gun control," Bee joked of Reagan. "At this rate, most Americans will come around in the next year or two."

Additionally, Bee highlighted that former President George H.W. Bush actually quit the NRA in opposition to their "hateful, paranoid rhetoric." And former conservative Supreme Court justice Warren Burger called the NRA's lack of flexibility on the second amendment a "fraud."

Instead, Bee said that today's Republicans are unabashedly open about being in bed with the NRA or at least parroting its talking points.

Watch the video below:

SEE ALSO: Seth Meyers takes a closer look at how easy it is to buy guns in America

DON'T MISS: Stephen Colbert used a Nazi symbol to slam Donald Trump's 'new low' in the election

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NOW WATCH: FILIBUSTER IN THE SENATE: Democrats block spending bill to debate gun control

Singer Frank Ocean posted a moving, personal reflection to his Tumblr page on Tuesday — taking on an array of subjects, including the Orlando mass shooting and the controversy over North Carolina's transgender bathroom laws, while confronting homophobia and transphobia at large. 

In his extended post, Ocean discussed the violence of the Orlando massacre in the context of global hate crimes and intolerance toward the LGBT community.

"Many hate us and wish we didn’t exist," Ocean wrote. "Many are annoyed by our wanting to be married like everyone else or use the correct restroom like everyone else. Many don’t see anything wrong with passing down the same old values that send thousands of kids into suicidal depression each year. So we say pride and we express love for who and what we are. Because who else will in earnest?"

Confronting the violence of the Orlando shooting — an attack that killed 49 people and injured 53 more at a gay nightclub on June 12 — the 28-year-old singer penned a sorrowful reaction that related the shooting to other instances of intolerance in his life. 

"I heard on the news that the aftermath of a hate crime left piles of bodies on a dance floor this month," he wrote. "I heard the gunman feigned dead among all the people he killed. I heard the news say he was one of us. I was six years old when I heard my dad call our transgender waitress a faggot as he dragged me out a neighborhood diner saying we wouldn’t be served because she was dirty. That was the last afternoon I saw my father and the first time I heard that word, I think, although it wouldn’t shock me if it wasn’t."

Read Ocean's full note on his website.

SEE ALSO: Meet Frank Ocean, The Bieber Songwriter Turned Hip-Hop's Hottest Singer

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NOW WATCH: Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws' was released 41 years ago today — watch the original 1975 trailer

Seven months after he revealed he was HIV-positive, Charlie Sheen went back on "Today" to talk about living with the illness and what has changed since the initial interview.

Publicly announcing his HIV-positive status was like "being released from prison," the "Two and a Half Men" actor said.

Sheen maintained his affinity for honesty when he admitted to some regrets.

"I regret not using a condom one or two times when this whole thing happened. I regret ruining 'Two and a Half Men.' I regret not being more involved in my children’s lives growing up which I am now," Sheen said during Matt Lauer's interview. "But we can only move forward from today and they wouldn’t call it the past if it wasn’t."

Since his public reveal, Sheen's former fiancee has filed a lawsuitaccusing him of assault, battery, false imprisonment, and failure to disclose to her that he was HIV-positive. When Lauer asked if any of the cases presented against him had merit, Sheen said "they do not" and that they were "baseless."

However, he did admit to not always revealing his HIV-positive status. "Protection was always in place. It was for the right reasons because everyone that I had told up to that moment had shaken me down," Sheen said.

Sheen also explained that his trip to Mexico to seek a controversial treatment from Dr. Sam Chachoua was in part due to what Lauer described as "pill fatigue" — an exhaustion from taking pills every day and from their side effects. "That man is a criminal," Sheen said. "He’s hurting a lot of good and decent people."

Now, Sheen is in the third phase of a FDA trial in which he receives one shot per week as opposed to pills daily. "The change is not just physical, but it’s psychological, emotional," he said. "This is the future of treatment."

Watch the full interview below:

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NOW WATCH: The trailer for the highly-anticipated Tupac Shakur biopic just arrived

Usher has collaborated with some of the biggest stars in the business — Jay Z, Beyoncé, Alicia Keys — but he's also constantly on the hunt for new, unsigned talent too.

Speaking to Business Insider after his Cannes Lions/iHeartMedia on-stage session, where he was interviewed by TV and radio host Ryan Seacrest, Usher explained that SoundCloud and Tidal are his main scouting tools.

"I think I have a very eclectic palette, so if it hits me, I'm engaged, and it doesn't matter at what level. It could be an artist that I hear for the first time on SoundCloud," Usher said.

Asked which tools he uses to unearth new talent, Usher responded: "Everywhere there is music, there I am."

Usher said he also spends a lot of time on Tidal — the Jay Z-owned subscription music service. When Tidal launched last year, Jay Z memorably invited his showbiz pals to appear at the launch event, where Usher joined other artists such as Kanye West, Rihanna, and Beyoncé.

"In that space I'm actually introduced to younger artists and [it's] great that on Tidal they have this opportunity to be seen in the way they want to be seen. It's not necessarily packaged — it is packaged but you have this ability to be raw and that right there is another great way to do it. It's not like you get demos and people walk up to you with demos any more," Usher said.

Once he spots talent, he'll get in touch with the producer or attempt to find an agent in order to offer to collaborate.

"Social media has made it very easy to connect, too," Usher said.

Seacrest, who also joined us on our chat remarked how Usher — especially given his fame — can instantly connect with new artists by sending a simple message on social media, but he asked: "How do they know it's really you?"

Usher responded: "They don't. You just kind of have to go through a few conversations ... and before you know it ... my contact contacts your contact, and you contact."

Usher uses Snapchat "too much"

We noted that Seacrest and Usher had been taking selfies on Snapchat ahead of our conversation. We asked how much they both use the app.

"Too much for me," Usher responded.

Seacrest said: "It's obsessive. I think that we recognize the value of it. Plus it's fun, we enjoy it."

They then took a brief break while Usher took another selfie of the pair.

Seacrest added: "It's fun for us, we wouldn't do it if it's not fun."

Usher has amassed a huge following on other social media platforms too — with 11 million followers on Twitter and 47 million fans on Facebook. With that huge audience comes an incredible amount of data. We asked Usher whether he ever uses that data to work out who his fans are and assess the kind of content they want from him.

He responded that he doesn't comb through the data from his social media accounts in a "forensic" way, but he enjoys the form of feedback when a post resonates with his fans and he sees the "likes" adding up.

Watch the full interview below:

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NOW WATCH: Yes, this is a giant baby stroller for adults — here's the next time you can see it live

Donald Trump once gave advice to an 11-year-old Daniel Radcliffe.

The "Harry Potter" movie franchise's star told Seth Meyers on Monday's "Late Night" that he met the Republican presidential candidate when they were both guests at NBC's "Today" show.

"I was really nervous and 10, 11 years old and I've never been on live TV before, and just terrified," the actor said.

Luckily for the worried Radcliffe, someone asked Trump if he wanted to meet the young "Harry Potter" star. That would give Trump the chance to hand down some of his unique wisdom to Radcliffe.

The actor, now 26 years old, told Meyers, "[Trump] was like, 'How are you?' And I was like, 'I'm really nervous. I don't know what I'm going to talk about on the show.' And he just said, 'You just tell them you met Mr. Trump.' To this day, I can't even relate to that level of confidence."

Radcliffe added, "How weirded out would [the audience] be? 'That British kid really loves Trump. He's really into real estate.' "

Watch Radcliffe tell the story of meeting Trump below:

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In a recent chat with film critics on the set of his upcoming "Justice League" film, director Zack Snyder discussed the negative backlash toward his 2015 film "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," admitting that he even incorporated fan responses into the production and changed the tone of the movie's sequel, "Justice League," which is due for release in November 2017.

"When 'Batman v Superman' came out, I was like, ‘Wow, okay, oof," Snyder admitted to Vulture, concerning the near-universal critical panning of his film. 

"It did catch me off guard," he continued. "I have had to, in my mind, make an adjustment. I do think that the tone of 'Justice League' has changed because of what the fans have said."

Where critics found "Batman v Superman" to be "joyless," plagued by a lack of "humor or self-deprecation" and the apparent result of the superhero-movie model's "creative exhaustion," Snyder maintains that the grimness of his film originated from a deeply probing study of the character's "darker" instincts, which he says was a requirement if the heroes were to fight each other. 

As for where he plans to take "Justice League" in light of the unfavorable response to the gloominess of "Batman v Superman," Snyder suggested that having his characters fight a common enemy — in the fashion of Marvel's "Avengers" films — will ultimately bring his new film out of the darkness, so to speak. 

"I really do believe that with this movie, with 'Justice League,' they’ve been freed of the responsibility to be in a place where they would fight each other," Snyder said. "That’s liberating for us in making the movie, because now we have a single enemy with a single objective, and it’s really about uniting the team. That, to me, is a fun activity.”

SEE ALSO: It turns out the 'Batman v Superman' box office opening isn't as big as first reported

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In March, the Supreme Court declined to hear a long-running case about Apple price-fixing e-books, making an earlier $400 million settlement final.

Now Apple's paying it out. You might have credits for free e-books waiting in your inbox — and you don't have to do anything.

Here's how it works:

• You're eligible if you bought an e-book from a large publishing company between April 1, 2010, and May 21, 2012.
• Those books could have been purchased not just from Apple's iBooks, but Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo.
• Those credits will be automatically applied to the account where you bought the e-books unless you requested a paper check years ago.
• If you're eligible, you'll receive a $6.93 credit for any New York Times bestseller and $1.57 for any other e-book from a large publisher.

The law firm that's handling the payouts has a lot more information along with a FAQ. Make sure you check your old email address, too.

If you're wondering why Apple is paying for Amazon credits, it's a long and fascinating story. But essentially, the complaint was that Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue strong-armed major publishers into a pricing agreement that ended up causing e-book prices to spike overnight.

The judgment was handed down in 2013, and Apple started sending iTunes credits to customers in 2014.

You can check if you got any Amazon credits here.

Here's one of the emails that's going out to eligible customers:

SEE ALSO: How Steve Jobs, Rupert Murdoch and Stephen King Worked To Fix Ebook Prices

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