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  • Spotify will try to conquer the audiobook market

    Spotify will try to conquer the audiobook market

    Audible, you should start preparing for a serious competition because Spotify is eager to conquer the audiobook market as well. Yes, as the streaming service firmly stated at its Investor Day 2022, from now on, one of its main goals will be to increase its share in the audiobook market.

    Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, stated that the global size of the book market is around $140 billion, with audiobooks having only about a 6%-7% market share. But, in the markets where audiobooks are more popular, they represent around 50% of the market. Also, the audiobook category is growing by 20% every year. This is why, according to Ek, the audiobook industry is an “annual opportunity of $70 billion dollars” for Spotify to expand and “eventually compete for.”

    Nir Zicherman, Spotify’s head of Audiobooks and Gated Content Vertical, stated that an expansion in the audiobook market “presents a really unique opportunity” to “drastically expand” that industry and to “introduce music and podcast listeners around the world to audiobooks.”

    Zicherman added that Spotify will soon be a place where you can buy and listen to your favorite audiobooks directly on the platform. This offering, as he stated, will reach Spotify’s global audience of over 422 million users.

    You can currently listen to audiobooks on Spotify, but until recently, they didn’t seem like that big of a priority for the streaming service. However, in 2021, Spotify purchased the audiobook platform Findaway, implying that it may be considering expanding in that segment as well. The streaming service is convinced that it can not only just grow the audiobook industry but also significantly innovate it and even transform it. As to whether Spotify will be able to do what it says, only time will tell, but it sure sounds promising.

     

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  • Spotify announces gains in both paid subscribers and free users in 2022

    Spotify announces gains in both paid subscribers and free users in 2022

    Despite the difficult circumstances, Spotify has managed to expand its user base in 2022. Paid subscribers rose by 2 million, while monthly active users – by 18 million.

    On Wednesday, Spotify released its financial results for the first quarter of 2022. While many streaming services are facing financial hardship, Spotify has defied the gloomy predictions and announced a nearly 24% increase in gross revenue on a yearly basis.

    The company reported growth across all key metrics, with increases in both monthly active users and paid subscribers. Based on the statistics, Spotify Premium subscribers now add up to 182 million, 2 million more than the figure for the same period in 2021. It should be noted that this increase was sustained despite the withdrawal of the streaming platform from the Russian market, which directly lead to the estimated loss of 1.5 million subscribers.

    The growth exceeded the company’s initial expectations and is largely attributed to outperformance in other key markets (notably Europe and Latin America). All in all, premium revenue rose by 23%, on a year-to-year basis.

    For the number of active monthly listeners, a little bit of guesswork was undertaken. Because of a system outrage a couple of months ago, many non-premium users were forcibly logged out from the platform. As a result, some simply ended up creating new accounts instead of logging back to their old ones. Nevertheless, even when accounting for this accident, Spotify is confident that the number of active monthly listeners has still risen, albeit not to the levels previously anticipated.

    Spotify also announced its forecasts for the next financial quarter and the end of the year. By 2023, the streaming platform is projected to have up to 187 million paid subscribers and a grand total of 428 million active monthly users.

    These figures are impressive and showcase Spotify’s continuous dominance of the music streaming market. Spotify’s biggest direct competitor, Apple Music, does not routinely report the size of its user base. The last time it did, it had an estimated 60 million subscribers – a sizeable number no doubt, but quite a bit off of what Spotify has.

     

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  • Spotify’s standalone Greenroom app gets a new home and a new name

    Spotify’s standalone Greenroom app gets a new home and a new name

    Spotify is constantly changing its app to provide users with a wide range of features. Last year, Spotify bought a company called Betty Labs, the creators of Locker Room, a live audio app where fans and insiders can take part in conversations focusing on various topics.

    A few months later, the Locker Room app has been renamed to Greenroom and offered separately as part of the Spotify ecosystem. Starting this week, Greenroom will be available from the Spotify main app to make it easier for everyone to enjoy its features.

    Additionally, Spotify announced that it decided to change Greenroom’s name to Spotify Live. It’s important to mention that Spotify Live is now available both as a standalone app and as a livestream function in the Spotify app.

    Spotify users can now tune in to live programming on the service via the creator’s podcast or artist page, and if whey wish be part of the conversation or join the host onstage, they can head to the Spotify Live app to make it happen.

  • Amazon Music Unlimited’s monthly subscription price set to slightly increase

    Amazon Music Unlimited’s monthly subscription price set to slightly increase

    Every once in a while, major streaming services are adjusting their subscription prices, especially if they prove to be successful. Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Spotify and many other similar streaming service have had their prices increased a few times in the last couple of years.

    The latest on that list is Amazon Music Unlimited, which is expected to increase its monthly subscription price by $1. Many Amazon Music subscribers have started to receive notifications via email that confirmed the monthly Amazon Music Unlimited Individual Plan price will increase from $7.99 to $8.99 .

    Strangely enough, Amazon did not announce anything yet, but it’s probably just a matter of time before the move is officialized. According to the email, the new price for Amazon Music Unlimited will go live on May 5.

    On the bright side, the Amazon Music Unlimited Family Plan price has been kept the same, so anyone who currently pays the $14.99 monthly subscription will not be affected by the price hike.

    With access to more than 75 million songs in HD, as well as several important top-tier audio features, including Spatial Audio, Amazon Music Unlimited is one of the cheapest offerings on the music streaming services market. Despite the $1 price hike, Amazon Music remains a great deal for those looking for high-quality music content at a low price.

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  • Spotify is now testing a new Car Mode UI for safer music listening while driving

    Spotify is now testing a new Car Mode UI for safer music listening while driving

    Driving is always more fun when you’re enjoying your favorite music, or listening to a podcast while you’re stuck in a traffic jam. Now, iMore reports about a new Car Mode look that Spotify is working on, designed especially to make it easier and safer for drivers. Check it out.

    The new Car Mode is a feature that will make it safer to use when you’re driving. This new feature comes after Spotify abandoned Car View, which actually was doing something similar.

    For now, the feature is not official, but the new look has been showcased on Android, and you can see what it will look like once it gets officially released. Most likely the feature will also have its testing period on iOS devices as well, and some might have gotten to test it already.

    What it is is bringing larger buttons that are easier to tap on while you’re busy looking at the road, and as a whole, the interface of the popular music-streaming app is simpler. However, it does have more options than what Car View had, as Car View was quite simplistic.

    Killing Car View was actually in order to have Spotify users look into the Car Thing accessory that the company released recently.

    Spotify is now prompting some users to “test drive” the new feature when they connect their phones to their car. One of the best features Car Mode brings is that you can easily browse and search for different music to play in your car, something that the old version, Car View, didn’t have.

    You get to have a home screen, a library view, and a voice control button so you can just give it commands and have your hands on the steering wheel. Of course, you get also simple media controls like play/pause, and others.

    The Library tab gives you a glance at the music you’ve listened to most recently. This feature is still in testing for Android (and probably soon for iOS users), and no official release date has been announced as of yet.

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  • Spotify to move Greenroom to its main app, rename it to Spotify Live

    Spotify to move Greenroom to its main app, rename it to Spotify Live

    It seems that the Clubhouse craze is slowly dying out – Spotify is the latest company to make changes to its live conversation app, Greenroom. According to inside sources, Spotify plans to integrate Greenroom into the main app, and rename it to Spotify Live.

    The change is apparently happening in the second quarter of the year, with all the features migrating to Spotify. Creators will be able to organize and start conversations in Spotify Live, and subscribers will be able to listen to them in the main app.

    There’s another piece of evidence, tied to the change – it was found in the beta app by developer Steve Moser who allegedly shared the matter with Bloomberg. Spotify reacted to the popularity of Clubhouse, which exploded last year, by acquiring Betty Labs, the maker of social audio app Locker Room, and then rebranded the product to Greenroom.

    The short-lived success of Clubhouse resulted in many companies trying to replicate the functionality – Twitter introduced Spaces, and Facebook launched Live Audio Rooms. According to data from SensorTower, Clubhouse scored less than 1 million active monthly users in October 2021, compared to the top result of 9.6 million active users back in February of the same year.

    Integrating Greenroom into Spotify is probably a wise choice, as the standalone app failed to take off and managed to haul only 140,000 installs on iOS as of July 2021. Spotify, on the other hand, ended 2021 with 406m active users and 180m subscribers, and giving them the opportunity to listen to these Clubhouse-like streams may breathe a new life to the feature.

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  • Spotify is going to shut down its own original podcast studio

    Spotify is going to shut down its own original podcast studio

    As many of you may probably know, Spotify has been investing in the ever-growing podcast industry in recent years. Despite that, the music streaming service has decided to shut down its in-house podcast Studio 4.

    It seems that Spotify has now told employees that work at Studio 4 that it will be closed after January 21. Original shows, such as Dissect and Chapo: Kingpin on Trial, were produced in Studio 4. Well, luckily this isn’t the only podcast studio that the company owns; however, it was the first in-house studio that it created before its major studio acquisitions.

    Some of the employees working at Studio 4 have been reassigned to other positions, while some unfortunate ones were laid off with the option to apply for another job at the company. So far, Spotify hasn’t given a reason as to why it is closing Studio 4, but a reported internal note stated this was done to help the company progress faster. Additionally, another reason for the closure given by Spotify in the internal note was to “facilitate more effective collaboration” across the organization.

    Reportedly, the affected employees were quite surprised and some of them found the news quite upsetting.

    For the moment, it is unclear what will happen to the Spotify shows that were produced at Studio 4, but not all of them may be abandoned. For example, Dissect Podcast will not be canceled and will continue as usual on Spotify, according to the show’s official Twitter account.

    Spotify’s presence in the podcast market has been steadily growing, and last year, the company introduced paid podcast subscriptions. Recently, it also acquired a firm that possessed the technology to easily transform broadcast audio to podcasts, in an attempt to enrich the podcast experience to its users.

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  • Spotify starts serving interactive ads to podcast listeners

    Spotify starts serving interactive ads to podcast listeners

    After investing big in podcasts, Spotify is trying to recoup some of that investment through ads. Starting this week, Spotify users listening to podcasts will be getting interactive ads that the streaming service refers to as CTA cards.

    These CTA cards are “the latest step in Spotify’s vision for the future of audio as an interactive, multi-way experience.” They will appear in the Spotify app when a podcast ad begins playing and will reappear later on while the user explores the Spotify app.

    According to Spotify, its CTA cards are supposed to make it easier for users to directly discover the products and services they’re interested in “without having a hard-to-remember promo code or vanity URL.”

    After running some tests, Spotify claims that advertisers with clickable ads have shown twice as many site visits compared to non-clickable podcast ads. CTA cards will be available across select Spotify Original & Exclusive podcasts in the United States.

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  • Spotify is testing a TikTok-like video feed

    Spotify is testing a TikTok-like video feed

    Spotify wants to become more TikTok-like… sort of. Apparently, the music streaming service is testing a new feature called Discover for its app. The feature will allow artists to post vertical videos to their songs and allow listeners to discover new songs more easily.

    The new Spotify Discover feature was spotted by Chris Messina in the music app’s latest iOS TestFlight beta version. The new Discover button is located between the Home and Search buttons. When you Discover, you are presented with a TikTok-style video feed of artists and their songs. You can like the song by tapping on the heart icon or hitting the three-dot button for more information.

    Spotify declined to comment on whether the new feature will make it into the official version of the app or if it will be ditched entirely. A spokesman for the streaming service gave the following statement:“At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We don’t have any further news to share at this time.” – Spotify spokesperson.

    The new Discover feature could prove very useful for artists as it will allow them to add a visualization to their songs without the need for an expensive music video. The feature will also allow Spotify to differentiate itself more from its biggest competitor, Apple Music, as the latter doesn’t have a video feed section.

    A couple of artists have already made vertical music videos in the past. For example, back in February and April of 2019, British singer MARINA published vertical videos for her songs Handmade Heaven and Orange Trees, which ere posted on all social media, taking advantage of the smartphone form factor. Later, Billie Eilish jumped on the new trend as well. The American music artist posted a vertical video of her hit song Bad Guy in August of 2019.

    If Spotify indeed adds the new Discover section to its app, vertical music videos could become mainstream. If that happens, Apple will probably add a similar feature to its music streaming service too.

    Spotify isn’t the first popular app to work on a TikTok-like video feed. Instagram introduced a very similar feature in its app called Instagram Reels. YouTube also introduced its own version of a vertical video feed called YouTube Shorts.

    Both Reels and Shorts proved to be quite successful, and it isn’t surprising that other big companies want to add similar features to their apps. Netflix also recently introduced a video feed to its app containing comedy content. The new Netflix feature is called Fast Laughs.

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  • Spotify’s new Enhanced feature will upgrade your playlists

    Spotify’s new Enhanced feature will upgrade your playlists

    Spotify’s new Enhanced feature promises to further improve your playlists with personalized recommendations. The music streaming service announced the new feature is rolling out this week to all its Premium users, so if you don’t pay for a Spotify subscription, you won’t be getting this one sadly.

    So, how is this Enhanced feature going to work for your playlists? First off, you’d need to toggle the feature on by tapping the new Enhance button at the top of each playlist. Once that’s done, recommendations will be added to the track list. According to Spotify, one recommendation will appear after every two tracks, for a max of 30 recommendations.

    Of course, you can choose to not add a recommendation to your playlist, but if you want to include it on your tracklist, simply press the “+” icon next to each track. All songs added through this method will never be replaced, but you can turn off Enhance at any time just like you enabled it.

    Spotify’s Enhanced feature will be rolling out to Premium users on Android and iOS in the following markets: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland Israel, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, U.K., and the U.S.

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  • Spotify to launch new Wear OS app, brings offline listening to smartwatches

    Spotify to launch new Wear OS app, brings offline listening to smartwatches

    Many months after launching its Watch OS app, Spotify announced it will launch a revamped Wear OS app that will include a couple of new features. The most important is offline listening, a brand-new feature that will be rolled out to Wear OS smartwatches in the coming weeks.

    Although the wording in the official statement implies that offline listening has been specifically designed for Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, the feature will work on older Wear OS smartwatches too.

    The new feature will not be limited to music, as Spotify users will also be able to download podcasts for offline listening. Premium subscribers will be able to download their favorite albums, playlists, and podcasts to listen offline. On the other hand, free Spotify users will be able to stream their tunes in Shuffle Mode using Wi-Fi or mobile data, as well as download any of their favorite podcasts directly to the watch.

    When the new Wear OS app will be available for download, smartwatch users will be able to download content for offline listening simply by tapping “Download to watch.” The new app will be coming to Wear OS smartwatches from Fossil, Mobvoi, Suunto and more in the coming weeks.

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  • Spotify no longer plans to add AirPlay 2 support

    Spotify no longer plans to add AirPlay 2 support

    Spotify backtracked on its initial statement and now claims it will eventually add AirPlay 2 support for its iOS app. Spotify says that it’s already working on AirPlay 2, but does not offer any ETA: “A post on one of Spotify’s Community pages contained incomplete information regarding our plans for AirPlay2. Spotify will support AirPlay2 and we’re working to make that a reality.”

    In an unfortunate turn of events, Spotify has decided against adding AirPlay 2 support to its music streaming service. The reason behind the decision is purely technical and has nothing to do with any possible rivalries between Apple Music and Spotify.

    A Spotify rep says that while the company has discussed the idea of adding AirPlay 2, it decided against implementing it because of audio driver compatibility issues.

    We’ve discussed this idea internally and while we are working on supporting AirPlay 2 in a proper way, we have decided to close it for now. The reason for this is that due to audio driver compatibility issues, this seems like a bigger project that we won’t be able to complete in the foreseeable future.

    Although the wording might suggest that adding AirPlay 2 support is possible with a bigger budget, it looks like that won’t happen any time soon. We can’t help but wonder if Spotify completely shelved the project or it will come back to it at a later time.

    AirPlay allows streaming between devices of audio, video, device screens, and photos. It was originally launched as AirTunes and only used for audio. AirPlay 2 made its debut three years ago and added more improvements like multi-room audio, Siri support, and better buffering.

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  • Spotify adds new feed feature on Android and iOS

    Spotify adds new feed feature on Android and iOS

    Spotify has just announced a new feature will be making its way to Android and iOS users in the coming weeks. The new feature will enable Spotify users to discover new music and podcasts, a much-needed improvement considering there are more than 50k+ hours of content uploaded to Spotify every day.

    The new feature is called What’s New and will gather all the new releases from the artists and shows Spotify users follow on the music streaming platform. Additionally, What’s New is updated in real-time, which means Spotify users will listen to new content just as it’s released.

    The new What’s New feed feature can be accessed by clicking the bell icon located at the top of the Home tab on your Android or iOS device. If new songs have been released since your last visit, a blue dot indicator on the bell icon will pop up.

    It’s important to mention that the What’s New feed includes filters that let users sort for new music releases or new podcast and show episodes. To have your favorite artists show up in the What’s New feed when they release new content, simply visit their page on Spotify and tap “Follow.”

    According to Spotify, the new What’s New feature will be rolled out to all users globally on Android and iOS over the coming weeks, so it’s not going to be available to everyone at the same time.

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  • Spotify acquires another company to further improve podcasts discovery

    Spotify acquires another company to further improve podcasts discovery

    Spotify bought a few small companies in the last couple of months to further improve the podcast experience. Over the weekend, the music streaming company announced another acquisition that’s meant to contribute to building the best podcast discovery experience: Podz.

    Podz is a small company that owns a technology that Spotify thinks it can successfully complement its own to accelerate the efforts to drive discovery and deliver listeners the right content when they need it.

    Podz technology, just like Spotify’s, is powered by machine learning and generates high-quality clips that offer users the chance to preview important moments from podcast episodes. To sum it up, thanks to the new acquisition, Spotify should be able to make it easier for its listeners to find the content they want to listen to, and for creators to be discovered and build a fan base.

    According to Spotify, Podz technology will be integrated into the music streaming service beginning this year, so users should start seeing the first improvements before the end of 2021.

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  • Spotify’s rebranded Locker Room mobile app rolling out globally as Greenroom

    Spotify’s rebranded Locker Room mobile app rolling out globally as Greenroom

    Locker Room is the mobile app developed by Betty Labs, a studio that’s been acquired by Spotify a few months ago. Originally, Locker Room was an invitation-only social platform dedicated to sports fans, but after being bought by Spotify, the app’s goals have been expanded to accommodate music lovers too.

    More importantly, the app has been renamed to Greenroom and released to more than 135 markets around the world. The new app is now available in its new form on both Android and iOS devices, and here are some of the new features added after Spotify’s acquisition:

    • New app branding (aka Greenroom) and a new overall look and feel
    • The ability for any user to host or participate in live rooms
    • A way to join Greenroom using your Spotify log-in info
    • A new onboarding experience that puts users’ interests front and center
    • Recording capabilities so you can complement your on-demand content with live conversations
    • Chat controls to ensure the best possible experience

    According to Spotify, more new programming to the platform spanning music, culture, and entertainment topics will be added to the app on top of the sports content the previous Locker Room app has been known for.

    In its current state, Greenroom is meant to optimize interactivity and deep connections between participants in live rooms, as well as make it easier for artists to keep in touch with their fans.

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