Matthias Verbergt, writing for The Wall Street Journal:
Swedish music-streaming company Spotify AB on Wednesday launched programmatic ad buying for all its markets, allowing advertisers to target its 70 million nonpaying users by age, gender, genres and playlists in real time […] such as listeners who are commuting, working out, dining, dating, partying or relaxing.
Nothing says “great date night” like an advertiser breaking into your playlist to sell you something.
The Set Listener is a pretty cool web-app that lets you enter any Setlist.fm URL into it and it’ll create a Spotify playlist from the songs. Clever.
Read More “The Set Listener Creates Playlists From Set Lists”
Rich McCormick, writing for The Verge, on Spotify’s two new radio shows:
Swedish streaming service Spotify is launching two new radio shows today, both of which feature musicians talking about the kind of music that they like listening to while they’re making their art. The first, AM/PM, will feature artists like electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre and Terry Hall of ska icons The Specials talking about the music they listen to in the mornings before work, and in the evenings after a day spent creating. The second, Secret Genius, speaks to the songwriters and producers behind major songs, and features the actually-pretty-well-known James Blake, among others.
Apple has responded to Spotify’s claim that they’ve been using their app store review process “as a weapon.” You can read the full response below, and it’s definitely worth reading. It’s basically the most business way of saying: “Spotify, you’re full of shit” you’ll ever see.
Colin Stutz, writing for Billboard, on the removal of lyrics from Spotify:
In a statement Spotify said, “We can confirm our partnership with Musixmatch is ending. It was a great partnership and there is mutual respect between both companies as our business strategies move us each in different directions.”
Musixmatch, meanwhile, has a bit more to say about the split, suggesting it did not come amicably.
Ben Popper, writing for The Verge, looks at just how big of a hit Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist has been:
According to the stats Spotify released, more than half of Discover Weekly users listen to 10 tracks a week and save at least one of those songs to their favorites. The company is trying to highlight the boost in listening this feature has given to small- and medium-sized artists, and noted it will be sharing data from Discover Weekly with bands to try and help them connect with their newest fans.
Peter Kafka, writing for Re/Code, on how Spotify lost a lot of money last year, but revenue grew:
Filings show that Spotify, based in Sweden and the U.K., generated revenue of $2.12 billion last year, up about 80 percent from the $1.18 billion it brought in the prior year (all prices in the story converted from euros to dollars at the exchange rate from December 31, 2015). Losses, meanwhile, hit $188.7 million — but that number was only up 6.7 percent from the previous year’s total of $176.9 million.
It looks like their paid subscribers hit 28 million.
John Paul Titlow, writing for Fast Company, looks at Pandora and their attempt to fight back the big streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music:
By shifting toward on-demand subscriptions, Pandora is hoping to add a new, much deeper layer of data and understanding to its artificial brain. By creating artist-based stations and thumbing songs, listeners can teach Pandora a lot—but behaviors like saving albums and listening to them on repeat or adding individual songs to playlists are vastly more informative (as Spotify and Apple already know). Right now, if you’re obsessed with the new Rihanna album, Pandora has no idea. These are the types of blind spots the service needs to fill in, especially if it wants to target superfans with special perks.
Data is just as crucial when it comes to selling concert tickets.
I’m fascinated by the idea of big music data and how it can find the perfect next band or album for a listener. I think Pandora is smart to be moving into trying to tie their music service into other things like selling concert tickets. But, I’m bearish on the company as a whole. They’ve been relegated to what is basically a feature in other apps and there’s no reason to pay for something you already get in a good enough fashion somewhere else.
Glenn Peoples, writing for TechCrunch, on Spotify’s aquistion of CrowdAlbum:
Spotify announced Wednesday it has acquired CrowdAlbum, a service that creates albums of events based on the location and time of photos and videos people share on social media sites. It can index content for any kind of event — sports, Earth Day festivals, political rallies — but mostly aggregates photos from music concerts and festivals.
Josh Constine, writing for TechCrunch, looks at Spotify’s latest move of raising $1 billion in convertible debt to fight Apple Music.
What the debt does provide Spotify is opportunities to make acquisitions. With SoundCloud and Pandora in the dumps, Spotify could potentially make a play to bring more independent music or radio listeners into its music empire.]
Why would Spotify agree to these aggressive terms? Because it’s competing with the most well funded company in history: Apple.
Nikhil Sonnad, writing for Quartz, looks at the technology behind Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” playlists.
“We now have more technology than ever before to ensure that if you’re the smallest, strangest musician in the world, doing something that only 20 people in the world will dig, we can now find those 20 people and connect the dots between the artist and listeners,” Matthew Ogle, who oversees the service at Spotify, told me recently. “Discovery Weekly is just a really compelling new way to do that at a scale that’s never been done before.”
Although I am a professed album lover, I think these playlists are the best thing Spotify has been doing recently. It’s the kind of personalization that is only going to get better, and the trick of finding someone that next band they love is going to put me out of business.
Alex Moazed, writing for TechCrunch, on why SoundCloud may be more valuable than Spotify in the long run:
SoundCloud has a platform business model where its content is created by its network of users, not acquired through licensing deals. For SoundCloud, the more audio producers that join the network, the more listeners will want to join. This increase in users, in turn, incentivizes more creatives to post their music or podcasts on SoundCloud, and the network effects continue to build from there.
In contrast, Spotify is primarily a reseller of music inventory owned by record labels and publishers. It’s simply a distributor for the latest releases, sort of like a Walmart for music streaming. Most of the songs on Spotify you could find on Apple Music, Pandora or another streaming service. As a result, Spotify lacks the network effects that SoundCloud enjoys.
But what if Spotify, or Apple Music (or Facebook, or YouTube), adds in the features that SoundCloud currently provides? Does SoundCloud have a monetization strategy that can scale or do they risk being a just a feature in someone else’s business?