Remove
Spotify
spotify
LATEST ARTICLES - PAGE 4

Spotify’s Mood Related Data Lets Advertisers Target by Listeners Emotional State

Jason Tate

Liz Pelly, writing for The Baffler:

[A] more careful look into Spotify’s history shows that the decision to define audiences by their moods was part of a strategic push to grow Spotify’s advertising business in the years leading up to its IPO—and today, Spotify’s enormous access to mood-based data is a pillar of its value to brands and advertisers, allowing them to target ads on Spotify by moods and emotions. Further, since 2016, Spotify has shared this mood data directly with the world’s biggest marketing and advertising firms.

This creeps me out.

Spotify’s Postal Address Insanity

Jason Tate

Josh Centers, writing at TidBITS:

Apparently, Spotify requires address verification to try to ensure that all family members are in the same household, so presumably, those addresses need to be entered identically. Did my wife type out the word “bypass” in our address, or did she use an abbreviation? Did she put our box number on the first or second line? Wanting to make sure I got it right, I asked her to check the address format on her account.

Apple Music’s U.S. Subscriber Count Overtakes Spotify

Jason Tate

Reuters is reporting that Apple Music has surpassed Spotify in paid monthly U.S. subscribers:

Apple Inc’s streaming music service overtook rival Spotify Technology SA in terms of paid subscribers in the United States, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

Apple’s service had 28 million subscribers as of the end of February compared with Spotify’s 26 million paid subscribers, the person said.

Spotify Files Complaint With European Commission Against Apple

Jason Tate

Spotify has filed an anti-trust complaint with EU regulators against Apple:

Spotify is filing a complaint against Apple with the European Commission, accusing the latter company of anticompetitive behaviour in the way it manages its App Store, and thus gives its own Apple Music streaming service an advantage over rivals.

I found this thread on Twitter did a pretty good job summing up my thoughts:

We’re not debating anything that that has anything to do with what’s good in the long run for customers.

We’re fighting over who gets to have a larger monopoly on fucking artists.

I think Apple has long had anti-competitive behavior in the app store, specifically in regard to rent seeking, and Spotify has its own issues that I think are anti-artist.

Remove

Spotify Premium Now Includes Hulu

Jason Tate

Cameron Faulkner, writing at The Verge:

Spotify Premium now includes a free subscription to Hulu’s ad-supported plan. This perk goes into effect today, and it is available to new and existing users of Spotify’s Premium streaming service in the US. Following Netflix’s recent price hike, Hulu lowered the cost of its ad-supported plan down to $5.99 a month, and now, Spotify users will get savings on top of savings.

Spotify’s Podcast Aggregation Play

Jason Tate

Ben Thompson, writing at Stratechery:

Basically, the wall that Spotify can put up around podcasts is much stronger than the one it can put up around music, and podcasters have fewer alternatives. Or, to put it another way, podcasts are a market where Spotify — to the extent they are willing to pay — actually has power over supply. […]

To put it another way, Anchor is a means of generating supply, and it is supply that has always stood in the way of Spotify’s ambitions to be an Aggregator. Aggregators bring suppliers onto the platform on their terms; Spotify, on the other hand, has had to scratch and claw to get labels to give them the music they needed to be viable. And again, the acquisition of Gimlet Media, while better from a long-term leverage perspective, is not a big improvement: Spotify almost certainly overpaid if the only goal was to obtain supply.

This is, as always, a very smart take.

Spotify Purchases Gimlet and Anchor

Jason Tate

Spotify has purchased Gilmet, the podcast company, and Anchor, a podcast producing platform:

Based on radio industry data, we believe it is a safe assumption that, over time, more than 20% of all Spotify listening will be non-music content. This means the potential to grow much faster with more original programming — and to differentiate Spotify by playing to what makes us unique — all with the goal of becoming the world’s number one audio platform.

Spotify wants to be the YouTube of audio.

Spotify Is in Talks to Buy Gimlet

Jason Tate

Peter Kafka, writing at Recode:

Spotify, which has been trying to branch out of the streaming music business, is getting ready to make its first big move into podcasting: It plans to pay more than $200 million to buy Gimlet Media, the startup behind popular shows like Reply All.

Spotify to Introduce “Block/Mute” Feature

Jason Tate

Tom Warren, writing at The Verge:

Spotify is getting ready to enable a block feature in its apps to mute artists you don’t want to hear from. Spotify is currently testing the “don’t play this artist” feature in its latest iOS app, and The Verge has been able to test the new block functionality ahead of its release soon. The feature simply lets you block an entire artist from playing, so that songs from the artist will never play from a library, playlist, chart list, or even radio stations on Spotify.

Remove

Spotify Focusing on Podcasts in 2019

Jason Tate

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

This has led Spotify to believe that influencers in the podcast community will be able to bring their community with them when they become a Spotify exclusive, and then further grow their listener base by tapping into Spotify’s larger music user base and, soon, an improved recommendation system.

Personally, I think an “exclusive” to one platform ‘podcast’ isn’t really a podcast. It’s a Spotify radio show. Which, cool, that’s fine, but if it’s not available via an RSS feed to any podcast player, it’s not a podcast.

Spotify Unveil the Top Artists of 2018

Jason Tate

Spotify have announced the top streamed artists, albums, and tracks from 2018.

Music lovers continued with some existing favorites, such as 2015 and 2016’s most-streamed artist, Drake, who took home the crown once again this year. With 8.2 billion streams in 2018 alone, the Canadian rapper is now our most-streamed artist of all time. His album “Scorpion” and song “God’s Plan” took the top slots in their categories—with “God’s Plan” bringing in more than 1 billion streams.

The top rising genre? Emo Rap.

Spotify Opens Up Playlist Submission Feature

Jason Tate

Spotify:

A few months ago, we unveiled a beta feature in the Spotify for Artists tool that gives artists, labels, and teams the ability to share new music directly with our editorial team for playlist consideration. Since the feature became available in July more than 67,000 artists and labels have submitted music and now we’re excited to announce our playlist submission feature is officially out of beta.

Spotify to Allow Indie Artists to Upload Music Directly to Service

Jason Tate

Dan Rys, writing at Billboard:

Beginning today (Sept. 20), Spotify will begin allowing a select group of independent artists the ability to upload their music directly onto the streaming platform through their Spotify For Artists account, the company announced. […] For those artists who control their copyrights and do not have label or distribution agreements in place, they can log into their Spotify For Artists account, upload their music, fill in relevant metadata information, preview how the upload will look on their page and set the song to go live at a pre-scheduled time

Spotify Sued for Gender Discrimination

Jason Tate

Gene Maddaus, writing at Variety:

A female sales executive sued Spotify on Tuesday, alleging that the head of sales took his staff on drug-fueled “boys’ trips” to the Sundance Film Festival, and excluded women who were better qualified.

Hong Perez filed suit in New York Supreme Court, accusing the streaming company of systemically discriminating against female employees. Perez alleges that her boss, Brian Berner, selected an all-male group to attend Sundance in 2016 and 2017, and that some of the men got into a physical altercation during one of the trips.

Remove

Spotify Lifts Song Download Cap

Jason Tate

Amy X. Wang, writing at Rolling Stone:

A common gripe among Spotify users is that the app limits the number of songs that can be downloaded to phones and computers for offline listening (3,333 tracks per device, with a three-device limit, to be exact). In its latest software update, the streaming service has quietly increased the limit threefold.

A number of power-users first noticed that they were able to save more than 3,333 songs this week, and the Swedish streaming giant confirmed the change on Wednesday to Rolling Stone.

A well deserved finally.

Remove