The original from 2006 stands out like a sore thumb, but after that, it’s just flattening and tweaks to the font. To celebrate its anniversary, the service is taking a victory lap and talking design. It’s also shared all-time most-streamed lists. No surprises there — it’s Taylor Swift and Joe Rogan.
No more scaled-up mobile interface elements. The latest version of Spotify has a collapsible sidebar and specific portrait and landscape layouts on both iPads and Android tablets. There’s also the ability to browse in one pane, while a video or music keeps playing in the other.
Wuthering Heights being number one makes sense; it just got a blockbuster adaptation. But why is the 8-year-old self-help book from James Clear number two?
Spotify’s new lists also include genre-specific charts, so you don’t have to scroll past 37 steamy thrillers just to find your next dystopian sci-fi.
With the new integration, SeatGeek will join the dozens of other companies Spotify partners with to sell tickets within its app. SeatGeek will surface tickets for shows at 15 major venues around the US, which could appear as recommendations on an artist’s Spotify page or inside notifications.
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It’s a new feature showing up in the app as part of the first iOS 26.4 developer beta, as reported by 9to5Mac.
The beta also includes a new “Playlist Playground” feature that uses Apple Intelligence to make a playlist from a text prompt.
Update: Added Playlist Playground details.
During the company’s Q4 earnings call, Gustav Söderström revealed that Spotify had fully embraced vibe coding. AI is coming for a lot of jobs, and software developer is high on the list of those in danger. Still, it’s shocking that the top devs at Spotify haven’t written any code in 2026. Per Business Insider:
“When I speak to my most senior engineers — the best developers we have — they actually say that they haven’t written a single line of code since December… They actually only generate code and supervise it.” - Spotify CEO Gustav Söderström
In its Q4 earnings report, the audio streaming service said it’s gained 38 million monthly active users (MAU) and nine million paying subscribers since its last quarter. Spotify now has 751 million MAUs and 290 million subscribers globally.
After debuting in New Zealand last month, Prompted Playlists are now available to Premium subscribers in the US and Canada. The feature lets you build a customized playlist using AI prompts, describing exactly what you want to listen to.
In a lawsuit spotted by Aftermath, Sega claims that someone with the username Ziodyne uploaded the Persona 3 Reload and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey albums to Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon before the company had a chance to offer them on the music streaming services.
Sega accuses Ziodyne of receiving “significant revenue and profits from his unauthorized sales” of its music, and is seeking $60,000 in damages, Aftermath reports.
The band was one of the higher-profile acts to leave Spotify over Daniel Ek’s war profiteering. But its songs briefly reappeared in the guise of an AI clone. An act called King Lizard Wizard uploaded seemingly AI-generated songs with the same names and lyrics as the real deal. That ran afoul of Spotify’s policies against impersonation and the songs were removed. In a statement provided to Australian site The Music, frontman Stu Mackenzie said he was:
“Trying to see the irony in this situation... But seriously wtf we are truly doomed.”
Spotify shared its methodology on how your Spotify Wrapped is made in a new blog post. More than 200 million people engaged with this year’s Wrapped in “the first ~24 hours alone,” CEO Daniel Ek said.
When everyone who’s gonna subscribe is already subscribed there’s one easy way to keep earnings going up and to the right: raise prices. It’s already happened in Europe, and now it’s coming to the US. What cost $9.99/mth at launch 14 years ago is now $11.99, and soon will cost… we’ll find out before March is done.
[Financial Times]
In September, the band announced it would remove its catalog from Spotify due to Daniel Ek’s investment in military AI technology. That appears to be easier said than done. But in 2026, it will begin releasing music on a new label, and the group said it will be available digitally — just not on Spotify.
A spokesperson tells Variety that the integration will arrive in the “coming weeks,” allowing users to go back and forth between listening to a song and watching the music video. Spotify brought music videos to countries outside the US last year with support for select artists, including Charlie XCX, Doja Cat, Ed Sheeran, and others.
