Janko Roettgers
Amazon’s newest streaming stick is missing a Spotify app.
Spotify hasn’t launched a native app for Amazon’s new Vega OS yet, so Amazon built a clunky workaround for the first Fire TV stick running Vega.
Spotify
Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Spotify DJ now understands text and Spanish.
Premium users can ask the AI feature for music suggestions in Spanish and type out descriptions of what they want to hear, in addition to the existing support for verbal English-language requests.
Jess Weatherbed
The only human-made element behind Xania Monet’s act appear to be the lyrics.
Elissa Welle
Terrence O'Brien
Jess Weatherbed
Terrence O'Brien
Emma Roth
Spotify’s editors will deliver weekly recommendations in a new video series.
Every Friday, Spotify will release “The Drop,” where its editors highlight the latest in music in a series of scrollable, vertical video clips. You can find the new series on the app’s homepage or by searching “The Drop Weekly.”
Terrence O'Brien
Jess Weatherbed
Emma Roth
Jammin’ out in a Waymo.
A new Spotify integration will let you connect your account to Waymo, allowing you to play your favorite tunes while the robotaxi takes you to your destination. Waymo also offers the ability to cast music, as well as listen to a selection of curated radio stations.
Jess Weatherbed
Spotify expands US Audiobook plans.
For an additional $11.99 per month, the Audiobook Plus add-on enables Spotify subscribers or members on Duo and Family plans to add 15 hours of audiobook listening time, on top of the 15 hours already included in Spotify Premium subscriptions — which can only be accessed by the account holder. The add-on was launched in other regions last month.
Jess Weatherbed
Dominic Preston
Spotify can now Jam with Android Auto.
Google first announced an overhauled Spotify app for Android Auto back at I/O 2025, and 9to5Google reports that it’s now arrived. Spotify Premium users can start Jam sessions in their cars, allowing even free users to join in and add songs to a shared queue.
The app’s had a wider redesign too, with a more prominent section for downloaded tracks and proper support for Spotify’s search functionality.
Richard Lawler
Believe (in Spotify HiFi).
If you’re still waiting for Spotify’s lossless audio offering, Chris Messina notes that the 9.0.58 update that rolled out a couple of days ago on Android has new changes hinting at the feature for settings tied to cellular downloading and checking storage space.
It’s similar to what we saw last month, but after all these years, how long will it take to turn into something everyone can use?
Chris Messina (@chrismessina.me)
[bsky.app]
Drummer Greg Saunier explains the moral calculus behind leaving the biggest streaming platform.
Elizabeth Lopatto
Thomas Ricker
Daniel Ek, Spotify CEO and drone warfare profiteer.
Ek’s investment company Prima Materia dumped its first €100 million in Helsing, the German defense tech group with roots in AI software, back in 2021. Now it’s leading a €600 million round to capitalize on the shift to drone warfare. Per the Financial Times:
“The world is being tested in more ways than ever before. That has sped up the timeline” for Helsing’s financing, Ek said, pointing in particular to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, where drones and other AI-powered systems have been deployed at scale for the first time. “There’s an enormous realisation that it’s really now AI, mass and autonomy that is driving the new battlefield.”
Richard Lawler
Google explains Thursday’s massive Cloud outage.
Yesterday, a global outage on the Google Cloud platform knocked out Google Home, Spotify, Snapchat, and even some Cloudflare features, and today the company released a mini incident report as it continues to investigate.
For Cloudflare’s part, its report says the Google failure took out a central data store for one of its services.
From our initial analysis, the issue occurred due to an invalid automated quota update to our API management system which was distributed globally, causing external API requests to be rejected. To recover we bypassed the offending quota check, which allowed recovery in most regions within 2 hours. However, the quota policy database in us-central1 became overloaded, resulting in much longer recovery in that region.
Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
TikTok has a new tune-hyping tool.
The platform is globally releasing a self-service “Pre-Release” feature for Artist accounts that allows musicians to easily promote forthcoming album releases. Fans can automatically save unreleased albums to their Spotify or Apple Music libraries so that they don’t miss the album drop and can listen to them instantly upon release.
Jay Peters
Spotify is seeing increased conversions to Premium subs on iOS.
Spotify now lets iOS users pay how they want following the big ruling in Epic Games v. Apple, and per an amicus brief:
“In the two weeks since Spotify updated its iOS app in accordance with the 2025 Order, the rate of conversions from the Free- to Premium-tier service has remained relatively constant on Android, while conversion among iOS users has increased substantially. This strongly suggests that the increase is due to Apple finally complying with the Injunction thanks to the 2025 Order.”
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