Spotify has partnered with late-night hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver to launch Strike Force Five. The proceeds will go to benefit the staff of their shows, who have also been out of work due to the ongoing Hollywood strike.
The music streaming giant has now rolled out its DJ beta — which creates and commentates on an ever-updating personalized playlist — to 50 markets around the world.
Spotify Premium subscribers in any of the countries listed can now access DJ from the Music feed in the English-language version of the app.
This story (which I found via the excellent Sunday Long Read newsletter) is mostly about the way the producer Jack Antonoff has changed music over the last decade. But it also has maybe my favorite description ever of how Spotify has changed music:
“We’re not in the music space,” Spotify’s chief executive announced several years ago; “we’re in the moment space.” This statement encapsulates how the streaming giant sees itself: as a dispenser of a quasi-therapeutic soundtrack for mood enhancement and regulation. This is a vision of music not as art or even as commodity, but as something like audio furniture. Mood is the object; sound is beside the point.
[The Drift]
The subscription-based meditation app is bringing some of its relaxing audio tracks to Spotify. While that includes free content from several of its shows, including Calm for Sleep, Calm for Stress & Anxiety, and Calm for Meditation, you’ll still need a Calm subscription to access all the tracks.
Meditation apps like Calm rose in popularity during the covid-19 pandemic, but experienced a sharp dropoff in use last year. Bringing its content to Spotify might help expose the app and its services to a wider userbase as things slow down.
Reddit user OhItsTom found Spotify’s group session feature in the desktop version of Spotify’s debug window.
Mobile users with Spotify Premium have been able to do this for years, but a desktop version has been missing — looks like that’s getting rectified soon.
Bloomberg reports Spotify “has already begun talking to partners about the product” adding full-length music videos to its app. After Spotify’s podcast plan went awry, it appears the company could try to take a bite out of YouTube (which also deeply integrates videos into its YouTube Music service) and TikTok.
The app’s divisive redesign earlier this year added short video clips with videos of artists discussing music, in addition to the existing Canvas background animations.
The company is entering the ‘next phase’ of its podcast strategy — but will it learn from its mistakes?
The former Daily Show host’s new show will launch later this year, drawing on his signature humor and wit to interview influential figures and comment on hot topics.
The as-yet-unnamed podcast isn’t exclusive to Spotify, however, and will be available on “numerous platforms.” This might be Spotify experimenting to retain big names following notable celebrity podcasters departing the platform and layoffs within its podcasting department.
That’s pretty much what Spotify is doing here. I saw this ad for the company’s subscription-based Soundtrap after opening the Mac app this morning.
Amid layoffs and a “realignment” of its podcasts business, you get the sense that Spotify is growing desperate to make money any way it can.
Very curious what the click through on this looks like. Maybe someone out there needed one last push to become the next Jack Antonoff. Or, more likely, they just wanted to hear their Daily Mix.
It may also enable streaming fraud, reports The Financial Times, where bots are directed to target tracks to generate revenue.
Spotify has removed tens of thousands of AI-generated songs uploaded to its service by startup Boomy because of suspected “artificial streaming.” (Though Spotify did not confirm this.) It’s another example of generative AI enabling misuse by creating a flood of content.
[The Financial Times]
On an earnings call today, Daniel EK called Epic’s single win — which will let app developers tell users about non-Apple payment options — “very important.” But mostly, he said the US still needs a law to be passed to open up mobile devices from the control of Apple and Google.
Here’s Ek on why he sees this as a big issue:
“When I started as a 14 year-old entrepreneur, the internet was this democratic place that anyone, anywhere in the world could have an impact, and right now we’re in a place where billions of consumers are using the internet primarily through smartphones and ... there’s literally two companies now that control all of that on the internet and they can unilaterally change the rules.”
