Subscribers to Command Line just got highlights from an interview I did yesterday with Gustav Söderström, Spotify’s co-president who oversees all of product and engineering. We talk about the controversial redesign that introduces a TikTok-like feed to Spotify and why it’s happening, plus why Spotify reorg’d earlier this year.
The full conversation is coming out on Decoder next week.
[The Verge]
And CEO Daniel Ek is already teasing the news: a “completely redesigned” home feed. Maybe this is the rumored TikTok-style approach we keep hearing about.
The event kicks off at 1PM ET / 10AM PT. We’ll be reporting back with all the news.
Every Noise at Once is an ongoing project to map the over 6,000 genres and sub-genres listed on Spotify’s music catalog. This fun little timesink can play you an example of each genre or open an entire Spotify playlist of it if you like what you hear.
I’ve spent the last couple of days listening to Spotify’s new DJ beta, which began rolling out to paid subscribers last week in the US and tries to humanize the custom playlists Spotify already feeds you.
Its synthesized voice and subtle quips aren’t teeeerrible, but, my dude, you can’t just segue from Seether to 1989-era T-Swift like that.
Feeling insecure about the Canadian presence on digital streamers and social media, the Canadian government is days away from passing a law requiring more Canadian content on TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, Netflix and so on...
The idea, said Peter Menzies, a former official at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, is to promote Canadian artists, tell Canadian stories and “defend Canada from being completely swamped by American programming.”
Sad, isn’t it?
Didn’t they just have record-breaking profits?
The company has announced its next “Stream On” event, where it plans to share updates on “creator tools, features, and programming.” The last event, in 2021, was used to lay out Spotify’s business vision in podcasting, music, and other arenas.
As my colleague Chris Welch reminded me, “This is where they announced HiFi!” Here’s hoping it actually arrives this time.
Don’t fret. While it should come up on your mobile app, it’s possible you accidentally dismissed the page on your way to your favorite playlist. No sweat — we tell you how to find it again.
In a lengthy tweet thread this morning, Daniel Ek criticized Apple’s App Store policies as a “threat to the future of the internet” — and he welcome Elon Musk to the fight.
Spotify has been critical of Apple’s policies for years, but it was only this week that the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX realized he might run into some problems with Apple now that he owns Twitter.
