Spotify

Following the debut of Apple Music Replay yesterday, Spotify Wrapped is also now available. This year’s Spotify Wrapped gives users the ability to view in-depth information on their top songs, artists, albums, and more. There’s also a new “Me” feature that assigns you a “listening character specific to your tastes and habits on Spotify.”

Spotify on Tuesday announced some significant changes to its rules for paying royalties to artists working with the platform. Starting in 2024, Spotify will no longer pay for songs with a small number of streams. It will also increase the minimum length required for noise recordings to be eligible for payments.

Spotify CEO and founder Daniel Ek is no stranger to criticizing Apple and the App Store to anyone who will listen. This time around, Ek has published a new op-ed in the Daily Mail with some of his most poignant criticism of Apple yet.

The argument? Ek says that he wouldn’t be able to launch Spotify in 2023 because “Apple is a barrier to innovation.”

A reported Spotify audiobooks development has now been confirmed by the company. Paid subscribers will be able to listen to 15 hours of audiobooks at no extra cost – though Americans are not first in line.

Whether or not 15 hours will let you listen to an entire book will depend on the book …

Remember the days of Turntable FM? Spotify is looking to channel that energy with a new feature called Jam. This feature will let users create real-time listening sessions that other people can join in on “from wherever” they are. Here’s how the feature works.

We first heard back in June that Spotify Supremium might be the name given to the company’s long-awaited lossless audio tier, and that now appears to have been confirmed by code found within the app.

The code also contains a reference to pricing of $19.99/month, which is in line with a previous report – but may be a tough sell …

Spotify is planning to offer free audiobooks to paying subscribers over the next few months, as it continues to seek ways to make money, according to a new report today.

The company is said to be working with some of the largest publishers in the US to offer premium subscribers up to 20 hours of free audiobook listening per month – but don’t expect it to last long …

Spotify is testing a change that’s already proving to be controversial across social media. The company says that it is conducting a test that locks in-app lyrics behind a paywall, which means lyrics can only be accessed by Spotify Premium subscribers.

Spotify launched its AI-powered personal DJ feature back in February, which it describes as a “curated lineup of music alongside commentary around the tracks and artists we think you’ll like in a stunningly realistic voice.”

The company has now announced that the AI DJ feature is expanding to a handful of new countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa, plus to users in Australia and New Zealand.

Update: It’s official. “So that we can keep innovating, we are changing our Premium prices across a number of markets around the world,” says Spotify. “These updates will help us continue to deliver value to fans and artists on our platform.” Original story from July 21 below.

Spotify has resisted increasing its monthly subscription price for as long as possible. According to the Wall Street Journal, the subscription music service will issue a price increase in the US as soon as next week.

A few years ago, Spotify removed the option to let new users subscribe to the platform via in-app purchases in its iOS app. Still, those who already had an active subscription were not affected – until now, that is. Spotify is now notifying subscribers that it will no longer support in-app subscriptions in iOS, including from existing customers.

Speaking of the good ol’ pivot to video, Spotify may be taking a page out of the Apple Music playbook and investing in a music video catalog.

Spotify is out today with an overhaul for its desktop experience. The new UI brings redesigned ‘Your Library’ and ‘Now Playing’ sections to align more with the iOS/Android Spotify app and make it more seamless to “explore, curate, listen to, and organize Spotify on a computer or web browser.”

Apple Music launched high-quality lossless audio streaming all the way back in May 2021, available to Apple Music subscribers at no extra charge.

Bloomberg today reports that Spotify is finally almost ready to compete. The company is readying a new higher-end subscription tier that will include “HiFi” lossless audio streaming. Unlike Apple Music, though, you’ll have to upgrade your plan to a higher tier and pay extra to get it.

Both Spotify and Elon Musk have previously spoken out against Apple’s App Store guidelines in the past. In a new exchange on Twitter this weekend, Musk and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek again questioned Apple’s guidelines, with Ek referring to them as “absurd” and Musk saying they present a “serious scaling problem.”

After rolling out a major update to Spotify for iPhone earlier this month, Spotify is now updating its desktop app for Mac a new navigation interface. In a blog post today, the company announced a new “Your Library sidebar” that it says is more customizable and makes it easier to access your Spotify collection.

If you’re an Apple Music or Spotify who finds it frustrating to quickly start listening to your favorite albums, a new app from developer Adam Bell might help solve that problem. The app, called “Albums: Music Shortcuts,” lets you create shortcuts to your favorite albums directly via widgets on your iPhone or iPad Home Screen.

Spotify paid subscriptions grew faster than expected in the first quarter of the year, but the company is still losing money.

The good news for the streaming giant is that paid subscriptions were up 15% to 210M, ahead of analyst expectations and the company’s own guidance …

Spotify is shutting down Heardle, the popular Wordle-inspired song guessing game that it acquired less than a year ago. The decision is apparently driven by Spotify’s desire for more users to discover music through the main Spotify apps (and because the company seems to hate fun).