Spotify

After seeing a few reports earlier this year that Spotify was closing in on Apple Podcasts’ listenership, new data allegedly shows that Spotify has eclipsed Apple when it comes to US podcast listeners. If true, it looks like the shift may have happened as early as Q2 this year.

Earlier this year, Spotify launched its first-ever in-vehicle device dubbed “Car Thing.” After six months of invite-only availability, Spotify is now expanding access to Car Thing to US subscribers who want to purchase the $79.99 in-car screen.

Ever since Spotify introduced its own podcast platform, we’ve been seeing the Swedish streaming service surpass Apple Podcasts in some countries. Now, according to an analysis by eMarketer, Spotify is actually close to globally overtaking Apple Podcasts in number of users.

There are, however, some things to keep in mind with this report: subscriber-only channels and shows on Apple Podcasts don’t count towards RSS activity. eMarketer is also somewhat vague with its definition of “users” and doesn’t share clear methodology for some of its data.

Spotify’s ambitions from expanding from primarily a music platform to leveraging podcast and audiobooks are well known. Music royalties are expensive, so it makes sense for Spotify to focus on getting listeners to spend more time listening to content that isn’t as costly to the company. As Spotify seeks to become a destination for all audio content, I spent time using it as my primary podcast player to see how it stacks up compared to apps like Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro, and Player FM.

I’ve been listening to podcasts since 2004, and the industry has grown up a lot during that time in terms of variety, but also in production quality. While most people think of podcasts as non-fiction talk show style, but there is a fast-growing industry fictional storytelling that is rising to the level of being considered a “movie in your ears.” QCODE’s new show, Electric Easy, is quite possibly the highest level of audio production I’ve heard in my life, and it’s worth checking out.

The official ruling from the Epic Games vs. Apple lawsuit in the US has been delivered today and one of Epic’s partners in the Coalition for App Fairness has shared its official statement on the matter. While Spotify is “pleased” with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ verdict when it comes to anti-competitive practices used by Apple, the streaming audio service says more legislation aimed at Apple “has never been more urgent.”

In another take to differentiate itself from other music streaming services competitors like Apple Music, Spotify announced today a new Enhance feature for playlists. Available exclusively for Premium subscribers, Spotify started rolling out this feature today and says it will help its users get “perfect song recommendations.”

One of Apple’s biggest critics when it comes to the App Store is Spotify. And shortly after the news broke about Apple allowing developers to tell customers about options to sign up and manage subscriptions outside of the App Store, Spotify’s chief legal officer and the founder/CEO have spoken up about their take on the changes set to arrive in 2022.

A new Philips Hue Spotify integration has been announced, and is rolling out to the Hue app from today. This will sync your color lights to the music you’re playing on Spotify, either fully automatically or with some degree of manual control.

Unlike third-party apps like Hue Disco, the integration doesn’t rely on your iPhone microphone to listen to the music …

Spotify has announced that it is now rolling out its highly anticipated Blend feature for creating shared playlists to all users. This feature launched in beta to a small percentage of Spotify users earlier this year, and it’s now widely rolling out.

Back in April, Spotify announced that it would counter Apple’s new Podcasts Subscriptions platform with its own support for allowing creators to offer subscriptions to their shows. The feature launched earlier this year to select creators, and now Spotify has announced that it is expanding the platform to all US podcasters.

Spotify users may have to wait longer to get full AirPlay 2 support on Apple devices. The company confirmed this week that plans to add AirPlay 2 to Spotify’s iOS app have been delayed indefinitely.

Spotify profitability is still not a priority for the company, claims the streaming music service, as it announced another loss-making quarter.

The company lost €20M ($24M) in the second quarter of the year, and also failed to hit its own growth targets, but there was some good news in the mix …

Spotify is adding a new way to find the latest releases of podcasts and music to its iOS app. The company announced today that Spotify for iOS now offers a “What’s New” feed that will immediately gather “all the new releases from the artists and shows you follow on Spotify.”

People love to share their music tastes online. While Apple Music still has a long way to go with its shareable features, like the Replay playlist, Spotify has given its users a variety of options for them to show what they’re currently listening to.

Even so, this doesn’t stop other people to create clients to help share how their music taste works. Spotify Palette, for example, creates a palette of colors based on what you’re listening to.

Apple has expressed caution about a proposal to increase the share of streaming music revenue paid to artists from the current typical 16% to a far higher 50% rate.

The British government has proposed a “complete reset” of the business model for streaming music, so that artists and songwriters are better compensated …