Spotify’s direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange marked a new chapter for the streaming music service, and the action has continued to make waves in the industry. The latest developments are that two of the major labels that were early investors in Spotify during its startup days have sold portions of their shares. Continue Reading
Spotify shared its first quarterly earnings report since the company listed on the New York Stock Exchange last month. Despite a solid performance in listener and subscriber numbers, Wall Street was unimpressed with the results. Spotify’s stock price sunk after the data was released, falling from about $170 per share to about $153 per share. Continue Reading
Spotify has announced a new deal with Instagram for an integration with the social network. Also, Music Business Worldwide reports that long-time exec Angela Watts is leaving the company. Continue Reading
Amazon and Spotify have both announced developments involving country music playlists. First, Amazon has debuted a playlist containing country songs and artists chosen to appeal to an international audience. Second, Spotify’s Hot Country collection is now an “enhanced playlist” that includes original videos alongside the musical selections. Continue Reading
Spotify has unveiled a new version of its mobile app that adds select on-demand features to its freemium tier. Free listeners will get on-demand access to 15 of Spotify’s personalized discovery playlists — such as Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and the Daily Mixes — and its popular curated collections — including RapCaviar and Ultimate Indie. Continue Reading
Spotify is soon to join the quarterly routine of reporting its business to U.S. and global investors — the Q1 date is May 2. Meanwhile, an April 24 media news event in New York is tickling rumors of changes to the Spotify free service, and its app interface. Continue Reading
Carl Chery has departed his role as head of artist curation for hip-hop and R&B programming at Apple Music. He’ll be joining the team at Spotify, which recently had its own big curator departure when Tuma Basa relocated to YouTube. Variety first broke the news. Continue Reading
The Triton Webcast Metrics Top 20 Ranker has seen Spotify’s listening metric streak upward since the music service joined the Ranker in January, 2015. Three years later, in January of this year, Spotify overtook Pandora for the first time. Continue Reading
Spotify has acquired mechanical licensing company Loudr, a move that could bring more expertise and technology into the streaming company to tackle that thorny topic. Loudr offers services to help content creators, aggregators, and music services to identify and pay mechanical royalties to publishers. Continue Reading
Spotify and Hulu are expanding their bundle deal. A joint subscription for the streaming audio and streaming video services was first announced in September. At that time, it was only available to college undergraduates. Now, the two companies have expanded the option to all customers. Continue Reading
Spotify is back in the rumor mill, this time with questions about its free listening tier. Bloomberg reported that the streaming service is considering changes to improve the mobile experience. Possible changes include quicker access to playlists and more listener control over what songs they hear on select playlists. Continue Reading
Spotify recently made waves in the financial sector with its unique direct listing, but the company’s next move is expected to be firmly back in the tech space. Spotify is hosting an event on April 24 to share its latest development. According to the early reports and speculation, that development may be a piece of dedicated hardware for streaming Spotify via voice control in a car. Continue Reading