In an internal memo also posted publicly, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced the company’s third layoff sweep of 2023. Seventeen percent of the company — about 1,500 employees — will receive severance packages. Click through for detailed coverage, quotes, severence package details, and SPOT stock activity. Continue Reading
We have noted over several years that Spotify Wrapped has become a cultural touchpoint. Wrapped is both an individualized personal account of listening patterns for millions of users, and a global summary of trends and “top of” lists. It launched today. Click for details and two of its many lists.
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Five weeks after launching its audiobook category, Spotify has opened it to Premium U.S. subscribers. The original plan limited the audiobook experience to U.K. and Australian listeners. Now these three territories are granted 15 hours a month for book listening. Spotify did some audiobook listening research, too. Continue Reading
Spotify has announced change to its royalty payout calculation, limiting royalty eligibility to tracks which exceed 1,000 streams per 12-month period. Whereas in the past, sub-1,000 tracks earned negligible royalties, now those tracks will be taken out of the calculation entirely. This change will create meaningful results. Continue Reading
Spotify released Q3 earnings this week. We covered basic money metrics elsewhere. In this post, we scrutinize information gleaned from the earnings call. Below, three main topics: User growth, podcasting, and the audiobooks initiative. Audiobooks were of particular interest to investors, partly because it was difficult to coax financial predictions about them. Click for lots of detail and quotes. Continue Reading
Spotify’s Q3 earnings report gave the investor audience upbeat news and validation that the strategic adjustment made earlier in the fiscal year are working as hoped. Expenses down; user growth up. And … profit for the first time as a public company. Continue Reading
Today, Spotify announces the unlocking of more than 150,000 titles, making them free to Premium subscribers. But there remains a limitation: 15 hours of listening per month. Users can spread that allotment over an unlimited number of titles — so nibbling is allowed. Click for more. Continue Reading
Spotify is raising its social media game with the launch of a new collaborative function called Jam. It’s a group-playlisting feature that builds on the previously released Collaborative Playlist by putting the social activity in realtime, and giving it a phone-touching in-person aspect. Unlike many cautiously incremental launches, Jam is available globally now. Premium users start Jams, then any user can join. Continue Reading
Spotify is piloting an AI tool which translates any podcast into alternate languages, called Voice Translation for Podcasts. The translation is one part. Perhaps more startling is the AI technology which also synthesizes a voice sounding identical to the original. Click for more. Continue Reading
Spotify today unleashed a fusillade of features targeted to its enterprise podcast customers, and to independent creators in the Spotify for Podcasters program. Fulfilling hints made in March, the company is now rolling out several publishing enhancements: Show page customization will… Continue Reading
Spotify made news during its Q2 earnings report (See RAIN HERE and HERE) for raising its monthly Spotify Premium subscription rate from $9.99 to $10.99. Investor reaction, as a whole, could be characterized as “It’s about time.” Our survey of current music subscription pricing does support some investor impatience with Spotify, with six competing services having already boosted to that level.
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Acast has selected Podscribe as its “preferred attribution partner” in all markets. It’s a meaningful and sweeping endorsement of Podscribe’s performance analytics in podcast advertising. The other half of that handshake appears to be a back-of-hand reference to Spotify’s Ad Analytics tool which launched just two months ago. Continue Reading