Sony’s PlayStation consoles rolled out a new music feature, powered by Spotify, last March. The partnership kicked off strong, with an impressive 785 million tracks streamed on the PlayStation 4, the company’s latest gaming hardware, in less than three months. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Is Kanye West a tactical genius? Should there be more podcasts for kids? Can musicians benefit from streaming data? Continue Reading
Spotify just changed the rules of the game, raising an unprecedented $1 billion in convertible debt. Guest columnist Mark Mulligan analyzes — what is Spotify’s strategy, and where will growth come from. One key: “The 9.99 subscription model is incredibly difficult (perhaps impossible) to run profitably at scale.” Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Will iHeartMedia Survive? To SoundCloud, Love Dave. Audio advertising changing the tune for advertisers. David Lowery talks streaming, royalties, and solutions. Continue Reading
Spotify has increased its war chest of cash, taking one-billion dollars in a debt offering to institutional investors that points explicitly to a future Initial Public Offering (IPO). The deal rewards investors with discounted pricing in the event of a Spotify IPO, and Spotify is punished if the public offering is delayed. Continue Reading
Spotify has released a new advertising campaign with a series of three quirky video clips. The spots are meant to capture the idea of a story behind each of the songs we listen to, according to agency Wieden+Kennedy New York. Continue Reading
Spotify is collecting some interesting information from playlist creators about their use of the feature. According to Music Ally, the survey inquires about whether the respondent makes and shares playlists, and how much they know or care about how others interact with their creations. Continue Reading
Spotify announced a dramatic increase in targeting options offered to streaming audio advertisers. Over 100 new segments are being brought to the U.S. advertising market, many of them sharpened by Spotify’s first-party data collection of listener behavior. Continue Reading
The parade of self-gating artists marches on. Gwen Stefani is the latest to only allow streaming of her new release on paid streaming services. Spotify members curious to hear her album This Is What The Truth Feels Like see a message that the release will be available on April 1. That’s a two-week delay from the album’s official launch. Continue Reading
Big news in a tiny package. Daniel Ek chose Twitter to announce that Spotify has reached a milestone: 30-million subscribers to Spotify Premium. The last time the company disclosed numbers, it was at 20 million paid subs in June 2015. That is dramatic growth for a nine-month period during which Apple Music was grabbing headlines. Continue Reading
Spotify announced that its streaming music service will be available in Indonesia later this month. Over the weekend, the music company posted to both Facebook and Twitter that it would be launching into the new market on March 30. Continue Reading
The National Music Publishers Association has signed an agreement with Spotify centered on songwriting royalties. The arrangement allows publishers to claim and receive royalties for certain compositions on the streaming platform where ownership details were not previously known. It also establishes a compensation fund and a path for finding rights holders who should receive royalties. Continue Reading