Pop princess Taylor Swift remains one of the most visible holdouts on Spotify and she has taken a bold action in the ongoing fight between artists and streaming platforms. She withheld her much-anticipated album 1989 from Spotify upon its initial release on Oct. 27. Today, she has chosen to remove her entire back catalog from the platform as well. Continue Reading
Nordic nations have 8 million streaming music users. That’s one of the takeaways from a survey conducted by the Polaris Nordic Alliance, a coalition of music collecting societies. The poll covered the roughly 17.8 million Internet users between the ages of 15 and 65 in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. Continue Reading
Spotify is launching a television ad campaign in the UK that ties in with talent competition X Factor. There will be two spots airing each week until the end of November. The first will tell a story about people listening to music, and the second will be related to the weekly theme of the singing show. Continue Reading
Data is the big buzzword of the moment, and a new web app from Spotify is putting a slice of that information trove in the hands of listeners. The web app is called Sort Your Music. It lets you look at any playlist in Spotify, then shuffle the order based on the various musical traits. Continue Reading
The inverse relationship of streaming music and music sales is well known: Streaming up, sales down. A similar symbiotic relationship exists between music concerts and music sales. But how do streaming and concerts interact? Is the relationship mutually beneficial? That’s what Spotify’s Director of Economics Will Page set out to discover in a new study. Continue Reading
Spotify has announced the addition of a new subscription designed for family sharing. Under the Spotify Family plan, up to four family members can be added to a single billing account while keeping their listening histories and playlists separate. All people in the family will have access to the full set of Premium features. Continue Reading
In July, we wrote that Playlists.net, a platform for sharing Spotify playlists, was looking for a buyer. Today, the hoped-for deal was announced. The UK startup ShareMyPlaylists has been acquired by the artist and services arm of American recording giant Warner Music Group. Financial details of the purchase were not disclosed. Continue Reading
David Lowery, musicians’ advocate and the foremost critic of streaming music, posted a column in which he prescribes solutions to “fix” the streaming music business model — or, more accurately, his issues with it. Lowery’s arrows are pointed at Spotify, and his suggestions are surprising. Along the way, he misses some reality points. Continue Reading
Vodafone has continued its trend of partnering with streaming services. This time, Vodafone Australia has tied up with Spotify for a deal that will give the telecom’s customers access to the premium listening plan. Details of the arrangement or for a potential discount on the Premium plan were not disclosed. According to the streaming platform, about 1.5 million Aussies regularly stream music on their smartphones. Continue Reading
The British Phonographic Industry group reported that UK listeners have streamed 10.2 billion tracks to date this year, almost double the 5.4 billion tracks streamed last year in the same period. People are listening to tunes more than 300 million times each week. Continue Reading
Spotify UK saw impressive growth in revenue for 2013 thanks to a 42% spike in subscriptions. The company credited its partnership with Vodafone, which led to the inclusion of Spotify in new customer bundles, and the launch of a student discount with the jump in paid plans. Total revenue for the UK subsidiary increased 40% to £131.3 million for 2013. Profit that year totaled £2.5 million, compared with a loss of £11 million in 2012. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the Internet: Prince criticizes U2; do lawsuits for pre-1972 royalties threaten digital music?; Spotify’s semi-secret info sessions; what’s up at The Echo Nest. Continue Reading