Spotify

Spotify partners with Vodafone Australia for down under listeners

Posted on by Anna Washenko

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 →

Spotify UK turned a profit in 2013 on increased subscriptions

Posted on by RAIN News Staff

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 →

Deezer reportedly partnering with Vodacom for South Africa deal

Posted on by Anna Washenko

Deezer may be getting a leg up in the South African market for music streaming thanks to a partnership with Vodacom Group. Bloomberg cited an unnamed person familiar with the negotiations who said the Vodafone unit would offer its customers access to Deezer through an exclusive year-long deal. Neither Deezer nor Vodacom offered comment on the report. Continue Reading →

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Rosanne Cash: Streaming is “dressed-up piracy”

Posted on by Brad Hill

The latest outburst in the high-profile Spotify debate does more than just criticize streaming, it condemns it. Rosanne Cash, who testified in a congressional music-licensing hearing this summer, stirred up mixed reactions with two recent Facebook posts in which she equated streaming with music piracy, and also continued her impassioned campaign to alter U.S. copyright regulations. Continue Reading →

Spotify now available to all listeners in Canada

Posted on by Anna Washenko

After several weeks on an invite-only basis, Spotify has made its official entrance into Canada. The Swedish streaming platform staked a claim to “one of the most extensive Canadian music catalogues available,” with access to more than 20 million songs in the market. It noted a “comprehensive Quebecois library” within those millions of tunes, according to VentureBeat. Continue Reading →

Where is the (musical) drama? Big data answers

Posted on by Brad Hill

Monday distraction: Paul Lamere, Director of Development Platform at The Echo Nest, which is owned by Spotify, has created an entertaining hack that anyone can try — Where Is the Drama? The idea is to use waveform analysis to identify a song’s climactic section. The experiment is fun, if nothing else. Read how Lamere accomplished this hack, and where you can test it. Continue Reading →

What do college students listen to? (Spotify Insights)

Posted on by Anna Washenko

Spotify introduced its Insights blog earlier this month, and its creative take on data has already been taking the music world by storm. The latest missive delves into the listening habits of college students. Spotify listed the top 40 schools with the highest rates of sign-ups for its student deal last semester, then ranked them by number of song plays. Arizona State University secured the top place on the Most Musical Universities in America list, followed by Auburn University and Brigham Young University in second and third, respectively. Continue Reading →

Spotify vs. Aussie piracy: Latest data is promising but not definitive

Posted on by Anna Washenko

Spotify’s director of economics, Will Page, spoke at the Bigsound conference in Brisbane, Australia, about the impact of legal streaming services on piracy. His data showed that, in the year from December 2012, the volume of BitTorrent files downloaded by Australians dropped by more than 20%. Spotify launched in Australia on May 21, 2012. Since then, he said one in six Aussies have tried out the music service. Continue Reading →