In early March, Spotify, the most famous Swedish music streaming platform in the world, announced that it had crossed the milestone of 500 million users and that from this Wednesday new functions would be introduced such as intelligent shuffling (was it dumb before?) or views previews to podcasts and playlists, plus a new TikTok-style interface redesign to attract new users and advertisers. ‘Nosolomúsica’, like that Telecinco program, seems to be its motto.
This new interface offers large cards with images or videos imitating TikTokthat is, short videos created ‘ad hoc’, fragments of video clips or podcasts if they have video that are played down in infinite ‘scrolls’ where, as we say, there will be songs but also podcasts or audiobooks in a visual layout with the one that clearly wants to connect with younger users.
The audio platform has announced these new features at the ‘Stream On 2023’ event, which has taken place in Los Angeles and has brought together artists, composers, ‘podcasters’ and content creators “from around the world” to publicize the new tools, which will gradually reach all users.
Let’s get to know them:
– ‘Smart Shuffle’. With this new functionality, Spotify introduces a new way to include new music that perfectly complements an existing user-created playlist with the push of a button. It is a commitment to the discovery of talent also from the interface, with new visual and interactive elements. Pressing the aforementioned button offers the option to activate intelligent random playback, with which Spotify will introduce new songs into the ‘playlist’ queue based on the user’s tastes and the type of music on the list.
– ‘Previews’ of playlists, albums and podcasts. It will be possible to access the Music submenus, or podcasts to discover previews of playlists, albums and podcast episodes personalized for each user. Both visual and audio content can appear in these previews, showing a brief description of what you will hear or see.
– Podcast autoplay. As with music, Spotify will now offer autoplay for podcasts. When a podcast ends, it will automatically start playing another episode that suits the user’s tastes.
And, at the moment, only available in some territories:
– The new ‘Feeds’ for the ‘Search’ section. They will allow users to scroll up or down to explore short clips or audio tracks from some of their favorite genres, making it even easier to discover new favorite music.
– ‘Discovery Mode‘. A tool through which artists and their teams identify priority songs. With this, Spotify will add this information to its recommendation and personalization algorithms to show them to users.
– ‘Showcase‘. It consists of a mobile card in the new home feed that will present an artist’s music to potential listeners. Spotify is starting to test ‘Showcase’ with artists and labels and in the near future it will be widely available
– DJ. a new personalized AI guide that transforms the way listeners listen to and discover the music they love.
In addition, they have made more announcements regarding the future for their ‘Spotify for Artists’ section so that content authors can grow their fan base:
– ‘Marquee’. It consists of a full-screen sponsored recommendation of a new music release, focused on “reaching listeners who have shown an interest in the music of a specific artist. On average, Marquee is 10 times more profitable to get listeners to listen to music on Spotify than ads on the most popular social media platforms.
In addition, in the area of podcasts, Spotify has announced the new version of ‘Spotify for Podcasters‘, which now brings together the best of Spotify’s tools for podcasters to create, manage, grow and monetize their content. This includes increased availability of exclusive Spotify features like video podcasts and interactive tools. AND MegaphoneSpotify’s hosting solution for publishers will be integrated into ‘Spotify for Podcasters’ in the future.
Copyright Notice: ‘Loud & Clear’
Spotify also presented its new annual report on copyright in the music sector: ‘Loud & Clear’. This year’s update shows the increase in artists making more than $1 million, as well as those making more than $10,000, which has more than doubled in the last five years.
In addition, Spotify says that the 50,000 top earning artists on Spotify generated more than $50,000 among all registered revenue sources.
From the platform, through this report, they affirm that Spotify returns to the music industry the vast majority of every dollar it generates for music, almost 70%. In fact, the sum of all Spotify payments to rights holders is already approaching $40 billion.