Spotify held its annual Stream On event in Los Angeles today (March 8), chock-full of announcements, stars and announcements that musicians and the industry at large are sure to take notice of.
The event will serve as a platform for the company to showcase its latest updates and achievements, giving users a glimpse of what to expect in the future. It’s like a mixture of TV network upfronts and Apple’s AAPL annual developer conference.
At this year’s event, Spotify announced for the first time that it has surpassed 500 million average monthly users.
Perhaps most notably, Spotify has announced a new homepage layout for mobile users. music alley Writer Stuart Dredge took an early look at this redesign, noticing that his app had already been updated, noting that it resembled TikTok’s Discovery section. This update has been in development for some time and will be first announced in 2021 and rolled out to users soon.
In addition to the homepage redesign, Spotify shared other key updates that fit into three categories: discoveries by listeners, tools for musicians, and podcasts.
Detection by listener
According to Gustav Söderström, co-president and chief product and technology officer at Spotify (in a release shared by the company), “Spotify recommendations power nearly half of all users’ streams.” Discuss streamers.
Today, the company announced a series of exciting updates to help users discover new music and enhance their listening experience.
- One of the most important additions is smart shuffle. This is a new feature that allows users to insert previously unknown, complementary music into existing playlists. Something like this already exists in a simple form at the bottom of user-created playlists, but this new focus allows users to create visual and audio playlists for playlists, albums, podcast episodes, and audiobooks. You can now explore the previews of the , always getting something new. listen.
- Spotify’s search functionality has also been upgraded with a new feed for discovery. Users can now scroll through collections of short canvas visuals in their favorite genres. Canvas clips are videos that artists use to enhance their musical content.
- Another exciting update is the ability to preview tracks from Spotify’s most popular playlists, including New Music Friday, Discover Weekly and Release Radar. This feature allows users to get a taste of the music before listening to it completely, saving time and finding new tracks more efficiently.
tools for musicians
Making life and work easier for musicians is important to Spotify for many reasons. There were quite a few updates and new features introduced during the Stream On event that directly benefit the creators who power the site. Conveniently, each one is named, making it easier to track (and write).
- large tent – According to Spotify, marquees (full-screen sponsored recommendations an artist promotes to fans who have confirmed they are interested in an artist’s work) outnumber ads posted on the most popular social media. is also ten times more efficient at getting people to stream music. platform.
- discovery mode – Discovery Mode, already available on Spotify for Artists, allows artists and their teams to choose which tracks to focus their promotion on. The company shares this with more acts, and the real advantage is that the streamer’s powerful algorithm takes that into account.
- Showcase – Currently still in testing, Showcase acts like an ad that introduces fans to an artist’s music, whether new or old. These songs and albums will appear in your redesigned home feed.
- Concerts and product discovery – Fans can already find out about upcoming concerts, see links and buy merchandise, but Spotify is prioritizing this in a way it’s never done before. We hope this will help artists make more money through the platform, but it won’t increase the payout percentage for streaming.
- fun first – We plan to expand this marketing program to allow more artists to use it. Musicians can now reach out to their biggest and most important listeners with emails and notifications about everything from new releases to concerts to merchandise sales.
- clip – Similar to Canvas videos, artists can now post 30-second visuals to their profile and album pages.
- countdown page – These are all about expectations. Countdown promotes new releases and merchandise drops, allowing fans to pre-save and pre-order.
podcast
Spotify, which has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars to become a full-fledged player in the podcast industry, including a nine-figure amount just for Joe Rogan (who appeared at the Stream On event), continues its media commitments. . Spotify and Patreon will soon be integrated, allowing fans to directly support their podcasters.
The tech and music giant has also announced a number of new series coming to the platform, as well as several features affecting podcasters and their teams.
- The company is focused on introducing more exclusive features such as interactive episodes and video podcasting, making them more widely available to users.
- Coming to Spotify for Podcasters is Megaphone. This is the platform’s hosting capability for proprietary enterprise publishing solutions.
- To improve the podcast listening experience, Spotify introduces podcast autoplay. When an episode of a show ends, the platform will automatically begin playing another episode personalized to the user’s tastes and interests.
In addition to new podcast-related features, Spotify also shared a number of numbers and updates connected to its internal Spotify Audience Network (SPAN). It connects podcasters and advertisers, making podcasting a more revenue stream for creators. According to the company, it seems to work fine.
- In less than a year, monthly payments to publishers who opted into the SPAN program surged by 50%. Besides, advertiser participation he increased by 500%.
- Over the past two years, over 700% of independent and enterprise podcasters have joined the platform.
