In November 2021, Spotify launched the City and Local Pulse charts, aimed at representing the songs listened to in major cities around the world. The Group Session feature was later expanded to allow any Premium user to join/participate in a Group Session, with a special link the host can send to participants. Rap Caviar had 10.9 million followers by 2019, becoming one of Spotify’s Top 5 playlists. Spotify provides artists taking part in RADAR with resources and access to integrated marketing opportunities to help them boost their careers, in addition to expanded reach and exposure to 178 markets worldwide. In March 2021, Spotify announced an upcoming option for higher-resolution sound, Spotify Hi-Fi. Users find the relevant content to share and press a “soundwave-style barcode” on the display.
Spotify for Creators
In October 2017, Microsoft announced that it would be ending its Groove Music streaming service by December, with all music from users transferring to Spotify as part of a new partnership. Spotify offers DRM-protected audio content, including over 100 million songs and over 7 million podcast titles, from record labels and media companies. In 2016, Spotify was criticized for allegedly making certain artists’ music harder to find than others, as these artists would release their music to the rival streaming service Apple Music before releasing it to Spotify. Spotify has been criticised by artists and producers including Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke, who have argued that Spotify does not fairly compensate musicians, and both withdrew their music from the service. However, there has been some concern about the music streaming platform’s social media features. Before May 2020, all service users were limited to 10,000 songs in their library, after which they would receive an “Epic collection, friend” notification and would not be able to save more music to their library.
Additional features include the ability to get “verified” status with a blue checkmark on an artist’s profile, receiving artist support from Spotify, customising the profile page with photos and promoting a certain song as their “pick”. In April 2017, the panel was upgraded to leave beta status, renamed as “Spotify for Artists”, and opened to all artists and managers. In March 2009, Spotify began offering music downloads in the United Kingdom, France, and Spain. The company was, according to TechCrunch, planning to launch on the stock market in 2017, but in 2017 it was seen as planning on doing the IPO in 2018 to “build up a better balance sheet and work on shifting its business model to improve its margins”. In April 2015, Spotify began another round of fundraising, with a report from The Wall Street Journal stating it was seeking $400 million (equivalent to $515,700,000 in 2024), which would value the company at $8.4 billion (equivalent to $10,831,000,000 in 2024). In February 2010, Spotify received a small investment from Founders Fund, where board member Sean Parker was recruited to assist Spotify in “winning the labels over in the world’s largest music market”.
SharePlay
The feature is powered by lyrics providers Musixmatch and PetitLyrics ja (only in Japan). The following November, the company began rolling out a web player, with a similar design to its computer programs, but without the requirement of any installation. In June 2012, Soundrop became the first Spotify app to attract major funding, receiving $3 million (equivalent to $4,039,000 in 2024) from Spotify investor Northzone.
On 14 November 2018, the company announced 13 new markets in the MENA region, including the creation of a new Arabic hub and several playlists. It offers some social media features such as messaging, creating profiles, following friends, shared playlists, and creating listening parties called “Jams”. Listen to your favourite songs and discover new music, podcasts and audiobooks with the Spotify app! In doing so, if users chose to listen to one set of these artists’ music, it effectively reduced the number of plays for other musicians. In 2021, a conspiracy theory began to take hold that Spotify was filling its playlists in some genres (including jazz, chill and “peaceful piano”) with stock music attributed to a handful of little-known musicians, mostly Swedish, in an effort to meet demand for background music.
Fake artists
In 2023, Spotify launched additional features to help independent artists distributing their music on the platform reach a wider array of potential fans. This feature allows two or more Premium users in the same location to share control over the music that is being played. In 2016, Spotify introduced its Daily Mix feature, which creates playlists of music that a user has previously listened to on the platform.In 2017, Spotify introduced RapCaviar, a hip-hop playlist. In August 2016, Spotify launched Release Radar, a personalized playlist that allows users to stay up-to-date on new music released by the artists they listen to the most.
App Privacy
On 12 September 2019, Spotify acquired SoundBetter, a music production marketplace for people in the music industry to collaborate on projects, and distribute music tracks for licensing. Spotify stated that Sonalytic would be used to improve the company’s personalized playlists, better match songs with compositions, and improve the company’s publishing data system. In June 2015, Spotify announced they had acquired Seed Scientific, a data science consulting firm and analytics company.
It also said that Apple believed Spotify users on the app store were Apple’s customers and not Spotify’s. In March 2023, Spotify announced a partnership with Patreon, which Spotify claimed would “enable creators to expand their creative business through direct payments from fans, and allow fans to listen to their Patreon content on Spotify”. In May 2022, Spotify announced a partnership with the online game platform and game creation system Roblox, the partnership saw Spotify as the first streaming brand to have a presence within the game with the launch of “Spotify Island”.
In a further escalation of the dispute with Apple, on 13 March 2019, Spotify filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission over unfair app store practices. Spotify released the first version of its Apple Watch app in November 2018, allowing playback control of the iPhone via the watch. Furthermore, he stated that “There is nothing in Apple’s conduct that ‘amounts to a violation of applicable antitrust laws.’ Far from it. … I would be happy to facilitate an expeditious review and approval of your app as soon as you provide us with something that is compliant with the App Store’s rules”. Listeners will be able to link their Spotify to ChatGPT, asking it to find anything from a specific playlist to a podcast topic. In May 2020, Spotify teamed up with ESPN and Netflix to curate podcasts around their Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance, and in September, Spotify signed a deal with Chernin Entertainment to produce movies and TV shows.
In February 2020, Spotify announced it would be featuring new songwriter pages and ‘written by’ playlists. In June 2017, Variety reported that Spotify would announce “Secret Genius”, a new initiative aimed at highlighting songwriters and producers, and the effect those people have on the music industry and the artists’ careers. On 1 July 2019, Spotify deprecated the program and announced plans to stop accepting direct uploads by the end of that month and eventually remove all content uploaded in this manner. Uploading was free and artists received 100% of the revenue from songs they uploaded; artists were able to control when their release went public. The feature was rolled out to a small number of US-based artists by invitation only. In September 2018, Spotify announced “Upload Beta”, allowing artists to upload directly to the platform instead of going through a distributor or record label.
- Spotify had added social media-related features to its platform, especially to compete for ad revenue and to increase its media-related users.
- User growth continued, reaching 20 million total active users, including five million paying customers globally and one million paying customers in the United States, in December 2012.
- In 2013, Spotify revealed that it paid artists an average of $0.007 per stream.
- In April 2014, Spotify moved away from the peer-to-peer (P2P) system they had used to distribute music to users.
- However, there has been some concern about the music streaming platform’s social media features.
- Additional features include the ability to get “verified” status with a blue checkmark on an artist’s profile, receiving artist support from Spotify, customising the profile page with photos and promoting a certain song as their “pick”.
- In 2023, Spotify merged Anchor into their Spotify for Podcasters tool, a rebranding move and to organize its tools for creating, managing, growing, and monetizing their content in one place.
The aim was to help users to listen to the music they want without information overload or spending time building their own playlists. The ability to purchase and download music tracks via the app was removed on 4 January 2013. Another source of income was music purchases from within the app, however this service was removed in January 2013. In September 2025, Spotify began removing restrictions preventing free users from listening to specific tracks. In November 2018, Spotify announced it was opening up Spotify Connect to all of the users using its Free service, however, these changes still required products supporting Spotify Connect to support the latest software development kit.
Spotify provides access to over 100 million songs, 5 million podcasts, and 4 billion playlists. Unlike the apps, the web player does not have the ability to download music for offline listening. Spotify also offers a proprietary protocol known as “Spotify Connect”, which lets users listen to music through a wide range of entertainment systems, including speakers, receivers, TVs, cars, and smartwatches. The company said users would be able to login into the main Spotify app with their Stations account and transfer their stations into Spotify.
Users can add tracks to a “Collection” section of the app, rather than adding them to a specific playlist. In April 2012, Spotify introduced a “Spotify Play Button”, an embeddable music player that can be added to blogs, websites, or social media profiles, that lets visitors listen to a specific song, playlist, or album without leaving the page. In November 2011, Spotify introduced a Spotify Apps service that made it possible for third-party developers to design applications that could be hosted within the Spotify computer software. In Spotify’s apps, music can be browsed or searched for via various parameters, such as artist, album, genre, playlist, or record label. Offline Music listening is possible on watchOS and more recently added to Google’s WearOS for those with premium subscriptions.
- In June 2012, Soundrop became the first Spotify app to attract major funding, receiving $3 million (equivalent to $4,039,000 in 2024) from Spotify investor Northzone.
- Months later, Spotify tested its own version of stories (the sharing format popularized by social apps) known as “Storyline”, and the focus is on allowing artists to share their own insights, inspiration, details about their creative process or other meanings behind the music.
- A camera icon in the apps’ search fields lets other users point their device’s camera at the code, which takes them to the same content.
- In March 2013, the five-play individual track limit was removed for users in the United Kingdom, and media reports stated that users in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand never had the limit in the first place.
- In November 2021, Spotify acquired audiobook company Findaway, including its publishing imprint OrangeSky Audio.
- “Follow” lets users follow artists and friends to see what they are listening to, while “Discover” directs users to new releases as well as music, review, and concert recommendations based on listening history.
Spotify gets its content from major record labels as well as independent artists and pays copyright holders royalties for streaming music. In May 2023, Spotify removed tens of thousands of songs, roughly 7% of the tracks uploaded by the Boomy, due to suspected “artificial streaming”, the practice of using online bots to inflate the listening statistics. On October 6, 2025, Spotify announced a partnership with OpenAI to bring music and podcast recommendations inside ChatGPT, allowing Spotify users to discover and queue new music through conversations, rather than search. In March 2017, Spotify announced a partnership with the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference for 2017, presenting specific content in special playlists through an SXSW hub in Spotify’s apps. In December 2021, Spotify acquired Whooshkaa, a podcast tech company that develops specialized technology that allows radio broadcasters to easily turn their existing audio content into on-demand podcast programming.
On 5 February 2020, Spotify announced its intent to acquire Bill Simmons’ sports and pop culture blog and podcast network The Ringer for an undisclosed amount. On 26 March 2019, Spotify announced they would acquire another podcast network, Parcast. On 6 February 2019, Spotify acquired the podcast networks Gimlet frostybet casino Media and Anchor FM Inc., with the goal of establishing themselves as a leading figure in podcasting. This was followed in May 2017 with the acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Niland, which uses technology to improve personalisation and recommendation features for users.
In July 2025, several artists joined a boycott of Spotify because Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek raised another $600 million in support of German defense company Helsing through his investment fund. On 26 January, Neil Young removed his music from Spotify after they refused to remove the podcast. This policy was revoked in June because the company deemed the original wording to be too “vague”; they stated that “Across all genres, our role is not to regulate artists. Therefore, we are moving away from implementing a policy around artist conduct”.