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Spotify

As of 2022, Spotify is the current sponsor of Spanish football club FC Barcelona, with music artists like Drake, Travis Scott and Ed Sheeran collaborating with the club by changing their shirts into their artist logo, sometimes used for album promotions. Users can search for music based on artist, album, or genre, and can create, edit, and share playlists. Operating as a freemium service, the basic features are free with advertisements and limited control, while additional features, such as offline listening and commercial-free listening, are offered via paid subscriptions. Like HBO Max, YouTube, and Instagram which are also running ads from the campaign, Spotify defended the advertisements by stating they were part of a government campaign, playjohnny casino registration which complied with its ad policies and stated that users could provide feedback or thumbs-down such ads. Some liberal users responded by cancelling their subscriptions and calling for a boycott. According to journalist and author Liz Pelly, Spotify, "under the guise of AI-powered recommendations has developed a surveillance apparatus driven by emotion profiling and pseudoscience."

Spotify for Artists

Spotify also announced that the third season of WNYC Studios' 2 Dope Queens podcast would premiere with a two-week exclusivity period on the service on 21 March 2017. In October 2022, Spotify acquired the Dublin-based content moderation startup, Kinzen. In July 2022, Spotify acquired Heardle, a Wordle-inspired music trivia game, for an undisclosed amount; Heardle was shut down in May 2023. In March 2021, Spotify acquired app developer Betty Labs and their live social audio app, Locker Room, On 12 May 2021.

Features

  • On 6 February 2019, Spotify acquired the podcast networks Gimlet Media and Anchor FM Inc., with the goal of establishing themselves as a leading figure in podcasting.
  • While certain musicians laud the service for offering a lawful option to combat piracy and for remunerating artists each time their music is played, others have voiced objections to Spotify’s royalty structure and its effect on record sales.
  • Some of the premium options users may choose from include individual, duo, family, and student.
  • 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 February 2021, Spotify announced their plans to introduce a HiFi subscription, to offer listening in high fidelity, lossless sound quality.

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. The Waze partnership allows Waze app users to view directions to destinations within the Spotify app and access their Spotify playlists through the Waze app. The integration also enabled Spotify within the SXSW GO app to help users discover and explore artists performing at the conference. In January 2015, Sony announced PlayStation Music, a new music service with Spotify as its exclusive partner.
Spotify offers DRM protected audio content, including over 100 million songs and 7 million podcast titles, from record labels and media companies. 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. In 2024, Spotify Wrapped, which has become a key marketing strategy for the company, was heavily criticised for appearing to rely on AI-generated content and producing uninteresting insights. He explained, "An extension of the internet radio craze of the early 2000s, Spotify would license content from record labels, and then support artists as people listened to their music." In March 2021, David Dayen argued in The American Prospect that musicians were in peril due to monopolies in streaming services like Spotify.

Fake artists

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. In November 2021, Spotify acquired audiobook company Findaway, including its publishing imprint OrangeSky Audio. 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.

  • In April 2014, Spotify moved away from the peer-to-peer (P2P) system they had used to distribute music to users.
  • 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).
  • This approach is not intended to raise fresh capital, but to let investors get their returns.
  • Spotify operates under a freemium business model (basic services are free, while additional features are offered via paid subscriptions).
  • The company reported that the tier conditions may change before its full launch.
  • For example, Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road and Doja Cat’s Say So started their popularity through Tik Tok but through Spotify playlists had their popularity accelerated.
  • It was announced later in April that this type of agreement would be extended to indie artists signed to the Merlin Network agency.

Unionization

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.

Accounts and subscriptions

This eligibility rule only applies to royalties for sound recordings, not musical compositions. Some of the premium options users may choose from include individual, duo, family, and student. Spotify operates under a freemium business model (basic services are free, while additional features are offered via paid subscriptions).
In September 2020, Spotify, Epic, and other companies founded The Coalition for App Fairness, which aims for better conditions for the inclusion of apps in app stores. In 2019, under iOS 13, it became possible to play Spotify music using Siri commands. Additionally, Apple stated that they have attempted to work with Spotify to integrate the service better with Apple's products, such as Siri and Apple Watch.

In December 2015, Spotify debuted Spotify Wrapped, a program that creates playlists based on each user's most listened-to songs from the year. "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. The applications provided features such as synchronised lyrics, music reviews, and song recommendations. 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.
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. Offline Music listening is possible on watchOS and more recently added to Google's WearOS for those with premium subscriptions.
On September 10, 2025, it was announced that Lossless would be rolling out to Premium listeners gradually to more than 50 markets through October. In February 2021, Spotify announced their plans to introduce a HiFi subscription, to offer listening in high fidelity, lossless sound quality. Spotify introduced a Family subscription in October 2014, which allows up to 5 family members to have a premium subscription. The changes faced a mixed reaction from the music industry, who believed that it would be detrimental to emerging musicians, but would make a larger share of total royalty payments available to musicians. In 2013, Spotify revealed that it paid artists an average of $0.007 per stream. Spotify for Artists states that the company does not have a fixed per-play rate; instead, it considers factors such as the user's home country and the individual artist's royalty rate.
The functionality is limited to selected playlists and was only available on Spotify's iOS app at launch, being expanded to the Android app in April 2017. In May 2015, Spotify announced a new "Home" start-page that could recommend music. 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.