Tag: Spotify

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Spotify confirms Neil Young’s music is being removed after Joe Rogan complaint

Spotify is removing Neil Young’s music from its streaming service after the musician stated he didn’t want his songs on the same platform as Joe Rogan’s podcast.

In a letter posted to his website earlier this week, the Canadian-born musician said the podcast spreads misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine and he doesn’t want his music streamed on the same platform.

“Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy,” Young wrote in the now-removed letter. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

While 60 percent of Young’s music is listened to on Spotify, it’s clear the company valued Rogan’s podcast more.

A Spotify spokesperson told The Washington Post Young’s music is being removed. “We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon,” the statement reads in part.

Joe Rogan’s podcast, The Rogan Experience, is the most popular podcast on Spotify. The streaming audio platform holds exclusive rights to the show.

In a follow-up letter Young shared on January 26th, he advises fans to listen to his music on various other platforms, including Amazon, Apple, and Qobuz.

“I sincerely hope that other artists and record companies will move off the Spotify platform and stop supporting Spotify’s deadly misinformation about COVID,” said Young in the latter.

This isn’t the first time a stand has been taken against Rogan’s podcast. Earlier this month hundreds of doctors and health care professionals in the U.S wrote an open letter to Spotify about the misinformation being shared on the podcast, according to Rolling Stone.

Source: Neil Young Archives

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Mobile Syrup

Streaming music report shows Spotify in the top spot, YouTube Music growing fast

A new report has dropped regarding the streaming music landscape worldwide, showing off its winners and losers.

As expected, Spotify is in the top slot with a 31 percent market share. Apple Music sits in second with 15 percent, and Amazon Music is at 13 percent. YouTube Music is at eight percent. Deezer holds onto two percent of the market.

One thing worth noting is that this data represents the streaming market in the middle of 2021. It also uses data from 2019 and 2020 for Apple and Amazon since those streamers don’t share subscriber counts as often as Spotify.

These are still likely as accurate as the numbers are going to get for the time being since Apple and some of the other streamers don’t share subscriber info often.

Notably, the data claims that YouTube Music was able to grow 50 percent over the last year. The Google-owned service is still at the bottom of the pile of the big players, but the fast growth actually lines up with what I’ve seen in the real world. Since YouTube Music offers people a wider pool of tracks to pick from, I’ve seen a few friends trend that way this year.

However, in 2021 we also saw Amazon and Apple Music both expand their offerings with more Dolby Atmos-equipped music and lossless quality for no extra cost — two very appealing technology improvements for audiophiles.

While Spotify is still holding the lead, it has lost two percent of its market share since 2020. This is unlikely to make a massive difference in the grand scheme of things, but it definitely showcases that Spotify might have some real competition in a few years.

If you want to see what makes each of these services stand out, you can check out our breakdown and video for it here.

Source: Mida Research Via: The Verge

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Mobile Syrup

Spotify delays HiFi tier, but no new release window given

In a bid to keep up with Apple Music and Amazon, last year, Spotify announced it would begin to offer a new high-fidelity Music tier for an additional cost.

The Swedish music streaming giant said the high-res music option would launch by the end of 2021, but since that year has come and gone, it’s become unclear when the feature will release.

9to5Mac has discovered a Spotify forum thread where a moderator mentions that Spotify doesn’t have any “timing details to share yet.”

As disappointing as this delay is, I’m not sure how much of a draw Spotify’s HiFi offering will be for listeners. Since it’s going to cost more than $10 per month, the price for Apple and Amazon’s top-tier offerings. That being said, Spotify still offers numerous other features in its favour. You can read how the music streaming service stacks up against its competitors here.

It’s weird Spotify is keeping the timeline under wraps for the HiFi tier’s release. This leads me to believe that it might be a lot further away than expected.

Source: 9to5Mac

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Mobile Syrup

Spotify is putting podcast ads in the app itself with new clickable cards

If you were hunting for another reason not to use Spotify for podcasts, the streaming platform may have just delivered one on a silver platter. The company is adding new ‘call-to-action’ cards that are effectively visual advertisements linked to the audio ads you’d typically hear while listening to a podcast.

Spotify announced the new cards on Thursday via a blog post and confirmed to Gizmodo that the cards would be available across the desktop, mobile and tablet apps. For now, the ads won’t appear in web browsers, and to start the cards will only show up on Spotify Original and Exclusive podcasts in the U.S.

As for how these ads work, well, it’s pretty straightforward. When an ad starts playing in a podcast on Spotify, a small card pops up in the app with the brand name, some information and a clickable button that takes users to the advertiser’s website. These ads will show up for both free and paid users.

Further, Spotify will resurface the call-to-action cards for users who listen to an ad with the app closed or their phone screen off. For example, if you listen to a podcast while doing the dishes, you might see the call-to-action card next time you open Spotify and look at that show’s page.

To be clear, I’m not against advertising. It pays the bills for a lot of content creators and podcasts have relied on ads for monetization for some time. But so far, most podcasts advertise by reading ad copy (or playing pre-recorded audio) to listeners. Ads are contained to the show and usually to a specific ad segment at the beginning, middle and/or end.

My concern with Spotify’s approach is that it pulls the ads out of the show, which could open the floodgates for some of the scummier advertising practices that have run rampant on the web — for example, tracking and ad targeting. Additionally, the call-to-action cards add extra clutter to Spotify’s already less-than-stellar podcast interface. Oh, and serving the ads to paid Spotify subscribers is also frustrating since people pay to not have ads.

That said, there are some benefits to Spotify’s approach to ads. As the company points out in its blog post, most podcasts rely on special URLs or promo codes for ads — Spotify’s call-to-action cards remove the need for listeners to remember these codes since they can just click the card instead. And for advertisers, Gizmodo notes that Spotify found when testing call-to-action cards that they doubled site visits compared to non-clickable podcast ads.

Images credit: Spotify

Source: Spotify Via: Gizmodo

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Mobile Syrup

Spotify Wrapped 2021 is out to recap your favourite songs of the year

Welcome to December. To mark the fast-approaching end of the year, Spotify has released its annual ‘Wrapped’ playlists and accompanying statistics.

This includes a personalized list within your Spotify app and several global lists that showcase music trends from around the world. I’m able to view my Wrapped list on my smartphone, but not on the desktop version of Spotify. The popular feature will likely roll out to desktop in the coming days.

Personal lists

To help spice up the personal lists this year, Spotify has added a section that soundtracks your year like a movie and another that shows you a picture of your audio aura. Further into this story, you of course, can see your most played songs, top artists, and other interesting stats.

Each stat also plays out as an interactive vertical card that can shared easily on TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms.

If you want to dive deeper into Spotify’s Wrapped playlists, tap where it says ‘Your 2020 in review’ on the Home page to reveal more playlists and the ability to create a blended playlist with both you and your friend’s top songs.

Global stats

The number one artist globally was Bad Bunny, followed by Taylor Swift. BTS came in third, and two Canadians, Drake and Justin Bieber, came in fourth and fifth, respectively.

The top song was unsurprisingly Olivia Rodrigio’s Drivers License, which Spotify says was streamed over 1 billion times. Her album SOUR was also the top album of the year. You can find the rest of the regular stats here, but what’s more interesting are the company’s random finds. For instance, The top album released more than 20 years ago is Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours followed by Nevermind by Nirvana.

Spotify also mentions that its Music for Plants playlist has grown nearly 1,400 percent during the pandemic, and users have created almost 3 million of their own playlists related to plants or gardening. It’s also worth mentioning that 187,000 sea shanty playlists were auto-generated on Spotify last year.

Source: Spotify

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Mobile Syrup

Spotify kills Car View, says it’s ‘exploring’ new in-car experiences

Spotify killed its ‘Car View’ mode that offered a simplified playback control interface for drivers.

Earlier this week, several users noticed Car View was inexplicably missing from the app. Several people took to a Spotify community forum thread to ask what happened, and a Spotify forum moderator confirmed the feature was dead (spotted by Android Police):

“We can confirm that we’re retiring the car view feature. This however doesn’t mean we don’t want to improve on how our users listen to Spotify while driving. On the contrary, we’re actively exploring a variety of new ways to deliver the best in-car listening experience. Think of retiring car-view as something that needs to happen in an effort to make way for new innovations coming down the track.”

Unfortunately for Car View fans, this means you won’t have access to the interface anymore. Hopefully, Spotify’s “variety of new” in-car listening experiences don’t revolve around the Car Thing, a frankly silly piece of hardware only available in the U.S. It’s basically an $80 USD (about $102.12 CAD) device that does what Car View already did for free.

The Spotify moderator suggested a few possible alternatives people could use in place of Car View, including Google Assistant. While Google does have a few Assistant-based music voice control options baked into its apps (like Google Maps), these don’t really stack up to a dedicated car mode.

All that said, not everyone will miss Car View. I found the interface to be incredibly annoying, in part because no matter how many times I disabled it, the feature always seemed to come back and interrupt me. Although I’m not alone in that sentiment, it does seem like a lot of people will miss Car View too.

Source: Spotify Via: Android Police

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Mobile Syrup

Spotify testing out TikTok-type design

Like nearly every app out there at this point, Spotify is testing a music discovery tool that functions like TikTok.

This new tool, ‘Discover,’ is part of Spotify’s nav bar along the bottom of the app and slots between the Home and Search icons. Tapping on the new button brings up a vertical music video and the audio to accompany it. You can then swipe up and down to navigate through these songs like you would with TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and more.

Spotify has confirmed that this feature is being tested in its beta iOS app, according to TechCrunch. That said, it’s unclear when the feature will make its way to all users.

This is a fun little add-on for Spotify, but part of me is concerned about how the TikTok formula could shift the already warped music making progress by forcing musicians to ensure the opening ten seconds of songs hook people. I know this is already an issue, but I can only see a form of music discovery like this making that problem worse.

I’m also afraid this will only show off songs with music videos or canvas album art, leaving lesser-known artists behind.

Via: TechCrunch 

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Mobile Syrup

Adele gets Spotify to respect album track lists

Spotify has finally replaced its giant shuffle button with a play button on album pages in its app. If you want to thank anyone for this, you can thank Adele.

The British superstar asked the streaming service for the change, and I assume since her album is making Spotify tons of money, it complied. Notably, Adele’s last album, 25, was one of the most popular albums of the year and when it launched, it wasn’t even on streaming services.

In all seriousness, this is a change that needed to happen and I’m glad Adele finally got Spotify to respect the tracklist.

Source: Adele

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Mobile Syrup

Artists can now sell merch on Spotify thanks to a partnership with Shopify

Spotify and Shopify are teaming up to make it easier for musicians to sell their merch on Spotify instead of relying on tour merch tables and websites.

This is a significant update for artists since it earns them more revenue through the music streaming service. A few years ago, Spotify started selling concerts tickets through its app. This update helps the platform become an even more robust one-stop-shop for all things music.

Spotify says that artists can start learning about the new sales feature in the Spotify for Artists app. If you want to see the new feature in action, pop artist Remi Wolf has a few items on her page.

Source: Shopify

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Mobile Syrup

Leaked Ikea speaker has built-in Spotify ‘Tap Button’

A new lamp/speaker hybrid appears to be coming from Ikea, and this time, it looks like the company is partnering with Spotify instead of Sonos.

The tiny speaker/lamp includes a few fun features like a 20-lumen light and an IP67 water/dust resistance rating. However, the most intriguing part of the device is a new ‘Spotify Tap’ button that starts playing music from where you left off when pressed.

This feature has been available with several wireless earbuds in the past, making it possible to touch and hold on to them to instantly begin playing music or podcasts from Spotify. If the leaked Ikea speaker is real, it will likely be the first portable speaker to include the feature.

The speaker will be called ‘Vappeby,’ according to its FCC filing. The filing also confirms that battery life will last for 13 hours if the volume and brightness are both set to medium.

I like the concept of the Spotify Connect button, and since the speaker seems like it will work via regular Bluetooth connections too. However, it’s a smart move for Spotify that will likely make it just that much more prevalent and easy to access for people who own this new lamp.

Source: The FCC