Spotify

Back in September, we saw Spotify finally start testing streaming support for its Apple Watch app, something we’ve seen arrive with other third-party services like Pandora months ago. Now it looks like the feature may finally be rolling out more widely.

Spotify has pulled further ahead of Apple Music in terms of paid subscribers, announcing that it now has 144M against the last-declared number from Apple at 60M. Apple last shared its subscribers way back in June of last year, but the lack of update since then suggests that growth since then has been relatively slow.

Digging into the details, however, reveals a mix of good and bad news for Spotify …

An enquiry has been opened in the UK into whether streaming music services like Spotify and Apple Music pay artists a fair royalty.

Apple Music pays more than both Spotify and YouTube on a per-stream basis, but artists say that the amount they receive from all streaming services is just a small percentage of a tiny sum …

Spotify has rolled out an update to its iOS app today with support for home screen widgets. This comes after Spotify beta tested iOS 14 home screen widgets with a handful of beta users last week. Read on for instructions on how to find the new Spotify widgets.

Since iOS 14 was released in September with the all-new home screen widgets that have proved hugely popular, Spotify hasn’t officially released an update to support the new feature. However, now iOS 14 widgets have been spotted in the Spotify beta.

A number of big developers who object to Apple’s App Store policies have jointly formed the Coalition for App Fairness, a non-profit intended to coordinate efforts to do battle with Apple. Founding members include Epic Games, Spotify and Tile, each of which is involved in high-profile disputes with the iPhone maker.

It will add to the antitrust pressure faced by Apple as the coalition accuses the Cupertino company of ‘taxing consumers’ and ‘crushing innovation’ …

After almost two years since the debut of the Spotify Apple Watch app, the service is finally testing streaming support with what looks like a random selection of users.

Spotify has been one of the major tech companies to accuse Apple of having too much power and using monopolistic business practices. Now after Apple’s September event which included the official announcement of its Apple One services bundle, Spotify has hit again with a statement of condemnation.

The podcast industry is at a crossroads in 2020. Since 2004, we’ve enjoyed an open ecosystem with podcasting driven by RSS feeds. Once Apple released the iTunes podcast directory in iTunes 4.9, but it’s still been based on the open RSS standard. When listeners subscribe to a show, it is directly pulled from the RSS feed and, therefore, a direct download from the podcast’s server. As Spotify has made its mark on the industry with exclusive shows, it’s worth discussing the differences between free shows, the open podcast market, and paid podcasts.

Amazon Music podcasts are on the way, with the ecommerce giant also planning on making podcasts available on its audiobook service, Audible. This will almost certainly mean that podcasts are natively supported on Echo speakers, rather than requiring third-party skills.

Apple is still the best-known source of podcasts, but Spotify has offered podcasts for a few years now and has really upped its game in the past 18 months – including a controversial $100M exclusive. Other ways to listen to podcasts include TuneIn, iHeart Radio, Pandora, and Radio.com.

Just like Spotify, Amazon is headed for controversy with its approach …

Spotify continues to ramp up its efforts in the podcasting industry today, announcing that it now supports video podcasts. This means that users can now watch video podcasts directly in the Spotify app on mobile and desktop.

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