Spotify

Update: It’s official. “So that we can keep innovating, we are changing our Premium prices across a number of markets around the world,” says Spotify. “These updates will help us continue to deliver value to fans and artists on our platform.” Original story from July 21 below.

Spotify has resisted increasing its monthly subscription price for as long as possible. According to the Wall Street Journal, the subscription music service will issue a price increase in the US as soon as next week.

A few years ago, Spotify removed the option to let new users subscribe to the platform via in-app purchases in its iOS app. Still, those who already had an active subscription were not affected – until now, that is. Spotify is now notifying subscribers that it will no longer support in-app subscriptions in iOS, including from existing customers.

Speaking of the good ol’ pivot to video, Spotify may be taking a page out of the Apple Music playbook and investing in a music video catalog.

Spotify is out today with an overhaul for its desktop experience. The new UI brings redesigned ‘Your Library’ and ‘Now Playing’ sections to align more with the iOS/Android Spotify app and make it more seamless to “explore, curate, listen to, and organize Spotify on a computer or web browser.”

Apple Music launched high-quality lossless audio streaming all the way back in May 2021, available to Apple Music subscribers at no extra charge.

Bloomberg today reports that Spotify is finally almost ready to compete. The company is readying a new higher-end subscription tier that will include “HiFi” lossless audio streaming. Unlike Apple Music, though, you’ll have to upgrade your plan to a higher tier and pay extra to get it.

Both Spotify and Elon Musk have previously spoken out against Apple’s App Store guidelines in the past. In a new exchange on Twitter this weekend, Musk and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek again questioned Apple’s guidelines, with Ek referring to them as “absurd” and Musk saying they present a “serious scaling problem.”

After rolling out a major update to Spotify for iPhone earlier this month, Spotify is now updating its desktop app for Mac a new navigation interface. In a blog post today, the company announced a new “Your Library sidebar” that it says is more customizable and makes it easier to access your Spotify collection.

If you’re an Apple Music or Spotify who finds it frustrating to quickly start listening to your favorite albums, a new app from developer Adam Bell might help solve that problem. The app, called “Albums: Music Shortcuts,” lets you create shortcuts to your favorite albums directly via widgets on your iPhone or iPad Home Screen.

Spotify paid subscriptions grew faster than expected in the first quarter of the year, but the company is still losing money.

The good news for the streaming giant is that paid subscriptions were up 15% to 210M, ahead of analyst expectations and the company’s own guidance …

Spotify is shutting down Heardle, the popular Wordle-inspired song guessing game that it acquired less than a year ago. The decision is apparently driven by Spotify’s desire for more users to discover music through the main Spotify apps (and because the company seems to hate fun).

It’s been seven months since Apple launched its Lock Screen with customizable widgets but Spotify hasn’t really ever been on top of launching support for Apple features quickly. In any case, it’s nice to see Spotify debut an iPhone Lock Screen widget for instant access to your library.

A growing number of AI-generated songs are being uploaded to Apple Music and Spotify, and music label Universal Music Group has said that these involve breach of copyright. Some of these songs are AI-generated covers of existing songs.

UMG has issued a large number of takedown requests, and has asked both Apple and Spotify to block AI systems from scraping melodies and lyrics from their services …

Back in 2021, Spotify introduced a new app named Greenroom to compete with Clubhouse. Similar to its competitor, Greenroom was focused on letting users create and join live audio rooms with other people. Last year, the Greenroom app was rebranded as Spotify Live, but now the app is about to be discontinued.

Spotify’s mythical HiFi tier “is coming at some point,” at least according to a new update from the company’s co-president Gustav Söderström. Spotify first announced HiFi more than two years ago but hasn’t fulfilled its promises of actually shipping the feature.

Yesterday, Spotify announced what it described as its “biggest evolution yet,” with a new TikTok-style Home feed that combines music, podcasts, audiobooks, and more into a single feed. The redesign has received quite a bit of criticism from music fans — and it could represent a major opportunity for Apple Music. Hear me out…

At its “Stream On” event today, Spotify showed off a major overhaul that’s rolling out for its iOS and Android apps. Two of the biggest components include video and audio previews for music, podcasts, and audiobooks in the Home feed and new video feeds for discovery in Search.

As European Union officials work on the implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that formally went into effect last fall, a stakeholder workshop was held today by the European Commission to get input on “app store related provisions.” Spotify was one of the panelists and it shared three changes it feels Apple must be forced to make in the EU.

Update: Apple comment added at end

Some four years after the Apple/Spotify battle began back in 2019, we may have the first indication of how the European Union will resolve the antitrust dispute.

Reading between the lines of a brief report today, it appears that the European Commission may be heading toward a compromise ruling, which would mirror that made in the Apple vs. Epic Games case in the US …

Spotify is making a small but notable change to its UI today – it’s doing away with the heart button in favor of a dual-function plus icon. The move is designed to make it easier to save songs, albums, and podcasts and also add content to playlists. Here’s what to expect as the feature rolls out on iOS and Android.

Spotify has announced a new “AI DJ” feature, which it says is a “brand-new way to listen on Spotify and connect even more deeply with the artists you love.” The feature will deliver a “curated lineup of music alongside commentary around the tracks and artists we think you’ll like in a stunningly realistic voice.”

BeReal quickly became one of the most popular apps of 2022, and it was even named iPhone App of the Year by Apple. Now BeReal wants to make its platform even more attractive to users – the app is about to get official integration with Spotify to let users share songs there.