Spotify: Product Developments: Difference between revisions

September 26, 2023: Spotify launches Jam, a new personalized tool for creating playlists by group of people in real-time. Jam enables premium subscribers to invite other Spotify users to contribute music through a shared queue. Anyone who is on the shared Wi-Fi can contribute to the Jam but premium listeners can join anywhere, whether in the same room or across the world. It builds on technology used in Collaborative Playlists and Blend, that makes music sharing easier. Spotify said more than 45 million Blends have been created and last month alone, users spent over 200 million hours listening to Collaborative Playlists. The company said it will launch Jam globally starting today<ref>https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-09-26/spotify-jam-personalized-collaborative-listening-session-free-premium-users/</ref>.  

September 26, 2023: Daniel EK, Spotify CEO said the company will not completely ban content generated using AI. He said AI could be used to improve music, mimic artist and create content that are influenced by existing artists but doesn't directly impersonate them. EK said the industry is facing a big challenge when it comes to AI. "You can imagine someone uploading a song, claiming to be Madonna, even if they're not. We've seen pretty much everything in the history of Spotify at this point with people trying to game our system," Ek said. "We have a very large team that is working on exactly these types of issues."<ref>https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66882414</ref>

September 25, 2023: Spotify is testing Voice Translation for podcasts, a feature that translates podcasts into local languages and which uses AI to mimic podcaster's voice. The company said it has worked with podcasters Dax Shepard, Monica Padman, Lex Fridman, Bill Simmons, and Steven Bartlett to come up with AI-powered voice translations in other languages such as Spanish, French, and German for some current and future podcast episodes. Spotify said that voice translations for Dax Shepard’s eff won with DRS, The Rewatchables from The Ringer, and Trevor Noah’s upcoming original podcast will soon be generated. The translated episodes will be available to both free and premium users. Spotify currently has more than 100 million regular podcast listeners<ref>https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-09-25/ai-voice-translation-pilot-lex-fridman-dax-shepard-steven-bartlett/</ref>.

September 22, 2023: According to the Verge, Spotify could be getting closer to launching the long-awaited HiFi. The HiFi would come in the form of the “Supremium” tier and could include the ability to create playlists with AI. The Verge cited a code found in the Spotify app by a Reddit user. The Redditor's findings corroborate a ''Bloomberg'' report published in June 2023 that indicated that Spotify's lossless audio will come in the form of a  “Supremium” tier. Additionally, the tier will feature 30 hours of audiobook listening per month, according to the Redditor. The tier will also feature other music mixing tools such as customization tools and tools for filtering songs by mood and genre. The Redditor also discovered that the price listed for “Supremium” tier is $19.99 per month though this could just be a placeholder. “At Spotify, we are constantly iterating and ideating to improve our product offering and offer value to users,” Spotify spokesperson CJ Stanley told ''The Verge''. “But we don’t comment on speculation around possible new features and do not have anything new to share at this time.”<ref>https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/21/23884577/spotify-supremium-lossless-audio-tier-code</ref>

September 12, 2023: Spotify launched Showcase, a music marketing tool that enables artists to promote new and previous realeases to their chosen listeners at the right time. Showcase is a sponsored recommendation that appears at the top of Spotify's Home. Spotify said people who see Showcase are 6x more likely to stream the promoted music. Showcase also allows artists to book multiple compaigns for different settings such as different markets and listeners. The tool helps you reach listeners in more than 30 markets including countries in Europe, South America, North America and Oceania. Showcase will provide you with user engagement data after 24 hours of using it. Its budget start at $100 when booked using Spotify for Artists and will run for 14 days after your compaign starts or until the budget is spent. The budget is only spend when listeners click on it and the cost-per-click (CPC) starts at $0.40 CPC. To maximize value for your budget, Showcase filters out people who have already clicked on it<ref>https://artists.spotify.com/blog/getting-started-with-showcase-a-campaign-tool-to-give-your-music-its-moment-on-home</ref>.

September 12, 2023: Spotify adds Daylist to its personalized playlists. Daylist will update many times throughout the day with new tracks and titles to reflect your moods based on how you use the Spotify app. For instance, if you listen to happy and upbeat music on certain mornings, you might get a suggestion like 'happy dance." Daylist comes with an in-built sharing feature that has ready-made screenshot, personalized sticker, or customizable sharecard. The new feature will initially be available to both free and premium users in English-speaking countries such as U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland. In the coming months, the feature will expand to more users globally<ref>https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-09-12/ever-changing-playlist-daylist-music-for-all-day/</ref>.  

September 6, 2023, Spotify CFO, Paul Vogel, said during  Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference that AI DJ has been one of their most successful products. “Reviews have been amazing, and it’s something that’s very differentiated, that consumers love, that the artists love because it’s getting the content out there, and so we’re going to continue to invest in those types of things," he said. On podcasting, he said that they are the largest player in many countries they participate in and that they feel good about their market share and growth. “We feel really good about where we are in terms of our market share and our growth and our presence in podcasting," Vogel said. He added that Spotify originals will continue to be part of their strategy. “We continue to believe that creating podcasts and having Spotify originals will still be a part of the strategy. We’re also going to think about what’s the best way to produce that content with the business partner with that content. What’s the best way to share in the risk and the reward of that content with our partners?”he said<ref>https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/spotify-cfo-goldman-sachs-conference-1235577988/</ref>.

September 5, 2023: Spotify starts testing whether to make the in-app lyrics feature a premium feature. Users have started noticing the lyrics locked away under a paywall. Instead of the lyrics popping up when a song is playing, users have been presented with a notification bubble that says, “Enjoy lyrics on Spotify Premium.” Users have also been presented with a link to sign up for the new premium feature. In response to this development, Spotify co-head of global communications, CJ Stanley said,  “At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests, some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning.” “In keeping with our standard practices, we’re currently testing this with a limited number of users in a pair of markets." he said in a follow up statement<ref>https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/5/23860124/spotify-lyrics-premium-only-feature</ref>.

August 23, 2023: Spotify released a series of podcast tools and features including customization tools, new impression analytics, tools for editing podcast previews, expansion of automated ads, and new Spotify Audience Network Performance Dashboard for Megaphone enterprise publishers. With customization, podcasters will be able to personalize parts of their pages for the first time. For instance, they can add a bio and links to their social media pages. They can also introduce their pages by pinning some introductory episodes. Customization feature will be available to both hosted and non-hosted creators in the fall. Impression analytics will enable creators to know how their podcasts are being discovered. Spotify Audience Network Performance Dashboard for Megaphone enterprise publishers will display metrics such as CPMs and impressions delivered by each podcast. This dashboard will be available as from today. With auto-generated tags, listeners will be able to jump to any creator search results. By clicking on these tags, they will be able to find any content from a creator<ref>https://finance.yahoo.com/news/spotify-introduces-podcaster-tools-including-163035713.html</ref>.