The subscription costs $0.99 and is supposed to be a combination of the free and premium tiers. On September 10, 2025, it was announced that Lossless would be rolling out to Premium listeners gradually to more than 50 markets through October. Spotify introduced a Family subscription in October 2014, which allows up to 5 family members to have a premium subscription.
Trending Music Player
Of that amount, about 58.5% of its total revenue goes to the owners of sound recording copyrights, and the other 12% goes to the owners of musical compositions. In December 2013, the company launched a new website, “Spotify for Artists”, explaining its business model and revenue data. There was no provision regarding worker ownership of content created, one of the initial demands. In February 2020, Spotify announced it was acquiring The Ringer, and inheriting the previously established union. One month after Spotify acquired Gimlet Media in February 2019, 75% of staff at Gimlet Media went public, signing union cards and seeking voluntary recognition. Moreover, they are asking for a fairer redistribution system, as smaller artists are disproportionately disadvantaged on Spotify.
On 14 November 2018, the company announced 13 new markets in the MENA region, including the creation of a new Arabic hub and several playlists. It offers some social media features such as messaging, creating profiles, following friends, shared playlists, and creating listening parties called “Jams”. Listen to your favourite songs and discover new music, podcasts and audiobooks with the Spotify app! 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.
One year later, in 31 cities worldwide, 27,500 musicians joined UMAW’s campaign #JusticeAtSpotify to demand a compensation of one cent per audio stream. The United Musicians and Allied Workers campaigns for a fairer redistribution and compensation system for musicians. In November 2022, Henry Catalini Smith, a Spotify engineer in Malmö, set up the channel #kollektivavtal in the internal company Slack, which means “collective agreement” in Swedish.
- The company said users would be able to login into the main Spotify app with their Stations account and transfer their stations into Spotify.
- PlayStation Music incorporates the Spotify service into Sony’s PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 gaming consoles, and Sony Xperia mobile devices.
- In 2024, Spotify Wrapped, which has become a key marketing strategy for the company, was criticised for appearing to rely on AI-generated content and producing uninteresting insights.
- Spotify intended to use MightyTV to improve its advertising efforts on the free tier of service.
- In April 2018, Spotify began to allow Free users to listen on-demand to whatever songs they want for an unlimited number of times, as long as the song is on one of the user’s 15 personalized discovery playlists.
- The company reported that the tier conditions may change before its full launch.
- On 26 January, Neil Young removed his music from Spotify after they refused to remove the podcast.
SharePlay
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.
Demus: Easy Music Streaming
On 19 November 2019, Spotify announced the acquisition of the exclusive rights to The Last Podcast on the Left. Spotify intended to use MightyTV to improve its advertising efforts on the free tier of service. In March 2017, Spotify acquired Sonalytic, an audio detection startup, for an undisclosed amount of money.
Music Downloader / MP3 Player
- Users can add tracks to a “Collection” section of the app, rather than adding them to a specific playlist.
- 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 February 2018, Spotify integrated with the gaming-oriented voice chat service Discord on desktop clients, allowing users to display their currently playing song as a rich presence on their profile, and invite other users with Spotify Premium to group “listening parties”.
- Spotify first announced a voice-activated music-streaming gadget for cars in May 2019.
- In November 2021, Spotify launched the City and Local Pulse charts, aimed at representing the songs listened to in major cities around the world.
- In February 2021, Spotify announced their plans to introduce a HiFi subscription, to offer listening in high fidelity, lossless sound quality.
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.
Spotify’s terms and conditions do not permit users to reverse-engineer the application. Ek stated that “We’re giving people the best free music experience in the history of the smartphone.” This limitation does not apply to Android and iOS tablets, or computers. In March 2013, the five-play individual track limit was removed for users in the United Kingdom, and media reports stated that users in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand never had the limit in the first place. In April 2011, Spotify announced via a blog post that they would drastically cut the amount of music that free members could access, effective 1 May 2011. frostybet casino In April 2025, Spotify expanded its AI Playlist beta feature to Premium listeners in over 40 new English-speaking markets, including countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean. Instead, a 30% commission is applied to recording royalties generated from all streams of selected songs in Discovery Mode contexts—Spotify Radio and Autoplay.
In April, Spotify announced a discounted entertainment bundle with video-on-demand provider Hulu, which included discounted rates for university students. In December, Spotify and Tencent’s music arm, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), agreed to swap stakes and make an investment in each other’s music businesses. Two more partnerships were announced in March; one with WNYC Studios, and one with Waze. PlayStation Music incorporates the Spotify service into Sony’s PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 gaming consoles, and Sony Xperia mobile devices. In 2023, Spotify merged Anchor into their Spotify for Podcasters tool, a rebranding move and to organize its tools for creating, managing, growing, and monetizing their content in one place.
Billboard estimated that the changes will pay songwriters and publishers $150 million less “from premium, duo and family plans for the first 12 months that this is in effect, compared to what they would have earned if these three subscriptions were never bundled.” The “deeper” loss came as a result of the company’s tax debt to over one-third of its employees in Sweden. Years after growth and expansion, a November 2012 report suggested strong momentum for the company. In 2008, just after launch, the company made a loss of 31.8 million Swedish kronor (US$4.4 million). The company reported that the tier conditions may change before its full launch.
Additional features include the ability to get “verified” status with a blue checkmark on an artist’s profile, receiving artist support from Spotify, customising the profile page with photos and promoting a certain song as their “pick”. In April 2017, the panel was upgraded to leave beta status, renamed as “Spotify for Artists”, and opened to all artists and managers. In March 2009, Spotify began offering music downloads in the United Kingdom, France, and Spain. 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 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). In February 2010, Spotify received a small investment from Founders Fund, where board member Sean Parker was recruited to assist Spotify in “winning the labels over in the world’s largest music market”.
Spotify helps place songs campaigned through Discovery Mode on listeners’ personal algorithmic playlists. The feature is represented by a bell icon on the app’s main page and is available on iOS and Android. In July 2021, Spotify launched the “What’s New” feed, a section that collects all new releases and episodes from artists and podcasts that the user follows. In December 2015, Quartz reported that songs in Discover Weekly playlists had been streamed 1.7 billion times. 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.