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.
No sound in Telegram Desktop
Worldwide, 30,000 musicians have joined the organization UnionOfMusicians (UMAW). Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it temporarily closed its office in Russia and indefinitely suspended all of its services in the country. The company is incorporated in Luxembourg as Spotify Technology S.A., and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, with offices in 16 countries around the world. For example, Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road and Doja Cat’s Say So started their popularity through Tik Tok but through Spotify playlists had their popularity accelerated.
In July 2025, a leak containing the listening data of several politicians, journalists, and businesspeople, titled the Panama Playlists, was released online. According to journalist and author Liz Pelly, Spotify, “under the guise of AI-powered recommendations has developed a surveillance apparatus driven by emotion profiling and pseudoscience.” Spotify does not sell user data but did begin selling broader trend data, often coined “streaming intelligence” to marketing firms in 2016, allowing for the data to be available directly to clients. Helsing is an AI defense software company that also engages in military strike drone manufacturing. Spotify promised to add content advisories for anything containing discussions related to COVID-19 and posted additional rules.
- Spotify had added social media-related features to its platform, especially to compete for ad revenue and to increase its media-related users.
- In April, Spotify announced a discounted entertainment bundle with video-on-demand provider Hulu, which included discounted rates for university students.
- The following November, the company began rolling out a web player, with a similar design to its computer programs, but without the requirement of any installation.
- 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 July 2025, a leak containing the listening data of several politicians, journalists, and businesspeople, titled the Panama Playlists, was released online.
- In April 2014, Spotify moved away from the peer-to-peer (P2P) system they had used to distribute music to users.
Acquisitions, podcasting and exclusivity deals
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 frostybet casino 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.
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.
Fake artists
The standalone app was made available to all iOS and Android users in the United States since 4 June 2019. On 31 January 2018, Spotify started testing a new Pandora-styled standalone app called Stations by Spotify for Australian Android users. The company also announced an expansion of its book catalogue to 250,000 books. In January 2021, Spotify made a selection of audiobooks available on the platform as a test of developing a greater breadth of content for users. Spotify thereafter announced it was planning to add more of these pages and playlists to highlight songwriters.
Spotify for Creators
In April 2017, they acquired Mediachain, a blockchain startup that had been developing a decentralized database system for managing attribution, and other metadata for media. In a comment to TechCrunch, Spotify said that Seed Scientific’s team would lead an advanced analytics unit within the company, focused on developing data services. On 3 July 2020, cybersecurity firm VPNMentor discovered a database containing 380 million individual records, including the logins and passwords of Spotify users. It was announced later in April that this type of agreement would be extended to indie artists signed to the Merlin Network agency. New reports in April confirmed that Spotify and Universal Music Group had reached an agreement to allow artists part of Universal to limit their new album releases to the Premium service tier for a maximum of two weeks.
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.
Telegram not downloading media files, any solution to this?
In November 2021, Spotify launched the City and Local Pulse charts, aimed at representing the songs listened to in major cities around the world. The Group Session feature was later expanded to allow any Premium user to join/participate in a Group Session, with a special link the host can send to participants. Rap Caviar had 10.9 million followers by 2019, becoming one of Spotify’s Top 5 playlists. Spotify provides artists taking part in RADAR with resources and access to integrated marketing opportunities to help them boost their careers, in addition to expanded reach and exposure to 178 markets worldwide. In March 2021, Spotify announced an upcoming option for higher-resolution sound, Spotify Hi-Fi. Users find the relevant content to share and press a “soundwave-style barcode” on the display.
Daniel Ek, co-founder and CEO of Spotify, discussed “what he called an artist-friendly streaming solution”. However, artists such as Gary Glitter and Lostprophets are still hidden from Spotify’s radio stations. In May 2018, Spotify attracted criticism for its “Hate Content & Hateful Conduct policy” that removed the music of R. A study has shown that record labels keep a high amount of the money earned from Spotify, and the CEO of Merlin Network, a representative body for over 10,000 independent labels, has also observed significant yearly growth rates in earnings from Spotify, while clarifying that Spotify pays labels, not artists. The free service tier has led to a variety of major album releases being delayed or withdrawn from the service.
Songs, Playlists & Audiobooks
It combines short-form podcast news updates from The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and PRI with a mix of a user’s favorite songs and artists interspersed with tracks the listener has yet to discover. Also in January 2019, Spotify beta-tested its Canvas feature, where artists or labels can upload looping 3 to 8-second moving visuals to their tracks, replacing album covers in the “Now Playing” view; users have the option to turn off this feature. The features were announced by CEO Daniel Ek at a press conference, with Ek saying that a common user complaint about the service was that “Spotify is great when you know what music you want to listen to, but not when you don’t”. “Follow” lets users follow artists and friends to see what they are listening to, while “Discover” directs users to new releases as well as music, review, and concert recommendations based on listening history. Users can create, edit and share playlists, share tracks on social media, and make playlists with other users.
- On 3 July 2020, cybersecurity firm VPNMentor discovered a database containing 380 million individual records, including the logins and passwords of Spotify users.
- Worldwide, 30,000 musicians have joined the organization UnionOfMusicians (UMAW).
- In January 2016, Spotify and music annotation service Genius formed a partnership, bringing annotation information from Genius into infocards presented while songs are playing in 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.
- The free service tier has led to a variety of major album releases being delayed or withdrawn from the service.
- Later that month, Spotify also acquired MightyTV, an app connected to television streaming services, including Netflix and HBO Go, that recommends content to users.
Using PC streaming, a similar structure to the one used today allowed the listener to play songs freely, but with ads every 4–7 songs depending on listening duration. Ek’s initial pitch to Lorentzon was not initially related to music, but rather a way for streaming content such as video, digital films, images or music to drive advertising revenue. While certain musicians laud the service for offering a lawful option to combat piracy and for remunerating artists each time their music is played, others have voiced objections to Spotify’s royalty structure and its effect on record sales. Operating as a freemium service, the basic features are free with advertisements and limited control, while additional features, such as offline listening and commercial-free listening, are offered via paid subscriptions. Spotifya is a Swedish audio streaming and media service provider founded in April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon.
In October 2017, Microsoft announced that it would be ending its Groove Music streaming service by December, with all music from users transferring to Spotify as part of a new partnership. Spotify offers DRM-protected audio content, including over 100 million songs and over 7 million podcast titles, from record labels and media companies. In 2016, Spotify was criticized for allegedly making certain artists’ music harder to find than others, as these artists would release their music to the rival streaming service Apple Music before releasing it to Spotify. Spotify has been criticised by artists and producers including Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke, who have argued that Spotify does not fairly compensate musicians, and both withdrew their music from the service. However, there has been some concern about the music streaming platform’s social media features. Before May 2020, all service users were limited to 10,000 songs in their library, after which they would receive an “Epic collection, friend” notification and would not be able to save more music to their library.
Curate the best playlists and stream millions of free songs, albums and original podcasts on your mobile or tablet. With the Spotify app, you can explore an extensive library of music and podcasts for free. Anyone can view, but only approved users can contribute Pelly advocated for a move away from the current royalty model that says the artists who people listen to the most should make the most money toward a more generalized approach where the decision for who gets paid rests with industry or government bodies, not audiences.
